
The AI Threat Isn’t Skynet – It’s the End of the Middle Class - peter123
https://www.wired.com/2017/02/ai-threat-isnt-skynet-end-middle-class/
======
philipkglass
_That threat has many thinkers entertaining the idea of a universal basic
income, a guaranteed living wage paid by the government to anyone left out of
the workforce. But McAfee believes this would only make the problem worse,
because it would eliminate the incentive for entrepreneurship and other
activity that could create new jobs as the old ones fade away. Others question
the psychological effects of the idea. “A universal basic income doesn’t give
people dignity or protect them from boredom and vice,” Etzioni says._

It's funny how boredom, vice, and the indignity of receiving income without
continual labor loom in importance if and only if we're talking about
technological unemployment. What of people receiving Social Security,
pensions, inherited wealth, royalties from patents and copyrights, rents
collected on real estate...?

Some people sound like they're planning how to invent enough bullshit jobs to
provide everyone a regular 9-5 schedule and a supervisor even after machines
are doing all the strictly necessary labor. It's like the worst of the
Protestant work ethic married to the worst proposals from Keynesianism, so
it's one of those special bad ideas that people from all parts of the
political spectrum can endorse. I'd rather trust adults to find their own
amusements and purpose, like we trust adults who today have income-without-
regular-labor, and trust the robo-police to curb those whose boredom turns to
criminality.

~~~
TheSmiddy
The idea that giving someone just enough money to live will kill their
motivation is insane. If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour
weeks when they could be earning enough to live on just 15? Most UBI schemes
are initially targeting around 1k per month which is nowhere near enough
satisfy the vast majority of people.

~~~
gozur88
>If that were true why do people still work 40+ hour weeks when they could be
earning enough to live on just 15?

There are all sorts of practical reasons why it's difficult to work 15 hours
every week, the biggest of which is employers don't want to hire you. If
you're flipping burgers, sure, but it's pretty rare to find that arrangement
for a professional job.

~~~
nojvek
When everyone working 40 hours they are getting paid a lot more. They can
afford high rents and mortgages. Even as a software engineer I struggle with
rent and don't leave much for savings.

When a robot is doing low skilled jobs and education is insanely expensive
like it is now, the gap is inevitable.

Capital buys AI allowing one person to do the work of many and reap the
rewards of it. America is built on this very idea.

~~~
vegiraghav
well robots arent just doing low skilled jobs here. They are on the verge of
replacing many white collaar jobs

~~~
drvdevd
This is an important point. AI could replace many _programmers_ for example.
Or make better investment decisions.

It has the potential to kill the entire notion of wealth as we _currently know
it_ , regardless of social standing.

What then?

~~~
Snowe
The fear is that capital will own all the means of production and services and
what then of everyone else? Hope UBI is implement? Or perhaps become more
self-sufficient? The hype around 3D printing seems to have died down. I guess
a lot of grand visions weren't realised and a lot of cheap trinkets printed
instead but it still contains an idea that should be nurtured: robotics and AI
at the grass roots level. Don't let capital own all the means of sufficiency.

------
rrggrr
>McAfee pointed to newly collected data that shows a sharp decline in middle
class job creation since the 1980s.

False. McAfee will find a corresponding _increase_ in middle class jobs in
India and China and elsewhere for the same time period. The narrative that
says automation has destroyed the middle class is demonstrably overstated to
the point of being close to false. Employers arbitraged labor rates across
borders, pure and simple.

This issue is vastly more complex than the scope of the Wired article which
suffers from temporal distortion about what has occurred versus what will
occur and when.

~~~
maverick_iceman
Absolutely. A lot of these people don't seem to see the world beyond US. If x
job losses in the US is compensated by 2x-3x job gains in India/China, why is
that a bad thing? Are Westerns somehow more worthy than people from third
world countries?

------
problems
People have been saying this kind of thing forever. They said it about
agriculture, they said it when the Luddites attacked factories, they said it
about farm automation, they said it when computers were becoming popular.

I'm not so sure that this time is different - despite all the insistence, I'm
sure it seemed just as serious every other time before too.

