Robots won't just take our jobs they'll make the rich even richer

[Jimbo101]

The Guardian

Slashdot

The bad news is that if it does, it will produce a level of inequality that will make present-day America look like an egalitarian utopia by comparison.

The real threat posed by robots isn't that they will become evil and kill us all, which is what keeps Elon Musk up at night -- it's that they will amplify economic disparities to such an extreme that life will become, quite literally, unlivable for the vast majority. A robot tax may or may not be a useful policy tool for averting this scenario. But it's a good starting point for an important conversation.

Mass automation presents a serious political problem -- one that demands a serious political solution. Automation isn't new. In the late 16th century, an English inventor developed a knitting machine known as the stocking frame. By hand, workers averaged 100 stitches per minute; with the stocking frame, they averaged 1,000. This is the basic pattern, repeated through centuries: as technology improves, it reduces the amount of labor required to produce a certain number of goods. So far, however, this phenomenon hasn't produced extreme unemployment.

That's because automation can create jobs as well as destroy them.

What's different this time is the possibility that technology will become so sophisticated that there won't be anything left for humans to do. What if your ATM could not only give you a hundred bucks, but sell you an adjustable-rate mortgage?

[luvMIdog]

1. Yeah they want America thinking about Mexico while they fill jobs with robots

[Hortensis]

2. They are not taking OUR jobs.

The U.S. is outsourcing or bringing in people to take large numbers of good-paying technical jobs, AND/OR being forced to somehow do away with them, because not enough Americans are training for them. This is a 30-year constant problem. Too many are sitting around complaining about being screwed, or that politicians aren't "talking to them," instead.

But no matter, no job that we did not create for ourself is OUR job. It's THEIR job.

And if we want our share of the riches of modern production THAT WE PARTICIPATE IN, we can damn well go get that too. Or do without.

What if there was no demand for the enormous production capacities of modern technology because only about 30,000 incredibly wealthy people were the entire market? The other 330 million plus people dead and gone of starvation for lack of work?

Can't stand whiny victim politics.

[Warpy]

3. Well, I don't believe in the evil AI robots banding together to kill us off

What I do wonder is what the end game of robots working 24/7 to produce shit that has no market because a beggared population is too poor to buy anything will look like, the pipeline utterly choked with stuff and nowhere to put any more of it, the money pump from the bottom up completely stalled. We're almost there now.

A guaranteed minimum income might be proposed at that point, but the wealthy would shriek about having to pay taxes for it and the ungrateful wretches at the bottom would take it and use it to produce and barter artisan goods among themselves that would outlast all the mass produced crap made by robots.

The rich think robots will make them richer because none of them ever thinks of the demand side of the economic equation. It's just not going to happen that way. They'll be stuck playing accounting games to give them the illusion of increasing wealth, surrounded by a hungry and resentful population with nothing left to lose.

[MichMan]

4. Seems like there will be fantastic opportunities for some

Seems clear that people with the skills to engineer, design, program, maintain, and repair automated equipment will be in high demand. These would be both degreed and skilled trade jobs

[Blue_true]

5. Exactly. The acquisition and install costs for smart

machines is beyond the means for non wealthy individuals and small business. Rich individuals and companies buying and deploying smart machines will allow them to wipe out their poorer competitors, while firing workers that are no longer needed. So, smart machines cost jobs and increase income inequality.

[Blue_true]

6. People can get mortgages online now, as well as buy

homes and real estate.

Early machines which ushered in the industrial revolution and early assembly line manufacturing actually expanded employment and broadened wealth because the machines and systems gave humans capabilities not seen before, like making large, strong steel beams, making cars cheaper so that more people could buy them, making it possible to pave roads to allow people to search wider for work and recreation (which created more jobs). Smart machines today are fundamentally replacing vast amounts of human labor and replacing it with a comparatively very small amount of high paid labor.

IMO, I don't see machines one day physically wiping humans out directly. Rather, what smart machines (and the humans that can afford them) will do is create such a barren landscape for the majority of humans that groups of humans will set upon eachother with murderous intent, it will be like the period in France after the French Revolution, multiplied 1000x.

In order for machines to rule humans ala Terminator, a machine that is capable of outthinking the vast majority of humans (that is increasingly becoming a reality) would have to have an original thought that takes place outside the programming parameters for that machine - the original thought would have to be of a level that allows the machine to rival the thinking capacity and original thought capability of it's creators. How can an original thought happen, say the Military had a super advanced machine capable of outthinking every soldier accept a handful in a lab in the Pentagon, the machine also would need the capacity to diagnose problems with itself and repair itself at a high level of capability - if the machine has a glitch, it could develop an original thought, if it has the interative loop capability that underlie an original thought (effect, observation of effect, analysis of what was observed, hypothesis based upon analysis, test of hypothesis, 2nd effect to start the process over and advance). Babies have original thought from the time their sensing capabilities develop in the womb, those original thoughts multiply and become more complex after babies are born and become even more complex as the babies grow into toddlers, preteens, ect). One thing with the "self awareness" scenario that terrifies some people is that if machines do have an original thought, even a womb level original thought, machines can work on developing more complex original thoughts 24x7, 365, no human that has ever existed can do that - what would happen is that within a few weeks, machines would be smarter than and capable of out thinking their creators - if the machines had one task that involved killing humans, then a Terminator scenario could become a reality.