
Rise of the Machines: The Future Has Lots of Robots, Few Jobs for Humans - mark_l_watson
http://www.wired.com/2015/04/rise-machines-future-lots-robots-jobs-humans/
======
PopsiclePete
Why is a job a _good_ thing??? I don't need a job. I need income. The two
don't have to be necessarily connected. If robots doing all manual/farm labor
replace humans, that's a _good_ thing - it frees us up to pursue more
interesting pursuits.

Now, all of this wealth that will be generated, if it's concentrated in the
hands of the top 0.5%, then yes, we're screwed.

But _some_ form of basic guaranteed income would go a long way to make sure
we're not turned into serfs.

I love programming. But if I could focus on the projects I _wanted_ to write
instead of what I'm forced to write, why is that horrible?

~~~
yetanotheracc
We need our jobs. The rich may play with their robots however much they want,
but I will not have my job take away from me.

Basic income or what not, it is unemployment. You may want to spend your life
sleeping 15 hours a day, binge watching TV rest of the time, but I choose to
be gainfully employed. Do not take that choice away.

~~~
Kluny
I don't want to sleep 15 hours a day or watch TV. Last time I was unemployed
(3 months following graduation from my college program), I was so busy playing
bike polo, volunteering at the local bike co-op, putting on races and
tournaments, and swimming at the lake with friends that I didn't even have
time to catch up on the TV I missed during exams. I don't know who the hell
has time to sleep 15 hours a day and watch tv when there's so much STUFF to do
in the world! I guess it's a personal choice. I'm pretty good at keeping busy
without a boss telling me what to do though.

~~~
undersuit
>I guess it's a personal choice.

Bingo! It's going to be so depressing if we don't get basic income because
people are worried about what about people will do with it, and ( _horror_
)disagree with those choices!

------
ryanSrich
So the article points out that within a half decade we'll see a lot of
repetitive jobs being replaced by machines. I get that and certainly agree.

Later in the article it suggests that we'll see even more jobs being replaced
and eventually all human employment will be obsolete (it doesn't say this
directly). Then the author of the book points out that this may be a catalyst
for people becoming more entrepreneurial.

To counter the second point; if there exists a point where AI can be applied
to essentially any job (doctors, therapists, CEOs, etc.) then why would the
job of an entrepreneur exist? What makes that job more special than any of the
other highly intellectual jobs out there that are supposedly on the chopping
block?

I mean if we're really talking about true AI, one that can medically treat
patients, mobilize and palpate, then that same "being" would easily have the
mental capacity to start a business.

Point being, it seems contradictory to say all human jobs will be replaced by
machines except for this one thing.

~~~
jdreaver
People argue that the owners of the robots will amass wealth and then sit on
it like Scrooge McDuck, leaving everyone else to starve and live in poverty.

Not that I agree with them :)

~~~
kokey
That brings some interesting questions. Like, will they use this power to use
humans to do the jobs of robots, for fun? What will they use this wealth for?
It can't be to pay for things because you wouldn't have to pay people to
produce and deliver those things for you.

~~~
TheGRS
Maybe currency fades away and we start anew by measuring wealth by how many
people are loyal to you. I don't think power and influence will go away just
because labor does.

------
mark_l_watson
I posted this article. I have been an AI practioner since about 1982 and
whenever a non-tech friend asks about AI I usually talk about the challenges
to society in dealing with a world where only a small number of people need to
work to produce enough for everyone.

I think that social challenges will be even greater than the technical
challenges.

~~~
LordKano
Maybe The Terminator and Robocop had a deeper effect on my young psyche than I
recognize but what I find truly terrifying is the day when first world nations
can completely automate military and law enforcement.

A human being can have internal dialog, "Yes, I know that no one is supposed
to be here but I'm not blowing up a building full of toddlers." or "Yes, I
know that it's a crime but I'm not going to use deadly force to apprehend
someone who was stealing apples to survive." and obviously, machines won't
care.

~~~
marcosdumay
Machine warfare is something so anti-intuitive that my head spins.

How said that watever should be a crime, and why? (Those are much deeper
questions than it looks like.) Also, machines can avoid deadly force much
better than humans, and apply it better too.