~~~
goda90
Those things freed up people to do more things that require mental instead of
physical labor. Now that we're automating mental labor, what is left to shift
to? Spiritual and emotional labor? I struggle to envision how we can continue
to keep people prospering in a money based economy on just those kinds of
work.

~~~
problems
What makes you think we're at a peak of mental productivity?

For the most part the mental labor we're automating isn't actual mental labor,
but physical labor things which are difficult to make a computer do - like
drive, cook or stitch.

~~~
bad_user
You haven't been watching the news dude:
[https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603431/as-goldman-
embrace...](https://www.technologyreview.com/s/603431/as-goldman-embraces-
automation-even-the-masters-of-the-universe-are-threatened/)

Yay, bring the downvotes, doesn't change the fact that not even our jobs are
safe and downvoting such opinions won't make the problem go away - in the
future we'll probably build software systems the way we train dogs today! And
yes, we'll taste our own medicine :-)

~~~
inderLogging
Stock trading and software development aren't tasks I'd rate as difficult
mental labor.

In fact, the reason such jobs are desirable, is specifically because they're
actually kind of cushy.

Stock trading is a task that has been over-complicated mostly because
investors need to engage in double-speak, so that motives for trades that lead
to financial gain can be sufficiently obfuscated, when explained to auditors,
judges, juries and regulatory officials. Behind the curtain of quants, it's
really just a lot of grocery shopping.

Software development is mostly about stacking legos in ornate fashion. Bytes
cobble together as building blocks. There are a variety of 256 different
building blocks. The computers themselves, the syntax of the code, the
methodology of data structures and loops, these aren't the hard parts. It's
just plumbing.

Plumbing is probably a similar target of automation.

~~~
whiskers08xmt
Every mental task can be reduced to putting 0's and 1's in the right order.
However, reducing the tasks to this point isn't really helpful in the
discussion. You pretty quickly arrive at a mind bending number of ways to
order 0's and 1's, or "legos".

------
wmccullough
It scares me too, but you know, I'm ready to embrace whatever comes next.

I've been thinking alot about this over the course of the last year. Say that
enough things get automated that we have massive numbers of unemployed, how do
we address that? Instead of dodging the question by exclaiming that it won't
happen, we probably should address a much deeper and more fundamental
question: Why does the value of a person come from their method of earning a
living? We have to detach individual value from choice of career first.

Once we've done that, we really have a real question to answer, and it's
deeply existential: Do we really want humankind's story to be about the
majority of a population working at dead-end jobs just to buy food and water?
Aren't we here for more? I for one don't buy the theory that we will self
organize into makerspaces and become "creators". Creativity beyond survival is
a luxury when life and death are on the line.

I don't have the answers, but I certainly have many questions. If I had to
guess what would happen in the event that extreme A.I. automation puts us out
of work, I'd suspect we will organize back into tribes to focus on
subsistence. I've found that if you look at the history books, a centralized
government isn't the best entity to take care of masses of unemployed people.
In large enough countries, people would end up starving in the bread lines.

I think we need to really think about why we're here. Why are we so bent on
using automation to complete the tasks of our shitty 9-5 lives instead of
building a utopia? People are quick to say that we need to replace a money
based economy, but that's too superficial a solution. Money is merely a shared
myth used by us to trade our time and value for a symbol that we can use to
prove our worth. Until we transfer where the "worth" of an individual comes
from, we're going to be in this cycle.

~~~
bad_user
Such questions have been asked for a long time, because this problem was
visible ever since the dawn of the industrial revolution. It's what inspired
Marx after all. And no, I'll never advocate for communism because I think Marx
was wrong and because in practice it ends with crimes against human kind.

But we are here because of greed. And along with all other problems that we
face, like global warming, overpopulation, pollution, etc, I think it's going
to get a lot worse before getting better.

Some form of socialism is inevitable though, that much is certain. Having
guaranteed food, shelter and medical care is a must.

------
stevehiehn
Each time this conversation comes up I notice people often like to suggest
that history is just repeating and we have seen this before. I think its
important to recognize patterns in cycles but its also important to be open to
the possibility we've only seen local cycles and larger global cycles are
still revealing themselves. In other words is AI really analogous to shifts
we've seen before?

