Ask HN: How to realistically prepare for the robotization of the U.S.? | Hacker News Reader

Ask HN: How to realistically prepare for the robotization of the U.S.?

19 pointswturner15 comments

So their is a huge swath of automation coming down the pike. Automated cars, automated work force, video based education.

Many of these things still require human input although we've set ourselves up so that people don't get paid or paid very little (an example is Google translate which Jaron Lanier likes to use as an example).

I'm curious what insight people here have to mitigate being a victim of all of this. I know customer service jobs and the like will always be available but those are low paying and require a certain personality type. Mainly upbeat and happy...all the time. We seem to be moving toward a lack-of-a-middle class society. I am still convinced there are enclaves that will be well paying that don't require an MIT degree or a customer service personality that borders on senility. So feel free to respond.That is all.

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The real question is "What do we do when we are forced to acknowledge that a free market in labor doesn't work?"

Most of us reading this live in a bubble. We work at things that are, for now, very hard to automate. Employers bid up our wages. We may even tell ourselves that smart people are always in demand. It won't always be this way.

How will your brain be valued when prosthetic brains can make all those dullards you look down on now smarter than the un-assisted you? Will the poets with minds that (still) can't be artificially be boosted start pitying you and giving you free advice that you should have become more creative?

One of the biggest challenges for all us smarties will be to try to imagine ourselves on the outs, and to imagine economic systems very different from the one we have now.

"One of the biggest challenges for all us smarties will be to try to imagine ourselves on the outs, and to imagine economic systems very different from the one we have now."

I already know what that's like. If any of the 'smarties' are writing an anthropological fucking study on the cave people of U.S. society just ask. lol

I believe even customer service jobs are not immune to technological unemployment. I see no reason why a modernized automat couldn't replace most of the food service industry. And why couldn't an upgraded Siri replace most customer support workers?

The problem is when company owners replace human laborers with computerized laborers. CEOs are the ones who see the profits from the increased efficiency and the employees see nothing. This seems fine in a free market system yet if we follow through to the end game, we find incredibly efficient companies owned by a few people, with no human employees. If nobody is employed except CEOs, who will have money to buy their products? Robots can't buy stuff (yet)!

I believe the only solution is to pay people for robot labor. This may seem counter-intuitive, but when society has no income, there's nobody to buy the goods your robots have so diligently created.

Two solutions I've come up with are either a guaranteed minimum income or robot labor profit sharing.

An example of robot labor profit sharing is forming a union of "robot laborers" in which human employees invest in robots and receive the profits their robots generate. It would essentially be employees outsourcing their work to robots and receiving the profits.

One thing is certain. If we don't make significant progress on this solution, in favor of society as a whole, economic inequality will continue to increase until our economy breaks.

I am deeply interested in this topic and would love to hear from anyone who is working to find a solution to this problem.

I was asking based on the assumption that social, cultural or 'institutional' solutions are not going to happen and that individuals are on their own.

As an individual? I'd suggest researching the hardest problems for computer AI to solve, then picking a career in one of those areas. Generally any area to do with creativity and the human condition should remain viable for a long time. Luckily, programming and design should remain relevant for quite a while.

Creativity huh? Like music? j/k

Just pay everyone to walk away from work, there you go, problem solved, everybody has money buy stuff made by robot. Those socialism European countries got ahead of themselves while works still require diligent human labor. But technically they're ready for robot to take over than other countries where people still work for food.

Robot shall set you free. When selling labor in exchange for food is no long a necessity, People make wealth by having new ideas, designs which robot will implement. When minds are free, It will be a much better world.

The whole social foundation of human after each other for resources is gone. Greedy as a driver to human is no longer effective when facing robot, that changes every philosophy we know in civilization. The animal element in human for the first time is counter productive to survival, that's why this is very shocking and uncomfortable to us when imagine a world full of robot.

My recommended mitigation strategy would be to stick to things that computers do badly, and save as much money as possible. If someone asked me to pick a (potentially) lucrative career that won't be replaced by robots or computers in the next 50 years, I'd tell them to go to culinary school.

Except that it's not at all lucrative.

I'm not talking about line cooks. I'm talking about executive and personal chefs. I know several, and they all make high five to low six figures.

Full disclosure: I am probably too optimistic re: AI (in 1982 I put an AAAI bumper sticker "Artificial Intelligence: it is For Real" on my car :-)

I think that not only in the USA, but in most developed countries that within 10 years robots will be doing a lot of routine physical jobs like stocking shelves, farming, flipping burgers, etc. Lots of white collar knowledge workers will be partially displaced also.

Preparation: favor jobs like management, very high tech, nursing, etc. that are more difficult to replace.

1. Provide for your own i.e. grow your own food and customize your own manufacturing. 2. Develop a strong ethic of value add to your interactions with other people. 3. Empower,not just encourage, other individuals to be creative rather than consumptive, thus generating freedom and accountability.

http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/the-switch/wp/2014/02/18...

http://www.economist.com/node/21552897 might be relevant. (Pay-walled.)

Learn robotics.

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