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Anyway, I'm not going to get into all the reasons why our future looks bleak, but I'm happy to discuss it if you are interested.
I'm not all that sure the future looks bleak. Yes, consumer capitalism is on its way out but, as an economic system for the masses, that has been true for 40 years. If you look at all the social safety net bandaids we have slapped on the economy, it's pretty obvious it is bleeding to death. The right wing thinks if they just cancel the safety net the economy will quit bleeding, but everybody from the far right to the far left knows the system is in its death throes.
The collapse may accelerate, but I don't see it happening overnight. We will have plenty of time to switch to another economic model. The advent of AI could mean an era of unprecedented ease and luxury for the whole human race. In SF circles, the singularity is known as "The rapture for the nerds." Of course, lifting the undeserving poor out of poverty is offensive to Puritan prudery. They think it's immoral to give people something they didn't work for, while the admirable aristocracy enjoys vast wealth that they didn't work for. TPTB will cling to the old system until they are scared into changing.
We will have plenty of time to switch to another economic model. The advent of AI could mean an era of unprecedented ease and luxury for the whole human race.
I think that's been the "promise" of AI and robotics since the beginning. When I believed that democracy, freedom, and human rights were natural and would certainly last forever, I assumed that we'd just work a lot less and have fun with no worries. Productivity and wealth would skyrocket, we just needed to spread the wealth.
But after a little investigating of our history, that view seems very naive.
Based on what has happened to incomes in the last 40 years, it is obvious that we are moving in the opposite direction. This has clearly happened by design. We didn't need to create fiat currency and all the abuses of creative finance, and escalate public and private debt. We didn't need to gut unions and *encourage* companies to move production offshore. We didn't need to support a perpetual trade deficit, or have a massive income tax cut for the rich. All these changes were made simultaneously to have the exact outcome that we've experienced: Flat middle class wages and several times more debt, and an insane 10x increase for the very rich.
The more amazing thing is that this can happen with essentially no public outcry. Well, I *was* amazed at first, but now that I've paid a little attention and seen how easily public opinion is manipulated, I'm not surprised at all. 9/11 was a big eye opener, and the war on Iraq. We see what we are told to see, and believe what we are told to believe. The truth is easily smothered by a ton of confusing BS. Anyway, I could get carried away on this theme, but the bottom line is that it is easy to confuse and divide the public until they are powerless, and it will only get easier with advances in comprehensive data mining and personalized manipulation, all run by AI of course!
Another thing is that I didn't realize the basics of how consumer-capitalism works. I had the impression that the middle class had consistently fought the upper class through history (and won!) to gain their share of the pie. I didn't realize that consumer capitalism is entirely symbiotic. There certainly was some fighting, but the intelligent (or well informed) members of the upper class knew that higher consumer wages were necessary for the economy to thrive, and profits to increase. That's why we have (had) unions, public benefits, wages supports, etc. And if the economy doesn't thrive, then your military doesn't either. When there is a real threat of communism spreading over the world, then your capitalist oligarchs have a heavy interest in a strong economy and military, as well as a content and patriotic population.
So it makes sense why things were so good for most people, particularly from the 30s to 70s when the threat was the greatest. IMO, the main thing in the world climate that changed in the 70s, was that communism was obviously dying. So the capitalist oligarchs won that war. The next step was to maximize their power and wealth after that threat was removed. They were still constrained by the rules of consumer capitalism, but globalization, finance, and debt escalation gave them the means to divorce themselves from dependency on domestic consumers. They depressed wages, kept demand boosted with debt, and realized much greater profits by moving production to poor countries. All the while undermining and draining consumer wealth from the domestic economy.
I think there is pretty solid evidence that the super-rich have always gotten their way in this country. We are fortunate that for most of the industrial revolution, their desire for wealth and power resulted in democracy, freedom, and prosperity for the rest of us. But that changed about 40 years ago, and hardly anyone realizes it. Going forward into the AI revolution their desires are in clear opposition to ours, and our power to organize and assert our rights and freedom and our share of the pie, is constantly eroding.
