Robots Don't Complain or Demand Higher Wages or Kill Themselves...
economist.com
economist.com
What do we do when there is an excess of human labor? Everyone here is opposed to make work for good reason. But a suggestion that solves the moral issue of what to do with an unemployed human who is not contributing due to a lack of labor demand has not been proposed in the general case. It is typically waved away by saying, "There will be a new industry." But can we really not imagine that this new industry will remain un-automated for long? What about the new industry that begins by being automated?
I am not opposed to automation in the slightest. I think that if we can automate every task in the world, that would be the best thing. If anything I am just opposed to insisting that as technology changes, we must maintain the same social values and behaviors.
We get to work building some really awesome space ships and start colonizing other planets. Seriously.
You could put faith in several people groups like Copenhagen Suborbitals, CSTART, OSM and the like, but like above they seek those specialised in certain skills.
That's to discount the paradox of technology efficiency: Food becomes cheaper but unemployed people can't pay for it.
The educated and skilled people will be busy working on military tech, farmville, and face recognition software. You know, technologies aimed at pacifying the masses.
I'm sure there are several other examples of new types of low level employment that will arise as automation increases. In a world where everything is automated, there is no such thing as "too much training data".
As the price of human labor goes to zero, humans will be increasingly used as marketing props.
In a democracy or socialist state, handouts or negative taxation will redistribute wealth.
And I will tell you that few people will chose human made pizzas just for the experience, especially if their wages are going to zero.
It's like there is a a pyramid of salaries and we just have to admit that we're trimming bits off the bottom of the pyramid. (IMHO)
Foxconners are not unusually predisposed to kill themselves. It's a jingoistic myth.
>To pacify its increasingly restive workers, Foxconn has repeatedly bumped up their wages, improved facilities, provided counselling and swathed its factories with nets to catch anyone leaping from a window.
And, for comparison, the WHO gives numbers that are closer to each other, though still surprising individually: http://www.who.int/mental_health/prevention/suicide/suicider...
The question is this: will the powerful still value human life when robots are better than manual workers?
Wealth keeps concentrating in the hands of a small minority.
Unskilled workers increasingly look like nothing but a drain on resources, unable to produce anything valuable or afford education.
Many many billionaires have little respect for unskilled human life and libertarians do not believe in free education or social services.
When the bottom 50% of society finally ends up with no money, no marketable skills, and no military prowess, what is going to happen to them?
viva la revolution baby!
I guess we have to hope that when the ability to completely automate warfare that the people in power aren't genocidal sociopaths.
If they didn't question the orders you would have to question whether they were brainwashed into thinking the fellow country men were deserving of attack.
A lot of militaries train their soldiers to not question the orders of their superiors. I believe the US military does allow a solider to question orders, but I would expect that it is not encouraged.
I think we are in agreement. I was just trying to clarify my comment above because I was confused as to why my previous comment had been down voted. +1 for you :-)
The Tiananmen square massacre was committed by the current Chinese government. Do you think they've grown a conscience in the last 20 years? Or does killing over a thousand (1,000) civilians agitating for Democracy just make it that much easier to kill a hundred thousand (100,000) civilians later on?
Robots do not just make better workers, they are also better warriors. How many Chinese peasants does it take to kill a single UAV? How many protestors can modern riot police crowd control using sophisticated psychological warfare combined with advanced nonlethal weaponry?
Once the violent, unskilled, uneducated, unmoneyed lawbreakers are rounded up by the riot police and thrown in jail... then what? The Chinese are not shy about executions. How about humane lethal injections for everyone?
Also, if 50% of people are unemployed there will be a lot of people who are employed who sympathise with them, so we are really talking about 80% plus.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Final_Solution
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Khmer_Rouge#Number_of_deaths
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rwandan_genocide
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Augusto_Pinochet
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bombing_of_Dresden_in_World_War...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Atomic_bombings_of_Hiroshima_an...
The OP said he "can't even believe that anyone could think of [mass murder]."
Think!
Lack of imagination, lack of historical awareness, or just plain willful ignorance?
Or perhaps I was just chose the wrong turn of phrase? No need to go on a pedantic nerd rage.
Of course people could think about it. Of course people have killed millions of people in the past.
What I was trying to say is that any sensible leader in a industrialised nation would not choose exterminating 50% of their population instead of than trying to affect social change.
Of course we could have another Stalin or Hitler or Pol Pot who tries for genocide again. But killing 50% of your population is much different to killing 5%. Those 50% are going to have friends so you'd be up against 80-90% of the population. It would just be more sensible to try to redistribute wealth at that stage.
