Ask HN: Will automation generate social massive protests? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: Will automation generate social massive protests?

59 pointsMister_Y63 comments

Like it happened with the industrial revolution when the luddit movement tried to stop it and how can we face it nowadays with the next automation revolution

View on HN

Yes, but if we continue down our current path, they will not be directed at automation itself. Instead, advanced propaganda and bot networks will organize discontent against whichever targets allow the protesters to feel temporarily empowered, but that pose no actual threat to entrenched powers. The Russians are far further down this road than the US. Go read about how Surkov simultaneously creates Neo-Nazi movements, gives money to anti-Putin protestors, and props up the Russian Orthodox Church.

https://www.amazon.com/Nothing-True-Everything-Possible-Surr...

Hypernormalisation is an awesome documentary that actually covers this subject. If you've got a couple hours to kill I highly recommend it.

It can be watched on youtube https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-fny99f8amM

Automated stochastically generated fads and hate campaigns as political camouflage -

Oh my. In the future it's not rogue internet devices which will cause only trouble - it's fallible individuals who will create critical mass for social proof for any random idea.

Soon we can buy actual online cults as easily as stolen credit card numbers :). But I suppose this is already happening at a nation state scale, but only in the mechanical turk sense of automation. Who will be the first automated propaganda unicorn ...

Open source sockpuppet software seems like an inevitable equalizer in the propaganda field.

It's unlikely that people will identify automation as the cause of the problem. Take a look at the U.S. manufacturing sector. What is the story? Jobs are being shipped overseas, and the manufacturing sector is dying. What is the reality? Measured by output the U.S. manufacturing sector is bigger than ever before and has grown by a fifth since 2000, while cutting the number of workers by a third. Profits have soared, double what they were in the 90's. Automation is the cause of manufacturing job loss, but people blame nafta and elect trump to close the borders.

The modern luddite movement is already here.

A few days ago I was unable to get an Uber out of Hyderabad airport because of a "strike". "Strike" might be the euphemism of the year - it refers to angry taxi drivers/autowales striking Uber drivers who continue to drive.

This is not an isolated experience, many other countries (Columbia, France, Brazil) have the same problem with violent angry mobs trying to shut down automated competition. Politicians mostly side with the luddites; here in Maharashtra, Shiv Sena (racist party of Maharashtra, for those unfamiliar) is strongly opposed to Uber. French politicians similarly surrendered to the terrorists.

>A few days ago I was unable to get an Uber out of Hyderabad airport because of a "strike". "Strike" might be the euphemism of the year - it refers to angry taxi drivers/autowales striking Uber drivers who continue to drive.

Nope. The Uber and Ola drivers are themselves striking against the two companies.

"The drivers have also demanded that no new cabs be licensed until existing drivers are guaranteed a minimum of daily bookings.

"The managements should give us at least 12 guaranteed bookings during peak hours for the first five years of each cab,” the association said in an earlier statement."" [0]

[0] http://www.thenewsminute.com/article/ground-report-hyderabad...

I was told by the person I was visiting in Hyderabad that those who didn't go along with the strike were attacked. However I cannot find independent corroboration of this via Google (then again I don't speak or read Telugu). So I may be mistaken on this and I concede that the anecdote may be badly chosen.

That said, in other cities the luddites have become violent: http://indianexpress.com/article/cities/mumbai/mumbai-taxi-d... https://www.google.co.in/amp/www.hindustantimes.com/india/ub... https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2015/jun/26/uber-back...

Violence an intimidation towards "scabs" has a long history.

>I was told by the person I was visiting in Hyderabad that those who didn't go along with the strike were attacked.

That is common in any strike in India. Previously, when auto drivers went on strike for any reason, if one of them broke the strike, they would be beaten up.

> French politicians similarly surrendered to the terrorists.

How do you feel calling someone striking a terrorist?

Why are my feelings relevant?

If you must know the answer, I feel like a person who's read a dictionary and knows that terrorists are people who use violence and intimidation to achieve their political goals.

