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We aren't horses. We have intellect, and reason. There will be innovation, and technologies to replace those jobs from automation. Plus, who do you think will install, maintain, and repair the automation? HUMANS.
I think the system will self correct. When too many are unemployed, too many will not pay for the products & services offered by the robots. The masses will create and find other sources for to fill their needs. The robots and their owners will loose purpose. The rich robotic owners will have to turn to the originally displaced workers for their needs.
Social programs will step in where the private sector fears to tread. So we have Medicare.
IMO in the far future we will have central supports for those unemployed. Probably money as a monthly allowance. So the rich will probably not have to give up their heads, and consumers will continue to consume. Supporting the rich.
Eventually bioengineering will advance to the point that our machines will be living things. They will be self sustaining. The waste from one living device will be the food for the next. Your home will be a living thing. It's natural body heat will be your HVAC. Your toaster will love you.
We will alter our bodies for the changing environment. Some form of us will travel to the stars.
Really, I'm not concerned about corporations or robots taking over and euthanizing us. The law and basic human decency will keep that from happening. What I'm concerned about are the reactions of regular people to the changes that may well be coming a few decades down the road. We fight wars over economics all the time...so what happens if we reach the singularity and machines can keep designing faster and faster technologies to help them design faster and faster technologies and most human work we are capable of doing goes obsolete? Or, that's really just the worse case scenario. More likely, I think it would be just that certain certain careers, though many careers, would be difficult for human beings to find jobs in.
We might be able to deal with that without the country falling apart, but it could very well require major changes. The people who eagerly await the singularity might have to get used to certain forms of artificial intelligence being banned. The anarcho-capitalists might have to get used to a socialism that makes what Bernie Sanders wants seem right-wing in comparison. The important thing, I think, that I'm most concerned about happening, is that whatever changes we decide are necessary to adapt, we go about the changes peacefully...and not do the whole burning stuff/destroying things that our species tends to be so fond of doing anytime anything happens it doesn't like.
We can see exponential advancement of technology in human history. We lived in small groups, then agriculture was invented which allowed larger groups to form which led to specialization which led to faster advances in technology, which were spread faster through society because there were more people to interact and spread those ideas. Then currency came along to fund personal incentive and innovation, and banking along to further encourage investments. The computer came along to enhance the speed of technological innovation, and the internet came along and gave people access to knowledge from all over the world, and I wouldn't be surprised if humanity has discovered more about the world around them in the last century than in the last hundred thousand years.
I like this example of exponential growth shown through folding an imaginary piece of paper that can be somehow folded eternally, so that each time it's folded it's thickness doubles:
Take a sheet of paper of the ordinary variety - letter size for the Americans, A4 for the rest of the world - and fold it into half. Fold it a second time, and a third time. It's about as thick as your finger nail. Continue folding if you can. At 7 folds it is as thick as a notebook. If you would have been able to fold it 10 times, it would be as thick as the width of your hand. Unfortunately, it isn't possible to do so more than about 12 times. Try it for yourself. At seventeen folds it would be taller than your average house. Three more folds and that sheet of paper is a quarter way up the Sears tower. Ten more folds and it has crossed the outer limits of the atmosphere. Another twenty and it has reached the sun from the earth. At sixty folds it has the diameter of the solar system. At 100 folds it has the radius of the universe. "Preposterous!", you exclaim. That is what I thought till I started calculating the thickness myself. If you do not want to pull out your trusty calculator here is a table that contains what I have described above. http://raju.varghese.org/articles/powers2.html
That could be kind of how technological advancement works.
People will be in debt up to their eyeballs, either from student loan debt, because there are no jobs, mortgage debt, because there are no jobs, or credit debt because there are no jobs.
Before any of this happens, there will need to be lending institutions that can actually reach the bottom of the pyramid, so that way, those people will also be debt slaves.
I imagine that the people who are unemployable will start to "act out" by burning forests and other resources, but facial recognition and drones will keep them in check for the most part.
Since machine learning techniques rely on a tremendous amount of data in order for it to be processed it into something meaningful, many people will be locked up and sent to hospital's where experiments will be conducted on them. They will attempt to merge technology with biology and as a result, many people will die in the process.
The others will go to prison, but never heard from again as they will be exterminated.
Everything is already being set up for this. Central banks are artificially inflating assets. Long term infrastructure has not been developed for crude oil, which will result in an oil shock.
