
Basic income may be needed to combat robot-induced unemployment - jonbaer
http://www.independent.co.uk/life-style/gadgets-and-tech/news/basic-income-artificial-intelligence-ai-robots-automation-moshe-vardi-a6884086.html
======
stegosaurus
No, it's needed because forcing people to perform increasingly pointless tasks
for wealthier humans in order to be granted the right to live is obscene.

Unemployment is _good_. Being poor is bad. They are only correlated because we
decided that made sense in the past. It doesn't any more.

~~~
scarmig
Context: I'm a big proponent of the basic income.

That said, it seems too much to say "Unemployment is good." It's hard to
disentangle the effects of poverty versus unemployment, but there are pretty
strong hints that having a (good) job is good for health--prolonged
unemployment from solidly middle class jobs leads to depression, and people
die at higher rates after retiring.

People need a purpose and outlet for their creativity, and a sense of order
and direction for their lives: sitting at home all day playing video games
would be disastrous, and encouraging automation (which a basic income will do)
will make it even harder to get entry level positions. We've got to enable
some kind of meaningful labor (market-compensated or not) that people still
can engage in after the basic income is implemented.

~~~
pasquinelli
there're two distinct senses for the word "work" that're pertinent. let's call
it toil when we're given work to do, and play when we find our own work to do.
in my experience, i see we're conditioned from childhood to think that toil is
the normal way in which we're to make ourselves useful, or rather that it's
the normal way in which we're _made_ useful. we're also conditioned to think
that play is kids stuff, that it isn't serious. so play becomes stunted, not
maturing past kids stuff, and toil becomes serious and responsible, when
actually it's infantile.

so, you get laid off and find yourself, first of all under stress because your
financial situation is uncertain, but secondly wasting away as a person and
frittering you newly abundant free time playing video games. i don't think
that points to your deep need to toil, to be given work to do. it's evidence
of a poorly developed ability to play, that is to find work to put yourself
to.

as for me, i've had a few stints of unemployment and it's improved everything
in my life, except my bank account. and when i got work again, everything
became worse, again, except my bank account. now, like i said, this is just my
own experience, but though i _hear_ often enough that people have a real need
to toil, i've never _seen_ it in my actual experience. on the other hand i can
see a real human need to play, which most people are deprived of. and, of
course, a need for money, which is the only tangible thing people get from
their toil.

~~~
ZenoArrow
Spot on.

------
11thEarlOfMar
I am genuinely concerned for the millions of Americans who drive for a living.
Autonomous vehicle technology is a clear and present risk to that class of
work. Like the rust belt of the 80s and 90s as manufacturing moved out of the
US, there will be a major shift in where people work and what kind of work
they do. Many, if not most, of those affected will go through hell getting
their lives sorted out again.

There are other affects of autonomous vehicles to consider. Labor is a major
cost of shipping or taxiing. Accidents and the resulting repair, liability and
insurance costs are expected to come down with autonomous vehicles. So the
cost of just about everything we buy will come down, and we'll spend that
difference elsewhere. Those 'elsewheres' will then see more employment.

What we can expect, at a macroeconomic level, is not massive national
unemployment, but a transition period as the work opportunities change.

At a micro economic level, it will be very painful for millions as they go
through the transition. I don't know if a basic income can make this
transition smoother for the country, but it is worth studying.

~~~
lossolo
300 years ago, humans couldn't even imagine the way the planet (economy, rules
etc) would work in 2015. It's natural, that this cycle will repeat itself
again and again. Do not worry about drivers, there was a lot of jobs that were
eliminated by time/technology and humans survived. Maybe in 2100 people will
not need to work at all. This revolution is coming, it's part of evolution,
stop fighting it, embrace it and learn how to live in new reality, because you
can't stop it.

~~~
kafkaesq
_300 years ago, humans couldn 't even imagine the way the planet (economy,
rules etc) would work in 2015._

Except the (potentially) sweeping changes due to automation & other
technologies aren't expected to happen in 300 years -- more like 5-20 years.
Do you see a difference here?

 _This revolution is coming, it 's part of evolution, stop fighting it,
embrace it and learn how to live in new reality,_

Do you really think your own livelihood -- and that of people close to you --
is that immune from the potential negative consequences of the "revolution"?

 _because you can 't stop it._

Not entirely. But we can _moderate_ and _regulate_ it if we wish (and we pay
close attention). That's the key issue, here -- not simply "either fight it or
embrace it."

