# What happens when the robots (peacefully) take over? **URL:** \ **Category:** Great Debates\ **Created:** [January 9, 2012, 11:43am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914 "2012-01-09T11:43:10Z")\ **Posts on this page:** 20\ **Page:** 32
**Author:** ![Jefferson](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/j/8491ac/32.png) [@Jefferson](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Jefferson)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 7:05pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/621 "2017-02-21T19:05:10Z")
> [@Trinopus](#): > > Well, no, not exactly. Individual cases aren’t coded any longer; AI is able to learn. The coding is for general cases. The programmers are often (joyously) surprised by what their AI can accomplish. Indeed. People are still very complacent about this. And might well be until they lose their jobs. ---
**Author:** ![Amateur\_Barbarian](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/59ef9b/32.png) [@Amateur\_Barbarian](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Amateur_Barbarian)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 9:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/622 "2017-02-21T21:02:51Z")
A colleague just wrote an interesting book about the intersection of human and AI consciousness and what it means for the future. It’s on **[Amazon](https://www.amazon.com/Crisis-Control-Artificial-Superintelligences-Destroy/dp/0967987431/)**. (Full disclosure: I was part of the book production team - not author in any way, though.) ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 21, 2017, 10:20pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/623 "2017-02-21T22:20:38Z")
That looks good, **AB!** ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2017, 2:10am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/624 "2017-02-22T02:10:13Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > What are some of the more accomplished AIs? What have they “learned”? “Watson” – the one that played Jeopardy – learned all of the answers it gave. All those tons of trivia were not programmed in, line by line, by coders. ---
**Author:** ![RickJay](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/bb73d2/32.png) [@RickJay](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/RickJay)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2017, 2:39pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/625 "2017-02-22T14:39:47Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Except that beyond a certain stage, which we may already have passed into, “improving economic efficiency” means extreme economic inequality and a desperate circumstance for the unemployed who don’t have anything to offer that can’t be automated. All of this has happened before. If it’s logical to tax robots, please explain to me why we don’t tax combine harvesters. Combine harvesters - well, every machine you’ll find on a farm - eliminated jobs. There’s absolutely no logic whatsoever behind taxing a robot and not taking a tractor, and I challenge you to explain why there is. Both are machines that replace human labor. You can flippantly say “okay” but you just created economic devastation on a level I can’t even begin to explain. You know the computer or mobile device you’re using right now? It’s got to be taxed; it’s is a job-eliminating device. What do you wash your clothes with? Tax it; washing machines and other similar inventions resulted in a massive dislocation of domestic servants. Your house is going to be a lot more expensive because every machine that was used to build it reduced available labor hours, at least if you totally ignore all the benefits, which is what people always do in Robot Job Holocaust discussions. Bill Gates knows a lot about operating systems and shit about tax policy. What he is literally suggesting is reallocating the tax burden from income to the things that increase wealth. That would be of enormous benefit to rich people, I suppose. Like, you know, Bill Gates. How about that! If you need tax revenue to create a minimum income or support social services, there is no need to get stupid with taxes; tax people’s incomes who can afford it. Tax thing that create externalities, like pollution. ---
**Author:** ![k9bfriender](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/k9bfriender/32/3283_2.png) [@k9bfriender](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/k9bfriender)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2017, 3:53pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/626 "2017-02-22T15:53:50Z")
> [@RickJay](#): > > All of this has happened before. > > If it’s logical to tax robots, please explain to me why we don’t tax combine harvesters. Combine harvesters - well, every machine you’ll find on a farm - eliminated jobs. There’s absolutely no logic whatsoever behind taxing a robot and not taking a tractor, and I challenge you to explain why there is. Both are machines that replace human labor. > > You can flippantly say “okay” but you just created economic devastation on a level I can’t even begin to explain. You know the computer or mobile device you’re using right now? It’s got to be taxed; it’s is a job-eliminating device. What do you wash your clothes with? Tax it; washing machines and other similar inventions resulted in a massive dislocation of domestic servants. Your house is going to be a lot more expensive because every machine that was used to build it reduced available labor hours, at least if you totally ignore all the benefits, which is what people always do in Robot Job Holocaust discussions. > > Bill Gates knows a lot about operating systems and shit about tax policy. What he is literally suggesting is reallocating the tax burden from income to the things that increase wealth. That would be of enormous benefit to rich people, I suppose. Like, you know, Bill Gates. How about that! > > If you need tax revenue to create a minimum income or support social services, there is no need to get stupid with taxes; tax people’s incomes who can afford it. Tax thing that create externalities, like pollution. It’s easy, tax all machines, starting with the wheel, the wedge, and the pulley, ever since those machines have been invented, human labor has been losing its value in a steady decline. [/sarcasm (if you need it)] But, seriously, there does need to be something done, and it is not something that will be done by the invisible hand of the market, it will require deliberate actions on the part of the people and the govt that they make up to make sure that with the value of human labor and even many levels of human intellect being replaced by machines, that people are still able to live a dignified and productive life. The automation of things should make the cost of goods and automated services low enough that it should be a fairly trivial effort to provide everyone with the basic needs of life. I am not sure the best path, but it is a path that we need to choose, rather than just blindly seeing where it will take us. ---
