
The Machines Are Coming - lambtron
http://www.nytimes.com/2015/04/19/opinion/sunday/the-machines-are-coming.html
======
kleiba
What ever happened to the utopian dream of a world where nobody needs to do
work because intelligent machines do all the necessary chores for us? People
are freed from labor but may chose to work if they enjoy it, or focus on art,
philosophy, or simply leisure.

While there's much to be criticized about such a naive idea, it seems to me
sometimes that despite the tremendous productivity gains we have seen since
the industrial revolution, it's not the common man who benefits most from
technical progress. Of course, it's indisputable that the quality of life has
improved dramatically across the board, and we have more spare time in our
lives now than previous generations. But society is still such that you need
to work 40+ hours every week if you want to be part of the middle-class.

Machines are not freeing men from labor. They're used to create competitive
pressure. At the end of the day, the gross benefit goes into the pockets of a
few, while the majority are kept in the same dependence structures as always.

~~~
transfire
That has always amazed me about people. It seems like for every one person
that can see the positive possibilities, ten more only see the negative, and
in fact will go out of there way to make sure their negatives come to pass
because more than anything they hate being wrong.

I think man might be doomed because of this. We are naturally apocalyptic, and
will make sure it comes about one way or another. As a case in point, consider
all the sci-fi movies. What's the last movie you've seen that depicted a
really great future for mankind?

~~~
mkaziz
Star Wars!

~~~
zanny
A long time ago, in a Galaxy far, far away =\

Star Trek much more so. Post-scarcity, post-currency, where citizens
participate in Starfleet not out of need but out of a sense of duty.

------
transfire
There is only one ultimate solution: Basic Income. We need to end the division
between those who receive welfare and those who don't. We can do this by
having everyone receive the same amount regardless of means.

For the last few decades we have been making up for job loss due to automation
by creating ever larger bureaucracies. Consider how much paperwork is now
involved in healthcare compared to 50 years ago. While we might be able to
continue this foolishness for some time (after all, what's 100,000 pages of
tax code compared to 100,000,000?) we only hurt ourselves as a whole by doing
so.

~~~
sukilot
I used to think basic income was effective poverty-welfare. No I realize that
basic income is a bulwark against enslavement of the masses by the elites.

~~~
ThomPete
And security for the elite that there is in fact a mass market for them to
sell their products to.

~~~
tomjen3
There is no point in making products people can buy if I also have to give
them the money to pay me.

~~~
ThomPete
Oh but there is.

Thats how it works today it's just conditional rather than unconditional and a
lot of those money are being given to corporations as tax deductions and
subsides not to those who actually need it.

------
golergka
On humanity scale, it looks differently: we don't need the amount of labor we
have now to maintain the current level of consumption. We can produce the same
amount of goods and services without 100% of people contributing.

May be we'll finally become OK with some of the people to live on welfare
checks? It's not "slacking" when the humanity just doesn't really need your
input.

~~~
noir_lord
Be interesting to see how fast we realise this and if that will vary by
region.

Parts of Europe strike me as the ones most likely to lead the charge (the
Swiss had an actual vote on Basic Income just recently) and many existing
benefit systems (welfare systems) come fairly close to a ad-hoc de-facto basic
income.

Assuming the basic income is sufficient to cover basic needs, I'd be quite
happy (as long as I could afford a reasonable computer and internet) to just
write open source software for the rest of my life.

The only reason I write any proprietary software is to pay the bills with that
incentive removed I'd program just as much.

~~~
wmat
Isn't it also just a matter of time before machines are writing the software?

~~~
yourapostasy
If that became true, I'd just switch to basic research. There are an infinite
number of open-ended questions to answer in the universe.

If machines become better at basic research than humans, then we have achieved
one of the key features of Banks' Culture. That's a feature, not a bug.

~~~
JoeAltmaier
Whoa there. I think there are a certain, countable number of fundamental
questions to answer about the universe. And you can count them with your
fingers and toes. They are the fundamental constants, and they're already
known to 3 or 4 decimal places.