~~~
lossolo
_Except the (potentially) sweeping changes due..._

No, it wont be 5-20 years. What i am talking about can't be achieved in 20
years, what you will achieve is part of evolution, not revolution.

 _Do you really think your own livelihood -- and that of people close to you
-- is that immune from the potential negative consequences of the
"revolution"?_

Don't worry about me, i will survive natural selection.

 _Not entirely. But we can moderate and regulate it if we wish (and we pay
close attention). That 's the key issue, here -- not simply "either fight it
or embrace it."_

Good luck with that, seriously, you will regulate it for sure as hundreds of
other things that needed to be regulated in USA and didn't because of
lobbying. How do you want to regulate it ? Did you regulate wall street? How
about punishing anyone after 2008? How about HFT? Did you prevented
deregulation that caused world crisis? No, you didn't and you know why. What
about gun control? how about hundreds others, where big players are involved?
So did you do all those things that felt even more right to do than what we
are talking about ? No, so please wake up and stop pretending you have any
choice.

USA know that technology is the core future of economy, no one will stop it,
you know why? Because USA is not the only player in the world, and if USA
still want to be in top, it just can't be stopped, because others won't. It's
just couple examples from thousand why you can't do anything about what's
coming. Big corporations will just benefit too much from it and you will see
this argument "we need AI/robots, costs are too high, or we can't compete with
the rest of the world". Sorry, but you already lost this war, you just don't
know it yet...

------
nefitty
A basic income tied to GDP per capita would be interesting. If automation
begins pervading every industry, the inherent improvement processes involved
would lead to maximally efficient production. A basic income should be tied to
the productive power of these systems, as leaving the BI pegged at a certain
point could make income inequality much worse than it is now. Capital-holders
would begin benefitting tremendously from automation as it improves.

Another thing to ponder is, if certain technological innovations come to pass
(ie, an affordable personal-AI system), should the government consider
providing those technologies to all of its citizens? The disparity between
someone with a personal-AI and someone without would increase exponentially,
very quickly. This is simply considering the economic value an AI could
provide, in terms of helping with business ideas, self-improvement,
secreterial work, etc.

Anyways, massive unemployment is going to occur soon. If governments can't
come to terms with providing a universal basic income, I would suggest they
begin planning emergency food supply distribution systems immediately. The
first thing that people will begin missing is food, and if a government can
provide sustenance to needy populations, it would buy itself some time before
civil unrest spread throughout the country. [http://livescience.com/52724-can-
strategic-games-prevent-foo...](http://livescience.com/52724-can-strategic-
games-prevent-food-riots-from-returning.html)

------
zazen
The idea of basic income is popular on this site and has many ardent
supporters here. Whichever side of the debate you're on, please bear in mind
this topic needs an extra effort of patience and civility to have a productive
conversation. Politicized topics like this break down into angry
confrontations very easily.

~~~
quadrangle
Yes, but if you look over the comments, you'll see that the critics of BI are
all either confused, ignorant, or have invalid world-views. ;)

(wish I had an emoji for only-kinda-tongue-in-cheek, i.e. saying something
kinda unfair with self-awareness to be half-joking, but actually kinda
asserting it anyway)

------
pluckytree
People seem to forget history and the fact that statements like this have
pretty much always been wrong. There’s always something that supposed to
replace something else and throw people out of work. Plus, robots are cute.

~~~
vkou
When the industrial revolution put artisans out of work, there were factory
jobs to replace what was lost.

They were by far and large, absolutely terrible. Quality of life across Europe
plummeted.

~~~
vixen99
Quality of life across Europe plummeted? Factories weren't manned by force
except that which drove people to avoid starvation in the face of a pitiful
agrarian lifestyle.

As T. S. Ashton pointed out
([https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Ashton](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/T._S._Ashton))
in 1948, the industrial revolution meant the difference between the grinding
poverty that had characterized most of human history and the affluence of the
modern industrialized nations. No economist today seriously disputes the fact
that the industrial revolution began the transformation that has led to
extraordinarily high (compared with the rest of human history) living
standards for ordinary people throughout the market industrial economies.