**Author:** ![squidfood](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/s/a87d85/32.png) [@squidfood](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/squidfood)\ **Post date:** [February 22, 2017, 7:02pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/627 "2017-02-22T19:02:35Z")
> [@SlackerInc](#): > > Same idea as the long term interest of fisherman not to fish a valuable species into extinction. Many people don’t think that way, unfortunately. Interestingly, many fish stocks that we like (cod, other whitefish) grow at rates that are lower than historical market returns. So a wholly rational fisherman would rather kill the whole stock today, sell it, and retire while investing the funds in the markets for faster growth. This is relevant to the discussion as, if this were allowed, the fishermen of today would get those funds and be the 1% of the fishing world. So it’s in the long-term interest of the fishing way-of-life, and fish protein security, and the fish species, but not today’s fishermen per se. Hence the need for regulatory management outside of market forces (even if those market forces take into account long-range risk projections). ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [February 23, 2017, 3:09am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/628 "2017-02-23T03:09:07Z")
Interesting! And nice post/name match. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 7:55pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/629 "2017-06-15T19:55:10Z")
I have long been a fan of Teixeira’s, so this counterargument is worth considering: > **[It’s time to explode the myth of "McJobs"](https://www.vox.com/the-big-idea/2017/6/13/15788610/robots-artificial-intelligence-ai-mcjobs-low-skill)** > > Pessimists on the left describe a future of dead-end jobs and robot workers. They’re wrong. But I think he fails to zoom out and consider that at some point, AI will surpass brainpower in most respects, and it will then be pointless to employ humans for thinking jobs. ---
**Author:** ![begbert2](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/begbert2/32/3357_2.png) [@begbert2](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/begbert2)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 11:41pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/630 "2017-06-15T23:41:03Z")
As part of the background of a fiction book I wrote, I postulated that not only did they have (unintelligent) robot labor doing all manual work, they also have fabricator machines a la Star Trek replicators. All the people have been put on the ‘dole’ - housing, food, clothes, medical support, entertainment, education - all is provided, somewhat, along with a small financial stipend. The fabricators are keyed such that some things can be fabricated for free, like a standard type of unisex jumpsuit, but if you want frills you have to pay to license the right to fabricate them, either out of your stipend or out of money you get elsewhere. The vast majority of people get by couch surfing and raising their families; some are artists, authors, athletes, or moviemakers, or just sell homemade things on future-etsy, and some get into politics and business management. These provide extra income for luxuries, but for everyone else (and even the ones who don’t need it), there is the dole. In my universe, the conversion to this society was managed by a somewhat shadowy secret force that implemented the dole and got it in popular use in the not-to-distant future, before all the jobs even vanished in fact. For that to happen in real life, we’d all need to shift to a very, very left-wing political system and stay there. (If we did, we could probably have a semi-functional dole right now.) Trying to make a similar system under a strongly capitalist right-wing system would lead straight to revolt and slaughter, due to that whole “poor people deserve to suffer” mentality they’ve got going on. ---
**Author:** ![CarnalK](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/carnalk/32/486_2.png) [@CarnalK](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/CarnalK)\ **Post date:** [June 15, 2017, 11:47pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/631 "2017-06-15T23:47:10Z")
> [@HurricaneDitka](#): > > What are some of the more accomplished AIs? What have they “learned”? The article dofe posted only briefly mentions the AlphaGo accomplishments. Having a computer beat a human Master of Go was something of a holy grail in computing. [How the Computer Beat the Go Master](https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-the-computer-beat-the-go-master/) > [@](#): > > Reinforcement learning was implemented years ago in neural networks to mimic animal behavior and to train robots. DeepMind demonstrated this last year with a vengeance when networks were taught how to play 49 different Atari 2600 video games, including Video Pinball, Star Gunner, Robotank, Road Runner, Pong, Space Invaders, Ms Pac-Man, Alien and Montezuma’s Revenge. (In a sign of things to come, atari is a Japanese go term, signifying the imminent capture of one of more stones.) > > Each time it played, the DeepMind network “saw” the same video game screen, including the current score that any human player would see. The network’s output was a command to the joystick to move the cursor on the screen. Following the diktat of the programmer to maximize the game score, the algorithm did so and figured out the rules of the game over thousands and thousands trials. It learns to move, to hit alien ships and to avoid being destroyed by them. And for some games, it achieves superhuman performance. The same powerful reinforcement learning algorithm was deployed by AlphaGo for go, starting from the configuration of the policy network after the supervised learning step. ---