I assume you're from the U.S.

https://www.law.cornell.edu/uscode/text/22/2656f

"(2) the term “terrorism” means premeditated, politically motivated violence perpetrated against noncombatant targets by subnational groups or clandestine agents;"

Rough words for a few Uber drives in France.

I know it's confusing when white people are called "terrorist", but the definition clearly fits. If it helps you to understand, think about the Pune/Bombay examples I linked to above (where the perpetrators and victims are all brown).

I believe the strikers, not the uber taxi drivers, are the ones that are called 'terrorists' here.

Any army that ever participated in a war fit this.

I think there some "terror" missing from this definition. Anyway, it is a word that should just not be used today. There is no context where it clarifies anything anymore. The GP is correct in distrusting people that use it, and I add that some loss of trust should be automatic.

Yes, I left out the requirement of being a non-state actor in my comment. I don't think my comment was misleading at all. My use of the word "terrorist" fit both my definition and chinathrow's.

Since you seem to think I'm being misleading, what do you think I'm misleading people about?

I bet they feel pretty good. It's the internet, after all. Isn't the whole point for a lot of people that there's no consequences for their words?

Not sure about what the OP is referring to, but striking may very well be seen as "terrorist" behavior if it turns violent. I.e. They're trying to "intimidate" and "scare" using violence against innocent people.

I worry about the consequences of labeling a large group of assembled people as "terrorists" based on the (real or perceived) actions or rhetoric of a few.

E.g., if a large group of angry protesters is staring down a national guard and shots are fired on the crowd, officials need only claim that the crowd fired first and thus the slaughter of "terrorists" might be justified.

I want to echo, in agreement, with the many people here who are saying that there will likely be protests, but not against automation itself. Present evidence suggests that it is true.

However I want to push back against the idea that current protests against, for example, lack of manufacturing jobs are totally misdirected or will be in the future (if they are not against automation). While I think blaming NAFTA and outsourcing for a loss of jobs is ridiculous at least people are recognizing that the problems are structural and public rather than technological.

What would protesting automation even look like? Stop the machines? The last movement to do that was small, ineffectual, and was perceived to be ridiculous.

Some kind of safety net or redistribution of wealth is needed in my opinion. The classic response to redistribution is to say that it's paternalistic, but if automation doesn't make up for the jobs it destroys what are the alternatives?

If modern civilization survives climate change ours and the next few generations are going to be judged with a very heavy hand and rightly so. There is no dearth of knowledge or critique in our culture, but there is an exceptional amount of inaction and passivity.

> What would protesting automation even look like?

How about truckers stoning or blocking an automated truck that wheels into a rest stop to refuel? Maybe rest stop operators refuse service to automated trucks. (Can they do that legally?)

Stephen Hawking made a great point last year when he wrote that automation/robots aren't the problem, capitalism is the problem.

Most of the world takes for granted a system that allocates resources and the results of production in a way that encourages the highest profits with the least costs. Since humans are the highest cost, they are the biggest target for automation.

We have a golden opportunity to create a better, more equitable way of living now and in the future. Let's not let this moment go to waste.

http://m.huffpost.com/us/entry/us_5616c20ce4b0dbb8000d9f15

95% of people used to work in agriculture and now less than 5% do in most modern countries and also, as a result, there is a lot more food to go around.

Automation has been around for a while now. It's not a new problem and hasn't caused society to collapse yet.

As to alternatives to Capitalism, Communism was one that promised a more "equitable" way of living...

It's more inefficient than Capitalism, which is its Achilles heel. Socialism works when there is 'free' production to fuel it. Like in the Netherlands. It fails when the money stops pumping in, like Venezuela. Automation may provide the free input that makes a more humane (more Socialist) system work for everybody?

There is no such thing as free production because resources are not unlimited.

Oil out of the ground is the nearest thing then. Once its automated, it has negligible marginal human cost.

