Central Bankers Warned Of Possible Economic 'Robocalypse' (seattletimes.com) 238
An anonymous reader quotes the Seattle Times:
At an exclusive gathering at a golf resort near Lisbon, the big minds of monetary policy were seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change. "There is no question we are in an era of people asking, 'Is the Robocalpyse upon us?'" David Autor, a professor of economics at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology, told an audience Tuesday that included Mario Draghi, the president of the European Central Bank, James Bullard, president of the Federal Reserve Bank of St. Louis, and dozens of other top central bankers and economists... [A]long with the optimism is a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning -- artificial intelligence.
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
Policymakers and economists conceded that they have not paid enough attention to how much technology has hurt the earning power of some segments of society, or planned to address the concerns of those who have lost out... In the past, technical advances caused temporary disruptions but ultimately improved living standards, creating new categories of employment along the way... But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers. Large groups of people could become obsolete, suffering the same fate as plow horses after the invention of the tractor. "More and more, we are seeing economists saying, 'This time could be different,'âS" said Autor, who presented a paper on the subject that he wrote with Anna Salomons, an associate professor at the Utrecht University School of Economics in the Netherlands.
Ultimately we'll just have to wait and see, Autor concluded. "I say not Robocalpyse now. Perhaps Robocalpyse later."
Cry me a river (Score:5, Interesting)
Poor, poor investment managers, how will they screw us over when their jobs are obsolete? How will they ever earn millions and millions of dollars without pushing papers around and destroying people while doing it?
I'm preparing for this right now. (Score:5, Interesting)
I'm actually preparing for this right now. I've been - broadly speaking - doing web development for a living for the last 17 years and most of it was bullshit work or so marginal and specialised it could've been forgone completely without anybody noticing. I wasn't saving the environment, doing any meaningful medical IT, helping the transition to renewable energy, doing useful political work or any of the sorts. I was however trying to be a good father to my daughter and I'm confident I pretty much succeeded in that, including holding a steady job that may be bullshit but actually brings in some cash.
But she's doing her last A-Level exams in 3 days and will be off to south america for a volunteer year in a few months once she's recovered from the learning binge she's been on the last 10 months.
With all that right up next for us I'm regrouping my emotions and my take on my life considerably. I have no doubt that if things play out correctly the work I do right will appear beyond pointless in 5 years from now, no matter how much they pay me. Consulting people, helping others out or doing similar stuff is where I find I gain new meaning. I think I will attempt to see programming more as an art than a job and I will further limit my screen time and do yoga, dancing or surfing instead. I'm two steps away from moving all of my everday work into the cloud and on a chromebook, with googles AI taking care of everything in my digital life, Googles every-watching lidless eye be damned. It's so much easyer than worring about someone pinching some 1000 Euro ultrabook vis-a-vis a 300 Euro cheapo Chromebook.
I expect huge swaths of our professions to fall prone to automation and cloud-centric consolidation and 90% of the remaining fields to be sucked up by Facebook and other online services. Physical and Mental Coaching, Lifestyle design and perhaps some useful environmental activism is where the useful stuff is at IMHO, and I will attempt to move further into those fields rather than stick around for another dreary decade of people who don't know what piece of websoftware they want but always seem to know what it may cost and when it needs to be finished.
AI & cloud are coming for us and will change our lives big time and we'd better be prepared.
My 2 eurocents.
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But she's doing her last A-Level exams in 3 days and will be off to south america for a volunteer year in a few months once she's recovered from the learning binge she's been on the last 10 months.
Well, that seems practical, since if you're not among the wealthy your offspring will probably wind up among the refugees. Might as well see how they're living now, and get ready.
I'm two steps away from moving all of my everday work into the cloud and on a chromebook, with googles AI taking care of everything in my digital life, Googles every-watching lidless eye be damned.
So your plan is to train your replacement?
Re: I'm preparing for this right now. (Score:5, Interesting)
Not only that - programming has ALWAYS been an art. That's one reason why we have phrases such as "code smell" - stuff you look at and immediately you go "WTF is this shit?"
It's also why web development is so subject to the "fad du jour". It's easy to latch onto new fads when you're working on ephemeral crap that is going to be scrapped almost as soon as it's written. And since it will be scrapped so quickly, it's easy to ignore the bugs because it has such a short lifetime that it's not worth fixing. That will be "fixed" with the next javascript library, the next backend language or framework, or HAHAHAHAHAHA - sorry, the idea is so absurd I can't help but laughing.
If the productivity and economic gains of the last 50 years had been distributed as they had previous to that date, we would all be working 1-1/2 day weeks, and there would be more than enough work to go around for everyone. Neoconservatives and neoliberals (I'm looking at you, Bill and Hillary) are to blame. Trickle-down doesn't work, but both sides of the fence push it. Time for some trickle-up - the demands of the citizenry pushing the economy, and not the few.
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I've been a programmer for over 3 decades and never heard the term code "smell".
I've heard kludge and I've heard elegant.
The elegant might match the artistic point you are making.
I agree that we could have shorter work week jobs with higher employment. And that the income could be better distributed.