~~~
_rpd
The "AI" being discussed is mainly competent data mining and machine learning.
If we stay at that level, then there are easily bigger shifts that we've
adjusted to in the past.

But self-improving AI is truly on a different level, as is AI with human-level
'general intelligence'.

~~~
stevehiehn
I hear ya on the data mining observation. I have been digging into 'applied'
ML for the last two years or so and its painfully obvious how many articles
are based on science fiction and not the current state of things (which
appears to be mostly reinforcement learning)

~~~
_rpd
So much tech journalism falls prey to the logical fallacy of generalization
from fictional evidence ...

[http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generaliza...](http://lesswrong.com/lw/k9/the_logical_fallacy_of_generalization_from/)

------
philipkglass
Now I'll highlight a concern I _do_ actually have about a fully robotized
economy: weapons proliferation. The key pieces of information needed to build
a serviceable anti-tank missile or a jug of nerve gas are already lying on the
shelves of thousands of technical libraries. The details may be classified,
but the broad outlines in the open literature are good enough for someone with
patience and a technical background to fill in workable solutions. Fortunately
for civilization to date, {diligent, technically educated, sufficiently well
funded, homicidal} is a set of attributes that rarely co-occurs. We've seen
homicidal maniacs who were patient and well-funded enough to make their own
nerve gas just once so far (Aum Shinrikyo in Japan in the 1990s).

Things change if machines do all the real work and a would-be killer doesn't
need any special skills to get deadlier weapons. The unhinged man who rage-
kills his ex-wife and some of her coworkers with a gun today could, in the
future, ask the makerbot for kilograms of RDX or tabun instead of a gun.
Outbreaks of lethal violence might be rarer, since people who are materially
well-off are generally less likely to murder, but the rarer killings rooted in
rage or ideology could become a lot deadlier.

In a few post-scarcity science fiction settings impulses to violence are
stopped with direct human nerve implants linked to a machine panopticon that
can halt dangerous actions. I don't consider that a plausible or even
desirable future. In my favorite space opera setting, the Culture of Iain M.
Banks, killers are pre-empted by omniscient benevolent AI oversight running
millions of times faster than biological intelligence. That sounds dreamy to
me, but it involves a lot of made up Space Opera physics so I don't think it
is plausible. Thinking about a future where AI is capable enough to
manufacture anything people ask for, but not capable enough to act as
benevolent gods, leads to some odd mixtures of prosperity and catastrophe.

~~~
smartbit
_The unhinged man who rage-kills his ex-wife and some of her coworkers with a
gun today could ....._

After such a horrendous event, maybe the US society would start asking
themselves why there are so many societies with far less lunatics getting
around killing. And after answering that question, US politics and society
force themselves acting because everyone agrees "never again"?

------
anigbrowl
_Some fear that after squeezing immigration—which would put a brake on the
kind of entrepreneurship McAfee calls for—the White House will move to bottle
up automation and artificial intelligence._

Sounds bizarre but totally possible. If you haven't heard of Aleksandr Dugin
then it's time to play catch-up, because even if you think he's batshit insane
he's quite influential:
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Aleksandr_Dugin)

People in the developed world have come to take technological progress for
granted because of the inexorable economic logic. But with automation,
adherence to default axioms about basic concepts like property ownership
inevitably leads to most of the capital being concentrated in very few hands,
resulting in some sort of modern serfdom. Nationalist programs implicitly
depend on autarky, and the goal of nationalism is not maximum collective
utility but rather vitalism - continuous improvement through the struggle for
survival. Conflict, even defeat, is preferable for nationalists to _ennui_.

------
onlyrealcuzzo
AI will eliminate a lot of jobs, sure. So have many other advances in the
past. It seems like the decline of organized labor unions would be a bigger
threat to the Middle Class than technology.

~~~
mirimir
It's more like "was" than "would be".

------
Animats
There are basic capabilities humans have, and capabilities machines have.
Human capabilities are more or less fixed. Machine capabilities keep
expanding.

About half of work done today could be automated with technology we already
have. All it takes is wider deployment of the most automated technologies. The
current phase is not because computers are smarter. It's that they're really
cheap. If a computer can do it, it will be cheaper than a human.

