AI scientist,in the last minute or so of this video, talks about how he became concerned about the threat to jobs posed by AI as the intelligence of computer has increased “exponentially” in the last few years.
Now that the AI workers are starting to catch on that it might be THEIR phoney-baloney jobs that are in danger, not just some poor assembly line workers’ job, things are moving. When the corporate execs catch on, gonna be interesting times, people … maybe in the Chinese curse sense of the term, but still … interesting times.
The article mentions that service stations will add those facilities - I think truck stops have them today. The car will still need to get gas or recharge, after all.
But I doubt that it will kill air travel. Business travelers can’t afford the extra time taken. It will hurt short haul flights, and definitely hurt motels whose business is mostly highway travelers.
And there lies the problem. The .0001% own the automated means of production, which finally, in the dream of every aristocrat since the neolithic era, no longer require workers to produce. The aristocrats no longer rely on the peasants in the fields and factories to produce their fabulous wealth.
So why do they sell food to the 99%? What can the 99% offer in exchange for food? Nothing, of course. These people are useless economically, remember? They can’t buy anything. They can’t produce anything. Not only are they useless as economic producers, they’re useless as economic consumers. Why build a factory to make a billion widgets to sell to a billion peasants, when the peasants have nothing valuable to exchange for the widgets? If they had something valuable then they wouldn’t be useless as economic producers.
It simply isn’t true that the rich care about slapping the crusts of bread out of the mouths of starving peasants, on the theory that the poorer everyone else is, the better the rich person feels. Bill Gates doesn’t grind his teeth at the news that per capita income in China doubled over the past decade, on the theory that when peasants in China make $3000 a year rather than $1500 a year, that’s just like cutting his $30 billion fortune to $15 billion.
It is true that some things like Lake Washington beachfront property are limited, and doubling everyone’s wealth wouldn’t mean twice as many people get mansions on Lake Washington. It would mean you’d have to pay twice as much to buy that mansion. But–the people who already own those mansions, like Bill Gates, won’t see the value of their property cut in half. Instead their value doubles. It’s only people who want a new mansion that see their effective wealth cut in half. The incumbent wealthy who already own the classes of goods that can’t be increased see the value increase.
And that’s what makes no sense in your vision. In order for the owners of automated production to make “money”, they have to vastly increase production of automated goods and services. Otherwise they make less. Cutting production and raising prices doesn’t work unless the prices are below human labor production, because otherwise the human labor force replaces the robots. A medical AI will at first make a lot of money, but you have to keep charging less and less otherwise your competitors will undercut your production with ever cheaper software. And the ultimate floor is zero.
You imagine a scenario where the Bill Gates of the future send out robot police to literally wrestle crusts of free bread out of the mouths of starving peasants, because it makes them feel better to see peasants starving in the gutters. What good does it do to own the world if you can’t strut in front of the underclasses? Except if the aristocrats kill off the underclass, then the only people left alive are aristocrats. And if everyone is an aristocrat, no one is. You think murdering the underclasses will make the aristocrats feel powerful, and maybe it will, but what next? Once you destroy them all, you’re no longer an aristocrat, you’re an average Joe. Wouldn’t you have to use your automated systems to destroy the other Aristocrats, to grind them into the dust. You’re not part of the 0.01% if the 99.99% are all dead.
It literally costs your imagined aristocrats nothing for the peasants to live in prosperity comparable to 21st century first world middle class people. The only way they can prevent it is through literal cartoonish supervillany, where they send robot troops to snatch goods out of people’s hands and destroy them, merely to enjoy watching their suffering. Little girl with a teddy bear printed on a bootleg fabricator using unlicensed intellectual property? Gotta be destroyed, because otherwise…what?
But what about a mother who makes a teddy bear for her child out of discarded plastic bags? Impossible, that would mean the mother engaged in useful economic activity and produced something of value. A robot could do it cheaper. How cheap does a teddy bear have to be before making a doll out of cornhusks (like Ma did for Laura in Little House in the Big Woods) makes no sense? Pretty damn cheap. Indistinguishable from free, in fact. So does the little girl get her robot-manufactured teddy bear for free or not? If she doesn’t get it for free, her mom makes it for her out of old newspapers. And then, horror of horrors, the robot job holocaust hasn’t been complete yet. It only becomes complete when she gets the teddy bear for free.