I have to admit I think an AI pilot would be fantastic. It's rare but after the recent suicidal pilots plane crashes I would like to see the human element removed. Too emotional, unstable, and possibility of sickness is there. Of course AI can make mistakes but for airplanes I rather see the AI in charge with a human assisting.
The goal of using robots is to eliminate the need for humans in the boring, dangerous and dirty jobs. That is why so many people have their income taxes done by a computer program.
Right, they will breakdown and need repaired constantly. Do you think the greedy will perform regular maintenance on their workers? They cut corners now. Just wait until it gets overwhelming
There is nothing stopping us from having the robots fix each other once they reach a certain stage of development.
Alternatively you could keep a spare one around, and replace any that break, sending the spare in for service. The factory could just disassemble all of the parts, test each one individually, and then rebuild it. And once this really gets going robots will be cheap.
The video tells us that robots will replace a lot of mental work, which I agree with. But that doesn't mean there will be no jobs. We are not going to replace teachers or lawyers by robots. No one want get massaged by a robot, robots cannot be guards, companies still need advice on how to do their taxes and robots are not good enough to replace nurses or doctors.
I actually work as a developer, and I develop solutions that automate away a lot of jobs. Media is not telling the correct story. The people who are in danger of losing their jobs is not the store clerk at Wall Mart. It is much easier to replace medium skilled computer workers. If your job is to put numbers into excel diagrams, do calculations and write reports, then you are very likely to be replaced by a computer system in the near future.
Its not going to be the end of all jobs, but it is going to cause some trouble because most university graduates do not learn the skills required to do high skilled jobs. Digital systems will destroy medium skilled jobs, and today most university graduates are only skilled enough to do medium skilled jobs. They are not going to find jobs in their fields, and will be forced to do unskilled service jobs. This will push out high school graduates out of the labour market and into welfare.
We are not going to replace teachers or lawyers by robots. No one want get massaged by a robot, robots cannot be guards, companies still need advice on how to do their taxes and robots are not good enough to replace nurses or doctors.
Maybe not in the near term, but none of these are safe haven's. Teachers will be easily replaced except for maybe the "baby sitting" function. Heck, when I was in college (almost 40 years ago) I rarely went to class and had no interaction with my teachers. I thought sitting in most classes was a waste of time that could be better spent studying on my own.
The need for lawyers will be greatly reduced when the need for people is greatly reduced. Expensive legal representation for "useless" people will disappear. The need for lawyers may even disappear entirely, depending on how societies are structured. The number of doctors and nurses will be greatly reduced as well. The mental part of their jobs will be better done with AI.
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Its not going to be the end of all jobs, but it is going to cause some trouble because most university graduates do not learn the skills required to do high skilled jobs.
Most people lack the talent and intelligence for those jobs. Training will not solve it. Eventually the number of talented people needed will also be reduced. It will be more efficient to augment the performance of a handful of brilliant people.
Maybe not in the near term, but none of these are safe haven's. Teachers will be easily replaced except for maybe the "baby sitting" function.
Their "baby sitting" function is a really critical job. If not, then Elementary school could be like university and have lectures. So unless you can automate the "baby sitting" function, then you are not going to replace teachers.
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The need for lawyers will be greatly reduced when the need for people is greatly reduced. Expensive legal representation for "useless" people will disappear. The need for lawyers may even disappear entirely,
What the heck is an useless person? Lets think about a divorce, neither is going to consider themselves useless. But someone has to decide who get the paternity rights and how their asset is gong to be allocated. To do this, you will need a court case.
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The number of doctors and nurses will be greatly reduced as well. The mental part of their jobs will be better done with AI.
AI can already take inputs like symptoms and tests, and give you output. But, there are many problems doing it this way, people do not know how to do their tests, and we can't give everyone a machine for every single tests. You could have a testing center with nurses that help the patients, but then you could also have doctors so people don't do unnecessary tests.
Secondly, they are likely to interpret their result wrong. If a computers return 1% chance of cancer, 99% chance of knee injury. A lot of people are going to worry they have cancer. That is why you need an actual person to either calm them down or do further tests.
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