Or, did that mean something about 'poor planet we're exhausting its resources'? Then never mind.

There is such a thing as production decoupled from labor.

We still need a way to allocate the limited resources, but the primary way to do can't be labor/salaries anymore - because in the near future, unlike all the past millenia, labor of most people is simply not needed for optimum production.

I can't think of a single industry that has been able to completely decouple production from labor. Even something as simple as subway ticketing machines or vending machines require technicians to deploy and maintain them. Sure, most people that sold tickets lost that job, but economies have always found a new occupation for most.

Seems to me most have exaggerated expectations of the impact of automation.

No, most have underestimated the effect. A factory that used to have hundreds of workers and a few engineers and technicians, now has just a few engineers and technicians. That's effectively a decoupling of production from labor, however you want to look at it.

Automation of production has been explosive in the last few years. Companies that automate factories have a critical shortage of practical Engineers (no don't get excited; its one automation Engineer for every million people out of work). Automation Engineering requires a working knowledge of mechanical, electrical, chemical and information systems. My Niece flies all around the world installing and controlling automation, and her company cannot find qualified candidates to fill the demand.

My parents used to own a textile factory that employed at one point over 100 people. The business stopped being competitive and eventually was closed down with production moving to places like Eastern Europe, India and China. So I think a lot of those production jobs have already been destroyed in Europe and North America. Automation is an opportunity for manufacturing to move back closer to the creative and consumer ends of the businesses.

I get your point and I do agree that if a revolution like automation happens too fast, there is potential for social shocks such as high levels of unemployment and worse. But, as you state, the decoupling of the production from labor is actually being naturally throttled down by a scarcity of... labour. And that may buy enough time for society to adjust since education and training are taking longer and longer these days and no shortcut has been created for human learning.

Folks are still thinking about the problems of yesterday. Yes, overseas factories 'lost' a lot of jobs (actually employment worldwide went up). But today its automation baby. Explosive automation. Factories come back from overseas, but nobody is in these new factories.

Its growing geometrically. In shockingly fewer years than we think, there will be essentially no 'labor' jobs left. America will never again employ labor; its an obsolete idea. Our civilization is leaping forward, and we should plan on a humane response.

Are you saying resources get hurled into space when we use them?

Also, value can increase in a finite resources environment. For example, my iphone is worth a lot more, and is a lot more useful, than the materials it's made of.

Ah, the old fallacy that absence of capitalism equals communism. Yet humankind existed for millenia before either system was introduced.

That is not what I said. I merely mentioned that one of the possible alternatives was Communism. I do not know any alternatives that have worked and instead of pointing out a non existing fallacy, I would expect someone to actually point to viable alternative to Capitalism instead of simply being critics of it.

Also Capitalism is as old as the notion of personal property which predates any notion of State.

It is not. Barter is not capitalism. Cottage industry is not capitalism.

Google 'history of capitalism' and you'll see.

How do you think the new governments will unfold? Will there be gradual changes in multiple countries around the world, or will there be violent uprisings?

Historically speaking, at least in the United States, the citizens are far less powerful than the state simply due to the imbalance in weapons. The point of the 2nd amendment was so the people would be more powerful than the government, but due to the ban on machine guns and numerous other restrictions, I don't think anybody would argue the masses have nearly as much firepower as the military/police.

Exciting times ahead? I have to agree it feels like a change is coming, mostly due to the rapidly growing number of humans and dwindling of limited resources combined with growing inequality, but it's hard to predict what will happen (if anything) and when.

You think we'll see anything resembling a post-capitalist society in our lifetimes?

If the last decades have shown something, then that firepower is not really relevant for resistance.

I think a corporate government model may jump in if the anti-terror infrastructure can't handle it at some point.

In the event of a popular uprising, the semi-automatic hunting rifles owned by many of the public would actually be more effective against police/military units and their body armor than many military rounds. .30-06 has more power behind it and leaves a bigger hole than 5.56 NATO.

True, but rate-of-fire is often the more important feature of a weapon.