I think after enough casualities we'll settle on some superb law enforcement.
More "human" than anything we can imagine today. But the path through there is
complicated.

------
Navarr
CGPGrey on this same topic: [http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-
apply](http://www.cgpgrey.com/blog/humans-need-not-apply)

------
swalsh
"Then I believe that a guaranteed income would actually result in more
entrepreneurship."

In a future where finding easy problems is hard, and everyone is trying to
start a business... you'll going to see a lot of "sit-com" start ups.

~~~
phreeza
What is a sit-com startup?

~~~
ryanSrich
> Why do so many founders build things no one wants? Because they begin by
> trying to think of startup ideas. That m.o. is doubly dangerous: it doesn't
> merely yield few good ideas; it yields bad ideas that sound plausible enough
> to fool you into working on them.

At YC we call these "made-up" or "sitcom" startup ideas. Imagine one of the
characters on a TV show was starting a startup. The writers would have to
invent something for it to do. But coming up with good startup ideas is hard.
It's not something you can do for the asking. So (unless they got amazingly
lucky) the writers would come up with an idea that sounded plausible, but was
actually bad. [1]

[http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html](http://paulgraham.com/startupideas.html)

------
VLM
‘Well if I drop out I’m still going to get the same income as everyone else.’

We can observe an experiment we're running in poor areas without jobs, inner
city, deep south, appalachia, and around half the students will eventually
graduate even if there's no vocational reward for anyone, grads or not.

------
woodchuck64
It isn't the physical ability of the robot that matters much to jobs, it's the
intelligence. How about a future where each person is given a computing
wattage allowance for an artificially intelligent workforce at
AmaGoogleBaiduSoft. That way, each person can advance in intelligence and
productivity in tandem with technology.

~~~
M8
Sounds like coal-powered space ships and flying cars to be honest. If AI is
possible then you will soon enough have computational allowance for rather
running yourself in the cloud, unless you really love original imperfect
organic bodies and hate mind back-ups.

~~~
woodchuck64
It is unlikely AI will itself accelerate Moore's law for decades, so that
means we have decades to plan, use, and benefit from steadily improving AI at
Moore's law rates. AI is not a threshold, it's a continuum.

~~~
M8
Sorry, I thought you meant strong human-level AI.

------
anthonyarroyo
If, as this guy contends, the future economy won't adapt to automation as it
has in the past, it will lead to massive unemployment and social instability.

When threatened with massive social instability, smart countries will regulate
automation. Countries that fail to regulate will face rising social
instability and eventually eat themselves alive, being taken over by countries
that are more stable. Political elites will regulate automation purely out of
the interest of keeping their jobs.

All of these technofatalist arguments (the technology is coming, so why fight
it?) fail to take into account that Angloamerican laissez-faire politics are
not a global inevitability.

~~~
nicholasdrake
[http://lao8n.com/2015/04/05/if-technology-growth-does-
lead-t...](http://lao8n.com/2015/04/05/if-technology-growth-does-lead-to-mass-
unemployment-what-then/)

the flaw in your reasoning i think is that there will be zero-sum fight to
have the limited number of companies in your country so that you can tax those
companies and support the massive number of unemployed people. there will be a
race to the bottom in the automation regulation that you describe because
companies will just move if they are not allowed to lower costs through more
automation... thus i think the result is that some countries will have very
high employment rates because all the high-skilled, unautomatable jobs are
located there (e.g. the US) and some countries (e.g. spain?) will have really
high unemployment... this will lead to extreme tensions internationally
followed by god knows what..

~~~
anthonyarroyo
Unfortunately (fortunately?) your rebuttal assumes that 1) companies can move
easily from country to country and 2) companies are motivated entirely by
profit.

As for 1, countries have many ways from persuasion to coercion to keep
companies in their sphere of influence. There are plenty of business-
unfriendly countries in this world that somehow retain businesses. In the real
world, there's friction.

In my cursory research, I find 2 to be, once again, a liberal-democratic
assumption which relies on our particular barrier between public and private.
This barrier doesn't exist the same way everywhere: some corporations operate
as extensions of nationalistic projects. Gazprom's relationship to Russia is
different than Apple's relationship to the US. Samsung (and other Chaebol
corporations) has a different relationship to the Korean nation than Google
has with the US.

