We may finally get the promise of the 50's and 60's - less work and more leisure time thanks to technical advancements.
I personally look forward to the day there are less jobs, and so everyone can just work 3 days a week to spread them around, and spend much more time with family and passions.
If you want to work less, you can do it now, but it requires sacrifice in the sense that you'll lead a lifestyle closer to that of the 50's or 60's. Head over /r/financialindependence.
Thanks, I'm already doing it. I quit my Software Engineering job to drive 40,000miles from Alaska to Argentina over two years.
Now a few years later I've quit again and will drive 80,000 miles around Africa for the next 2 years. I'm in West Africa now.[1]
The number one question I get asked is how can I afford to do that, so I wrote an eBook "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" - http://amzn.to/2huxZjZ
[1] http://theroadchoseme.com is my website, and I'm posting updates to http://facebook.com/theroadchoseme/ and https://www.instagram.com/theroadchoseme/
Let me know if you have any questions or whatever, I love helping other people get out to live their dreams :)
Hit me up on Facebook or whatever.
We likely won't, because no one with the power to do so seems to be planning on making that future a reality. Automation exists to allow business owners to reap the benefits of labor without the burden of providing a living to human employees, not to free humans from the necessity of labor.
Barring some global socialist revolution and something like basic income, people made redundant by automation will still need jobs to survive, but automation means there will simply be fewer jobs available. The jobs that are available will be menial, low paying and high risk, because human labor will be practically worthless, as anything of value will already be done by machines.
Unfortunately, history shows that for the vast majority of people, it rarely works out the way you're looking forward to. For some, yes - for the well off and well connected, automation may lead to some sort of Eloi fantasy of intellectual opportunity and luxury. But everyone else is going to be left growing potatoes in the sewers.
Edit: obviously, there will need to be some people with the means to actually buy the goods that the robots will be making, but the efficiency of an automated economy means there needs to be far fewer such people, and they can be distributed globally.
I don't see that as obvious. Why couldn't each company pay their robot employees a wage, and the robots buy the goods produced by the other companies and put them in a building for a few years before moving them to landfill.
The exact same pattern as our current economy, which apparently holds itself up, but without needing humans to be involved.
By why would the companies do that. The robots are a distraction, the companies in that case are buying and storing the goods from other companies. Why would they do that?
I have no idea how employees-buying-goods sustains our current economies (although I suspect it doesn't, and that they are inflationary, debt driven, and unsustainable).
Why would robots, or more accurately the companies that own them, buy goods from other companies outside of those needed for the company's own business? There's no incentive to do that.
As to why, the inevitable conclusion is: Company A and Company B make goods which do not sell: both go out of business. Company A and Company B make goods which sell: they stay in business. In a world with no human labour, organizations which want to propagate their own existence will do what it takes, including trade agreements with other organizations.
As long as the agreement to purchase each other's goods is backed by a chain of buyers ending in ever-growing and infinite fiat currency debt, it would be as stable as a real economy. And they could compete for each other's robot's coin to affect profits.
And the question of "is it providing utility for a human" is ... utterly irrelevant.
Some other HNers will then probably chime in and say that me painting all this as a zero-sum-game is probably wrong, to which I'll retort that I'd like to be proven wrong but this time around it does actually look like there's nothing else hidden in the bag of goodies, it's us (the employees) vs them (the employers).
The more ai approaches humans, the more we will start to notice the differences and value the skill humans have and robots don't.
Will these activities be more expensive? In ^The Diamond Age^, Stephenson describes how the rich purchased hand printed newspapers while the proles watched the glyphs on public feeds.
I think most of the developed world will adopt a 35 or 30 hour work week within a few years.
Regulating the workday had the extra effect of labour appreciating in value. One couldn't run factory on two 12-hour shifts anymore, so had to hire for third shift. It pent up the demand for workers, who could command better terms. This certainly helped establishing blue collar middle class.
Unions gave us 40H weeks because their members were demanding it for 60 years before FDR signed the FLSA.
Lowered hours are still not a result of automation, though, right? The history of global workweeks also appears to point to unions: "Over the 20th century, work hours shortened by almost half, mostly due to rising wages brought about by renewed economic growth, with a supporting role from trade unions, collective bargaining, and progressive legislation." [1]
By my reading, industrialization gave people more money, and so they demanded more personal time to enjoy it. People generally don't work at factories for the fun of it.
For me (not in the US) shorter work weeks is an important political issue.
Marx thought all the jobs would be automated in the 19th century, and if we were content to live by 19th century middle class living standards, we'd be down to 10 hour workweeks. It's not about having enough though, it's about keeping up with the Jonses. I see no reason to believe that this perpetual game of one-upmanship will ever come to an end.
Even on the unlikely presumption that machines surpass us in every regard, like housecats, we'll still be investing a great deal of time and effort playing little domination games with one another.
http://newworknewculture.org/about-frithjof-bergmann/ http://www.partiallyexaminedlife.com/2013/10/10/ep83-frithjo...