Next employment area in the US about to get clobbered: fruit and vegetable
picking.[1]

[1]
[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TBcWZcjXr-I)

~~~
BWStearns
I get your point but I'm not entirely sure human capabilities are fixed. In
fact I would opt to say that we're the only species that has evidence of not
being fixed in capabilities. I have no doubt that pg was a better programmer
in the 90s than I am today. However if me now and him then were pitted against
each other to build some web app I'm thinking I have pretty good odds. Human
capabilities are their inate skills * education * available tooling. Education
and tooling improve as time goes forward (generally and hopefully).

------
kisstheblade
I think we will laugh at this "AI threat" in 30 years after yet another long
"AI winter". I mean I haven't been convinced of any "AI" displayed. All just
seems to be glorified pattern matching with little practical use. I mean siri
and cortana and alexa are all dumb as sh*t. Sure some cars can negotiate some
clearly marked streets in nice weather. I don't think there is an automatic
leap from these technologies to more advanced AI that actually would for
example enable totally autonomous cars. Sure there are incremental
improvements in robotics etc that helps to raise the efficiency of some
operations but then the humans can move on to different jobs and enable other
things. Eg. radiology where humans can treat people some AI has marked the
scans as "suspect". So better treatment because of "AI", but the doctor still
has a job.

Also, manufacturing jobs have _not_ been falling, far from it. This all seems
like a big ruse for globalists to use to lower wages and move jobs to the
currently cheapest place, where ever that may be. "It's AI I tells you,
luddites!"

~~~
StRoy
> Also, manufacturing jobs have _not_ been falling, far from it. > This all
> seems like a big ruse for globalists to use to lower wages and move jobs to
> the currently cheapest place, where ever that may be

You are decades behind the times.

>
> [http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966](http://www.bbc.com/news/technology-36376966)

> Foxconn replaces '60,000 factory workers with robots'

> [http://fortune.com/2016/12/31/foxconn-iphone-automation-
> goal...](http://fortune.com/2016/12/31/foxconn-iphone-automation-goal/)

> In a new report from Digitimes, Foxconn executive Dai Jia-peng has laid out
> the company’s three-step plan for automating its Chinese factories. The
> company’s ultimate goal is to fully automate production of things like PCs,
> LCD monitors, and its most famous product—the iPhone.

> Foxconn makes its own manufacturing robots, known as Foxbots, and has
> already deployed about 40,000 of them. Some, which the company considers
> "stage one," assist workers at their stations. Foxconn already has
> individual fully automated production lines—they're "stage two"—in factories
> in Chengdu, Chongquing, and Zhengzhou.

> Stage three of the process would be fully automated factories, with only a
> handful of workers.

Even China with its cheap labor is now willing to invest in that technology.
If Trump ever becomes "successful" at "bringing those jobs back" to the USA,
it will be jobs for machines.

------
Fricken
Throughout the 20th century new technology has been steadily increasing the
value of human labour, but some forms of human labour have increased more than
others, and this imbalance has caused a market distortions.

Technology has done a great deal to make railroad engineers more valuable for
instance, because one guy could suddenly move hundreds of tons of goods. Used
to be it took an army to do that.

On the other hand we have plumbers, and the amount of work a plumber can do
has changed little in a century. There is no plumber who can to the work of a
hundred plumbers from 100 years ago.

This causes a market distortion is what is hurting so much of what America
calls the middle class. If we deploy AI well, it may correct some of these
market distortions. A plumber with a team of robots and an AI assistant will
all of the sudden be able to do enough work to justify the cost of his labour.
Maybe. If one were to entertain the notion that there are certain jobs we
haven't automated enough, which hurts their ability to compete with the value
we get from low cost goods and services.

~~~
sanderjd
> A plumber with a team of robots and an AI assistant will all of the sudden
> be able to do enough work to justify the cost of his labour.

This also implies that fewer individual plumber/robot/AI teams than the
current number of plumbers. To offset that, we either need quite a bit more
work at this level, or we need a rethink of the whole work-to-live system.

In the past it has always turned out that there are new kinds of jobs to be
done. That may happen this time too. Things like living off of making YouTube
videos are perhaps an early indicator of the direction we should be looking
in. But it seems like most of the new models that are successful are based on
ads and it seems to me that advertising-based business models can only ever
make up a relatively small portion of the total economy.

------
gukov
Every living organism is designed by evolution to strive for survival and
reproduction. It's the constant fight that gets you out of the bed every
morning. Having nothing to do all day but paint will eventually result in
premature death. Think animals in captivity.

What if the end of humanity will be caused not by a nuclear war but by a
peaceful AI that made us zoo animals?