~~~
nicholasdrake
it is not just a function of companies moving after they are successful. just
look at silicon valley where most of the best start-ups are founded. silicon
valley is a classic global zero-sum game because the network effects are so
strong... look at attempts in chile, dublin, london etc. to create startup
hubs, they are struggle with the fact that silicon valley is taking all the
best companies first...

re 2) that's a good point i didn't thikn of that and many countries may seek
to nationalize big corporations to keep them based in the domestic country
etc..

clearly i'm not arguing that there will be no companies in some countries and
all the companies in other countries, but maybe just a more extreme version of
what you already see now where most of the big technology companies are based
in just two countries: usa and china... maybe you need only half of all the
companies in the world to be global enough to serve the world from just one
location/country to have extreme international inequality/differences in %
unemployed etc.

------
drzaiusapelord
These kinds of things ignore the premiumization of things. Sure you can
roboticize and 3D print cheap crap, but someone will make a slightly higher
quality version with slightly better materials and charge more for it. People
will flock to the better version for their own reasons. Capitalism fits in
very nicely with our own vanities and desires. Robots won't change that. Does
everyone reading this drive the cheapest Kia or Hyundai? If not, why not?

With premium goods you will need marketing staff, support staff, etc. Jobs
will continue to be created. We'll just lose manufcaturing entirely, which
seems to be a net good considering how horrible those jobs are. New jobs will
take up the slack, or if it not, we'll see a trivial uncheck in welfare and
less work hours for workers. Not exactly end of the world scenarios here.

These robot scare pieces really are out there. We've had industrialization for
100+ years. Its no different than what we're doing now. If anything, advanced
and cheap robotics and replication will help with a lot of inefficiencies in
the market. Why does it take a $90/hr guy to do some basic plumbing in my
house or to replace a door? This kind of blue collar stuff should be
automated/roboticized. Or why is Chicago on the hook for billions in pensions
for meter maids, janitors, bus drivers and other low effort/easily roboticized
jobs? We're paying millions per person in pensions for a mere 20-25 years of
labor. Robots will solve the inefficiencies that need to be solved. They'll
make things better via lower tax loads and better outcomes.

We need more robot optimistism here. I'm ready for the low work, low tax, low
hassle leisure society.

------
fiatpandas
Still waiting on machines to free humanity from the shackles of manual labor.

------
confluence
Good riddance to jobs.

------
jdreaver
Indeed, it would be unfortunate to lose your job to a machine, but oftentimes
people fail to see the upside: if a robot can do a job more cheaply than a
human, then whatever that robot produces is then cheaper for _everyone else_
to buy! If most of the economy were efficiently automated, then you would
barely need an income to survive or thrive.

Machines do not decrease your productivity. Just because a machine can make a
shoe faster than you doesn't mean you can't make a shoe. If a machine can make
houses in a day, that doesn't make your house will spontaneously combust
because you made it inefficiently. Labor-saving machines only _add_ to the
productivity of society.

People have been losing jobs to tech since the dawn of civilization. It does
suck if your job is automated out, but the overall good to society can't be
denied.

~~~
deciplex
The way we do economics depends pretty heavily on there being enough jobs for
everyone, or nearly enough anyway. And our culture reinforces this fact (a
strong desire to work is honorable, a belief that most work is mostly bullshit
is not) which will make it harder for our society to agree to rethink our
economics, even if what we're doing is clearly not working. And it doesn't
help that our political system seems broken as well, in much of the West.

So yes, the overall good to society can be denied, if it turns out that we
aren't smart enough to reap the benefits of our technology, and instead get to
watch our economy collapse and our society eat itself, right before the owners
of the robots decide to murder the rest of us since we were complaining too
much.

~~~
jdreaver
> The way we do economics depends pretty heavily on there being enough jobs
> for everyone...

That's the way many economists interpret the economy, but modern
macroeconomics economics can hardly be called an accurate and reliable
representation of the real world.

> And our culture reinforces this fact (a strong desire to work is honorable
> ...