What exactly do we think economic activity is? A man alone on a desert island has to fish, gather coconuts, build a hut, weave a sun hat out of grass, and so on. If I’m economically useless, then I have to get my coconuts and straw hats for free, otherwise I’ll do it myself. Economic activity doesn’t just include goods and services produced in exchange for money. It also includes stuff I do at home. Wiping the shit off a baby’s ass is economic activity. Yes, most people find they have to wipe the shit off their own baby’s ass for free. But there are plenty of nannies who get paid to wipe the shit off of someone else’s baby’s ass. If the nanny is a slave in an Antebellum plantation, she’s producing goods and services even though she’s not getting paid for it. And so are you, when you wipe the shit off your own baby’s ass.
So at what point is it cheaper for me to get a robot to wipe my baby’s ass for me? If I’m an impoverished peasant who owns literally nothing and doesn’t know where my next mouthful of rice is coming from, the answer is never.
Agreed. It doesn’t make sense to have to account for 60 or 70 hours travel time in sending someone from NY to LA, for instance. Although maybe if they can work in the car…?
Lemur, I usually agree with everything you say on this topic, but this time I only agree with most of it. This part may be a little off. I have seen social science research (I’ll try to dig up a cite later if you want) that indicates that most people would prefer to make $75K a year in a world where the average income is $50K, than make $100K in a world where the average income is $150K. I don’t feel like that’s very rational, but apparently most people do care more about their relative position than their absolute position. It’s not a good look, but there you have it.
Well, then the rich are never going to feed the poor into wood chippers, because they do serve an important economic function for the rich–their existence is what makes the rich rich. Without the poor, everyone on Earth is rich, which means nobody is rich. And at that point who cares if there are 10,000 people left alive on Earth or 10 billion? 10,000 people left alive on planet Earth aren’t rich, even if they all live in fantastic luxury due to automated production. That’s just life on Earth in a post-scarcity economy. You’re only rich when you can look down on the peasants and get a warm feeling inside about how superior you are.
And my contention is that the elites of the post-scarcity world won’t get warm fuzzies from having more robot yachts and robot mink coats and robot caviar than the peasants. Past a certain point of physical comfort money is a way to get other people to do what you want. Want to build a spaceship? If you’re Elon Musk you can pay people to build you a spaceship. What if nobody needs your money to live? Then you get people to build a spaceship by convincing them. “Hey everybody! Let’s build a spaceship! Let’s put on a play!” If you’re a charismatic person that when you have an idea everyone listens, then you’re part of the elite. No need to build killbots to smash all the automated fabricators in all the peasant hovels in China to make yourself feel powerful. And if you’re smashing the peasant’s means of production, why aren’t the even more powerful aristocrats smashing your means of production?
I mean, a world filled with automated factories pouring out military robots that do nothing but smash other automated factories sounds freaking awesome, but maybe it’s not the best use of the finite resources of planet Earth? So set up your killbot factory on the Moon, if you please.
Good points, Lemur, and this is actually why the rich in a post-scarcity world are likely to be fine with a guaranteed income. As long as the hoi polloi are not getting mansions on Lake Geneva or reservations at the hottest new restaurants, the super-rich will be happy to let them have all the food, gadgets, etc. they need and want.
The only point I was trying to make is that in the modern era a common measure of how elite you are is how much money you’re worth. But of course there are elite people today that don’t have that high a net worth, Barack Obama doesn’t have the personal fortune that Bill Gates has, but Barack Obama is still an elite.
In the past your personal net worth wasn’t an even less reliable way of measuring your elite status. Everyone is familiar with the idea of the impoverished aristocrat, who is nevertheless part of the elite class, compared to a wealthy merchant who is not. And of course in the Feudal system your ability to provide soldiers was your measure of eliteness. An aristocrat who shows up to the muster with himself and his squire is on one level, one who shows up with 30 mounted knights and 100 armored spearmen and 100 archers is on another. And of course you had to support those troops somehow, but the only respectable way to do so was by the output of of your estates. And you got those estates by the power of your military output, either directly by conquering them, or indirectly by being given them from your liege lord in return for supporting him.
A merchant might have much more liquid wealth than a baron, but that didn’t mean much if the baron could have you killed and your property seized and there was nothing the commoners could do about it.
The point is, we have to remember that our current market-dominated economy isn’t the only possible type of economy, and that when you have a different sort of economy different sorts of people are the elites of that economy. There’s always room for charismatic persuasive people to accumulate power in any socio-politico-economic system, but the methods and trappings of their accumulated power are going to be different. In one era they become a retainer to the king. In another they become a priest. In another they become a government bureaucrat. In another they become an industrialist. In another they become a media mogul.
The powerful people of the 22nd century aren’t going to be industrialists. There will be factories and goods will flow out of them, but overseeing the production of those goods won’t be a high-status job. In 1315 if you controlled thousands of acres of farmland you were a wealthy aristocrat. In 2015 you’re a nearly-broke small farmer, even though your farm produces many times the output per acre of that medieval manor.
