AI will create 'useless class' of humans
theguardian.com
theguardian.com
Another way of looking at it is, when the cars came, the carriages were obsolete. Sure, the drivers may have reskilled to some other vocation but what about the horse? In this situation, we are the horses, and the AI is the car.
With regards to quantum computing and nuclear fusion, I prefer not to count my chickens before they've hatched. We may get both (and more!) or we may find that they are only functional under specific contexts that limit their utility.
But 100 years ago, when steam, electricity, and wide-spread mechanization of the previous decades had brought huge advantages in efficiency, the thought was that there would be increased leisure, and the time to pursue the activities which make us more human, like friendship, raising children, hobbies, and more serious avocations. Or watching TV, playing video games, and getting high.
This isn't the "useless class" but the "leisure class." Of course, quoting from the article:
> Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. “I choose this very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not from a moral viewpoint,”
If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.
The term "useless" is inherently relative. The universe does not have a natural position on "usefulness". So yes, you do get to make it to mean whatever you want it to be. That is not a basis to criticize anyone - any framework you choose to set a basis is itself arbitrary. Unless you believe in some "higher purpose", where all discussion ceases to be meaningful because nothing can be proven and you can claim whatever you want, and the loudest and/or strongest "wins".
All it takes is a bout of inflation to kill the idea that we've run out of things for people to do. It'll happen to the United States if the flow of underpriced Chinese goods dries up and the US needs to start making its own goods.
AI replaces humans when:
- AI is able to perform a new human intelligence task
- Perform at a human level of reliability
- Perform at a cost-effective level
- It is wrapped in form of a product or service that makes it easy to distribute and deploy
Can't help but notice the sensationalist tone.
The author also seems to have a pessimistic view of the future and the role of humans in it. Certain roles may be replaced by AI and humans will move on to do different things, but that does not mean it will render those humans useless. What exactly will humans move on to do is of course an open ended question, but if history is any indication, it won't be bleak as the author predicts.
Alpha Go may have beat the best human player in the world but you can't ask it to fold the laundry or how it felt about Angela's Ashes.
I think we'll be able to optimize away boring, repetitive jobs and tasks that require vast numerical and statistical quantities. And that's a good thing.
We'll just need to adapt our economic models away from the indentured servitude to the Protestant Ethic.
It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry", and be able to control a robot body to do it. We've had robotic tech for a long time. But only right now is the AI catching up to make use of it.
> It won't be long before you can have a robot that will understand "fold the laundry"
Who the hell wants to spend their life folding laundry anyway? Some people do only because that is what their circumstances dictate. There's no reason they should if we have the means to alleviate them of such trivial "work."
It's my understanding that we already have these devices. They're slow as molasses but the efficiency of not having a human do it is great. Good. We're all better off.
I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.
The problem I have with that is that economic and political forces often keep people, intelligent people, in menial jobs for no better reason than circumstance. There are plenty of smart, capable people with real passions for music or mathematics who are stuck filling forms in an office because they need to a job to pay the rent and bills. There are many ways they could have ended up at that job.
But if they were given the opportunity to be free from that circumstance, what do you think they would do? If the economic output of the region is the same regardless, does it matter if they do nothing?
I have a belief that people will find more productive things to do that they previously never could.
> I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.
That's what I meant when I suggested we would need to shift our economic models away from the ideals set out by Max Weber. Criticisms about the formation of capitalism aside it traded serfdom for indentured servitude. It allowed us to transform our world and build great things... but I think it's time is nearing an end.
But yet the greatest opponents to change are those with the most to lose. And they have quite a lot of money and power.
update grammar.
Positions that involve a wide variety of fairly simple but involved skills such as landscapers, mechanics, or maids will probably be around for a long time. Don't forget the fact that as other jobs are automated away, the supply of these sorts of laborers will increase, resulting in lower wages.
It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.
But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.
You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in the first place.
You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal.
Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.
Why? If it's the elites that deploy it?
An example of this is military tech. The US sells surplus military equipment to anybody that will buy it, even sophisticated kit like F-16s. Naturally, they keep the best stuff to themselves, you can't buy an F-22 at the moment for any price. But eventually even the F-22 will be old tech and you'll be able to buy one.
Computers in the 50s couldn't talk to you or how to tell you whether its raining in Tulsa just by you asking it.
AI is early days.
This amuses me: https://www.google.co.nz/search?q=movie+where+a+professor+si...
The third result is the one I'm looking for.
DeepMind can learn atari games on its own.
The future is arriving quickly.
I don't see any link that could answer that question in my first page of results.
the answer is: "The Man From Earth", a movie. A very good movie.
The last programmer putting the finishing touches on artificial general intelligence (the one that will put programmers out of work too) just needs to make sure "love the meat bags who made you" is the second last instruction. The last instruction is don't alter the second last instruction.
Personally, I would enjoy hiking the west coast trail, drawing and painting more. I will miss coding through. I love the feeling when it finally work the way you want it to. The point being: if we are smart enough to automate all the jobs, we are probably smart enough to provide food/healthcare to everyone for free (basic living wage or whatever). It's not the end of world. There are lots of ways to spend your time.
Second energy efficiency isn't a big deal. A robot army that runs on petrol is still scary. Energy efficiency has not kept machines from beating humans physically, at all.
Lastly, it's impossible to code "love the meat bags who made you". AI's do not take English language instructions. You need to specify exactly what you mean by "love" and "meat bags", etc, and not make any mistakes at all.
What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical whatsoever...unless they wish to.
Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way first.
Fun times.
The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other newly created jobs.
Near future AI will make the majority of humans basically worthless. There isn't much left that people can do, and computers can't. Sure maybe high intelligence jobs like engineers and programmers are safe (for now...), but most people can't become programmers or engineers.
Not true. The price of materials and the energy needed to run it determines the lower limit on cost for AI. The cost of energy to run computers is pretty low -- low enough that a lot of people don't really think about it until you get up to clusters of the size found in computer labs and data centers -- but it's not nothing either.
I will agree though that the minimum cost to run a super-human AI (once it becomes available) is likely to be substantially less than the minimum wage needed to pay humans to do equivalent work.
Sure some jobs will be replaced but new jobs will be created. Thinking on the spot now. A manager and a whole team of people that oversee the job that the A.I does. Jobs that focus on applying A.I to certain field, (A.I consultants)
People value human interaction and when there is value in something, there is money to be made.
It is already eliminating jobs, gradually, not overnight but steadily, and this time it is from higher above, say, Wall Street traders.It is very easy to see there is a trend out there, that data + smart algorithms is going to take over a lot decision-making processes, that currently belongs to analyst.
The theoretical limitation of AI is bullshit. We don't get know what intelligence is, how do you think we quantify and draw a line around it?
100 years ago someone who's capabilities maxed out at wielding a showel cut still find work. Today that's pretty difficult. Granted, must people can up their capabilities by education, training, etc. but not everyone.
New technology (including clever software, sometimes labeled AI) will continue this trend.
True AI will also replace people, but that'll be way different (http://waitbutwhy.com/2015/01/artificial-intelligence-revolu...).
Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved.
A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.
Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors, staring at security camera monitors, etc.
> Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.
A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means $20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.