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Comment by qyv | Hacker News Reader

Perhaps the technological singularity that we end up facing is not one of AI but one of nation-scale automation?

I would phrase it as mechanization becomes a better investment than human capital.

It's the tipping point where humans, more often than not, no longer provide value. I can't help but feel we are VERY close.

When this tipping is reached then society may reorganize itself around concepts like basic income and so forth. It seems like a safe bet that a single, cohesive society could survive this transition without a huge amount of chaos. But what happens when you have hundreds of countries with opposing interests who all hit this wall at about the same time?

I really doubt those reforms will be quick and or painless. It's easy to say society will reorganize around those concepts but you're probably talking decades of struggle to get those reforms.

Maybe, but I suspect the change will happen so fast that we won't be able to adjust in time. We've got a few new auto plants that were either just built or are soon to be built near where I live. First off, they are almost completely automated these days. Secondly, it only takes a couple of years to get one built. Most of that is politics and negotiations. When the new plant is built, the old one is mothballed. Point is, it happens VERY quickly.

Now, in the grand scheme of things, auto manufacturing is a relatively small industry in terms of labor force. What happens when this transition happens to the logistics industry, which is one of the top employers globally? Can we adapt quickly enough if land (including farming), sea, and possibly air are all automated within a decade? I'm not sure.

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