
People's underestimation of AI - aidenlivingston
http://venturebeat.com/2016/12/28/a-robot-is-coming-for-your-job/
======
canadian_voter
I think the megapolitical perspective on violence in The Sovereign
Individual[0] by James Dale Davidson and Lord William Rees-Mogg can be helpful
here.

Unions were powerful because they could limit access to labour, which was
required for production. Now they are increasingly powerless. Mass manpower
was once required to wage war. Now is increasingly less useful in a world of
high-tech warfare.

What prevents the powerful from going straight to the source of production and
value? I'm not talking about off-shoring manufacturing to China, I'm talking
about something more extreme, along the lines of a small cabal of wizards in a
tower conjuring spells to extract energy directly from the wind and sun, and
materials directly from the ground? The tech is far off, but the direction is
clear. Maybe y'all think you're going to be one of those wizards. We'll see.

But what's going to happen to the rest of us? Are we all going to wake up some
day as basic-income supported artists, happily chewing on organic granola and
self-actualizing (or not) as we please? I think a study of history suggests
it's not going to be that easy. Those union rights were hard fought. People
died.

What happens when those at the top decide it's not worth keeping 8 billion
people around just for kicks, when they can make do with ... 5 billion? 500
million? How many programmers, painters and yoga instructors do we need? On a
planet with dwindling resources, tough decisions are going to get made.

So yeah, watch out for those robots. Especially the ones with the lasers on
their heads. (That's a joke. But the rest?)

[0] [https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-
Transi...](https://www.amazon.com/Sovereign-Individual-Mastering-Transition-
Information/dp/0684832720/)

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>Unions were powerful because they could limit access to labour, which was
required for production. Now they are increasingly powerless.

Given how _little_ is actually automated right now, I'm always a little
skeptical that automation drove the labor union extinct. It seems like
politics, corruption, and mismanagement drove American unions near-extinct. A
lot of countries still have very active trade-unions that take a strong hand
in production and economics (Germany and Denmark, for instance).

~~~
e40
If you think about how many people, 300 years ago, were involved in farming..
it was a lot. How many today? In 1st world countries, very few. Farming has
massive automation.

~~~
cstejerean
Sure, but what does this have to do with trade unions?

~~~
hijik
Every discussion forum these days feels like walking into a classroom of
second graders talking about things they have heard grad students talk about.

------
pryelluw
To save you time:

Author praises advances in AI by big tech. Complains about how he was served
the wrong medication and how a robot would not have made the error. Closes by
saying that robots will be better than doing things than humans.

Its a shitty post that does not even really take into account the current
state of AI, how robots are prone to errors as well as humans due to faulty
hardware, and well, the fact that some jobs are only trusted to humans. Even
if the margin of error may be higher.

~~~
darpa_escapee
A human can explain why it made an error. Good luck sussing out the "why?"
when an AI makes an error.

~~~
andrewflnr
A human can claim to tell you why it made an error. Good luck sussing out
whether they're wrong, or lying.

~~~
darpa_escapee
A human has the capacity to give reasoning, right or wrong, which a solution
can be built off of. No AI can do that.

------
dexwiz
I really think its the insurance industry that will push AIs into the
mainstream. The author makes a good point that humans would rather trust
another human with a 1% error rate than a robot with a .01% error rate,
because the robot error is somehow scarier. But actuarial science doesn't care
about which is scarier, it cares about the 1% v the .01%.

Malpractice insurance will force doctors to consult AIs. Auto insurance will
force us to install automated driving systems. Home insurance will force us to
install sensor systems and Echo-like assistants. Insurance costs will rise for
those that refuse AIs, and make ignoring them financially irresponsible.

Insurance requirements put all sorts of pressures on industries. Anecdata
here, but I know a very successful gynecologist who was forced to sell HIS
practice, because the malpractice insurance ate all his profits. The
possibility of a sexual misconduct case basically made it impossible for him
to be a male gynecologist and carry the requisite insurance, even though he
never had a suit filed against him.

~~~
meddlepal
It seems tho insurance would shift from inidivudual/user to producer tho. Why
would individuals need car insurance with a fully automated vehicle for
example.