~~~
whiddershins
You are saying the industrial revolution == repetitive factory work under
horrible conditions?

The parent comment was talking about artisans losing work, not farmers.

I think technological progress and innovation increased overall quality of
life, while many specific things, such as jobs many workers felt they had no
choice but to take in the shifting economic reality, were horrible for the
people involved.

Saying that most of human history was grinding poverty is again, cherry
picking. In terms of personal freedom and free time, as one of the most
fundamental measures of value, humans had it way better at many points in
history and much of prehistory.

------
CM30
To some degree, I suspect a certain number of human jobs will remain long
after automation simply for the sentimental value. Like organic or free range
food, where people are willing to pay a premium for goods that aren't made via
some industrial type process.

So you'd have 'human made' as a label on the side of slightly more expensive
products tailored to slightly more well off people who see it as more ethical.
Like a non food version of a farmer's market.

It won't save most of the jobs, but they'll definitely be enough people out
there who don't want 'machine made' products by companies only using robots.

On another note, I suspect many of these articles also miss one other thing;
there's no reason that every company would use robots or AI. Sure, large
companies would. But in the same market would likely be hundreds or thousands
of smaller ones with at least some humans in the workforce.

I mean, look at it this way. Go down the high street and look at the shops and
restaurants. Sure, big chains exist, whether they be coffee ones like
Starbucks and Costa or supermarkets like Walmart or Tesco or the likes, but so
do tons of small companies run by people aiming at a local market, or a
certain niche, or anything else. They're not all going to buy expensive
machinery to run the shop, and they're not all going to go out of business.
Heck, it could even be the opposite; quite a few businesses in the real world
have actually gotten MORE popular once a Starbucks has moved in next door.
People will still buy things from small businesses (especially if they're
distrustful of large multinational companies), and those small (and even
medium sized) businesses will still hire human staff.

That seems to be overlooked in these discussions. After all, if even something
as big as Coca Cola or Disney or McDonalds or whatever has lots of
competition, what makes you think your future companies won't?

------
surfmike
There is so much work out there to be done, it's laughable that we are talking
about paying people for doing nothing.

Think about all the elderly retiring people that will need to be cared for.
All the working moms who struggle to find people to care for their kids during
the day. All the litter and graffiti all over our cities and roads.

Countries like Japan are freaking out about their aging demographics and how
they will support them. The solution is definitely not to decrease the amount
of people working.

Instead of basic income, why not use the money instead to give a generous wage
subsidy to people at the bottom? So that even a street sweeper, caretaker,
nanny, or preschool teacher is well financially rewarded?

FWIW, the Scandinavian model, which has some of the highest equality and well-
being in the world, requires people to work and has some of the highest labor
force participation rates in the world.

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "There is so much work out there to be done, it's laughable that we are
> talking about paying people for doing nothing."

If automation continues to expand as expected, the majority of tasks humans do
could be replaced by machines/AI. At this point, the total volume of work may
be high, but the total volume of work only humans can best fulfil may be much
lower than it is today. The question becomes, when we can apply automation to
most jobs, what will human society look like?

~~~
surfmike
Let's worry about that when it happens. My point is that it's premature to
talk about introducing a UBI when there's so many needs out there.

Also, caring for children/elderly is not something that is necessarily
desirable to automate...

~~~
ZenoArrow
> "Let's worry about that when it happens. My point is that it's premature to
> talk about introducing a UBI when there's so many needs out there."

The point of talking about an UBI now is to iron out any issues with it before
it's needed. Furthermore, whilst the need for it isn't as strong as it might
be later, there are certain benefits it could bring to simplifying and
improving welfare even in today's society. If you're suggesting there's a risk
people will not work, that all depends on the implementation (again, another
reason why it's being discussed now). What I believe is likely to happen to
the current job market if we had UBI is that people would be freer to switch
careers, and as a consequence of this undesirable jobs are likely to have
higher wages, and desirable jobs are likely to have lower wages. For example,
cleaning jobs would pay more, and marketing jobs would pay less. In other
words, the incentives for working would change based on the flexibility of the
workforce.

> "Also, caring for children/elderly is not something that is necessarily
> desirable to automate..."

Most of that isn't paid work at it stands now, plus it's worth remembering
that the automation of the future is likely to be more adaptive to individual
needs (i.e. when it's driven by sufficiently sophisticated AI).