Then culture will have to change.

~~~
deciplex
Yes, culture _will have to change_. But the technological advances are coming
an awful lot faster than cultures usually change, historically speaking. And
even if we make it through to the other side, it's probably going to be
painful.

You act as though the Puritan work ethic is just a thing we can evaluate the
efficiency of, and keep or discard based on the results of that evaluation. I
wish this were so, but my wishing doesn't make it so.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
There are many subcultures. The Puritan ethic is probably quite small these
days. A subculture can thrive alongside.

How about this scenario: A rich person builds a town where a new ethic holds
sway, using her money to 'fend off' the rest of the world and executing a new
model culture, based on automation, creativity and leisure. Folks learn to
envy its benefits; the young decide to emulate it. Soon only old Puritans live
outside the new plan, in ghettos where they pretend to work and exchange money
in a dusty farce of the old economy.

------
themgt
"Sponsor Content" \- so, HN is linking to a paid advertisement

~~~
cwyers
It's promotional material for a book, yeah. If the content is any good, I
don't know why that makes it unsuitable for discussion on HN.

------
wehadfun
So from an energy prospective are robots better? Would generating all that
power to run all those robots cause problems in natural resources?

------
kokey
I think this will be great in industries where we like to interact with
people. If robots cook the food and mix the cocktails, it will free up people
to provide a better experience at the bar and table, with better food for
cheaper, or less pressure to get people to clear the tables.

------
pdiddy
I imagine The Second Machine Age is old news on HN, but I highly recommend it
for a discussion of these topics. It's a very readable book and discusses
these social shifts in an intelligent manner without descending into pessimism
or making exaggerated claims.

------
borgia
Automation en masse of low skilled labour is going to present an absolutely
huge challenge to society.

I cannot see how low-skilled jobs such as:

\- driving jobs (taxis, haulage, etc)

\- store work (stacking shelves, stock ordering, cashing out purchases,
solving basic customer queries such as where in the store is product X, etc.)

\- retail banking

\- fast food or convenience store services

\- etc.

will not be replaced by automation in the next decade or so.

We're already seeing it as self-driving vehicles are rapidly developing, stock
picking bots at Amazon and similar are coming along rapidly, self-service
checkouts at stores are becoming very much mainstream and highly used, online
banking and ATM machines offering a wider range of services, etc.

Those jobs listed above represent an enormous amount of employment throughout
the western world as it is. If we accept that not everyone can do every type
of job, that IQ does separate people in their abilities to do or even learn to
do a job, etc. then that means we will see mass displacement of the workforce
when the only jobs available to many are one's that are out of their
educational or intellectual reach.

This is just the beginning, by the way, as AI and automation gets better then
the skills and jobs it can replace will grow and increasingly sap up jobs
requiring higher levels of intellect or education. So while low-skilled job
replacement is the primary short-term challenge, overall job replacement is a
medium-longer term challenge.

This challenge has been on my mind quite a lot recently, as have the
challenges posed by the development of AGI/AI which are pretty well linked,
although AGI has its own challenges in terms of what it might mean for
humanity as a whole.

If we accept the above then we accept that not just large scale unemployment,
but large scale human redundancy, is inevitable then we have very large
questions to ask, and thus very large answers or solutions to provide,
regarding how we structure society.

If the low skilled jobs are the first to go, which are tended to by people of
lower IQ / intellect or who aren't strong academically, then not only will we
have large scale unemployment/human redundancy but I believe it would be
coupled with comparatively low entrepreneurship. That's not to say that people
of lower intellect can't be entrepreneurs, but it is becoming increasingly
difficult to find easy problems to solve and will only become more so. It
would also be significantly more difficult for such people to, for example,
open a franchise of a chain due to the financial and experience backgrounds
levied by most franchise owners.

The conclusion I've come to is that socialism is inevitable in the medium-long
term whereby the machines do the work and the ownership/profits of the methods
of production are shared by everyone.

I'm not a proponent of socialism, I will say, but I've come to the conclusion
that it's inevitable given the technologies and changes that are coming our
way.

On solutions:

\- Without changing the ownership of that which produces, a basic living
income for all would come at a very high cost to those who still have jobs in
the form of higher taxes.