You’re making some interesting claims, but … proceed …
We’re talking about my worst case scenario here, and we’re on the same page.
Some few rich people might be that rotten. Most aren’t. Most simply don’t CARE whether or not a starving peasant has enough to eat. They’re not AGAINST starving peasants eating, they’re kinda FOR it in a vague, abstract kinda way. But not nearly as intensely as they are FOR them continuing to be wealthy.
Agreed.
Your vision is far too limited.
Imagine that you are a One Percenter. You are an investment banker for Goldman Sachs. Your year end bonuses alone are worth millions, and you do some savvy investing on the side with all that insider information you are not supposed to use. You don’t have much truck with the starving peasants. You have nice houses in Lake Lucerne, Switzerland, a penthouse apartment in New York and a ranch in South Africa.
Now when the robot job holocaust starts to happen, you do some thinking, some short and long term projections. And you realize that you and the other One Tenth of One Percenters are fast approaching a crossroads. A lot of corporations are losing market share because the number of consumers is decreasing because no jobs. The firms that cater to the luxury market are doing fine. Gangbusters!
But the firms that make products and services that are designed for discretionary income for the upper, middle and lower classes are seeing their profits go down every year, by a greater extent every year. Because software and automation are taking the jobs away, and they’re being replaced by … nothing … because the software and automation are capable of doing the NEW jobs that are created, too.
Luxury goods are staying strong because robots do not own things. The people that have wealth are not being replaced.
Well, where do you invest your money, Hargus? Short term, in luxury good firms, of course. People who make the things YOU buy. And agriculture, because even a homeless person with no job might have some kind of income and if they do, they’ll use it to buy food, because they have to eat to stay alive.
(Of course, some people might turn their lawns into gardens, but how long are they gonna keep making those mortgage payments without a job, hmmm?)
But you’re a long-term thinker as well as a short-term thinker, and you do some projecting and find the crossroad:
On the one hand, there are these people supporting Basic Income, which is fundamentally paying people to be consumers of goods. It would be tremendously expensive to implement, and it would be necessary to have the government control rent-seeking if it were to work, but it probably would work to keep the economy going, especially for all the businesses that make discretionary products for that huge middle and lower class demographic.
On the OTHER hand, what if you did nothing? Just let things kinda … die off. Sure, a lot of firms would tank, but YOU’RE rich, and you’d make sure to invest in those that don’t. This is capitalism, not socialism, let the workers who can’t be productive die!
I mean, there are a lot of side benefits on both a macro and micro scale here. No more traffic jams, for starters. Probably wouldn’t need to take helicopters to get to that place in Los Angeles or New York any more. Even (shudder) driving might be tolerable. And no long lines at the ski lifts … anywhere! A lot of formerly overcrowded golf courses would suddenly be playable!
Sure, there’d still be people around, but they’d be good people … you know, the RIGHT people … RICH people!
Carbon emissions would go way down, envirnomental destruction would go way down … things could get VERY comfy.
Of course, that’s a pretty dark vision. But not MUCH darker than your vision of everyone happily making corncob babies in the little cardboard boxes they call home, mucking in the dirt for their food. I mean, I bet the little girls who had the handmade dolls would be happy … they wouldn’t know any better. But Mommy and Daddy gonna be unhappy … WAY unhappy … putting heads on pikes unhappy, if you get my drift …
hehe “Wealth” is a subjective term and, as mentioned earlier, relative.
Personally, I see no point in acquiring much more than I can use. Hubby and I make sure our kids stay comfy and we stay comfy, and that is enough. After that, we give. We are happy living as we do.
The best bet for survival is not to have a lot of riches, it is to be the most adaptable. Darwin made some mistakes but he was essentially correct (that is why his conclusions are bound in a theory rather than a hypothesis). If your life changes and you cannot adapt fast enough to the changes, you likely will not survive.
Anyways, “what happens when the robots take over?” Some people will be out of work, I guess.
As far as AI goes, having been based upon logic in the first place, I would think “smart” machines would continue functioning based upon logic. I see no more reason to fear that than I see in welcoming that. I need evidence and sound reason to change what I think.
But even today, when taxes actually cost rich people significant money, we have gigantic social spending programs. Social Security, Medicare, Medicaid, unemployment, and on and on and on.
In a future where automated production produces the goods and services needed for a decent living, what does it cost the elites to keep the factory spigots going? NOTHING. That’s the point. The welfare state of the future isn’t being funded by onerous taxes on the rich that cut into their budget for beachfront property on Lake Geneva. It’s just funded by not making it against the law for peasants to own the means of production.