I imagine that this crisis will be so bad that the formerly sovereign banking functions will be consolidated into one global entity. Borders will essentially be eliminated and there will be an international police force to lock people up for debt.
This international police force will not care about US history and will have no qualms with using Gestapo like tactics.
I don't understand why people believe anything different will happen. Do people believe that those at the top will be altruistic?
Great thread, OP. I think I might have to add you on my mental list of best posters on city data.
People will be in debt up to their eyeballs, either from student loan debt, because there are no jobs, mortgage debt, because there are no jobs, or credit debt because there are no jobs.
Before any of this happens, there will need to be lending institutions that can actually reach the bottom of the pyramid, so that way, those people will also be debt slaves.
I imagine that the people who are unemployable will start to "act out" by burning forests and other resources, but facial recognition and drones will keep them in check for the most part.
Since machine learning techniques rely on a tremendous amount of data in order for it to be processed it into something meaningful, many people will be locked up and sent to hospital's where experiments will be conducted on them. They will attempt to merge technology with biology and as a result, many people will die in the process.
The others will go to prison, but never heard from again as they will be exterminated.
Everything is already being set up for this. Central banks are artificially inflating assets. Long term infrastructure has not been developed for crude oil, which will result in an oil shock.
I imagine that this crisis will be so bad that the formerly sovereign banking functions will be consolidated into one global entity. Borders will essentially be eliminated and there will be an international police force to lock people up for debt.
This international police force will not care about US history and will have no qualms with using Gestapo like tactics.
I don't understand why people believe anything different will happen. Do people believe that those at the top will be altruistic?
Great thread, OP. I think I might have to add you on my mental list of best posters on city data.
Past the first part of your response, most of that will not happen for the following reason: the government officials and corporate leaders will not be the ones facing great difficulties. Therefore, they'd have no reason to behave that way. They'd lose the security their positions of power offer them if they intentionally throw the world into chaos and encourage people to have a revolution.
I agree that there could very well be much lashing out by the regular, less powerful citizens though.
You're not going to see mindless destruction caused by billionaires or experiments done on the brains of the populace by congressional representatives. They have too much to lose. Problems they cause will either be due to destructive economic consequences their actions or decisions have on society, I suspect. So, no death squads of eugenicist robots. Instead, perhaps a monopoly causes a great depression or some member of a possible government technocracy designs a faulty economic model for society that throws everything into chaos.
Any violence will come from where it usually comes from: the little people. We could see a rise of terrorist groups, from the left or the right, depending on what kind of changes are required to adapt to all the rapidly rising levels of technology, I suspect.
I have three concerns. Concern #1 would be that the government won't be able to make sensible laws fast enough to keep up rapid technological advancement, so they'll have to remove the public's voting rights and form a technocracy or be completely ineffective. Concern #2 would be that the corporations become all-powerful because the government proves incapable of controlling them. Concern #3 would be some type of societal breakdown/civil war because nobody agrees upon how to deal with the necessary changes.
If humans and machines merge, and we really already have given how much we rely on the internet for communication, entertainment, and research, that would, I suspect, actually be one of the positives to look forward too. That'll be the choice of individuals of their own free will oftentimes, because that's what we're doing now.
Developed nations will institute tight border controls and Universal Basic Income.
Undeveloped/3rd world nations will give lip service to border control, like building useless walls, but will essentially turn into real life Hunger Games scenarios.
Developed nations will institute tight border controls and Universal Basic Income.
Undeveloped/3rd world nations will give lip service to border control, like building useless walls, but will essentially turn into real life Hunger Games scenarios.
I agree about the stronger borders. I'm mostly only concerned about the affect of the singularity on the developed nations whose people might be put of jobs. I'm wondering if the third world nations might end up pretty well off, actually. They could watch what happens to us first world guinea pigs, learn whatever technological advances purely enhance their society (such as better energy sources and water purification systems) and then just say WE'RE NOT TAKING THAT! THAT'S NOT COMING INTO THIS NATION when they notice the robots that take everybody's jobs or whatever negative repercussions they'll result in.
Maybe they'll be like: No thanks. We don't want the fully immersive virtual reality worlds because we've noticed 95% of your population never leaves them. They're too distracted getting massages from supermodels who worship them as gods to ever accomplish anything productive ever again. Just give us the medicines and the stuff that doesn't smash into our culture like an iceberg into the Titanic.
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