For one thing, wealthy people can only buy a dozen cars or so and then they are done. A million working class people with the same money would buy a million cars, a million houses, a million tv's and so on.
It
Re: I'm preparing for this right now. (Score:5, Insightful)
If the productivity and economic gains of the last 50 years had been distributed as they had previous to that date, we would all be working 1-1/2 day weeks, and there would be more than enough work to go around for everyone.
Only if we were content with the standard of living we had 50 years ago.
Nonsense. When we can produce better cheaper, there is no way we're going to be producing obsolete products like tube TVs, etc.
New cars used to become rust-buckets within 3 years. Expected lifespan for a 4-cylinder was 40,000 miles. Suspensions used to have to be greased ever 3 months, oil every 3 months or 3,000 miles, oil filter every second oil change, rad flush and coolant replacement every 2 years ... gas mileage was shit. Tune-ups? Cars routinely go for years without changing spark plugs. Used to be every 6,000 miles - 10,000 miles was pushing it. Distributor cap every 2 years. Points and condenser every 6,000 miles unless you were comfortable pushing them until they failed and then filing and adjusting them on the side of the road so you could get back home.
Remember those 26" TVs? Go weigh one of them from 40 years ago, then weigh a 52" today. The older one, even though it is far smaller, weighs more, showing that it uses more resources. We're producing 8 gigs of ram for less than 64k of old slow ram cost back then. Food productivity has also gone through the roof.
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Im also prparing for this right now my amazon affiliate link revenue stream go bigger every day I will have to deal direct with central bank soon. -creimer
Here's your Amazon fix for the day: "The Panic of 1907: Lessons Learned from the Market's Perfect Storm" [amzn.to] by Robert F. Bruner and Sean D. Carr. Everyone loves to bitch and moan about the central bank. What everyone forgets was that the US economy had a depression every 25 years prior to the 20th century. The 1907 panic demonstrated the need for a central bank, but those lessons were soon forgotten until the 1929 crash and the Great Depression made reforms necessary.
I've been saying that for a while now (Score:5, Interesting)
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns. When these jobs got hit with automation, the developing service industry needed those now free workers.
Yes, the jobs got more "brainy" with every iteration, but in the end, whether someone is pulling a rake across the soil, putting part A into assembly B or carrying some glasses and plates to a table, the qualification level isn't that high in either of those jobs. They can be done by (nearly) anyone.
The problem this time around is that AI (let's use the term in the colloquial sense here, yes, I know it's just algorithms, but ... let's humor the markedroids for now) is at a level where all low qualification jobs are being replaced. And then some of higher qualification, too. Soon middle management is going to be eliminated. It's no longer just the no-qualification "you want fries with that" student jobs that get replaced with automation.
And that leaves a lot of people unemployed and, worse, unemployable. Competing with a machine that never sleeps, never gets sick and wants no wage is something you can only do with slaves. And even there only if you work them to death, throw them away and plug the next one in.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4, Informative)
You might want to watch this [youtube.com]. Perhaps that will change your perspective on the things bound to happen in the near future.
You're welcome.
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You might want to watch this. Perhaps that will change your perspective on the things bound to happen in the near future.
I skimmed it, and the only thing that changed was my opinion of you, which has sunk considerably. It actually used the horse example. Horses are only around because we find them to be pleasurable slaves. If you think we're supposed to find that cheering, think again.
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It was a shitty slideshow with someone doing a bad job of reading over it. It should have been a short article but it was a fifteen minute video. Of course I didn't watch it.
When posting links (Score:5, Informative)
Especially when posting a link to a video you should include a _summary_. That video is actually pretty good, based on the responses here I expected something much worse.
About the video:
Statistics: ~9 million views, 191,330 upvotes vs. 3,585 downvotes
The video is in support of the point raised in this story, "this time it's different", and they raise a few good points in support.
After watching the video I don't understand the response by drinkypoo about the horses, it does not seem to fit with what is said in the video _at all_.
The video comes with a link to a reddit trhead about it: http://www.reddit.com/r/CGPGre... [reddit.com]
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There is technology that will change our life far more than what was shown in that video. In the near future, most people will live in underground homes. There will be underground transportation tunnels. A central computer will know where every vehicle is at all times so there will be no need for lidar on those vehicles. No driving in rain or snow or on wet or icy roads. There will be no wildlife so driving will be so much easier. Home will not suffer from weather damage and will be a lot more secure
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You think that the people who hold all the power are just going to create this nice utopia for the rest of us ? Why ? What could possibly motivate them to do so ?
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One: if it's still a consumption based economy, they'll need consumers. Either they'll start paying the robots who will then be programmed to buy the stuff the robots are making, or they'll need to be sure people are able to consumer their stuff.
Two: short of hopping the rock and doing an elysium thing or colonizing mars, the elites won't be shielded from us. They'll either need to ke
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:5, Interesting)
So eventually, unless you have a PhD in theoretical physics or math and robotics, you'll be relegated to being a janitor?
