You can't hold it back or wish it away.
You can't hold it back or wish it away. You can't run from it or fight it. AI is the future. Will there be a place for you in it?
Originally shared by Erik Jonker
Human work in the Robotic future
Nice contribution by Foreign Affairs to the discussion about the coming age of AI, Robotics and the challenges it brings.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-06-13/human-work-robotic-future
Originally shared by Erik Jonker
Human work in the Robotic future
Nice contribution by Foreign Affairs to the discussion about the coming age of AI, Robotics and the challenges it brings.
https://www.foreignaffairs.com/articles/2016-06-13/human-work-robotic-future
No. I will return to the forests our ancestors emerged from.
ReplyDeletejust because it is doesn't mean it's right. just because I might lose doesn't mean I won't fight.
ReplyDeleteIf enough of us come together to demand it, we can have the robotic future without it being unjust.
ReplyDeleteThere's a fundamental incompatibility between the capitalist market-state as currently maintained, and the long-term viability of civil society. Think about the case of the reductio ad absurdum: Androids that delight in service, that can perform basically all service jobs, and molecular replicators that can assemble any physical goods.
To the extent that such a suite of capital goods is owned by a limited class of people, those people can offer essentially ALL goods and services at a low price point; in fact, if they don't have a monopoly or a cartel, their competition with each other will make it impossible to charge any price above the mere cost of energy to power their capital goods. On the other hand, if they DO have a cartel or monopoly position, then because they can drive out any other form of goods and services, they will have full control of the market.
The problem is, nobody aside from the capital owning class will have income, because in general, human labor will be irrelevant. So no matter the situation, the capital owners will have no customers for the massive amount of supply they can offer.
Our capitalist society cannot survive without realizing that (a) actual ownership of capital must be widely spread, even if that means something as simple as forming a Sovereign Wealth Fund that will gradually buy up a larger share of corporate capital and administer it on behalf of the people (though of course this would also require reforms to safeguard the idea that the government needs to actually represent all the people, not just the ones that can buy a campaign); and (b) in order for Aggregate Demand to keep up with Aggregate Supply and avoid a long-term persistent depression, we have to keep money circulating in the economy, which pretty much means we MUST institute a Guaranteed Basic Income. Every citizen needs to be entitled to enough of a claim on our growing Aggregate Supply to get by with basic housing, food, the opportunity to educate their kids, etc.
As a side benefit of this, if we had a solid minimum income, we probably could abolish the minimum wage, while beefing up the Earned Income Tax Credit. Work would become optional, but anyone would be able to work at whatever wage price-point they liked, if they wanted to supplement their income beyond the minimum; and with a negative income tax to make the overall tax scale extremely progressive, lower-wage work would continue to be attractive for many people, both in terms of being a significant improvement over the bare minimum, and simply because earning a wage and feeling productive has psychological value. But nobody would have to work multiple min-wage drudge jobs just to survive, so employers would have to ensure that the jobs they were offering, no matter how low the actual cash wage, were not horrendously unpleasant, unsafe, etc.