**Author:** ![Crane](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/crane/32/3495_2.png) [@Crane](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Crane)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 3:14pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/632 "2017-06-25T15:14:42Z")
Clearly the problem facing us today is not productivity. Various levels of ‘robotics’ have placed the wonders of the modern age at our fingertips for only $19.95 (act now and you get 2). Technology that 20 years ago was a military secret is now sold at the Walmart in rural New Mexico. Yesterday I saw a drone with first person view 3D headset for $150. Persons of modest education are walking around with more computing power in each of their pockets than existed in the world for most of my life. The internet has increased the productivity of information exchange exponentially. The problems facing us are institutional: We need a method of funding our system of government that is not based on labor. The practices of our politicians need to move out of the horse and buggy era. Our economic system must adapt to the fact that robots do not buy cars. Our religious institutions need to evolve. The robots are doing fine - we need to catch up. Crane ---
**Author:** ![Trinopus](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/t/2bfe46/32.png) [@Trinopus](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Trinopus)\ **Post date:** [June 25, 2017, 5:32pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/633 "2017-06-25T17:32:40Z")
Agreement: society needs to catch up to the new reality. Not for the first time. The Industrial Revolution of the 1800’s led to the hellish slums of British inner cities. Over time, accommodations were made. One example being Social Security, which helped stabilize society and reduce desperate poverty. It took a crisis to lead to this reform. That’s pretty much the human pattern: wait until things become VERY bad, and only then move to fix them. Global climate change will have to get quite a lot worse before we, as a species, actually face up to the necessity of addressing it. It’s just how our minds are made. At least our robots – computers – are giving us better raw and refined data so we can (when we finally want to) make better-informed decisions. ---
**Author:** ![PlaceboTarget](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/placebotarget/32/1073_2.png) [@PlaceboTarget](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/PlaceboTarget)\ **Post date:** [June 26, 2017, 1:42am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/634 "2017-06-26T01:42:00Z")
> [@Crane](#): > > Our religious institutions need to evolve. > > The robots are doing fine - we need to catch up. The robots are doing fine because “we” are causing them to do so. The idea that the robots can (peacefully) take over seems to me a reminiscence of another religious institution that needs to evolve: mythical thinking. ---
**Author:** ![Tangent](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/tangent/32/3098_2.png) [@Tangent](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Tangent)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 5:52am UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/635 "2017-07-02T05:52:50Z")
There was a good discussion on this topic on the NPR program ‘On Point’ a few days ago. The host talks with two MIT profs who co-wrote a book on the subject. Link to episode: [Machine Over Mind In A New Economy | On Point](http://www.wbur.org/onpoint/2017/06/26/machine-over-mind-in-a-new-economy) (you can also probably find it in your podcast app; it aired June 26) They acknowledge that the upcoming changes will be disruptive, but they ultimately believe that they will be a net positive, if society prepares for these changes. That ‘if’ is the crucial point, though. I don’t have much faith in our current governmental institutions (not talking about just the Trump clusterfuck) to steer things in the right direction. ---
**Author:** ![aregard](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/a/73ab20/32.png) [@aregard](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/aregard)\ **Post date:** [July 2, 2017, 5:27pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/636 "2017-07-02T17:27:33Z")
> [@hkepotat](#): > > It seems the problem of making your own goods to compete with the robotically produced goods is not going to be the cost of the goods themselves, but the input materials. We don’t seem to be factoring in greed, either. Everyone is talking as if robotic production will lower costs to zip because robots themselves will be so cheap. But we have all kinds of artificial supports in our system that supposedly motivate certain kinds of production, but are, as well, incentivizing negative actions. I.e., buying up a prescription medication still under patent protection, and upping it’s price 1000%. Debeers has been doing this with diamonds for years, so it’s a factor that MANY producers/industrialists/creative thinkers have been exploiting, and I don’t see them giving up any time soon. The cost of an item of clothing today is NOT the cost of the fabric, plus the cost of labor. It includes huge costs to create ‘buzz’ and ‘fashion’ and ‘popularity’ and all that wonk. And profit margins. In a system built to recognize and insist upon profit margins. That’s what has to change. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2017, 8:48pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/637 "2017-08-10T20:48:59Z")
Has anyone noticed how much more intricate (and time consuming) CAPCHA has become lately? it seems we are approaching some point at which it will no longer be possible to “prove you’re not a robot” in that sense. Is that not a version of passing the Turing test? And other than this being an interesting milestone, what will be the practical effects? Is (whatever it is that CAPCHA is currently preventing “robots” from doing) something really bad that will overwhelm the internet? ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2017, 9:30pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/638 "2017-08-10T21:30:08Z")
I thought some versions are actually being used to train robots. ---
**Author:** ![SlackerInc](https://sea3.discourse-cdn.com/straightdope/user_avatar/boards.straightdope.com/slackerinc/32/275_2.png) [@SlackerInc](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/SlackerInc)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2017, 9:31pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/639 "2017-08-10T21:31:18Z")
That makes sense! ---
**Author:** ![Ruken](https://avatars.discourse-cdn.com/v4/letter/r/f475e1/32.png) [@Ruken](https://boards.straightdope.com/u/Ruken)\ **Post date:** [August 10, 2017, 9:38pm UTC](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914/640 "2017-08-10T21:38:00Z")
Could be wrong. I don’t have a cite. Just brain lint. [Previous page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=31) [Next page](https://boards.straightdope.com/t/what-happens-when-the-robots-peacefully-take-over/608914.md?page=33)