~~~
marktangotango
Imo the flaw in this reasoning is, altough we may know an aweful lot about
chemistry and the physics of atomic and molecular interactions, the problem of
predicting the folding of proteins from the sequence of amino acids is
exceedingly difficult. This is why we still dont have custom engineered
protiens.

This is an example of a highly important and interesting problem that is
limited by computational ability, among other things. Knowing some physical
constants is important but the macro problem is still hard.

------
ThomPete
Machines are replacing higher and higher levels of abstract thinking.

One of the biggest illusions of how we humans see ourselves is to think that
our function as humans that make us valuable on the job market.

Yet we mostly use just a small subset of our abilities to perform jobs even
the intellectual ones.

And so the irony is that a Radiologist spending a decade getting educated and
makes 300K a year is more likely to be loosing their job than a cleaning lady.

~~~
protonfish
This seems exactly like the same worries that have always surrounded automated
production and have always resulted in long-term improvements in quality of
life. The article claims that AI could be different, but suggests no reasons
why.

~~~
ThomPete
I am not sure what you mean. If AI replaces higher and higher levels of
abstract thinking then it's always been true and in fact if you look at job
creation per decade.

[https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-
united-...](https://plot.ly/~BethS/8/job-growth-by-decade-in-the-united-
states/)

Its shows something else than the claim that technology replaces the jobs that
are lost due to technology.

And even more specific numbers

[http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/d...](http://www.technologyreview.com/sites/default/files/images/destroying.jobs_.chart1x910_0.jpg)

Shows how production output and employment is separating.

What have been clowding this reality is in fact the cost of products and
globalization which made it look like job growth would be steady in the west
and then spread to the rest of the world.

The reality is that job growth have been declining decady by decade and even
worse so. The jobs that are left are either very very well paid but few or
grossly underpaid (but still priced logically compared to it's relative value.

"The ludite fallacy" is in fact itself a fallacy.

How many cars are still occupied as serious transportation means in the West?
We are simply a higher level animal than the horse but also our skills can be
replaced.

Hardware and software continues to evolve, we don't.

~~~
protonfish
Pointing to graphs showing decreased U.S. job growth without mention of the
loss of labor union power or export of manufacturing overseas is ignorant in
the extreme. Tyranny looks the same economically irrespective of technology.

~~~
ThomPete
Pray tell. How does loos of labor union power or manufacturing overseas by any
metrics detract from my point?

------
bsenftner
If you have not read the sci fi short story "Manna" by Marshall Brain, then
you should. It is a 20 minute read looking back at the automation revolution
that pretty much destroys and then remakes civilization.
[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

~~~
sukilot
Sadly, its "happy ending" is still quite bleak.

------
josephagoss
Just a thought, and one I am not 100% behind, is that if these machines give
more and more power to employers perhaps this will allow more employees to
become employers? Employers of machines...

I'd imagine this technology having the potential to enable many people to
perhaps start businesses much more easily or cheaply. Is it possible to
imagine every single human being a self employed business? Could the economy
work that way?

~~~
ThomPete
No because technology and it's global reach also turn the industries into a
"there can only be one" game.

This is the dark side of making products cheaper for consumers. It will always
require consolidation to keep having a margin while the products more and more
accessible.

There are a couple of friction points with regards to technology and that is
dependence on local workforce and industries where people are always looking
for a better solution and in areas without any benefits for automation.

But there is no need for more than one taxi company once the cars become self-
driving.

~~~
camillomiller
No, if you consider capitalism as the only model. Who knows, maybe the advent
of the machines would move us toward a post-capitalist model of sort... Really
hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden.

~~~
noir_lord
> Really hard to predict, and the change won't be disruptive and sudden.

What leads you to that conclusion? I'm not saying you are wrong (who knows)
but I'm curious how you reached it.