~~~
kmnc
If we have the technological prowess to replace human labor in full yet can't
figure out what to then do with our lives other then paint then we truly are a
doomed species. It seems like people lack imagination, everyone either thinks
"don't worry we will still have jobs (appeals to social history)" or the "with
nothing to do we will wither and die (appeals to evolutionary history)". I
think both those camps are missing something which should be self evident if
we ever get to this point: The freedom and ability to create meaning in ones
own life.

I do agree with you though, if we are kept in captivity by political and
social structures (ahem..religion) that fail to evolve with technology (which
seems like human nature sadly) then the average human will go the way of the
sloth or the people in idiocracy. I am hopeful though that the AI will save us
from that captivity more so then reinforce it yet that may be a foolish hope.

Is being a zoo animal so bad if we have the full capabilities of very powerful
AI? What if those AI's were specifically devoted to making it a better zoo? At
that point what is the difference? What is inherently bad about being a zoo
animal if you can't see the walls and the zoo keepers don't abuse you?

------
orasis
I'm working on a machine learning product for conversion optimization,
[https://improve.ai](https://improve.ai).

Despite my initial fears, I'm noticing that, like any tool, it simply allows
the user to do more with less. My product isn't going to replace conversion
rate optimization consultants - it's just another tool they use to provide
more value to their clients.

If the barrier to using machine learning were high, then I would be concerned
that the benefits would only go to few. But since very powerful APIs will be
increasingly cheap and democratized, the barriers will be quite low to reap
the benefits of these technologies.

We often get caught up in the technical minutiae of machine learning, but you
already don't need to be a deep learning expert to take advantage of, for
example, cheap speech recognition APIs. This lowered barrier to entry will
only accelerate.

But, then again, I'm an optimist. :-)

~~~
jeremydavid
I think there's more to conversation rate optimisation than randomly testing
variations of a greeting. The price testing you mentioned looks interesting,
but a good CRO consultant will do research and figure out the objections
manually. Then, instead of having to test an infinite amount of variations
with millions of visitors to reach statistical significance, they can test one
or two. I call what your tool seems to do "throwing darts in the dark". And if
I've completely misunderstood your product, perhaps you've got some optimising
to do ;)

~~~
orasis
Thanks for the feedback. The "Hello World" was supposed to be tongue in cheek,
but obviously didn't come off that way. Oops!

We initially built the tool for this app:

[https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-second-meditation-
daily/id...](https://itunes.apple.com/us/app/7-second-meditation-
daily/id667197203?mt=8)

From hundreds of different daily meditations it has learned precisely which
order to show the content in to maximize retention. So it knows the best
message for day 1, day 2, day 3, etc.

The first month retention for this app is 43%, up from the 20s before
optimization. The current rating is solid 5 stars ands usually in the top 10
in the mindfulness category.

The In App Purchase prices are automatically optimized, and soon we'll be
throwing in a bunch of different background images, all of which will be
automatically optimized.

Anyway, I really appreciate the feedback.

~~~
jeremydavid
That should be your headline :)

------
geodel
Middle class is not some fundamental type of entity. New class types might
arise for future AI supported life. Or maybe population would reduce to a
level sufficient to maintain new type of living which would be
comfortable/luxurious in terms of what we think today.

~~~
jplasmeier
So, like Brave New World?

------
pvnick
The idea that technology will cause widespread job-loss and economic upheaval
is such an old fear, and it _never_ works that way. Technological innovations
lead to wealth creation 100% of the time, along with more opportunities for
more people, even if some jobs are initially replaced with other jobs. "This
time is different" is announced everytime, and it's always the same.

