'Rise of the Robots' and 'Shadow Work' | Hacker News Reader

'Rise of the Robots' and 'Shadow Work'

nytimes.com

15 pointskdazzle6 comments

> [Martin Ford's] solution is blindingly obvious: As both conservatives and liberals have proposed over the years, we need to institute a guaranteed annual minimum income, which he suggests should be set at $10,000 a year. This is probably not enough, ...

$10,000 per person per year might not seem like much in the US. However, average minimal living costs will gradually equalize globally, as low-cost machine labor becomes ubiquitous.

> ... and of course no amount of money can compensate for the loss of meaningful engagement.

I don't get that. Neither the "work or starve" nor "work is holy" ethics have ever appealed to me. I like to play. While I've managed to get paid for it, I'm not convinced that it's essential. If I had taken the academic path, it would have been less relevant.

I'm also inspired by post-Singularity fiction, most recently 'Diaspora' by Greg Egan. I don't recall that the concept of "money" occurs in the book.

Try reading 'DRIVE' by Daniel Pink. You like to play you say? You're exactly the kind of person he's writing about. Old skool 'algorithmic' work needs a carrot or stick to motivate workers. Heuristic, creative work needs something else entirely. It needs a sense of autonomy, mastership and something he calls 'something larger' or a connection to relevant topic of helping others in society. These 3 will motivate people like you (and me for that matter).

> average minimal living costs will gradually equalize globally, as low-cost machine labor becomes ubiquitous

This doesn't follow. Scarce resources alone (housing/land/water/transport bandwidth etc) dictate large differences and effects of unchecked greenhouse gas emissions will make this more pronounced. And it's going to be a long time (if ever) before robot labour can erase the effect of local human labour cost (such as daycare) from causing local cost-of-living differences. And global liberalization of immigration is also pretty far off - before that there will be lots of cheap labour to compete with robots outside rich countries.

I was thinking that average minimal living costs will decrease in the US and other economically well-off countries. Elsewhere, I was thinking that average minimal standard of living would increase, but that cost increases would be offset by inexpensive machine labor. Alternatively, they could be more-or-less ignored as they are now, except when killing is necessary.

> I don't get that. Neither the "work or starve" nor "work is holy" ethics have ever appealed to me. I like to play.

I think you are failing to see robots will also take away play.

Why garden, make things from wood, sew, knit, cook when they are close to free and better quality to buy.

Why learn instruments, program, make art when a robot is so much better.

Will reading be as fun when you have a millions of books specifically tailored to you by robots.

Will travel have value when it's easy and cheap? Compound this with the fact the world will become much more homogeneous at national levels.

Yes people will still have hobbies, but when they are needed to give you self worth, which is what work currently does, I don't think it will be enough.

Some people may react as you say. But many people will choose augmentation, and will arguably be just as capable as non-meat machines. And they'll always (or at least, for a while) have innate capabilities that provide advantages of various sorts.

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