May all your enemies be on full auto.

The AK-47 and AR-15/M-16 are products of the doctrine of area fire. The M1 Garrand is a product of the doctrine of aimed fire. WW II was aimed fire. Aimed fire sucked in the jungle wars with fewer open field battles.

Hunting rifles are good for a sniper-based, aimed-fire guerilla action. A battle between farm boys and Marines will be asymetric.

I'm not sure that matters, as long as people have some sort of guns. Watch the show Jericho. The bulwark against tyranny is an all-volunteer military. The real threat is replacing Iowan boys with robots.

Part of enabling the masses to go to war with the government is that if the war is long/wopsided enough then there are no more masses to be governed.

> The point of the 2nd amendment was so the people would be more powerful than the government

Sorry to drag this off-tangent, but that statement is not even close to the reality of why the 2nd amendment was proposed or ratified and you should really stop saying it. It makes a nice post-hoc fairy tale for NRA types, but you desperately need to read some history of the colonial period...

Enlighten me.

tl;dr:

* 'Yay! We are free from English tyranny'

* 'Hey, this is kind of a shitty neighborhood and the English might be back, we need an army.'

* 'Nah, armies are the tools of tyrants. We need a citizen militia, that will work.'

* 'Yeah, but they need to practice because we have seen how poorly these guys fight and if it weren't for our French friends and these German mercs we would have been toast'

* 'Okay, then we should practice. Now the general rule is that if you run a regulated (aka 'practiced') militia you also provide the cannons, beer and chips for the post-practice party, and you provide everyone with their gun. In case you haven't noticed we have been kiting bad checks for the past couple of years and our finances are somewhat...illiquid.'

* 'New plan. We tell our guys they need to bring their own gun. A lot have them already, so we make these BYOG militias.'

* 'Cool idea, let's write this down and stuff it in to the new amendments.'

[Yes, I am compressing a bit more than a decade of the post-revolutionary period under the articles of confederation and numerous state-level disagreements. Think of this as a simplified road map. The 2A was more about the poverty of colonial state governments than anything else.]

Denial isn't the same thing as argument. The text of the 2nd Amendment is pretty starkly clear.

The text of the 2nd Amendment is quite clear. Especially the first thirteen words.

Those words are obvious to anyone who understand the history of the period, what those words meant at the time, and the arguments made in favor of the amendment. But for some strange reason everyone seems to forget they exist or claim that they are some rhetorical flourish that is found nowhere else in the first ten amendments.

So please, show off for us and explain them.

Before that will happen, we will likely see insanitites like a 25 hour workday

https://myprivate42.wordpress.com/2016/12/19/lets-shift-to-2...

or the abolition of cash.

No, automation is not new anymore and unions are declining. Besides, domestic appliances and cellphones changed the way people look at machines and technology.

It is easier to demonize immigrants and globalization. That is already the main target of anger.

If you demonize globalization, the result is local automated recycling and production. Thus this actually increases as in decentralizes automation.

We are destroying the natural world, without respect or harmony with nature. Itsn't the automation the real problem, its our relations with others people or kind of life.

Perveresely, with automation taking jobs that leaves people more time to spend in nature. So we'll be returning to harmony?

Doubt it. We’ll just create other work opportunities for those being displaced by automation. Google "Economic Possibilities for Our Grandchildren" or http://www.newyorker.com/magazine/2014/05/26/no-time

Yeah weird. In the '50s we wrote stories about automation removing the yoke of labor from everybody, freeing us up to be our better selves. Now we panic that Capitalism is threatened and invent stupid ways to patch it up (make-work, mandatory service etc).

Unfortunately no, instead you will spend it with Nezflix, Amazon Prime, your game console, Alexa, ....

Automation can help our relation with the natural world. For example we use weed killers because labor is expensive (and the work is horrible: mindless and backbreaking). Robots could do all the weeding and spare the environment from the depredations of Roundup.