~~~
dexwiz
Insurance is all about covering liability. Car manufacturers won't willingly
take on all liability after automation. They will still try to shift some onto
the consumer.

On the other hand, maybe individual auto insurance will eventually go away as
automation takes hold. But automation will not happen overnight. The liability
in an accident between a human and automated driver will likely be assigned to
the human, meaning human based insurance premiums will rise, forcing more
people to automation.

~~~
stale2002
Why wouldn't they take on the liability? If it costs them so little, because
the cars are so much safer you might as well.

------
echelon
I can't be alone in thinking this recent "robots are talking all the unskilled
jobs" meme is a bit overblown. It feels premature, at best.

I'm skeptical about the robotic lawyer and pharmacist use cases the article
calls out. These seem like really distant applications--nothing I gather we'll
see in the next decade, anyway. I have a friend going to pharmacy school, and
I wouldn't think to warn her about her career choice just yet. Mistakes in
these fields simply cost too much.

What other careers are at immediate risk? How big of a working population will
be put out of work?

I imagine trucking and freight is the industry most immediately at risk.

Autonomous vehicles are impressive, but there are so many social problems
arising from failure modes we've yet to answer. I'm imagining the first fatal
accident arising from an autonomous truck--the press will jump on automation
like vultures. The lawsuits will be huge. I can't imagine the court of public
opinion being kind to the shipping company whose machine kills an unsuspecting
family on vacation.

I realize that doesn't prevent automation from happening, but I think it could
bring any rollout to an immediate halt.

And though it's getting a bit off topic, I feel like the "no more car
ownership" meme is utter hyperbole. I would be willing to bet money that
private car ownership will continue to be a thing for a long time. How much
would an hour and a half long Uber commute cost to make every day for workers
living in a city without sufficient public transit, such as Atlanta? Are
people that live or travel to rural areas going to participate in ride
sharing? Increasing remote work and better housing options seem like they will
be more pragmatic solutions to the plague of the commute.

As much as I'd like to see increased efficiency through AI and automation, it
still seems much too early to count humans out. I guess I'll eat my words when
I see it.

~~~
cm2187
On the media jumping on it like vultures, I think plane accidents can give us
hope.

When there is a plane crash, medias will be all over it for weeks. But at the
same time they will repeat again and again that aircrafts are incredibly safe,
and that you are more likely to have a crash on your way to the airport, etc.

The opposite is done for terrorism. Every time someone is killed in a terror
attack, the message is "it could happen to you".

So not sure what makes them behave either way but it could still turn out to
be OK.

On car ownership I agree. I don't really buy that all cars will be shared when
fully automated.

For sentimental reasons, people like to own their car, they like to invest in
it, they don't like to find a car that looks more like a mix of dumpster and
toilet after 20 party-goers used it before you.

For a very practical reason, the same reason farmers own there heavy equipment
when they could just rent it: because they all need it at the same time. The
primary purpose for cars is commuting from home to work and everyone needs to
do that at about the same time. So the only guarantee you will have to have a
car available when you need it at peak period will be to own it.

What I think could happen is that when self driving cars have become mandatory
in large cities, you won't really need to park the car near where you live or
work. It could go park itself in some large underground car park 5-10 min
away. Without parked cars on both sides of the street you increase the
capacity of most cities (at least in Europe) massively.

That plus smoother driving could go a long way eliminating traffic jams.

~~~
onion2k
_The primary purpose for cars is commuting from home to work and everyone
needs to do that at about the same time. So the only guarantee you will have
to have a car available when you need it at peak period will be to own it._

I think a more likely outcome would be that employers have to become more
flexible. If you _have_ to be at work by 9am but you can't get there at that
time then you can't do the job. If _everyone_ is in that situation the
employer won't be able to fill the position. Ergo, change will happen.