But yes, I'm sure whack jobs can think about these things and with modern weapons you could probably do it etc.
The "rich" people need the poor people. Without other classes, there is no rich. If everyone is in jail, who buys the goods?
What is money worth if there is no one to compare it to? If everyone is poor or in jail...why do you want money? For what? To do what? To drive a nice car that no one cares about because they can't afford food?
People are too quick to overestimate robotics and artificial intelligence. 100 years ago we were supposed to have flying cars, laser guns and teleportation. These were exaggerated views, just as ours are now.
I'm an ex-libertarian and have moved to a more centrist position, but this is disingenuous. Libertarians generally want the right to make their own decisions and are anti-coercion. However, many of them are big believers in philanthropy and true voluntary social contracts - just not the kind enforced by the barrel of a gun.
They're not opposed to education or social services - just of funding them by force. It might seem like a small thing, but it's not - if a society could built that achieves high levels of education and prosperity without coercion, most people would think that's a good outcome.
Libertarians frequently believe this is possible. They might be wrong, but the attitude is not "let them eat cake" - it's "my life, my choice for what I do with it, take your hands off of me." But many or most believe in learning and prosperity.
What now though? Robots are better soldiers AND workers. Carnegie and Rockefeller were motivated by foreign competition to help people with education and social services. Rockefeller in particular focused his social services on birth control to reduce overpopulation because he saw little value in human life at the bottom of society.
Now that masses are simply not needed for anything, and the masses no longer are a military threat due to extreme military tech, the masses have no bargaining chips other than appealing to the humanity of the plutocrats.
And I fear that many of the plutocrats agree with Ayn Rand when she says, "I don't want your appeals to my better nature. Appeal to my self-interest."
How does someone with no money, no marketable skills, no way to afford education, no ability to exert physical power, continue to survive when the upper class only accepts appeals to their self-interest?
That's pretty interesting. Being European, I don't know much about US industrialists and US population policy. I'd like to learn more about this. Do you have books / articles you'd advise on this subject?
Appeal to enlightened self-interest is more powerful than appeal to someone's "better nature". Find the sweet spot where those two meet. It does happen (that those two things meet) and that's the target if you want meaningful, effective change. Rome had a policy of "bread and circus" -- to keep the masses fed and passively entertained in order to avoid rioting in the streets. I follow a similar policy in my household when facing difficult situations. It's very effective.
Rome had to avoid rioting because Rome didn't have tear gas.
China does not have to avoid rioting. They are comfortable with using tanks to kill thousands of unarmed protestors.
The circumstances have changed since Rome. Technology has changed them.
PS -- There are riots in London currently going on:
http://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=2861840
http://news.yahoo.com/london-rioters-battle-police-shooting-...
PPS -- I've seen a couple of comments on HN indicating the rioters are staying ahead of the police using Blackberries. I find this funny given your remarks about how technology has changed things.
Which billionaires do not value unskilled human life? How many billionaires are their in the world? Are there really many, many of them that feel that way? Are they really all that selfish that they would happily destroy millions of lives? What does that benefit them?
Billionaires fund FOX News to indoctrinate the middle class and push them toward self-destruction. Which billionaires are funding universal liberal educations or a culture of empowerment?
By their actions the upper class is saying that they don't want a middle class. They are saying: if the middle class is so stupid to fall for Rupert Murdoch propaganda and Evangelical Christianity, then they deserve to be enslaved.
The alternative would be to fund liberal educations, fund free mental health services, fund enlightening media like PBS rather than saying, "If the middle class won't fund it it doesn't deserve to exist."
So many of the elite put all the burden on others. It's true that people should take care of themselves, but they don't. Mental illness is epidemic. Are the wealthy going to stand by and watch as the middle class implodes? Not all plutocrats are malicious, but the majority are indifferent, and their actions speak this.
I have no clue what a "culture of empowerment" is, but as to funding education:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bill_%26_Melinda_Gates_Foundati...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Warren_Buffett
http://newsfeed.time.com/2010/12/09/mark-zuckerberg-to-donat...
Another billionaire was recently in the news for donating $40k to a Republican governor. He also donated $7M to PBS, $35M to educating people about evolution and $78M to educating people about science in general didn't make the news.
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/David_H._Koch#Philanthropy
These are just a few that I can think of.
Peter Thiel also funds education, though probably not the sort of education you wish he would fund.
Conspicuously absent: - lowering cost of higher education - lowering cost of mental health services - lowering cost of land / rent
Literacy doesn't create a middle class. Higher education, mental health, and ownership of land does. These issues never seem to be touched by philanthropists because philanthropists are ambivalent about the middle class.