Lastly, the aim isn't to remove humans entirely from the world of work, the
idea is to change the need for humans to work, the option to work will still
be present.

------
blubb-fish
> a system in which all citizens or residents of a country receive an
> unconditional sum of money, in addition to any income they bring in
> elsewhere.

It will come - simply b/c a majority will depend on it and politicians depend
on majorities.

But it will also be so low that people will merely be able to afford a
reasonable modern living standard.

At the same time there will be incentives to take new kind of jobs to pad the
basic income.

Those jobs will be servant jobs - bringing people food, driving them around
... serving them ... b/c no robot can give you the feeling of being in a
position of power.

So the fate for the uneducated or people educated but in economically
irrelevant areas will be basic income plus being a servant.

------
CM30
On another note, does all this mean that in the future, intelligent robots
will actually be in the same situation as humans? I mean, if simple ones can
take care of simple jobs in stuff like manufacturing, driving vehicles, admin
work, etc, one with real AI would basically be unemployable. If they don't
want to pay humans for work, then they won't want to give a robot a paycheck
either. That's going to be an interesting issue too.

------
lossolo
It's future, in 100 years from now, all food, all energy and most of other
services/products will be made without any human interaction. While everything
will be produced without wasting any resources (full automation, recycling
etc), there is no reason why food and energy should not be free. To work will
be a choice not requirement.

~~~
krapp
What you're describing is impossible. There's no such thing as free energy, or
a system with perfect efficiency which doesn't waste resources.

~~~
lossolo
Do you know how fusion reactors work ? You give it energy to heat it up and
you get MORE (edit: transform) energy than you gave from this reaction.

~~~
krapp
>You give it energy to heat it up and you get MORE energy than you gave from
this reaction

No, you don't[0][1].

[0][https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/59673/why-
doesnt...](https://physics.stackexchange.com/questions/59673/why-doesnt-
fusion-contradict-the-1st-law-of-thermodynamics)

[1][https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3xxpw9/why_does...](https://www.reddit.com/r/askscience/comments/3xxpw9/why_doesnt_nuclear_fusion_violate_the_second_law/)

Fusion might be a vastly more efficient version of what we already have, but
it's still neither perfect nor infinite. Sooner or later, you run out of fuel,
or the reactor breaks down, or you have to build more reactors or something.

~~~
lossolo
So you interpreted what i wrote about "infinite" literally..? Ok... We are
talking about fusion... So you suggest then i think Sun will never die and has
infinite energy too, yes?

Maybe i will explain you what i mean and everyone else mean when they say what
i said. It means that we can RELEASE MORE (transform) ENERGY, because energy
is never destroyed, it's transformed.

In other words the total mass of the tritium and deuterium nuclei before the
reaction is greater than the mass of the helium and neutron after fusion has
taken place – even though it is the same number of protons and neutrons.

------
justifier
it's funny, i have been promoting this opinion in the opposite direction for
the last ten years

once we begin distributing gains to everyone there will be an exponential
robotics boon in order to fill all of the positions people walk away from

------
maxerickson
Is a basic income meant to cover healthcare needs?

If yes, what incremental steps could be taken in the US to start reducing
healthcare costs down to a level where we can even think about providing a
stipend on top of the free healthcare?

~~~
raverbashing
The thing that is most effective in reducing healthcare costs is prevention.

Easiest way today of increasing "overall health" in the US: better diet and
more exercise

I believe this will also be automated and there will be a 'Computer doctor'
that can give you guidance and maybe a basic Rx for the majority of problems
that take people off work (a lot of which are resolved by staying at home for
a couple of days)

Then you would have more complex problems dealt by a doctor

~~~
maxerickson
Prevention reduces spending. Lack of it doesn't provide a satisfying
explanation as to why an xray bill is much higher at a given hospital and
things like that.

Or is the lack of preventative care somehow showing up in the price of only
some xrays?

~~~
raverbashing
> Lack of it doesn't provide a satisfying explanation as to why an xray bill
> is much higher at a given hospital and things like that.

Of course not, but prevention will lower your "consumption of services"

Providers gauging the price of x-rays are a separate problem

------
lucb1e
"May be"? I thought that was the whole point: automation produces wealth but
people are put out of jobs to make it happen, so it makes sense that they're
compensated by something like a government.

------
rhino369
Until wealthy people get sick of #feelingthebern and take over government with
robotic force. I'm not sure you want to make the majority of people useless
beggars.

