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It's more or less inevitable that AI will outpace humans. Humans can't evolve fast enough and artificial intelligence can be updated i.e. "evolved" while in use. Stephen Hawkings mentioned something about humans inability to evolve fast enough although I can't remember the details at this moment.
With robots doing all the work and with enough resources to go around, the sticking point would be how to equitably distribute the output from the robots. Look around yourself at the amount of sheer wealth and possessions you have and consider what the normal level of possessions would have been five hundred years ago. In the 1500's more than one or two changes of clothing would have been out of reach of most of humanity. What about in the 1600's? 1700's? Okay, make it a mere 100 years ago, in 1915. That would have been more or less one or two generations from the start of the industrial revolution but folks still had a whole lot less of just sheer possessions than they do now but a lot more possessions than several generations before them did. They had more mostly because a lot of the production was automated. So now, about a hundred years later, the automated process has been extremely advanced, so will everyone now have abundance?
If the folks with the robots are going to get lots of money, they have to somehow get money to the people who are going to consume the output from the robots. Will everyone get a certain monthly stipend just for being human?
As for the infertility aspect, anyone read Dan Brown's "Inferno"? That solves the over population problem rather nicely. Does anyone remember when overpopulation used to be the "climate change"? Used to be that what was going to destroy the earth.
I also read somewhere that McD's was considering replacing most of their workforce with robots.
It's more or less inevitable that AI will outpace humans. Humans can't evolve fast enough and artificial intelligence can be updated i.e. "evolved" while in use. Stephen Hawkings mentioned something about humans inability to evolve fast enough although I can't remember the details at this moment.
You can't remember the details at this moment? If you were a robot, you could.
This will displace an enormous amount of jobs, and, quite frankly, create sustained unemployment levels not seen in decades. But it will occur, as there simply is no logical reason not to utilize every tool to improve efficiency and, with it, operating profits.
We were covered well in prior periods of rapid change as wants created more jobs than technology wiped out, but the wants that do not exist yet can likely be produced, via technology, barely creating a ripple of new jobs, while automation will yes, wipe out most of our top quantity types of 2015's jobs.
What will you do or the govt do when the pitchforks show up? Technology can wipe out outdated jobs but what will society do to keep people busy?
The rich depend on people working for them, they must keep creating jobs. When they stop creating jobs, people will come for them.
Which is why the govt will become the largest employer in this country and anyone not working for the govt will pay an even larger share of the tax burden in time.
Yes, moral judgement is key here. For example, I would want a sentient being with emotions to make the decision to take a human life NOT a machine.
So I guess judge's jobs will be safe for awhile.
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That's the future. We expand into space. And the automation will need human oversight. The human oversight will have to be local due to the speed of light. Plus humans will be present because they will be populating the solar system. Terraforming Mars, Terraforming Venus (or possibly just living in the clouds of venus, which have earth air pressure and temperature, and Earth's atmosphere is buoyant there), living in the Jovian and Saturnian moons, etc.
That would be cool, but unfortunately it isn't going to happen soon. There are some new scientific breakthroughs that would be necessary, mainly a way to get mass off the planet for a reasonably low energy cost or anti-gravity. It's easy for people to just say they exist in sci-fi, but in reality they may never happen.
Plus we'd already need a very mature and developed robotic culture on earth first, so we will face the issues associated with that long before we go off planet. I also don't believe that the robots will need very much human oversight (if any) by that time. If the people ruling the planet needed more humans then, they'd just grow genetically enhanced and modified ones in labs.
If the folks with the robots are going to get lots of money, they have to somehow get money to the people who are going to consume the output from the robots. Will everyone get a certain monthly stipend just for being human?
I don't know if you read my OP, but I covered that issue. In a nutshell, consumer-capitalism will be dead at that point and there will no longer be a reason for the wealthy to care about consumer buying power. From their standpoint anything the "useless" humans get will be a waste of resources. Unless our democratic institutions are strong enough to prevent it, we will face a declining living standard and a reduced population.
Will the war be fought by robots? Robots, controlled by the wealthy elite, at war with desperate humans who have nothing but their own numbers and primitive weapons? What if the robots win? Is that how the population is likely to be reduced to the level considered optimal for the wealthy elite? 99% of the human race will die in a war against robots, the robots will win, and their wealthy masters will then consider most of the problems of the world solved? No more overpopulation, no more global warming caused by too many people and their factories and vehicles polluting too much, no more overcrowded roads and malls, no more polluted rivers, lakes, and oceans, no more massive deforestation, none of those problems, but just paradise on Earth for the survivors, the wealthy elite?
I believe they will do whatever is necessary to prevent the destructiveness and danger of war. A more efficient way to reduce population would be a targeted virus that the favored few are inoculated against. But even that would be too dangerous I feel.
More likely we simply transition to living very differently on our low stipend. They don't really need us dead, they just don't want to waste too many resources on us. We may live in small dwellings (pods?) where we are hooked up to virtual reality equipment, and that is how we will experience existence and communicate and interact with others. We are already well on our way, just with smart phone, the internet, and Oculus Rift. If a way is developed to get full sensory feedback then I believe most people will *prefer* that existence to anything else available to them.
The amount of resources a person would consume and the amount of waste and pollution they'd create would be a tiny fraction of what is typical now. With the incentive to procreate and raise children absent, the population would reduce to whatever the leaders wished within a few generations, and in the meantime it would not cost that much to keep the useless humans alive.
The next generation of computers will not use a CPU at all. Instead it will use active memory, where computations, connections and storage are handled together.
The current issue of SciAm has an article on this. It is well enough advanced that it has reached the popular science stage. The reason so many scientists are talking about AI is that it is finally coming into reach.
jobs that cannot be roboticized: plumber, electrician, handyman, taxi driver, most kinds of repair work.
jobs that will lead to reduced human participation: order taker, food server, house painter, lawn mower
jobs that will enhance human productivity even more: architect, stockbroker, politician, schoolteacher
There are probably many more that you folks can come up with ...
It would be much easier to automate a stock broker than a house painter. As for architects, computers started cutting the legs out from under that profession a generation ago. Autocad, anyone? There are no rooms full of draftsmen re-drawing plans any more.
There's too much exaggeration and theories that have not align with realities yet. The reason why people have jobs today because we create dependencies that allow people to hold their jobs.
Why do we have managers? Aren't they the easiest to automate? They are nothing but reminders, alarm clocks, time keepers, and task managers.
The reason why managers still have jobs because they have more leverage in the food chain than others even though they can be easily discarded.
That's why the whole notion that robotics or automation is only theories. I have seen large groups of people being displaced by automation then another large group of people hired just to maintain the automation.
What's the net gain/loss?
We have not seen software that can self-healing, make all decisions big and small and self-evolving yet. I don't think the programmers are ready to take their jobs away yet.
There is not one small demographics that can handle all the work, there is one small group that holds all the money and does not perform any work they reap the benefits of monetary policies not from automations.
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Plus humans will be present because they will be populating the solar system. Terraforming Mars, Terraforming Venus (or possibly just living in the clouds of venus, which have earth air pressure and temperature, and Earth's atmosphere is buoyant there), living in the Jovian and Saturnian moons, etc. 