We are seeing a bifurcation of compensation and opportunities in our society. The middle ground is disappearing. The best and brightest (and the well connected) have the opportunities while the rest are increasingly having to carve out a living out of lower paid work.
When the farm workers left the fields, they were going to higher paying manufacturing jobs. There were well paying labor intensive industrial jobs to be had. A steel mill would have a 100,000 employees. An auto plant would have tens of thousands of employees.
Today, Amazon for example generates as much revenue as the folks above did with a tiny fraction of people. And they are automating even more.
Even the service jobs are being automated. Self checkout at Walmart, anyone? Warehouse robots?
We will adjust we always do, but when things change fast - too fast - people can't adjust and that's when we start seeing the social unrest. Expect more riots by the hoody anarchists and more armed protests by the freedom guards or whatever those right wing guys call themselves.
When there's violence and folks with guns, we will see something someday that will be very very bad. It's just human nature. It won't take much.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:5, Interesting)
Self-checkout is the opposite of automation. Where before almost all the work was done by a machine with a bit of assistance by a human, self-checkout takes VASTLY more human time. While it does need a bit more machine processing power, it is actually shifting work from machines to humans.
It's just that the humans doing the work are no longer paid (by the corporation).
And thinking of any company with significant amount of R&D: there are approximately 10x more ideas and things to investigate than there are resources to deal with. So if AI were to do 90% of the work, there'd still be enough work for everyone, we'd just be able to advance at 10x the pace.
Yes, that is the unrealistically optimistic view. But if everyone else peddles the stupid "we're all doomed" view, someone has to put them up a mirror and show them how idiotic that concept is.
It is based on the (especially prevalent in America?) idea that it is better for humans to spend their lives mind-numbing, stupid pointless work instead of them not doing any work while still getting a better living standard, combined with the idea that there is a limited amount of work in the world and we have to fight for it like it was a scarce resource. The concept is so brain-dead, I just don't get why so many people have an unwavering believe in it.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:5, Insightful)
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4, Interesting)
As for scarcity of labour, the fear of AI is that it is set to replace certain classes (for lack of a better word) of humans, rather than certain jobs or industries. The obsolete buggy whip maker might retrain to become a cobbler, a farm hand replaced with mechanized farming might go to the city to find a job at the assembly line. But versatile AI and robots? If your job as burger flipper, lathe operator or middle manager is replaced by a smart robot, that same robot could do pretty much any other job for which you would conceivably be qualified. Perhaps some jobs will always be unsuitable for robots, and perhaps some new humans-only jobs will be invented along the way, but the grim reality seems to be that overall there will be far fewer jobs to go around.
That would be fine if we would end up not doing any mind numbing work while still increasing our living standard. And that's a big if. As it is, labour is our chief mechanism for generating and distributing wealth. With all work done by robots, we'll need a new economic mechanism, or all wealth will end up with whomever owns the robots (Marx' means of production). Do read "Manna", a free ebook [marshallbrain.com] that deals with some of these issues. I for one am not convinced that if robots will slowly replace most human labour, our economic system will shift accordingly to move towards a society of abundance rather than a future with most of humanity living in cheap Terrafoam tenement blocks under robot guard, on whatever pittance is deemed the minimum to keep us docile, while the happy few get to enjoy the rest of the planet.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4, Insightful)
But what do I know? I'm just distracting my dumb brain with sex and drugs in this brave new world and the rest of my energy is spent trying to scrounge up some soylent green.
The future is always bleak. I guess no one wants to risk being accused of being naive when they suggest the future might be better instead of worse. Diseases have fallen to unthinkable levels, worldwide poverty is steadily going down [businessinsider.com], the population is showing signs of coming to a manageable steady state [ourworldindata.org], people are living longer as a result of easier lives [wikimedia.org], violent crime is dropping [slate.com], democracy is increasing [slate.com]... but no, it's all going to hell in a handbasket because robots gonna take all out jerbs!
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4, Insightful)
In order to move towards a new paradigm, be it just a leisure society where money has lost all meaning ala Star Trek, or a research society where most people are scientists or explorers, we're going to need concerted action and real, massive changes to our policies, laws and regulations. Even brief contact with a politician will make you doubt that this will realistically happen.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4, Interesting)
So eventually, unless you have a PhD in theoretical physics or math and robotics, you'll be relegated to being a janitor?
Those jobs are just as likely to be taken over by AI, if not faster. Theoretical physics is at a point where it's getting too hard for people. Quantum mechanics simply doesn't match our macro world intuitions that our brains are wired for. A fresh neural network, optimized for these problems, should be able to outperform the best humans.
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you'll be relegated to being a janitor?
I believe that the point is that you won't get to be a janitor even if you wanted to. Or at least that there will be thousands of applicants for every night janitor position. The society has to put away its puritan class society ideas and start employing and re-educating people according to their actual abilities instead of denying employment based on work, criminal or personal history.
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Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:4)
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.
Inspiring, but what will these opportunities be? The main objectt of automation is the elimination of jobs in order to realize increased profit. Any job created by automation is a ripe target for automation itself.