~~~
cm2187
There are reasons why companies have sort of standardised business hours.
School schedules. Being able to interact with other companies. And within a
company you sort of want people to be around at the same time otherwise you
lose efficiency.

~~~
onion2k
_There are reasons why companies have sort of standardised business hours._

It's because 50 years ago scheduling was hard. You had to notify people of
things sending them a letter via a post system. Large companies had their own
internal mail systems. After that there was email that sped things up _a lot_
, and now we have video conferencing so you can have a meeting whenever you
want without even really needing to schedule it if all the parties are
available. So long as there are a few core hours when everyone who'd need to
meet all work then hours wouldn't be an issue.

------
eva1984
I think what AI really challenges is the value of man. Our current world
relies on the assumption that more people means more productivity/consumption,
so more growth and stronger economy. With the potential emergence of more
capable machines, this assumption may no longer hold.

How to deal with the left behind society? Trying to find them new purposes of
life? How can we make sure those new purposes won't be automated in the
future? Or if large portion of the population facing the problem of being
jobless, is population growth/immigration still a positive thing? What about
education? If we know that most of the people won't be needed in the workforce
any way, is education still something worth having, except for very basic
common sense?

This all leads me to think that the future might be more static and less
energetic one, yet it might be more affluent than ever. It could also be more
equal than ever, that most people might be under the care of some really
intelligent system to spend their whole life, without really being required to
achieve anything, but it will be OK, and will become the new norm. Population
might decline, but they will be gradually replaced by robots, until new
equilibrium has been reached.

------
Fricken
I think we're overestimating AI. The hype has been around in tech circles now
for years, but now it's breached it's walls and is spilling out into
mainstream discussions in economics and politics, and it's getting even more
detached from reality.

And yet, I don't know of an instance where all this newfangled machine
learning has been disruptive. The expert systems that will supposedly displace
accountants and paralegals don't exist. Dextrous robots can barely screw the
lid on a bottle, and only under controlled conditions. Autonomous vehicles
reliable enough to be applied commercially don't exist. None of it exists.
There's no garauntee it will.

The AI race is most definitely on, but nobody knows where the finish line is.
And there's a long history of inventors grossly misunderguesstimating the
location of finish lines, particularly in the field of AI, where every time we
find a new piece of the puzzle we think 'This is it. This is the holy grail!'

Machines are better at pattern recognition, that's the big breakthrough, but
there's so much more to taking humans out of the loop than just that.

~~~
fourthark
Yep, maybe not the fun kind, but lawyering and accounting take creativity. We
have seen zero evidence of machine creativity.

~~~
falcor84
There are tons of examples of machine creativity. The highest profile one from
the past year is probably AlphaGo's famous move 37.

------
NicoJuicy
Everyone always says that we are over estimating current changes in the
economy. We already had industrialisation and it went fine. I think they are
wrong, we are on the verge of something totally new and all the optimists
aren't realists.

Farming was automized, so we transformed to other jobs. No problem there (
thank god it was possible)

Industrialisation made it possible for a company export to a total new market
and it made worldwide selling possible ==> New markets. No problem there

Computer appeared. Untill now, the effect wasn't big. They lines are all
dedicated and require huge investments. Humans are still required for putting
chocolates in a box and getting it out of the "container" ( although it could
be automatised with a huge investment).

What's going to happen when those robots with an investment cost of 10.000$ to
replace an employee. Can learn putting chocolates in a box with supervised
learning and no other investment.

Who's going to get work and where is the money coming from if all jobs are
slowly being replaced / automized. I think there is a lot of trouble on the
road ahead. To what usefull jobs will all drivers/truckers/taxi's transform to
for still being usefull. What jobs are next, accounting perhaps. And where
will it stop?

And don't say, they have to learn something new. The people that are going to
be replaced by total automation ( robots) in the workforce are (mostly)
workers in the first place and i don't think a lot of them are smart enough,
to do something new that won't be replaced by automation < 3 years when it
begins.

I'm not trying to offend someone, but i'm pretty hopeless because i don't see
a way out for a lot of people.

~~~
mamadrood
I've had this discussion yesterday with a colleague of mine a bit older than
me, he doesn't think that technology will kill jobs, he thinks that the
government will probably prevent self driving cars and the like.

I think the opposite, I live in a country where transport is the main employer
in the country, I think that in the next two decades all these jobs will be
lost and transport company will have enough lobbying power to pass any laws
they want.

