Yeah but they only need to get it ‘right’ once and they can copy/paste it forever.
United States California approves 1st state-funded guaranteed income plan
Doomsought
Well-known member
No, they can't.
You need to redo the entire process for every single item you make. With a fully automated factory, you can only make one thing ever.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
No, that's old-school thinking. Machine learning isn't about setting up presses and dies that can only press out one part and have to be rebuilt for any other.
Once an AI learns to drive you don't have to reteach it how to drive for every single road, just give it a destination.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
The thing is, a BIG/BLG (Basic Income Guarantee/Basic Life Guarantee) is going to be the only way forward. Machine learning is, simply put, breaking every single preconception on AI we've got. It's better that we get his prepped and ready now than later.
I wouldn't be surprised that, at the end of the half-century, most of us will be on a BIG/BLG because machines literally took all available work outside of the military.
I wouldn't be surprised that, at the end of the half-century, most of us will be on a BIG/BLG because machines literally took all available work outside of the military.
boomghost
I trust you know where the launch button is?
eh, theres always going to be some menial labor somewhere, I doubt they'll get self-cleaning brewing equipment available for the non macro breweries anytime soon
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
You would actually be surprised in that regard. Machines, simply put, are getting better than humans overall. So it is most likely you'll have -at most- a bunch of overseers being in the work market and the jobs are done by machines that make Bester the Learning Robot look like an old logic engine. If they don't, they'll be simply out of business because reality likes economies of scale to the point that they'll back it to the hilt and the economy is now one giant prisoner dilemma of sorts.
Militarily, it's more likely that drones get put into the refuse bin outside of being bodies for AGIs than drones replacing soldiers. At best. The evolving technological context is basically making them unusable alongside enough groups wanting them eliminated as a weapon of war due to their capabilities. I wouldn't be surprised if North Korea is currently working on something to subvert US Sat-Link drones for a future Korean War...
I'm banking on Texas being the next tech land.
Heard a lot of tech companies moved out there.
Texas instruments be all confused, like "why is coming to TX all of a sudden?"
Here comes Skynet.
Better get your guns ready.
Because the Terminators shall soon follow.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Not really, given that we're nowhere near AGIs yet. Really good expert systems, yes, but not AGIs.Here comes Skynet.
Better get your guns ready.
Because the Terminators shall soon follow.
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Here's something that you'll have to understand: humans are too expensive to hire, hence why companies have been going full steam ahead on automation and damn the consequences in doing so. I would be very surprised that waiters would be a thing by the halfway point of this century.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
I mean, those are probably going to be some of the last holdouts, but everybody in the world can't be a waiter for everybody else. When there're 5000 unemployed persons for every waiter job only the most exquisite and naturally gifted of waiters will have jobs and only the super-wealthy (who own the robots and thus generate all the wealth) will be able to afford a waitered meal. Everybody else will live in their pods and eat their bugs, or starve because the military is fully robotic too at that point and rebellion against those who control the robots is functionally impossible.
For the really dark future, the only job will be stroking the egos of those who control the robots and they might as well purge the genes of all those who aren't superb and gifted ego-strokers, there's no other use for humans when robots can do everything better.
Val the Moofia Boss
Well-known member
Laborers won't be completely supplanted by automation; automation means replacing laborers with technicians who maintain the robots that do the labor. With more automation means more technicians are required to keep everything working. Yes there is a net decrease in jobs to go around but automation doesn't cut all of the jobs. Also, as society becomes ever increasingly consumeristic and more and more stuff is being produced, you're going to need more and more people to distribute the stuff (ie, truck drivers, warehouse and port workers, etc). I guess if Google manages to perfect their self driving car technology, then truck drivers will be out of jobs, though.
Doomsought
Well-known member
Have you ever been inside a factory? Anything that is mass produced runs along the lines of at least one tool that has been specifically shaped for one part, as many as a dozen on an assembly line. You can get away with some minor modifications without having to completely replacing the tool, but this often either involves either removing metal, very expensive modular construction, or designeing your modifications around the million dollar tool.
Bear Ribs
Well-known member
Yes, that's an excellent analogy, our old ideas about AI were that it would be like that obsolete factory, the reality we're running into is that it's more like a 3D printer.
Doomsought
Well-known member
Too slow to be useful for anything other than prototyping and custom parts?
Aaron Fox
Well-known member
Not really. Remember we're only starting to use 3D printing in any actual capacity. I wouldn't be surprised that speed and durability make great strides by the end of the century at the latest.