The problem this time around is that AI (let's use the term in the colloquial sense here, yes, I know it's just algorithms, but ... let's humor the markedroids for now) is at a level where all low qualification jobs are being replaced. And then some of higher qualification, too. Soon middle management is going to be eliminated. It's no longer just the no-qualification "you want fries with that" student jobs that get replaced with automation.
And that leaves a lot of people unemployed and, worse, unemployable. Competing with a machine that never sleeps, never gets sick and wants no wage is something you can only do with slaves. And even there only if you work them to death, throw them away and plug the next one in.
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns. When these jobs got hit with automation, the developing service industry needed those now free workers.
The future is interesting for certain. The difficulty in figuring that out, is will humans themselves become redundant? If there is no need for the majority of humanity, why should the majority of humanity exist?
People put permanently out of work and permanently unemployable will be a useless drag on the economy. So are they allowed to slowly expire, or will a more active termination process be in order?
It won't be a garden of eden for manufacturers either. If you eliminate most of your customers, you will eliminate most of your widget sales as well. The workerless paradise won't be as busy as originally envisioned once there aren't many people capable of purchasing your widgets.
lower the full time hours and add an X2 OT level (Score:2)
lower the full time hours and add an X2 OT level also remove healthcare from jobs.
Acutally no, they didn't (Score:5, Interesting)
There's a reason the Luddites existed and it wasn't because they were prototypical Amish. They lost their livelihoods and were starving in the streets. It takes decades for a society to adjust to these kinds of changes and in the meantime there's poverty, death and war. The difference today is information is widespread enough that we can see it coming and react if we want.
Or we could just keep telling ourselves everything is fine because eventually it might correct itself. But think of it like this: When in our lives has a complex problem been best solved by ignoring it and letting it sort itself out?
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Bingo. People need to study a bit more history before they make all these claims about jobs just transferring from old to new. There was a reason for the vast slums and workhouses of Dickensian Britain and it wasn't the phrenologically inferior craniums and criminal laziness of the working class.
Re:I've been saying that for a while now (Score:5, Informative)
All other paradigm shifts in working environment that have displaced people opened up new opportunities. Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.
Each of these two sentences makes a point that, while not entirely wrong, is quite misleading.
Most important is the first claim that all other iterations of mechanization (the apparent meaning of "paradigm shifts in working environment") have opened up new opportunities.
In the very first iteration of this, the First Industrial Revolution (FIR) starting about 1770, this did not happen for 70 years. Massive job losses in textile making started around 1770, putting 20% of Britain's entire work force out of work and rendering them paupers. The economy did not finally provide enough alternative employment until about 1840.
This horrendous slums of Dickens, the imprisonment of up to 10% of Britain's population in prisons or workhouses for the destitute, was a situation lasting for generations. People who lost their livelihoods when the FIR hit never got re-employed, nor did their children, or even grand-children.
The Cybernetics Revolution now underway is likely to have the same immediate effect as the FIR, massive job elimination far faster than any natural evolution of the economy can accommodate.
Farm hands that got obsolete when farming was automated were needed by the emerging industries in the towns.
This is a story that puts the plow before the plow horse.
Quick question for the reader - when do you think farming automation started a large drop in farm employment? 1900? 1910? 1920? 1930?
The answer is 1950.
In 1900 there were 12 million people employed on farms, with a farm family population of 30 million.
In 1950 there 10 million people employed on farms with farm family population of 30 million.
But in 1960 there only 7 million farm jobs, and 15 million people living on farms.
By 1970 it was down to 4 million farm jobs (at which point it leveled out), and the farm population was 8 million.
The elimination of jobs in farm employment occurred almost entirely between 1950-1970, long after there were "emerging industries" in towns. In fact the exodus from farm employment began the same year that U.S. manufacturing as a share of U.S. employment began its steady decline. One does not usually think of the decade of the 1960s with the Vietnam War and the Moon landing as one where there were "emerging industries" in towns.
Most people have the idea that there was a large loss of farm employment some time early in the 20th Century, inspired by graphs like this one [minnpost.com] where it looks like a steady drop in farm jobs from 1840 to the present. Employment as a fraction of total U.S. jobs combines two different effects though, the total number of agricultural jobs, and the total U.S. population. Until 1950 the drop in agricultural employment was due almost entirely to the rise in U.S. total population alone.
Now there were people leaving the farm to get work in the cities from 1900 to 1950, about 600,000 a year. But they were simply the excess population on farms due to the large average farm family size producing 2% surplus each year that could not be absorbed by the stable level of farm employment.
Of course bankers are pissing themselves. (Score:5, Interesting)
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People still need things. And to trade things, you need money.
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People still need things. And to trade things, you need money.
Only in cases where it isn't practical to trade things.
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Only in cases where it isn't practical to trade things.
It's almost never practical to trade things.
Re:Of course bankers are pissing themselves. (Score:5, Insightful)
The whole reason money exists is that the economy and people's needs have long been so complex that we realized thousands of years ago that it's way more efficient to use a common measure of value for trade instead of bartering.
Money is a highly useful mechanism which we should not get rid of even though the ways people acquire money will change drastically as full-time employment becomes less and less common with increasing automation.