We were talking about retirement age and I was wondering how we could push it
later when there will be less and less jobs, and eventually we will have to
admit that a big portion of the population won't be able / needed to work, and
that I will probably be part of it.

------
cm2187
I think these fears are grossly exagerated. Our society has a remarkable
capacity to preserve manual work way after it should have been automated.

I work a lot with the finance dept of a large bank where 90% of the work
should have been automated years ago. No need for AI, just a little bit of
coding and good communication between IT and the business. But the business is
not in a rush to destroy its own jobs, and IT consistently misunderstand what
the business actually does. (Also we often have to deal with "bottom of the
basket" IT, but it will be the same with AI).

And with the people currently in charge, it won't change anytime soon.

So I think the time where AI will have automated every single manual job is
nowhere near. Like software has not automated every single manual task yet,
far from it. The only thing I can see AI taking over are the jobs that are
standardised enough, and accessible enough for programmers to understand, and
on a large enough scale that it makes sense to have a lots of ressources
dedicated to training and tuning algos for someone to bother deploying AI.

~~~
pmyjavec
This is true, the processes and technology for far greater efficiency in
business, manufacturing and politics have been available for a long, long
time. But why would a manager in a corporation leverage these things if it
means losing an empire?

This is the same for so many areas of society, especially politics. It would
be easy to build a system which replaced representitive politics, think micro-
voting on particular issues by all citizens. This hasn't happened en-masse
because politicians are going to have to remove themselves from their jobs
first.

Robot domination might actually never happen, I mean even if we ever manage to
create AGI, there is little reason to believe that it will:

* Want to stick around and serve humanity, because why would it?

* Care about us at all, ignore humans just do what it likes and forget about us entirely.

 _Edit: I forgot to add that if we built more welcoming, welfare bsaed
societies where people are looked after when they 're out of a job, then the
adoption of automation and "robots" would probably be more accepted and less
imposed upon us_

------
drcross
We see posts like this daily (and I know this article is more about AI) but
there's still no low priced robotic arms on the market. it's almost 2017, but
there's no dishwasher unloader or any other meaningful service robots except
from an automatic vacuum cleaner..

~~~
hugs
I make and sell low-cost robots, and business is great. :) But you don't see
them, because I'm in a niche where I sell to companies with huge pressures to
cut costs and go faster. (You don't see this kind of pressure for robots in
the home, _but_ I wouldn't be surprised to see dishwasher and service robots
appear in chain hotels and restaurants, because of the scale they are at.)
Having one dishwasher to unload is not a profitable problem to solve for most
people in their home, but if you had 1000 dishwashers, it would be worth it to
investigate your automation options.

~~~
deepnotderp
Hey there, I'd be super interested in this. I checked out tapster.io but I'm
more looking for (a little bit)larger and stronger robot arms. Email me at
sixsamuraisoldier [at] gmail.com

~~~
hugs
Sure! Sent!

------
nrjdhsbsid
What I don't get about the recent hype is that jobs have been vanishing for
thousands of years. The oft repeated statistic is that over 90% of the US
population were farmers 100 years ago. Is 90% of the population out of work?

As machines take over low level jobs (as they have for thousands of years)
humans will continue to migrate into positions where their skills are still
needed. Quality of living will continue to rise as a result.

The only real danger is singularity, and it's a danger to all of us, not just
the people at the bottom. If an AI was truly better at every job why would the
people at the top even be in charge?

Machination will continue to benefit society and humankind until an
increasingly worrying singularity results in everyone being out of work, and
likely, the extinction of our species

~~~
googi23
I think you have a very myopic view of history. Things have never changed this
quickly in known history. This is similar to how Anthropocene is killing of
animal populations because they just can't adapt fast enough.

Industrial revolution somehow made it through via interesting social and
market manipulations; it's not clear what it'll be this time.

~~~
mdpopescu
> Things have never changed this quickly in known history

Reminds me of Alvin Toffler's warning that the amount of information was
growing far too quickly for people to be able to assimilate it... that was
back in the 80s, with no web, no Wikipedia, no Youtube...

People will adapt. We're good at it.

------
et1337
Unpopular opinion: we techies _overestimate_ AI.