Peter Thiel is a total elitist by the way. He has no interest or love for uneducated, mentally ill masses and is just the kind of guy who would probably quote Ayn Rand when people are starving to death.
He stated in a conference (2009) that for robots to be successful in manufacturing, they needed :
1- object recognition skill of a 2 year old child
2- language capability of a 4 year old
3- manual dexterity of a 6 year old
4- social understanding of an 8 year old
I guess Foxconn is eyeing robots that are close to reaching those numbers.
ref. : conference I mentionned: http://fora.tv/2009/05/30/Rodney_Brooks_Remaking_Manufacturi...
I guess that's not the cool sort of robotics though.
What Brooks speaks of is a new generation of robots. Robots that can be shipped from a factory that builds iPods to a factory that builds car wheels. They take way less space than the first generation, and they adapt. So if your product decides it's going to use nails instead of screws, you don't need to redesign your robot line.
In the US, it's mostly behaviour-based AI that got a big push at MIT in the 90s and have been used in the US military for the passed decade... seems like they're ready for manufacturing now :D
Perhaps people will pay a premium for a "human made" sticker on the side?
Humans think they can control everything. We can't. Even if Robots were to automate everything, what happens when a tsunami hits Japan? Destroys sources of power, robots, the power grid. What do they do then?
We talk about all this "AI" as if it's close to fruition. It is not close to fruition. The "robots" Foxconn is getting aren't autonomous. They're just machines that do what they are told to do.
"Origin of ROBOT Czech, from robota compulsory labor; akin to Old High German arabeit trouble, Latin orbus orphaned — more at orphan First Known Use: 1922" http://www.merriam-webster.com/dictionary/robot
Noteworthy, I think, because it'd seem natural for a technology to be named by the people who created it, but that isn't always the case. Sometimes its the people who dreamed of it.
Many other companies in China will be watching very closely on how it works for them, and may do the same if it succeeds.
Does NOT.
Destroy.
Jobs.
Is the economy smaller today than in 1911? Are there fewer jobs today? Are there less worthwhile jobs today? Exactly the opposite in every case. Automation may eliminate A job in the near-term but in the long-term it creates and enhances wealth. Ultimately every dollar spent makes its way from one person to another person.
Robots don't have bank accounts.
The wealth created goes to the company that made the robot, and the one that utilizes the robot. The people who used to have jobs get left out of the wealth transfer.
I'm not saying this is necessarily bad, just that it will happen and maybe we need a new economic model to deal with this future.
Yes, I can imagine a future where most of the menial and factory jobs are performed by robots. Just as I can imagine a present where the majority of the population isn't farmers, or where "computers" are devices rather than people, or a present without elevator operators, switchboard operators, lamp lighters, or milkmen.
But what about below average intelligence people? People who are sub-literate and can't jump from job to job, learning skills quickly? Diligent, hard working people who just can't outwork a robot?
The wealth goes to the people creating the robots and the people maintaining the robots.
Automation is a great thing. I'm still waiting for an economic model to be put into place where (decent) food, shelter, and health insurance are provided free of cost because of automation. The necessity of having a job is so ingrained into our culture, I want to see what it'd be like when it's entirely optional.
I think socialism might be the economic model you are looking for: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Socialism
Job creation for the sake of jobs is wasteful.
I used to think this (and still do) but it is important to make sure people have something that fills in their time otherwise you'll end up with all sorts of societal problems like drug abuse, vandalism etc. Some people get a bit weird if they have too much time on their hands.
The argument that automation destroys jobs assumes that at least part of the population does not have the propensity to be artists. This is the crucial point that this whole debate rests on.
In other words, are there people who are so un-creative that everything they could produce can be automated? If there are, then such people will lose jobs due to automation and will not gain back any alternative jobs.
I think on a site like HN the debate is skewed because most of us are high IQ people who, so far, don't have any trouble competing with robots. If there were robots who could do everything I can do and do it cheaper than I, why would anybody hire me?
We're getting to where it's all about creativity.
Automation does not destroy skilled jobs.
Unskilled jobs, however, are hit by automation.
For theUS, the problem is how off-track our education system has gotten in terms of job preparedness.
We have lots of people who worked hard, got lots of student debt, and have no jobs. Which is actually still small (the unemployment rate for people with college degrees is what, 4-5%?). We have lots of unskilled labor who went through our public school system. That's a problem.
We need to bring trade schools back.
Also, did anyone else notice the use of the verb "hire" when talking about robots?
But those who manufacture, sell and buy them do. And they won't be very eager to share the returns of their investment with the rest of the society, at least a capitalist society like the ones we have today.