\- If the current situation remains, whereby few people control the vast bulk
of the production in the economy, and large scale unemployment comes around,
even with a basic living income we will see unparalleled inequality. Even if
ALL jobs were replaced by machines, if the ownership of these machines and the
decisions regarding their profit remains in the hands of few, there will not
only be unparalleled inequality but a system of inequality more sustainable
than ever before.

\- Regardless of how a solution is implemented, it will be gradual as
automation takes time to take up increasingly more intelligent work, which
will place an enormous burden on those intelligent enough to do the work. It
will inherently become even more less unequal, as those who "cannot" do the
work will not work but would be supported by those who can, those who can will
do so and pay large taxes while doing so, and those who own that which
produces can further relax.

\- We live in a society that is increasingly "no man left behind" in terms of
resources. The obvious solution to an issue whereby society shifts toward more
intelligent work and automation of less skilled work would be to produce more
intelligent babies.

\-- Eugenics will never be looked upon kindly, so the only other solution is
to make embryonic selection for intelligence en vogue.

\-- Despite grand increases in intelligence and knowledge, many of the
population are still highly religious. I don't believe this will fare well for
embryonic selection in the short term.

\-- Therefore in the short term we would see more of what we currently see -
higher reproduction rates in the unemployed or those doing low skilled work,
increasingly lower rates amongst those in higher skilled work as having a
child becomes even more expensive/stressful due to higher taxes.

\-- This makes all the above challenges even more difficult than they already
are.

So the solution lies in something like:

\- Changing the ownership of production

\- Putting in place support systems to support the lives of those whose jobs
are replaced and who have not the skills or intelligence to take higher
skilled work

\- Putting in place support systems to enable those in higher skilled
work/higher education/etc. to have as many children as they want. Free
childcare for working parents is one of the most important parts of that.

\- Increasing emphasis on education for all. Make it available to all for the
same cost and make the various colleges entrance based on merit alone.

\- Continue developing and finding a way to make embryonic selection for
intelligence popular and accepted.

There are large barriers to the above, namely ourselves in our reluctance to
put more funding into social/educational/etc. programs, and the elite who
control that which produces certainly not wanting to give up their position
any time soon.

I'm interested in people's thoughts on this. It seems to be something that is
largely ignored but yet appears to be staring us down head on as something
that _will_ happen and _will_ begin happening soon.

------
niche
Are AI scares cyclical as well? Much like market adjustments

------
ThomPete
His first book "The lights in the tunnel" is a great book too.

------
paulhauggis
"When you have a safety net in place, people will take more risks. That
probably is true of the economic arena as well."

I think the difference is that the same company that is going to take the risk
will also be restricted when it comes to income they are earning (more taxes),
and any other rules that are in place that will directly effect growth.

Look at countries like Sweden and Denmark: large safety nets and you would
think everyone would start a company, but it's just not the case. The
requirements for employees make it so you need lots of money to even manage HR
(hiring and firing is a court case).

Many safety nets also create a culture where risk is seen as a bad thing and
less people will want start companies. This can also be seen in places like
Sweden and Denmark.

"People say that having a guaranteed income will turn everyone into a slacker
and destroy the economy"

Will it turn everyone into a slacker? no. However, I know so many people that
went on unemployment and had no motivation to even be bothered to look for a
job. If this happened in my small, circle of friends, I can just imagine the
effects of essentially free money at a much larger scale.

All of these predictions are looking at what's happening now. We need to
predict what will happen when 2 or 3 generations of people have access to this
basic income. When more and more people are getting basic income and less
people are working (which I predict will happen over time as more people
figure out the system), where does the money come from to support everyone?

~~~
api
The problem with Sweden and Denmark is regulatory complexity. To maximize
entrepreneurship you want a social safety net and a simplified regulatory
regime. The ideal would probably be a simple basic income and few other
interferences.

~~~
Excavator
Based on my own experience and others, being dependent on social security is
the most stressful and time consuming work you can have thanks to the heavy
dose of bureaucracy involved.

There are also rules against what you can do in the meanwhile, such as not
being allowed education.

~~~
api
That's just a stupid implementation of a welfare state.