> So why is it that, despite each of us having a wealth of experience with
> people being unapologetically bad at their jobs, we still feel that humans
> have set the bar so high that the same machines — the ones that can tell you
> the name of that obscure actor in that even more obscure film with 100
> percent accuracy in .01 seconds — would somehow buckle under the challenge
> of distributing allergy pills?

Because those machines must still ultimately be programmed or trained by
flawed humans, and I still have to reboot every device I own on a regular
basis to keep it from vomiting all over itself.

~~~
deepnotderp
Chances are, anything that requires quasi-human decision making will be done
through machine learning.

------
nocoder
Few thoughts below, I think possibilities of future being considered in most
of AI takeover discussions are some sort of linear projections of our
imagination based on our understanding of current scenario, past history and
future expectations. Our minds are many times not able to consider outcomes
beyond any of these, for example when you read history of World War 1, we find
most of the experienced generals and strategist did not expect the war to be
as horrific and as long as it turned out to be, since their expectations were
based on past experience and current knowledge (which turned out to be
inadequate). Similarly, most of the people who witness atomic bombing of World
War 2, did not really expect to have no nuclear wars in next 70 years. The
prevalent expectations then was to consider nuclear wars being imminent.
Similarly, after the moon landing, there were not many people who thought no
human will go to moon in next 50 years.

I think one possibility that is not being considered is the ability of humans
to upgrade themselves via some combination advanced genetic and hardware. What
if you could design AI that can help upgrade humans, again this would lead to
creation of new superclass of humans.

The other thought I have is, on one hand we expect AI to be really intelligent
to take over most of the human skilled jobs but still expect it to be
controllable by few human beings. There is always a possibility that
superintelligent AIs might have some different motivations other than ruling
over human beings. As a human being, even though I am much more powerful I
probably do not have much motivation to rule over rats or cockroaches, same
could be true for AIs. We might be too insignificant for them to waste time on
us.

------
coenhyde
Why is education never discussed in the context of robot / AI automation? It
is the solution. If not the ONLY solution. We've been here before with the
industrial revolution. 50% of the population was working in agriculture and
everyone feared the factory would automate everyone's job. But we managed. We
managed by creating the current education system to produce educated factory
workers.

Now the current education system is out of date and failing us. IMO
programmers are just the modern day factory worker; leveraging machines to do
more with less. Imagine if we had ~30% of the population working on the next
abstraction (software / robots / AI) instead of the current 2%. We'd be living
in the real Utopia. I'm of the opinion that there is an infinite amount of
jobs; as we as a species always want our current situation to be better than
it currently is. But that only works if everyone can produce relatively
equally. The problem now is we have a class of society which can not compete
against another class who is benefiting from automation; not just programmers,
but anything tech.

~~~
krapp
> I'm of the opinion that there is an infinite amount of jobs; as we as a
> species always want our current situation to be better than it currently is.

This seems counterintuitive - there is a finite number of companies, a finite
amount of work those companies require, and a finite economy in which they
operate. It simply isn't possible to find an infinite number of jobs in a
system in which everything is scarce and demand is limited.

~~~
coenhyde
There's not a finite number of companies. Companies are a human construct.
Easy to create more. Resources are finite on Earth but we will be sourcing
resources from around the solar system relatively shortly. I'd say within 50
years.

~~~
krapp
Companies can only survive as long as enough demand exists for them to remain
profitable, their population is self-limited by the nature of competition.

You can _make_ as many companies as you like - all but a few will die. It's
the reason restaurants tend to go out of business so quickly, there are
already too many of them.

------
grecy
Fantastic!

We may finally get the promise of the 50's and 60's - less work and more
leisure time thanks to technical advancements.

I personally look forward to the day there are less jobs, and so everyone can
just work 3 days a week to spread them around, and spend much more time with
family and passions.

~~~
zeroer
We're already there. Productivity has increased manyfold since then. The
dividends primarily go to those with the capital, not the ones producing the
labor. What gains do go to the labor force are spent buying bigger nicer
houses and things rather than working fewer hours.

If you want to work less, you can do it now, but it requires sacrifice in the
sense that you'll lead a lifestyle closer to that of the 50's or 60's. Head
over /r/financialindependence.

