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Comment by kubb | Hacker News Reader

I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have.

There are two problems with this: machines can’t do that right now, despite everyone trying to make them, and somehow we humans are amazingly capable of inventing new and new jobs to do, because we somehow hate leisure.

Already almost a century ago Bertrand Russel observed in the Praise of Idleness that we have the capacity to greatly relieve ourselves from the burden of jobs, if not fully then enough to create the space to do excellent, intrinsically motivated things.

Alas, this never happens. We always have to invent some other job. And what’s the point of super AI (please forgive me for using this vague and misleading term, I’m doing so sarcastically) if it can’t even give us a minute more of time with our kids, or tinkering on our personal projects?

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Because at its core a “job” is just doing something useful for other people, validated by the incurrence of a large societal cost (your salary).

Humans like to feel useful AND validated. If you remove either we generally become more unhappy. If you remove both it becomes a real problem.

Hence why unemployed people (both of the working class and “too rich to work due my trust fund” variety) have much higher rates of depression. This even extends to people who have jobs, but that feel their jobs are not actually useful (re: big tech workers arbitraging the inefficiency of large organizations to get paid doing very little). They have the validation of the societal cost (the salary) but deep down they know it’s an inefficient mistake.

Intrinsic motivation beyond our base instincts is a myth. Everything you do as a human is in pursuit of external validation, hence why we are social creatures. It’s why you’ve bothered to take the time out of your day to type these words into a box.

Humans finding new useful things to do for other people (jobs) is the engine behind everything good in modern society. So no, it’s not a bad thing.

> a “job” is just doing something useful for other people

So all you need is someone who considers a task useful, and boom, you have another job.

What it that person is out of their mind?

> What it that person is out of their mind?

Then, I believe, the job is called "psychiatric nurse".

we somehow hate leisure

We don't hate leisure. Everyone loves their leisure. What we hate is each other. Unless people are able to accept someone else getting a free ride (even when they're not getting one themselves), some form of ever-increasingly pointless work will be required, because that's how we define whether or not someone has 'earned' their leisure.

I think what bothers people is the idea of having to work to pay for somebody else's leisure. Obviously lots of arguments to be had about the specifics of that, but I think it's more about this than a moralistic concern about "unearned" leisure. Nobody minds much if somebody wins the lottery and lives a frugal and leisurely life on the proceeds.

But that’s the current system. We all work so that 0.001% of the population can hoard wealth, influence our laws and control the media.

That's not remotely true. You forget the default state of humanity is fighting off starvation running naked in the dirt.

The average net profit rate of all business in the US is 7%. To think you’re not a primary beneficiary in such a system is just silly.

I see your point, but it feels like you're engaging in a broader defense of the system rather than directly adressing apercu's concern about wealth concentration and elite influence.

My first draft had examples of what "working to pay for somebody else's leisure" means for different people, but I thought it better to omit specifics in favour of the general point.

> Alas, this never happens.

it never happens because the amount of energy we can collect and consume is still insufficient. We have not reached post-scarcity, not even close in fact.

And i don't see a superior AI being capable of giving us post-scarcity, at least, not within this life time, nor the next. Perhaps in 100 years, that would be possible, if you'd want to be optimistic.

We haven't reached post scarcity, I grant you that, but we have reached a point where we could get away with much more leisure time than in the past. Either that, or all technology is useless.

If AI can outrun hedonic treadmill that would be vast achievement. Even more so if nature isn't destroyed in the process.

>it never happens because the amount of energy we can collect and consume is still insufficient.

Pretty much every developed country is overflowing with stuff, we just don't know how much is enough.

Why 100 years if there's exponential growth? I think it could be more like 50 years.

> we humans are amazingly capable of inventing new and new jobs to do, because we somehow hate leisure.

We don’t. We do generally crave meaning, the only people who hate leisure are the owner class, and they hate leisure for other people. Employees are not out there clamouring for 80h weeks or having to piss in bottles on your 12h shift. Some do like that (sometimes to an unhealthy extent) but that’s a very different consideration.

I really don't want that. The rich will find a way to force us into jobs we dont want. I'd rather develop software than cleaning toilets to be honest...

figuring out how to balance this, could be the intrisincially rewarding role you are looking for in life. So that way we have people who are rewarded with ensuring that there is no outsized bargaining power on the political stage.

Marx figured this out a long time ago. The problem is implementing it.

> I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have.

I would take it a step further and question why is everyone assuming that people have to work, whatever the work might be.

Of course the genetic answer is to pay the bills, but what if you didn't had to worry about paying them? How would your life change if you didn't had a mortgage or rent to pay? Would you still spend hours commiting to and back from the office? Would you stick with your current job? What would change in your life?

Once I came across a group of construction workers that were working on a construction site. Half a dozen of them were spending their days wearing fluorescent vests and holding hand-held stop signs on a crosswalk of a low-traffic road. There were more construction workers on that crosswalk than people actually crossing the road. They were there five days per week, from early morning to evening. What a colossal waste of time. I wondered how soul-crushing that would be. Is that how people expect to spend the bulk of their days? Does society benefit anything from those roles?