I do believe there will be a tipping point if it really creates large scale unemployment even in a certain sector. Without an appropriate safety net people won't have enough money to buy food which will trigger substantial social unrest.

I doubt protests will be prompted by automation explicitly. Take Britain as an example, it used to be the largest manufacturer in the world [1]. Now less than 13% of its economy is based on manufacturing.

This hasn't cause massive protests at the level I think your proposing. The question therefore is if automation is likely to have knock-on effects, resulting in widespread poverty. This might well result in popular unrest.

[1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Manufacturing_in_the_United_...

Indirectly. The protest will follow from unemployment combined with the huge income divide. These will be the results of automation, but the protest will focus on the inequality.

Perhaps some countries (kinda like France at the moment) will take action to strengthen job security by legislation, those countries will lose out economically though.

(gotta append this with stating this is guesswork)

There might be small protests but massive protests are unlikely. Back in 1980s in India there were massive protests against introduction of computers in banks. At that time people were not much aware about the positive role computers can play in society. Today things are different and people are more aware about technology.

probably not because it's happening slowly and has been happening for 2 centuries ...

I think that if the public continues to putter along on auto-pilot for much longer, absolutely not. Acknowledging that I sound like some nutbag conspiracy theorist, we can already see systems of mass control being quietly put in place. At the moment, the general public appears to be very accepting of these systems, or just totally unaware that they can (and will) be used to control society in the future.

I'm not just talking about your three letter agency direct dragnet surveillance type programs, I'm also talking about stuff like cloud-based voice & speech recognition that is only one FISA warrant away from being the NSA's very own voice-print database. I don't even think many of the people implementing these systems intend them to be used as systems of mass control. But they will, and they will be used very intentionally to stifle any kind of popular 'neo-luddite' movement.

Why? Because automation will result in massive concentration of wealth (remembering the 'auto-pilot' assumption). Production will become extremely capital-intensive (i.e. people replaced with machines), and the few people who are not owners of capital yet still 'employed' will probably be paid astronomical salaries due to their similarly astronomically high 'labor factor productivity'. So you will have a handful of extremely wealthy 'neo-capitalists' with much greater scope for 'free political speech' (i.e. buying politicians with their mountains of money).

Last time we had a huge jump in the amount of capital used in production (the industrial revolution), while I wouldn't call it a 'fair fight', workers at least had a fighting chance, because:

- Capitalists had relatively less resources than future neo-capitalists will. To analogise, if 'industrial revolution capitalists' could employ professional strike-breakers and private security forces, future neo-capitalists will have the resources to field entire armies. With laser rifles.

- Society hadn't, just prior to the industrial revolution, constructed massive and intricate systems of total social control. We're doing this right now, in many cases not realising it.

- The state was at least sort of impartial in most cases. In some historical periods the state even sympathised with workers' concerns, due the formation and mainstream success of political parties representing 'labor'. Even now, these 'labor' parties seem totally adrift, like rebels without a cause. And the effect of money (er, I mean 'political speech') in politics will only get exponentially worse as capitalists become exponentially richer (er, more eloquent and verbose).

- There were clearly identifiable groups of people (i.e.'the workers at factory x', 'the workers in industry y', etc.) with identifiable and specific common goals and interests (i.e. 'get industry y to share more of its profit with labour', 'get factory x to build fire escapes so we all don't burn to death next time' etc.). In the context of future automation, this simply will not exist. Good luck organising a strike at, say, googles robot factory, when you're not actually an employee (as you're not employed at all).

Under the 'auto-pilot' assumption, the only power we will truly have is as consumers. Even just typing that last sentence makes me feel a little ridiculous. Because of the factors outlined above, there will be no counter-revolution. There will be no Karl Marx. There will be no new 'extreme opposites' (like communism), nor will there be new 'moderate balancing forces' (like labor unions). They will be killed off in their infancy or, ideally, never conceived to begin with.

So if you don't want this future, the time for action is right now.

Reply on news.ycombinator.com