Of course there’s no future in producing goods and services for the middle classes. They won’t have significant money, and producing those goods will be too cheap and easy. That’s the key. How can you get rich selling TVs to poor people when TVs are given away free in cereal boxes? So don’t bother investing in TVs. Does this mean the masses don’t get TVs anymore? No, they’re being given away free in cereal boxes, remember? The masses get their TVs precisely because TVs aren’t worth anything.
And of course, you have a vision of an investment banker at Goldman Sachs. He gets millions in bonuses every year. But why? What makes him one of the elite? Because he can pick stocks and make his customer’s money grow. At least in theory. In practice he and his kind extract a lot of the extra value generated from his services. Every gold plated toilet seat the investment banker gets means one less gold plated toilet seat for the guy whose money he manages.
Why isn’t this investment banker affected by the robot job holocaust? Because it seems to me his sort of work is exactly the sort of work that can be automated. Why does Bill Gates need to call up an investment banker to help him buy such and such a company, when he could just go on investmentbanking.com and do it for nearly free?
The robot job holocaust evaporates jobs in the financial sector just as surely as it did in the manufacturing sector last century. That’s the point of all the worry about the loss of jobs. It’s one thing when welders and machinists and blue collar workers lose their jobs at the factory. It’s another when doctors and lawyers and bankers lose theirs.
If you argue that the bankers will just make it illegal to not use human bankers, then their real power isn’t their money, their real power is the political stranglehold they possess. Their money is just a symptom, they’re voting themselves welfare out of the public treasury. It’s socialism gone mad.
And of course, for every couple dozen greedy elitists–like you say, ones who don’t enjoy seeing starving peasants, but wouldn’t lift a finger to actually help a starving peasant–there’s going to be one or two who would lift a finger. Not if they have to break a sweat, mind you, but ones who are kind enough to let the peasants collect whatever scraps of food they like from the dumpsters.
This is a post-scarcity society. The scraps of food from the dumpsters are actually unimaginable wealth by the standards of 2015. Just like a hungry ragged peasant of 1315 would be astonished at seeing the wide asses and brightly colored clothes of the urban poor of 2015. And just as we don’t consider plenty of cheap calories and a bunch of cheap t-shirts from Walmart and a phone glued to your hand to be indicators of wealth in 2015, neither will the abundant consumer goods and services produced by automated systems of 2115 seem like wealth to them. They’ll be living luxury lifestyles by 2015 standards, but they won’t feel rich, not like the guys who really call the shots in 2115.
Lemur covered it pretty well, but let me just respond with a couple quick points that cover overlapping ground.
Captor’s fever dream (nightmare) only applies to a world where everyone in the 1% is like the Koch brothers, and the government is completely captive to their interests. (Actually, it would have to be all the governments on Earth, but let’s just talk about the U.S. for simplicity’s sake.) This is the way many of my fellow progressives see the world, but it is this vision which actually misses a lot.
There are first of all liberal billionaires like Mark Zuckerberg, Bill Gates, George Soros, Warren Buffett, and others whose names escape me at the moment. Just among them, they could prevent the catastrophe Captor is describing, without any government help. And then there are many other billionaires who are neither liberal nor archconservative, but who certainly don’t want to see starving and rioting in the streets and try to explain to their children why they are not doing anything to feed/clothe/house these people, when it would be a trivially easy for them to do so without getting their hands dirty.
But even if we imagined for the sake of argument that all the 1% were like the Koch brothers, those guys do not have the omnipotence in the political arena that many imagine. Most of the candidates they have supported have lost. And their lift would get a lot heavier at the point where they are pitting themselves and the political elites against 99% of voters, or even 90%.
TL;DR: Most one percenters would not stand for a level of famine that kills off the majority of the population; and even if they would, the government would not let it happen. And the government is the one that controls the police and military. Most of whom, let’s remember, would have relatives that are among that 99%.
lol I suppose some people feel rich “calling the shots”.
I think people who can enjoy what they are, what they have, and that live in the present are better off. Just my opinion. Like I said, “wealth” (whether wealth of power, riches, or state of mind) seems to be subjective.
I think gov’ts (at least those of developed countries like the USA, Canada, Germany, Japan, etc) are more or less pawns of business. But business would prefer not having myriads of their consumer/investor types of people dying of starvation and whatnot anyways.
Of course, this may not mean a loss of 50% of the jobs … but probably a BIG chunk, if everyone is ordering stuff delivered from tablets instead of going to stores.
Guess how I bought all my Christmas presents this year, BTW …