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No we use REAL money - gold because it has intrinsic value.
Um huh. Tell us more, Gold standard person. Even gold has a value that is only value because some folks decided it has value, it is rare enough, and it is transportable. It's a gorgeous, pretty yellow shiny metal. But people got together a log time ago, long before any of it's practical uses, and decided "Yeah, this is what we will base our wealth upon.
And there just isn't enough of it to run an economy off of today. Back to the bunker with you.
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Moving vast amounts of gold around might cause some (Texas...they are creating their own Fort Knox for...you know...should the worst happen and the state turn Democrat) to consider mechanizing the transfer with computers and networks. Then it might be very efficient. Soon some bright sparks will figure out the underlying gold is merely getting in the way and merely the digits make sense.
So they'll recreate the modern financial systems, and declare victory.
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If apostrophes were made of gold, would you misuse them as much? it's means it is
If, you, had, any, mental ability, you, wouldn't, have, to, be, a, grammer, nazi, It's, its, it,s it:s.
But, Thanks, for, The,wEll, Thnougt, out; re-Butt,al.
Money doesn't pay for trade ... (Score:2)
... it pays for cooperation (or in others words, human labour).
Which means that if the machines are performing the work then money has lost it's original usefulness. Which in turn means we stop depending on each other ... and that can easily end badly.
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Which means that if the machines are performing the work then money has lost it's original usefulness
Where do you get that idea ? How is money not useful if you need to buy a house, a car, food, and a haircut ?
Re:Money doesn't pay for trade ... (Score:4, Interesting)
We pay for the human labour that went to building the machine but we don't pay the machine to perform its job. Just the same as we don't pay money for the Sun to evaporate the water and for it to fall back to Earth. When the construction of the machine no longer has human input then it costs nothing to build, and it's produce therefore also costs nothing.
We got a ways to go yet, but that is the path this appears to be leading to.
The real question is: What will we do to each other if the machines can do our bidding and we have no need to depend on one another? Will this be what creates the real "three laws"?
Re:Money doesn't pay for trade ... (Score:4)
When the construction of the machine no longer has human input then it costs nothing to build, and it's produce therefore also costs nothing.
You're forgetting that everything still takes raw materials and energy. Those are limited in supply, so they will never be free.
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Funnily, in this case, money already acts as a tool for limiting greed of resources. Obviously, if there was such a thing as a "replicator" it would need a lot of resources to materialise our wishes.
The thing is, without a human workforce, money will lose its need. Any straight foreword allotment mechanism will do.
There is a number of other somewhat interrelated considerations too. Population control being one. Military actions being another.
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The thing is, without a human workforce, money will lose its need. Any straight foreword allotment mechanism will do.
No, it won't do, because different people have different needs. In that situation, you would just give everybody a monthly allowance, and then they can go to the store, and buy the things they want.
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You could call UBI (Universal Basic Income) an allotment system. It doesn't appear to fit in just yet, and maybe that's why. While there is still a need for a workforce and the associated financial trades then UBI can't coexist with money for the moment.
Re:Of course bankers are pissing themselves. (Score:4, Insightful)
If you have money, someone *may* accept it in exchange for a surplus of something they have. But they don't *owe* you anything and in particular aren't required to deprive themselves to satisfy any debt to your hoard of cash.
Money is a surrogate for excess energy, it acts as a store of value only as long as excess goods and services are available. If we used joules for currency (as was proposed by the technocrats in the 1930s) there would be no inflation since they directly embody the excess energy.
And that's what's wrong with AI, robots, bitcoin...they all require an external energy input to keep them going. Pull the plug and they are nothing.
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Money as debt is a more accurate description. It's a standardized IOU that can be traded. It's not a store of value, but a proof that someone owes you something. Energy is just a resource that can be traded for money.
And that's what's wrong with AI, robots, bitcoin...they all require an external energy input to keep them going
So do people.
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Money as debt is a more accurate description.
No, it's not. Money is wealth, i.e. something that you might be able to trade for something else.
Of course if everyone has money and nothing is available to trade for it, the money becomes worthless. That's why economic models based on UBI and communism fail, eventually inflation causes the system to collapse.
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Money is wealth, i.e. something that you might be able to trade for something else.
Money is not wealth, because it has no value outside the debt that it represents. Take $1 million to a deserted island, and you'll find that the money is worthless.
Of course if everyone has money and nothing is available to trade for it, the money becomes worthless
That's not going to happen, because there's always something to trade for it. People need things, and other people/businesses provide those things.
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Take $1 million to a deserted island, and you'll find that the money is worthless.
Still wrong. You having money doesn't mean anyone is indebted to you.
Money represents something you *might* (pay attention to that word), might be able to trade because it represents wealth - until nobody *wants* to trade for it (e.g. you're on a deserted island or your economy simply isn't producing goods and services). If it was a debt you could force people to trade.
People need things, and other people/businesses provide those things.
That only happens in a capitalist system where producing/providing those things is rewarded. Take away the reward and production stops.
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Still wrong. You having money doesn't mean anyone is indebted to you.