~~~
grecy
> _If you want to work less, you can do it now_

Thanks, I'm already doing it. I quit my Software Engineering job to drive
40,000miles from Alaska to Argentina over two years.

Now a few years later I've quit again and will drive 80,000 miles around
Africa for the next 2 years. I'm in West Africa now.[1]

The number one question I get asked is how can I afford to do that, so I wrote
an eBook "Work Less to Live Your Dreams" \-
[http://amzn.to/2huxZjZ](http://amzn.to/2huxZjZ)

[1] [http://theroadchoseme.com](http://theroadchoseme.com) is my website, and
I'm posting updates to
[http://facebook.com/theroadchoseme/](http://facebook.com/theroadchoseme/) and
[https://www.instagram.com/theroadchoseme/](https://www.instagram.com/theroadchoseme/)

~~~
mdpopescu
I apologize for the off-topic but... this is FUCKING AMAZING.

~~~
grecy
Haha, thanks :)

Let me know if you have any questions or whatever, I love helping other people
get out to live their dreams :)

Hit me up on Facebook or whatever.

------
mnm1
When we actually have proof that AI is even possible, issues around AI will
become real and pertinent to real life. Until then, it seems like a
distraction from the very real problems these proponents of AI are actively
trying to ignore, like mass surveillance and privacy. I wonder why so many
proponents are actively trying to ignore these very real problems in our world
in favor of living in this fantasy. It's fine to pretend that self driving
cars and things like that are artificially intelligent, but while such things
are artificial they're certainly not intelligent. I'm going to revisit the
conversation when artificial intelligence is proven to exist. Until then, I
personally don't see a reason to humor people deliberately ignoring important
issues like mass surveillance in favor of living in the fantasy of AI.

------
jwatte
The article plays fairly loose with its own arguments. For example, while an
expert system/predictor likely gets the medication right more often than the
human, the actual shelving, counting, and management of the physical
medications is totally beyond the reach of present and near future robots. For
example: no robot or AI knows how to recover of a customer accidentally spills
a cup of coffee on a shelf. (Further into the future, anything will happen!)

Similarly, while I am impressed by the Google self driving technology, the
Uber version seems like a dangerously underdeveloped imitation that breaks as
many rules as a bad human driver.

I think AI is powerful and important, but nowhere near where the singularity
fan boys say it is.

~~~
mdpopescu
> ... the actual shelving, counting, and management of the physical
> medications is totally beyond the reach of present and near future robots.

Er... what?

[https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9eRDyZJzSA](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=h9eRDyZJzSA)

------
imh
I'm sick of people who know nothing about statistics, machine learning, or AI
writing about the future of statistics, machine learning, and AI. He talks
about the kinds of errors people make and compares it to a database lookup of
an actor? Come on.

------
imjustsaying
So to make the argument that peoples' jobs are at risk of automation, the
author provides anecdotal evidence of a glorified vending machine pharmacy-
pill filler (yes, I know this is not nearly all a pharmacist does, but this
was the specific task given in the example), a position that has already been
automated by vending machines, self check-out lanes, and robotic pick-and-
ships?

Way to pump the industry hype there venturebeat, but I don't think you're
going to make the cheerleading squad cut this year.

~~~
mdpopescu
His point, in my opinion, is that the only reason the pharmacist isn't already
replaced by a (more effective) vending machine is political and that it _will_
be so replaced once most people figure it out.

------
lkrubner
In recent months, there has been a large number of posts on Hacker News
extolling the coming robot (and/or AI) revolution. I've read that we are
facing a jobless future because all the jobs will be automated.

All of that might be true, at some point in the future. The future is a very
long time. I have no idea how they economy will work 500 years from now. But
we can form reasonable opinions about what will happen during the next 10
years.

For all the rhetoric about a productivity revolution thanks to robots and/or
AI, we should check in with reality and remember how bleak the present is.
Productivity in the USA ran at a high level during the 1940s, 1950s and 1960s,
but it stalled out in 1973.