Not really. We're talking about a complete job market collapse here on a scale that makes the skilled laborer market collapse that happened during the 2nd Industrial Revolution (the one everyone points to when the words 'industrial revolution' are uttered) look insignificant. Laborers will be supplanted, even technicians, thanks to advances in machine learning that simply blow out our previous assumptions right out of the water.
The thing is, those military robots are likely not going to happen largely because they would be reliant on an AGI pipeline, and that is going to be slow in comparison. Drones as we know them are likely going to be gone by the half-century thanks to the currently evolving technological context.
If reality is taking my "A New World" setting as a blueprint like it did to Stand on Zanzibar, then we're probably going to have 'fun' in the most sarcastic meaning possible. Drones without AGIs stuffed in them? Useless, no more than giant paperweights. That means you can only have people (or cybernetically augmented clones) as soldiers...
That's not a foregone conclusion. Unless they have a friendly President who puts their social programs on the Fed tax bill or they get it passed through the Congress (which would need Senate approval...), then California will not consistently have the resources pouring in from the Feds. Not without giving major concessions to Republicans. And that won't be for permanent cash transfusions, but rather the Republicans agreeing to x or y cash transfers if they get a or b.
Long term, this will probably do more to weaken the Democrat's hand. They can't afford to alienate California, but they can't really afford to keep giving up things to pay for California. I expect that once the rest of the country returns to work, California will either be forced to quietly reverse its position, let its new programs rot from lack of funding, or keep demanding that the rest of the Democrats make huge political concessions to the Republicans so as to keep their liberal paradise afloat for another few days. All the while, California sinks deeper and deeper into the abyss.
Actually, there's a great deal of excitement in 3D Housing. Between lower cost in labor, mistakes made, and other installations (such as plumbing and electric). With the growing housing crises in smaller cities from people leaving the really big cities, what you may see is an explosion in these companies as they provide cheaper housing at lower prices, with more efficient costs. Honestly, I expect us to be making significantly more 3D houses by the end of this decade. The technology is already there and PROVEN. And assuming the company that make these early 3D houses aren't fudging the numbers to make them more appealing (and they may), they are going to be cheaper and faster to build, but with greater durability and energy efficiency than previous methods.
I expect us to make great strides in the technology within the next decade. I will expect it to be a mature technology by 2070 at the latest. (Which will probably cause its own crises then)
While I think it will be disruptive, it may not be as devastating. Gen Y is one of the most educated (if childish) generation on American history. The American workforce is actually more educated leaving the Pandemic than it was entering it, thanks to people going for secondary education. The real question is what will be the next economic product that will transform the American economy.
I think that's going to be 3d printing. From large structures (such as houses) to smaller objects (screws, nails), we could see a complete overhaul in the way the US economy works. Instead of having a large box office with lots of stuff in stock in 25 years, we may see them shift down to having machines that produce screws and nails on demand (or simply as the store needs it). And in 50 years, most of those stores may vanish to be replaced with mostly material supplying stores as people simply download the blueprints of what they want and print it at home, after purchasing the materials at the store. Or having Amazon deliver it. Big box stores may shift to little more than local factories producing finished goods (custom, finished goods--as these can be more or less done on demand at the store) instead of just a repository for finished products for customers to purchase.
Factory jobs as we knew them are basically dead in the US. But that doesn't mean with reshoring and a shift in technology, that we won't have a blue collar sector. Instead the most skilled and educated will be involved in new and growing companies utilizing 3D technologies. Programmers, architects, designers, and even architects may be drawn towards the Rust Belt because quick and cheaply made custom pieces will require their input. Of course, they may not need to move at all, as there looks to be a push towards decentralization and work from home. And of course, cheap, custom made products will undermine entirely new sectors--like films.
20 years ago, you had good digital cameras that you could make half-decent movies on. Now you have phones that you can almost make half-decent movies on. In 20 years, you might have 3D machines you can produce half-decent props from. Hollywood will feel the same sort of pressure that big oil has been facing against fracking. Big players may just start getting squeezed out because their entire business model is dump a shitload of money and resources and talent into big block busters (that no one really likes), whereas smaller companies can make much better movies for a fraction of the budget, without having to use the Hollywood gatekeepers.
LordsFire
Internet Wizard
It's not a strawman, it's part of why things won't work the way you think.
A robot used for manufacturing strictly adds value to the economy. I'd say it's a producer, but not a consumer, unlike a human being, but it's not even that. It's a tool, which enhances the production of human beings.
The fact that a robot has taken over a job a human used to do, does not cause there to be less value, less wealth in the economy. And in anything approaching a free market economy, wealth doesn't just sit around doing nothing; it is used and spent, so the wealth that used to be spent paying one worker, is now freed up to pay for a different worker.