I can't decide whether the transition is likely to be evolutionary or
revolutionary, I think a lot of it will come down to how it's handled over the
period.

~~~
camillomiller
I'd say that's because:

\- power is extremely centralized in our Western society and the mechanisms of
conservation are much more sound than in the past, because...

\- ...the "masses" are generally richer, therefore less prone to really feel a
urge to overthrow the current setting. We all have much more to lose, if you
want, than the people that took part in revolutions in the past.

\- ideologies strong enough to bypass the previous reasons are basically dead

The only sudden transition could come from a planetary war or global-level
event (even natural disaster), but the tipping point of our current
equilibrium, in my opinion, is much harder to reach today, thanks to
technology, global communications, the role of the Media and the intertwined
financial interests of all nations.

------
polymatter
I highly recommend CGP Greys video
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU))
for a good overview of the issue.

See
[https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055](https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=9341055)
for similar discussion.

~~~
blumkvist
There is a serious wrong assumption in that video.

His claim is that there weren't any new job types after industrialization. The
number of new job types is irrelevant. The change was in percentage of the
population doing knowledge work vs. manual labor.

It will shift just the same way now. Yeah, we won't magically think of new
types of jobs. We will just shift from knowledge to creativity and improving
service level like in education and healthcare, for example. A teacher on
every 5 kids? Yes, please!

------
AndrewKemendo
Every week we have this conversation and every week it's the same thing, a
shrug and no real solution.

I think it's going to take a clear "line in the sand" event for anyone to
actually figure out how to solve this issue.

~~~
zanny
People literally scream UBI in these threads nowadays. Every time it comes up
someone does way too much work disproving the arguments about "its too
expensive" or "its not enough" and then they shut up until the next batch of
naysayers comes along.

Discussion is important, but really, this is starting to be repetitious. I can
trace back my first posts on this topic, back when I was doing those long form
investigative reports, back to 2012 on reddit, and 2013 here.

And the worst part is we now have a literal library of highly qualified
writing and video about the topic, and all were doing is reposting links to
this stuff every time someone brings up regurgitated complaints...

Maybe HN should just sticky "yadda yadda, UBI fixes economy, blah blah
startups".

~~~
tomjen3
That is because you keep posting Basic Income propaganda. It is never going to
work and producing a library of bullshit isn't going to change that anymore
than all the books on Christian apology suddenly makes God answer prayers.

Normally I wouldn't care but if we stay the current course we may just have a
chance of bootstrapping The Federation/The Culture in my lifetime, but if the
UBI gets implemented that will permanently destroy the economy and we will
die, just a few meters from the finish line.

~~~
astrange
What would that current course be?

------
karmacondon
Is there any evidence that machines are actually causing significant
unemployment? Articles of this type are composed of anecdotes. Machines can
now do this or that, several individuals lost their jobs to machines, etc. Do
we know that jobs aren't being created as fast as they are being destroyed?

The siren song of the hype machine is very tempting. But it would be
comforting to know that there's some substance to the implication of this
article before we start taking baseball bats to technology. There are several
compelling social, economic and historical reasons to believe that people will
continue creating jobs for other people, for as long as humans exist.

~~~
transfire
B/c the current system requires people to work to survive (for the most part),
you have to look at where the jobs are shifting, more than the overall number
of jobs being destroyed. Two areas of employment stand out -- the huge
increase in administrative work (healthcare especially) and the huge rise in
"scams", i.e. the number of people trying to sell worthless products over the
phone, tv and internet.

Here is an example of the former
[http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-
administr...](http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2014/02/06/higher-ed-
administrators-growth_n_4738584.html)

------
kennethh
Technology have always made some jobs obsolete. 100 years ago, jobs like
barrel maker, timber floater was among top 10 jobs. None of those jobs exists
anymore. There will always be new jobs, new possibilities. Automation make
products cheaper as a general rule even thought the central bankers try and
reduce the value of money as much as possible. Normal people today can buy
stuff every day which even Kings could do 100 years ago. Electronics, but also
food from all over the world which is available all year.

But why do we still work as much as we do?

------
guiambros
One of the linked posts is this 2013 article about an automated lie detector
being tested at U.S. borders: [http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-
detector/](http://www.wired.com/2013/01/ff-lie-detector/)

I have mixed feelings about it.

------
jqm
I don't see this as a negative although there will be a transition.

The careers I most hope are replaced soon are politicians. I'm pretty sure my
coffee maker currently has the capability to do at least a good a job as Ted
Cruz.