~~~
Mikeb85
They're already developing autonomous weapons. Once countries no longer need
poor people to make up the military and police force, there'll be no incentive
to help poor people. They can live in cloistered communities, and with all the
means of production as well as war machines, there'll be parallel worlds - one
ultra rich, one ultra poor.

------
Animats
Key quote: _" Our current economic system requires people to either have
wealth or to work to make a living, with the assumption that the economy
creates jobs for all those who need them. If this assumption breaks down - and
progress in automation is likely to break it down, I believe - then we need to
rethink the very basic structure of our economic system."_

That's a good statement of the problem. It's useful to get that clear before
talking about solutions. Solutions are hypothetical; problems are real.

How far along are we in that direction already? About 14% of the US workforce
makes all the stuff - that's manufacturing, construction, mining, and
agriculture. That figure was about 50% in 1950 and around 90% in the 19th
century.

The conventional wisdom was that more education helps. That is no longer the
case. About 37% of employed US college graduates are in jobs which require
only a high school diploma.[1] Overproduction of college graduates has reduced
the value of a college education substantially.

It's not often mentioned, but there's one class of jobs that's almost totally
gone - large numbers of people doing the same thing under close supervision.
In 1900, Carnegie Steel had 5000 men with shovels at one plant. Today, you
might see one or two people with shovels working, but beyond that, power
equipment is brought in. There's a fraction of the population which needs jobs
that structured. Many homeless are in that category. (Jobs where drunkenness
is tolerated have almost totally disappeared.) That's a problem at the low
end. 13.5% of the population has an IQ between 70 and 85. What are they going
to do?[2]

Nothing above is really in question. So that's a way to look at the problem as
of right now.

Looking ahead, there's this well-known study on jobs likely to be automated
soon.[3]

Understanding the changing nature of work is the first step to dealing with
it.

[1]
[http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/Underemploy...](http://centerforcollegeaffordability.org/uploads/Underemployed%20Report%202.pdf)
[2]
[http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/fut...](http://www.dol.gov/oasam/programs/history/herman/reports/futurework/conference/trends/trendsVII.htm)
(Note that this paper is from 1999.) [3]
[http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2642880/Tabl...](http://www.thisismoney.co.uk/money/news/article-2642880/Table-700-jobs-
reveals-professions-likely-replaced-robots.html)

~~~
iofj
But in the 1950s this was solved by doing something new : get everyone and
their dog a car. This got us to the 1980s or even the 1990s and is still
employing large amounts of people, though not as large as before. After that
we're getting everybody "services". Phones, bank accounts, insurance, apps,
newsletters, ... that did make life better. That got us jobs until 2000/2001
or so.

We just need to find a new "car"/"phone". Something to get for everyone and
their dog, that they'd want, ideally with recurring charges, that can't be
delivered without employing God knows how many people (ideally something that
would improve the more people you employ).

Because, whilst I don't subscribe to the positive side of Ayn Rand's
philosophy, I do subscribe to the negative side. Having the government
redivide wealth from the productive to everyone is something that may soften
the short-term impact of unemployment, but in the medium/long term it's a
disaster. I even agree that redividing wealth combined with human greed
manifesting through corruption will make it impossible to turn back from
redividing policies once they reach a certain percentage of the economy, by
blocking any and all innovation (because it would require changing the
redivision policies, which is too dangerous politically. Much easier to just
block, say, autonomous cars. Meanwhile drivers die, or worse, kill others, are
away from their families for weeks/months, and don't do anything useful.
They're not improving anyone's life by having that job over not having that
job. It would pretty much be better for everyone, including them, to just have
them sitting at home watching TV. And why ? Because figuring out redividing
policies would lead to political infighting, or even real fighting (just watch
some European demonstrations by farmers, or students)).

I agree that the economy is there so people can live, and live well, not the
other way around. But having the private sector do that is almost infinitely
preferable over having government redivide wealth. We essentially need to find
something new we can and want to do with the economy, that would improve our
lives, and require large amounts of people helping to make that happen.