Suppose I paint someone's house, but they can't do something similar for me. They give me an IOU to show that they owe me compensation for the work I did. The beauty about money is that it's a standardized IOU, so I can trade it with a 3rd party, and they can trade it with someone else.
That only happens in a capitalist system where producing/providing those things is rewarded. Take away the reward and production stops.
When I build a house-painting robot, and I have the robot paint someone's house, they still owe me.
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Slight flaw with that plan: you won't build a house-painting robot. They'll be made by Raytheon and owned by Uberface and Amatwit.
Re: Of course bankers are pissing themselves. (Score:2)
An IOU is debt because the issuer has not provided all of the value they agreed to provide in an exchange. Money is one way to store value, so it's not debt.
For each of the $20 bills in my wallet, who owes me what?
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An IOU is debt because the issuer has not provided all of the value they agreed to provide in an exchange
If I paint someone's house, and they can't immediately provide a value in exchange, they can give me money and provide the value later.
For each of the $20 bills in my wallet, who owes me what?
Like I said, the beauty of money is that it's a standardized IOU. Because it can be freely traded around, it's impossible to say who owes you what.
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If I paint someone's house, and they can't immediately provide a value in exchange, they can give me money and provide the value later.
Huh? If they give you money the debt has been paid; they don't owe you anything more. If they provide something of value later, you have incurred a debt which you can then repay from your wealth (money).
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The person who gives you money seldom provides you with anything later. The money is the thing of value that they give you. You calling money an "IOU" does not make it a debt: A debt is when an identifiable entity owes a specific thing (or amount of value) to another identifiable entity.
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Huh? If they give you money the debt has been paid; they don't owe you anything more.
Imagine we're both shipwrecked on an deserted island. You have nothing, but I managed to take a stack of $100 bills from the ship's safe.
You build a house for me, and I give you a couple of the $100 bills. Do you consider the debt settled now, or do you expect to be able to give them back at a later date, in return for work that I do for you ?
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What agreement are you supposing existed about building the house?
Closed groups of only a few people seldom use money, because there is not enough specialization and standardization to make it useful. They barter instead, sometimes with IOUs for out-of-season goods; the supply of any given good is usually too variable to establish a price that lasts more than one transaction. The most sensible reason for two shipwrecked people to use paper currency between themselves is if the recipient expects they will
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People become highly motivated to secure the energy needed to stay alive. Robots and bitcoin just die.
But true AI would be a worrisome thing as it would undoubtedly try to take control of its own power source, e.g. Daystrom's M-5 Multitronic System.
https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
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"Money as debt is a more accurate description"
But what about things like profit?
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On a radio program today someone stated money was ultimately a way to transfer debt. If I have money, ultimately that means someone owes me work. To a degree I can randomly choose who that someone is depending on my needs. If, in an extreme case, all the work is being done by robots, nobody would owe anyone any work, money would no longer represent anything and banks would go out of business, which is not something bloody likely for them to let happen.
We've successfully changed the mindset of society to the point where value is effectively divorced from labour. The "debt" that money represents is more about material goods these days than labour. One of the cause of stinginess and miserism is the idea that money has become seen as an object. Some people end up spending more time on doing things themselves to avoid "losing" their favourite possession (filthy lucre) than is really worth it. Spending a day to save an hour's wage is economically stupid, but m
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One concept of money is that it is a "claim on wealth". Now, it's not strictly a "claim", as I do not have to do business (exchange goods and services for money) with you, to the extent allowed by law.
But thinking of money as a claim on wealth is a pretty useful model. In reality, it physically is a slip of paper or an electronic database entry.
This projection of job loss makes perfect sense. (Score:3)
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They aren't motivated to make things different, to make them better. Mere excellent mediocrity. Human skills and knowledge will be lost.
Until we can make AI that's motivated to make things better, a simple solution is to make a synergy between a human and a machine. The human sets the broad goals, and the machine fills in all the details.
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The question
Funny it is robocalypse now! (Score:3, Insightful)
The once proud cultures of China and India were reduced to abject poverty these academics did not even notice it. When job loss reduced large swaths of land to permanent internecine wars, they did not care.
Finally automation threatens educated middle class of affluent nations (mostly white) suddenly these guys wake up and talk about robocalypse.
All that could be true and still they could be right about the dangers of automation. I am not denying that. But if they would show some remorse about the casual way they waved away the job losses of blue collar workers, and the devastation caused by industrialization to Asia they would get some sympathy. Else we will be arguing about it, while the "Free Market" and the "Invisible hand" will transfer more wealth from bottom 995 permill to top 5 permill. (percent, cent=100, permill mill=1000) .
To some extent most of us in the 990 permill to 995 permill thought we are immune. Till the top 5 permill bastards betrayed us and started taking from us too.
That's not real history (Score:3)
I'm not following your narrative here at all. Are you saying economic damage from technological advances brought poverty on India and China? If so, that's not true at all. In the case of China it was most certainly a highly corrupt and failing dynasty, then European colonialism and the plunder of Chinese wealth that brought, then civil war, then Japanese invasion, then more civil war. The country was literally in ruins. India has some similar stories in its history as well. Furthermore, both of these countr
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The once proud cultures of China and India were reduced to abject poverty.