This book is very good for anybody wishing to understand basic economic theory
and see many examples throughout history of this exact debate taking place
over and over and over again:
[https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/](https://www.amazon.com/gp/product/0517548232/)
(see the chapter "The Curse of Machinery").

~~~
234dd57d2c8dba
Yes but this time it's different. Throughout history, until the past 50 years
or so, the new technology has typically replaced a mechanical function humans
were performing. The coming evolution of software and robotics will start
performing the mental work humans, until very recently, were the ONLY thing on
the planet capable of doing.

For the past 3000 years of "modern humans", we have had a monopoly on the
human brain and creative intelligence. That monopoly is coming to an end. What
will the average worker do when a robot that can out-wit them? You cannot just
handwave this problem away saying "it always creates new jobs!!11".

This problem is well-summarized by this video:

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU)

~~~
twoodfin
I'm pretty sure travel agents believed they were doing "mental work".

------
mirimir
Animatrix: The Second Renaissance: Part I

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0K6Cb1ZoG4](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=L0K6Cb1ZoG4)

So yes, human revolution may come first.

------
nubol
I don't find many articles talking about how AI integration in the industry
could lower the production costs in many markets, that would allow consumers
to be able to buy products cheaper, so they could work less to be able to pay
basic stuff.

Also it would allow people to be more capable to scale multiple tasks, for
instance: instead of being a taxi driver you become the manager of a driver
less taxi.

------
tabeth
Even though I am considered 'skilled labor', I hardly consider myself so
skilled to be making the incredible AI machines that will be the ones to take
over the jobs (in comparison to the competition, anyway). As for "less skilled
folks" like myself, here's an abridged list of things you can do (in
additional to software) to start hedging your bet against AI.

\- Real estate (Landlord): I'd suggest you save money and start buying some
property. Dump some sweat equity into certain markets and you may have
something here. AI can never beat the ultimate constraint -- land.

\- Environmental science: AI is great, but I doubt computer vision and
robotics will become good enough to replace foresters and the like anytime
soon. If you live in a wooded area, it may be worth it to start investigating
it. Plus, it's healthy to walk around in nature anyway. Double whammy.

\- Teacher: It's unlikely any teaching will be done by an AI. Behavior
management in particular is difficult enough with a human, let alone an AI.
When an AI robot is teaching our students directly, we have bigger problems on
our hand.

~~~
StRoy
> \- Teacher: It's unlikely any teaching will be done by an AI. Behavior
> management in particular is difficult enough with a human, let alone an AI.
> When an AI robot is teaching our students directly, we have bigger problems
> on our hand.

That already depends on the type of skill being taught. Learning a new
language, for example, has never been dependent on teachers and I think I've
been doing quite well with purely self taught English, and that was before
methods like duolingo appeared. My mother is living in retirement and has
started learning languages as a way to pass time, she has learned enough
English through duolingo to achieve a conversational level and she never had a
teacher. Is it really impossible for more sophisticated AIs to truly replace
language teachers in schools, and have students do things through a computer?
and possibly replace teachers in many other fields of studies too. I'd wager
most of the less advanced courses in pre-college stuff could do well with
modern, computerized, interactive methods of learning. I don't think you could
replace the interaction with a teacher for more advanced studies, though.

------
enjalot
This problem has been weighing heavily on my mind since reading The Second
Machine Age. The first thing I've read that gives me some hope for finding a
solution is Rushkoff's "Throwing Rocks at the Google Bus"

I highly recommend reading both books, because more perspective is needed to
think abouy this than just "what machines can and cant automate"

------
macawfish
Well, I dint know what they decded the ethics were for biotechnology, but
genetically engineering seeds so that farmers depend on the auxiliary
herbicides from singular corporations strikes me as unethical. Not to mention
that farmers are reliant on those same corporations for seed itself. Seeds
that have been cultivated for hundreds of thousands of years are getting
replaced with zombie varieties that disrupt ecologies. This is a crisis. We
are losing our collective seed memory.

To me, capitalism is not about free markets, it's about debt markets. Maybe
that's because the only capitalism I've ever known is ideologically
restricted. Its champions are often hypocrites of their religion, where income
from rent is deemed productive while work done by a mother in taking care of
her children is consumptive and indebted.

------
boona
So was the telegram, the telephone, automobiles, computers, but every time
it's meant an astonishing increase in wealth for everyone.

Employment isn't even the end all be all, we would be much happier with 50%
employment and greater levels of wealth.