> Does society benefit anything from those roles?

Till we invent machines that can replace construction workers yes we really do need those jobs still. Even if some of them looked like they were doing nothing of importance, I am sure they have periods were they are fully engaged in hard work (too hard I think) otherwise no one would pay them.

> I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have.

This is already the case for shareholders, and will still be the case in the future as long as automation remains privatized.

The rest of us will need to find a way to eat without working pointless jobs. We aren't getting a slice of the automation pie.

It did happen and continues to happen!!! The average time worked per week has halved over th past 70 years (more so in Europe than the US, but that is also why the US is richer)

It's not just jobs but also chores used to take up significantly more time!

> I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have.

Who will own the machines that feed you?

If you aren't contributing anything, why would they care to give you more than the absolute bare minimum to survive?

I don't know, a benevolent, humanity loving oligarch? Or you know, common ownership.

Even with common ownership, why would you be given any more than subsistence? What actual power and influence will you have if your economic value is zero?

I see a future where someone who has the skill and talent to be a surgeon earning millions of dollars is now living in a basic pod, eating rations of slop, exactly the same as everyone else, with no meaningful role or contribution to society.

I'd work for the little more than subsistence that I need to be happy.

The premise is a future where the economic value of your work is zero. Machines do everything better and faster than you.

That was never my premise.

It's also absurd. Machines can't make a person feel powerful because they're controlling another human being.

"I really wish that machines could just take over at some point and we could be free of the pointless jobs we have."

Your words.

No it is not absurd. That is the goal for AGI/ASI sytems and it is an existential threat to human civilization, currently being debated at a very high level.

> I see a future where someone who has the skill and talent to be a surgeon earning millions of dollars is now living in a basic pod, eating rations of slop, exactly the same as everyone else, with no meaningful role or contribution to society.

And at the same time other people (way more numerous than your surgeon example) will get amazing healthcare, better shelter and be able to choose how to spend their time instead of hopping between soul crushing low pay jobs.

David Graeber's Bullshit Jobs argues semis convincingly that 40% or so of jobs in the USA don't really have to be done - by the workers own admission.

Certainly if we wanted to, so much of the advertising, scamming, copying other companies, etc. could be done away with without affecting life very much.

We don't even need to wait for AI.

Conversely, even with AI I suspect we will still be expected to work, if anything harder because our labor is relatively less useful

> 40% or so of jobs in the USA don't really have to be done

Many would question that, but if you think it through it probably even higher. Somehow we manage to automate and industrialize pretty much everything, yet everyone still have a job. Previously women stayed at home, removing half of the workforce, and that still worked out fine.

I had a client, they sell cheap furniture. They really didn't need me, because they really didn't need all the IT infrastructure they've built up. Rather than attempting to sell me new cheap ass plastic garden furniture every spring, how about they just sell me really high quality stuff once? Then I don't need to shop with them for the next 25 years. That would save a lot of work right there.

Russell was an aristocrat and enjoyed excellent schooling, and thus knew how freedom and idleness could produce excellence. He was a socialist because he realized that non-aristocrats generally had no shot at his kind of life without it.

Well, yeah, that's rare among aristocracy though. Look at today's billionaires, they'll tell you that you should work until you drop dead.

The problem with this idea is that in a capitalist system, the machines taking over all the jobs means wealth fully concentrating in the capitalist class while taking away all power from labor. In other words, misery for the 99%.

We need a systemic change before we can allow this to happen.

So the problem is capitalism?

In my eyes, yes.

If we had some sort of post-money utopia where the machines would do the work and we could all just do whatever we wanted, AI would be great. But as-is, we'll have a dystopia where AI will allow the rich to hoard ever more while the rest of us loses all leverage.

> could all just do whatever we wanted

Anything except do work that meaningfully contributes to society and makes the best use of your abilities, or that requires significant material resources beyond the bare subsistence level that the system has allocated to you.

What if you want to be a neurosurgeon or radiologist? Forget it. That will be done by machines better than you.

What if you want to travel the world? Why would you be entitled to any significant amount of international air travel, or any at all?

You could hang out and be friends with a lot of people. That's a meaningful contribution that's impossible right now.

Also why should a person be entitled to being a neurosurgeon who has a worse success rate than the magical theoretical machine you're assuming? That's plain selfish.

Exactly. That's the point.

Hanging out with friends? That's what we will be reduced to. Everyone living in a Trailer Park Boys episode.

> could all just do whatever we wanted

No we cannot, because that would be "selfish and entitled".

> What if you want to be a neurosurgeon or radiologist?

How many people are able to and get to be that , 2%? And how many of them actually fully enjoy that job? Or more importantly - how many got a fair opportunity to become that to begin with? I get what you're saying but it's not like things are great now for the majority.

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