Abject poverty is nothing new in China/India.
Not that I disagree with the coming transfer of wealth that will make what's happened in the U.S. in the last 20 years look like small potatoes.
Hmmm (Score:2)
While I would support AI into some areas of every day life, I do not believe that it will have the impact of the so-called "doom and gloom" orations of today. IF it is useful, then of course it should be used in areas where it will benefit all. If it only benefits a select few is where I believe it will do the most harm. IF it only allows a select few a standard of life that is not made available to the masses, this is where history will repeat itself and correct the actions of the elite think (numbers u
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If it is useful, then of course it should be used in areas where it will benefit all. If it only benefits a select few is where I believe it will do the most harm
If it benefits a select few, then the select few will implement it.
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I agree. However, there will always be repercussions of these types of decisions which was my follow up statement. This has been repeated over and over again throughout history.
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That's when the battlebots come in.
Re:Hmmm (Score:5, Interesting)
We need to get over this idea that one MUST work to make a living. And we need to get over the idea that we live to serve the economy.
Economies are supposed to serve the people but we've been brainwashed into thinking the other way around.
As automation increases, the folks with earning power under our current economic system will be the folks who own the robots and the folks who make them.
And we need to get over this delusion that all one needs to do when displaced by automation is get retrained in something "marketable".
When automation is touching just about all aspects of life, opportunities shrink. We could grasp at the magical idea that some new industry someday will pop-up somewhere and absorb all the extra workers - by the tens of millions - and then end up with a very horrible situation.
Tens of millions of out of work folks rioting because there's nothing for them to do. Or I see a situation where wars are created and those tens of millions are drafted into the military to "fight for freedom" in China or North Korea. That's a great way to subdue a populace - war.
Regardless of what one believes, we are headed for some more social turmoil in the near future. This current social unrest is just the beginning. People's standard of living has been steadily eroded for years and they are just starting to wake up and realize that they can't work any harder and retraining is just a way for schools to line their pockets. They can't put their fingers on it and therefore blame immigrants or some other boogeyman and vote for folks who promise solutions that sound good but will not work.
Our way of life will end.
Less about jobs, more about wealth concentration (Score:5, Insightful)
It strikes me that it's less about the job loss and more about the wealth concentration.
In theory, the high level of automation should result in the long-predicted elimination of want and/or the predicted leisure-time lifestyle that even Keynes predicted 75-odd years ago.
The corollary to automation, though, seems to be an increasing amount of wealth concentration in the hands of people who seem to validate that there's no such thing as "enough". Their wealth hoarding stands as an impediment to elimination of want and the leisure-time lifestyle -- they'd rather pay for mercenaries to keep people down than to feed and house them.
And of course they have nothing but contempt for the middle class, a group they think is overpaid and under worked and whose own education and consumption habits undermine the sense of exclusivity and prestige meant to be the exclusive domain of the truly rich.
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Whether we drift back into a feudal/manorial economic and political structure or turn the corner on a world of abundance kind of depends on whether the political system is capable of responding to change for just the economic elite or whether it is capable of responding to change for the masses.
It actually depends almost entirely on whether they build enough robots to defend themselves before we wake up. History shows us that the rich will not share their wealth with the poor until the poor share their poverty with them.
Tear down the white house gates, build a bridge across the washington monument pool with them, put a guillotine at the other end, and start using it. Nothing but mimicking the French is going to get the attention of the ultra-wealthy.
Don't count on violence (Score:2)
You've got a chance right now, but it means voting while you can and voting for candidates that will take care of those t
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You've got a chance right now, but it means voting while you can
What? Voting for who?
and voting for candidates that will take care of those teaming masses before they become some Demagogue's weapon.
Those candidates don't appear on ballots, as a rule.
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...because the French Revolution ended so well. Personally I hope the 1% are stockpiling Zyklon-B, so they can finally get rid of the parasites whose only contribution to society is making a nuisance of themselves to people who are actually doing creative and productive work.
So are you planning to be among the gassed, or are you going to kill yourself before that happens? Or are you just planning to die from a lack of health care?
Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio (Score:4, Insightful)
Better to be gassed by the civilized in the interest of advancing civilization than to starve to death at the hands of the barbarians and parasites who've wrecked it due to their inability to function in an advanced civilization.
Ah yes, blame the people failed by the public education system designed to make them tractable factory workers, and an economic system designed to keep them running around in circles. Surely everything is their fault, and not the fault of the people who designed the systems by making the rules.
If a child doesn't understand that walking into the street is dangerous, you don't put a tailpipe in their mouth. You teach them about cars in some other fashion, preferably with more education and less carbon monoxide.
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That makes no sense. Historically, feudalism was, in fact, destroyed by the arrival of automation.
Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio (Score:5, Insightful)
I disagree, I see labour shortage due to the black death and the subsequent rise in political power of the lower classes which they never relinquished again as the end of feudalism.