~~~
v4voodoo
Who is we? The 50% that's employed and thus can afford to live, or the 50%
that's homeless?

------
rick_perez
We don't need AI to end the middle class.

Services like Uber are replacing what used to be a stable job by fewer drivers
with a job now done by many more drivers for peanuts. It's almost a way of
taking an industry and redistributing the wealth.

~~~
dragontamer
> Services like Uber are replacing what used to be a stable job by fewer
> drivers with a job now done by many more drivers for peanuts.

Right idea, wrong complaint.

GPS is the automated tool that killed the Taxi. There was a time when it took
specialized knowledge to know the layout of a city. GPS took away the one edge
the Taxi-industry had... experience in driving and roads.

Uber is just the first major company to take advantage of cheap GPS
technology. As soon as GPS-systems were so cheap that they are in literally
everybody's pockets... the Taxicab industry became an endangered species.

~~~
rick_perez
"GPS is the automated tool that killed the Taxi."

No, not really. When I travel to a new city, I always use a Taxi to get
around. GPS actually helps out the taxi drivers because I don't need to sit
there explaining exactly where to go. I can just tell them the address. In a
foreign country, it's even better: Just give them a business card or piece of
paper with the address on it.

"Uber is just the first major company to take advantage of cheap GPS
technology."

Uber is the first major company to avoid all of the taxi unions and the
medallion systems and hire any driver off the street for what amounts to some
extra beer money for the drivers.

It's really convenient and nice for consumers, but guts the industry of jobs
that could actually earn someone a real living.

"the Taxicab industry became an endangered species."

Again, no it didn't. I'm not sure how much traveling you have done but when
you need to get somewhere on time, Trains and Subways don't really cut it. You
need to take a taxi.

Unless we have an instant form of travel without cars, we will always have a
need for taxis.

Uber did, however, show us that when unions are in place and create a monopoly
in an industry, they really have no incentive to actually make things better
for the consumer.

~~~
dragontamer
> Uber is the first major company to avoid all of the taxi unions and the
> medallion systems and hire any driver off the street for what amounts to
> some extra beer money for the drivers.

Oh come on. As if these Uber drivers would have been able to navigate an
unknown neighborhood in the 1980s.

The enabling technology here is the GPS, specifically the free GPS in
everybody's smartphone. Without that, the entire Uber model fails because the
typical Uber Driver has no navigation skills.

------
CodeSheikh
So us as technologists and engineers contributing towards this AI field, how
do we help sustain middle-class? The state of STEM education is unfortunate at
public schools here in the USA.

------
laughfactory
The problem with UBI is inflation. Give everyone another $1000/month (or
whatever) and all you've done is make every existing dollar in the economy
worth less.

~~~
noisy_boy
This is exactly the question I don't see answered. How will you handle
increased prices? Unless instead of $1000/pm, you give an equivalent
purchasing power/quota based on normal/average/reasonable per-capita
consumption. Like a token that allows you to buy a certain amount of
food/clothes/medicines etc. So what happens if I don't need to buy anymore
clothes today but need more medicines but another guy is in a reverse
situation? How about we translate this purchasing quota into points and have
an exchange for people to trade them? Did we re-invent barter system/money in
another form?

------
redsummer
AI makes me want to join the Amish. You learn things to give yourself a future
and self-fulfilment. But AI will catch up with your skills eventually. You
would need to spend all your time learning if you want to keep ahead, and
never have time to put to work what you have learned.

Wouldn't you rather have a community and a meaningful life than be a meat-
based beta version of a future AI?

------
hyperion2010
Great! Maybe we will finally have the excess capacity to finally send people
into local archives all over the world so that we can save the data about the
past and feed it to the machines. If you want data for models there is tons of
it lurking in the basements of municipal buildings all over the world, and you
might find a lost Da Vinci manuscript while you are at it!