And robots will not be doing all the work. This is, simply put, a baseless assertion, with no supporting evidence beyond speculation about the future. History has shown us time and again, that no matter how many jobs are eliminated because of better methodologies and machines, we always find something new to do with the freed up resources, and that something new, means new jobs. If those jobs are also highly mechanized and efficient, that means that there are still more resources floating around, available to make more new things.
The people of 1700 didn't imagine that trains would make ox-pulled wagons largely obsolete. The people of 1800 didn't imagine that the car would make the carriage a niche luxury good. The people of 1900 didn't imagine that aircraft would make passenger-carrying ships functionally exclusive to luxury cruises. The people of 1950 didn't imagine that calculators would mean that engineers trained fifty years later wouldn't recognize a slide-rule on sight, if they even knew what it was in the first place.
Yet every single time, every single time without exception, the fact that there is a machine that does part or all of a job better, has just mean new jobs with new things that never even existed before came about.
Yes, yes, I've heard the argument that 'not everyone can be an engineer or a physicist.' Yes, that's fine. You don't need an IQ of 120, or even 100 (though below 90 is probably pushing it) to have practical hands-on understanding of what it means to be a mechanic, or a plumber, or a carpenter. You don't need to be a genius to have specific specialized knowledge in how to operate a couple types of heavy machinery, like a logging machine, or a front-end loader. And there are continuously more jobs for luxury goods and services being created, because as necessities become cheaper, people can afford more luxuries.
Even necessities like housing that remain expensive, have more luxuries built right into them.
This also does not account for the fact that the IQ scale has been repeatedly recalibrated higher. 100 is always the average, so if the average intelligence rises, then they shift the scale upwards. Odds are decent (but by no means certain) that this will happen again in the future.
And as to the argument about machine learning? Let me share something with you:
After decades and decades of AI development, while some pattern recognition has been managed, a basic reading of things like this will show you that AI does not do well with meaning. It can be taught the strict rules of grammar. It can be taught many of the weird exceptions and irregularities built in English. That doesn't mean that it can teach itself why you can't 'switch a child to airplane mode.' Exhaustive and highly-detailed programming work from specialists may be able to manually teach it a lot of the things about what a child is and isn't, but it can't teach that to itself.
As Doomsought said, you can create and program a machine for highly specialized tasks, but it's very difficult to implement, and each use-case requires different specialization. People thought self-aware robots were around the corner in the 80's (and some decades further back), but that continuously fails to materialize, because human thought is more advanced and sophisticated than almost anyone understands.
And that's the kind of barrier you need before humans can be outright replaced, rather than just given better economic tools, by robots as a whole.
TL;DR: The 'we'll just keep creating new jobs and new types of jobs' position has two hundred years of evidence of the results of what has happened since the first industrial revolution when things become more automated, the 'permanent 30%+ unemployment' position has 'we speculate because of things in AI development that we see' as the sum total of its evidence.
You do not implement government policy based on a position with the evidence weighted so heavily against it.
Edit: Regarding the 3d Printing thing:
3d Printing is great for specific uses, but what nobody in here except Doomsought seems to understand, is how ineffecient it is when it comes to time, energy, and sometimes material.
A low-end 3d printer that only works with plastic or resin, will take hours or even days to create a single toy. And that's a single-cast rigid-shape toy. If it's a complex toy with moving parts, you have to have multiple print runs for each individual part, and then assemble it by hand. After you find the blueprints, make sure they're compatible with your machine, queue up and execute multiple print-runs, making sure to have the machine kept properly fed for resin/plastc/etc. All of this takes time, and time is your most precious resource.
Or, you can go down to the store, or hop onto Amazon, and buy an equivalent toy for five to fifty dollars. Depending on what you're getting (like low-quality toy cars) you might get a pack of multiples that combined cost you a dollar or less.
And that's just with one of the simplest applications for 3d printing.
It certainly has its place, and I'm glad of the modular resiliency that high-end 3d printing adds to our economic system. Some of the really expensive ones can print circuit boards and the like for you at home, and if we have a complete economic collapse, being able to restart the 'building the tools to build the tools to-' process from 80's tech rather than 1920's tech would definitely be a good thing.
Being good at using 3d printers is practically a professional skill in and of itself, and while I expect ease-of-use and operator friendliness to improve as time goes on, that doesn't change the basic economic limitations of it. Some things, like simple spare parts, might shift to the 'just print it' model in the near future, but...
There are physical limits that mean that mass-production will always have advantages for efficiency and economies of scale, for many different things. In order to overcome those advantages, we'd have to have technology on the level of Star Trek replicators and the like, which is not happening anywhere in the near future.
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