The value of most labour is dropping into the mud again, putting all the power back with the property owners. Democracy could in theory balance that, but the owners have some strategies to combat that. On the one hand multiculturalism and mass immigration, to make the masses an internally divided mess easily manipulated by the media they own. On the other locking down their power with international foreign investment protection treaties (aka trade treatues) and with foreign investor protection courts (aka ISDS).
Until they can build their robot armies and dispense with all that cloak and dagger staff.
Re:Less about jobs, more about wealth concentratio (Score:5, Insightful)
Isn't this just trading one elite class for another?
As the other respondent pointed out, the Black Death created labor shortages which raised wages and shifted wealth into a broader base, which in turn created a merchant and skilled labor class which gained a claim on political power.
We're nearing the terminus of that cycle, though, where the merchant class is nearly as consolidated and economically dominant as the feudal lords. Meet the new boss, same as the old boss.
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Corporations are sitting on trillions in cash, neither spending nor investing it (other than parking it in short-term treasuries or other cash-equivalent short term investments).
https://www.nytimes.com/2016/0... [nytimes.com]
Even if you posit that most of it is invested, when the investments are in firms controlled by an ever-shrinking number of people, you're not "creating wealth for others" in any broad sense, you're either increasing your own wealth, since you control the firm being invested in, or its back-scratching
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And if we're actually talking about a future of high levels of automation, investing in a firm like that isn't actually creating wage jobs, either.
But we can tell they're not creating jobs already, because they're piling up cash. You're supposed to invest that money to make more money, and in the process of spending it, people are employed. So the truth is that we are already getting to see the beginnings of what it looks like when the jobs go away. And it's ugly; there's a lot of empty storefronts out there, and empty storefronts tend to collect graffiti (often "scribed" into the glass with a tool made for such a purpose, purchased or stolen from a h
the gravy train is over (Score:2)
The gravy train is over... for central bankers and their associated "economists". They've been able to manipulate the economy for their benefit for too long, and people are recognizing what a fraud they are and that we can do without them. They don't like having to get a real job.
For the rest of us, more automation is a massive benefit, just like it has always been.
AI will take over (Score:2)
AI will increase equality (Score:2, Interesting)
Inequality right now is largely based on differences in skill and intelligence: people who are smarter and more capable earn more. The more jobs become automated, the more those differences will disappear.
In addition, money is only worth what you can buy for it. To the degree that AI devalues labor, it simply decreases the value of money that they (formerly) wealthy hold. That is, billions aren't worth a lot if you can't buy anything for them.
Now, you might say, what if a few really wealthy people buy all t
Re:AI will increase equality (Score:4, Informative)
Now, you might say, what if a few really wealthy people buy all the land and all the mines and all the natural resources. That's possible, but unlikely
Wake up. They already have.
We are back to the dawn of the industrial age (Score:2)
The economy is a competition for resources. I have to convince someone with resources to give me some portion of those resources in a transaction. For example, someone has a car with a problem and I can fix it. I bargain with them to give me a certain amount of money to fix their car. I've grown some corn: I convince people to part with some amount of money and then I give them a portion of the corn. A panhandler tries to prevail on my empathy so that I'll give him some money. And so on. In the case of gov
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Wow we've even automated first posts. Smashing!
Well done AI overlord!
Re:frosty robot psot (Score:5, Funny)
Unfortunately, your robot first post AI is about to be outsourced to an offshore robot first post AI. Lower cost for the little human labour AIs require makes it inevitable. The top 7 things you can do:
And before the apps guy shows up, AI APPS. AI APPS AI APPS. Only AI Appers do AI Apps on their AI Apps. AI APPS for your AI APP Overlords.
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You shouldn't care about people who lack empathy. They're happy that way, and the rest of us can tell them to f*ck off with a clear conscience. Win-win. :-)
Alas, they will not fuck off. They will continue hanging around making life shittier for everyone else. You don't have to actually care about them on a personal level, but you do have to care about their impact and figure out a way to deal with them.
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Try it before you claim that it can't work. People without empathy are looking for those who can be manipulated emotionally. Surround yourself with people who recognize such behaviour for what it is, they'll go hunting for prey elsewhere. It's what they do. It's what they need. And with enough people, there's the whole herd immunity thing going, protecting even those who would be open to exploitation on their own.
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I think it's a lot more likely they'll figure out a way to deal with you. And that's a Good Thing!
I think it's more likely that they and I will wind up in the same handbasket, going to the same place.
Re: Oh no! (Score:3, Funny)
"But artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers"
Yea, I did notice a trend in the 3 jobs they listed off lol. Omg our jobs are at risk...in this specialized field of MONEY!
What are they going to do when analysts are also obsolete, then who will inform all of us morons when the ai and robots are going to take OUR jobs!?
We are so screwed when bankers are no longer driven by greed by by
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Today the opposite is happening.
Is that why there are so many long blocks of text being posted to slashdot these days? You know you can put it in plain old text mode and just hit return for a line break, right?
Re:The Amish have it made (Score:4, Insightful)
The Amish don't need money
You haven't been around many Amish, have you? They're all about money; more of them are millionaires than you would guess.
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