------
jganetsk
The problem isn't AI. It's capitalism. People are fearing the ultimate triumph
of capital over labor.. If people owned the robots, then there would be no
problem.

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAwB9-9QOQI](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=BAwB9-9QOQI)

~~~
dgudkov
It's an interesting perspective, but what would stop people from having shares
in companies that own robots?

~~~
jganetsk
All people should have shares in companies that own robots. Or they should at
least have a claim in the return on capital.

[https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-
fu...](https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/basic-income-funded-by-
capital-income-by-yanis-varoufakis-2016-10?barrier=accessreg)

------
optimuspaul
Once everything is automated there will be little need for money, we'll all be
kings! Damn hell ass kings!

~~~
chadcmulligan
This is the bit I can't understand about the nay sayers. AI promises a world
of everything you could want. The problem is the current way of assigning
goods (money for labour) is obsolete. The really funny thing (to me) is the
people who'd benefit most by this are the ones wailing the most.

It's the disconnects that confuse me the most. "What about houses, how can we
afford a house without a job?" is a complaint I hear. Like for some reason AI
won't reduce construction costs to near 0.

The hard part imho is the transition where some jobs are obsoleted, but some
aren't and some things still cost lots because they haven't been automated
yet. This is where we are now I think.

~~~
codexon
> Like for some reason AI won't reduce construction costs to near 0.

Ok and how will you pay the guy who owns the lumber if you have nothing he
wants? And the guy who owns the construction bots? And the owner of the land?

~~~
chadcmulligan
Yes, thats what I'm wondering - when you have a fully automated supply chain
that builds houses with 0 labour (probably never be 0, but near enough for the
sake of argument). Lets say we have a world that everything is automated to
produce all the stuff we need.

Then how do you pay for that stuff because no one will be working. Also what
will prompt people to make new machines to build new stuff?

~~~
thomyorkie
foglets perhaps will do the trick
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Utility_fog)

~~~
chadcmulligan
one step from gray goo then though
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Grey_goo)

~~~
pizza
In the end, it's all in the hands of our friend Sol. If only we could reduce
every problem down to a problem of harvesting enough photons from the sun,
we'd be set for life (and many more). In a way, DNA is the strongest-possible
argument for truly universal UBI...

------
visarga
So the unemployed would need to find a way to support themselves by their own
work, by cooperation and by using automation as well. A combination of solar
technology, robotics, AI and classic engineering could be a formula for self
reliance.

~~~
anigbrowl
Why not just wrest control of the means of production for themselves? The more
concentrated the wealth, the easier it becomes to target it. When people see
no other practical means of economic advancement revolutions tend to ensue.

~~~
natoliniak
yes, the old "specter of communism" is always hanging around. I don't think
people will just rollover and cease to exist once they are deemed not needed
by a society.

------
chubasco
Skynet probably wasn't built for its own sake. It was probably built to
protect the people who owned Skynet from the people that didn't.

~~~
inderLogging
Skynet has a specific origin story, explained in the movie, Terminator 2:
Judgement Day.

    
    
      In three years, Cyberdyne will become the
      largest supplier of military computer 
      systems. All stealth bombers are upgraded 
      with Cyberdyne computers, becoming fully 
      unmanned. Afterwards, they fly with a 
      perfect operational record. The Skynet 
      Funding Bill is passed. The system goes 
      online August 4th, 1997. Human decisions 
      are removed from strategic defense. Skynet 
      begins to learn at a geometric rate. It 
      becomes self-aware at 2:14 a.m. Eastern 
      time, August 29th. In a panic, they try 
      to pull the plug. Skynet fights back. It 
      launches its missiles against the targets 
      in Russia. Skynet knows that the Russian 
      counterattack will eliminate its enemies 
      over here.
    

It was an out-growth of the cold war arms race. Nuclear deterrents aren't as
much about protection as they are about posturing. Lives aren't quite "saved"
by nuclear arsenals.

------
lostmsu
I still think it is the end of all classes.

------
excalibur
Why can't it be both?

------
multinglets
Heady fucking stuff, just wow.