[https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20150709...](https://www.whitehouse.gov/sites/default/files/docs/20150709_productivity_advanced_economies_piie.pdf)

"Labor productivity in the private nonfarm business sector rose by an average
of 2.9 percent per year between 1948 and 1973. Beginning in the earlier 1970s,
though, productivity slowed sharply, averaging only 1.5 percent growth between
1973 and 1995. Several factors can help explain the downshift. First, growth
in the immediate post-war era benefited from the commercialization of numerous
innovations made during World War II, including the jet engine. The early
1970s marked the point at which the wartime innovations became exhausted.
Public investment also slowed, and the 1970s oil shocks and collapse of the
Bretton Woods system caused dislocations that weighed on growth. "

For awhile, the situation was better in Britain, but since 2008 the situation
has been worse. Britain has seen a complete collapse in productivity growth
since 2008.

All of this is difficult to reconcile with talk of a revolution in
productivity. Maybe that revolution will happen, but as late as 2016, there
was no evidence of it in any government statistic, in any of the advanced
economies.

It's also worth noting, if we do see uptick in productivity growth (thanks to
robots or any other technology) it might simply get us back to the kind of
productivity we took for granted during the boom years of the 1940s and 1950s
and 1960s. And those were decades of full employment. And that would be
awesome.

~~~
gohrt
Labor Productivity measurement depends on GDP, so it suffers from classic GDP
mismeasurement error. GDP only measures $, not value, so it fails to measure
technological improvements in a competitive industry -- so it utterly fails to
measure productivity (hence the charts showing that labor productivity growth
is always tiny). Your computer today costs $1000, but it's 1000x more useful
and more complex than that $2000 computer of 30 years ago. In GDP / Labor
Productivity terms, though, it's value hasn't changed at all -- in fact, it's
DECREASED, since your new computer costs less than the old computer!

~~~
lkrubner
You are completely wrong here:

"In GDP / Labor Productivity terms, though, it's value hasn't changed at all
-- in fact, it's DECREASED, since your new computer costs less than the old
computer!"

At least in the USA, the government does adjust for the increasing power of
computers. Indeed, that is one of the arguments that productivity is really
lower than what the government says (and therefore inflation is higher).

Consider this article:

[https://growthecon.com/blog/Manufacturing/](https://growthecon.com/blog/Manufacturing/)

It sets out to debunk this claim:

 _… the numbers are skewed by huge gains in real output in computer and
electronics manufacturing that mainly reflect quality adjustments made by
government statisticians, not increases in real-world sales._

But in fact, the author points out that it is altogether appropriate for the
government to make those adjustments:

"Multi-factor productivity is simply a ratio of value-added to an index of
inputs. Value-added in the manufacturing sector is a mesure of the economic
value of all the goods produced. Not the physical number, the economic value.
And hence manufacturing MFP is a measure of how much economic value that
sector produces - not the physical number of goods - per unit of input used."

And even with those adjustments, productivity growth in the USA has been weak.

If you were to remove the quality adjustments that the USA government makes to
the computer and consumer electronics sector, then productivity has been even
worse, and inflation much higher, and growth even weaker, than what we
typically think.

------
godelski
I see all these talks about AI coming for our jobs and how awesome post
scarcity society will be. But I never really hear people talking about the
transition. Because what do you do when 10-20% of people are unemployed?
Because isn't the end goal to have a majority of labor done by machines? What
jobs can replace? How do we deal with high unemployment?

~~~
cm2187
Industrialisation has wiped out way more jobs than AI can ever wipe out.
Manual labor in farms and factories. But the economy adapted and new jobs were
created.

What I find more concerning is the evolution of the degree of skills required
in that new world. Not everyone is capable to do conceptual jobs, and those
will increasingly be left behind (and vote Trump!).

~~~
godelski
See that's my concern. AI, I think, will first take out a lot of low skill
job. But it is also good at a lot of high skill jobs, such as surgery. Now a
lot of these jobs work well in conjunction, but there is a saturation point of
how many jobs you need for that skill set. AI can reduce that.

So either we need to have a more highly educated workforce, which we do not
seem to be prepping for; some may argue there's a limit to how educated your
population can be too.

Industrialization is a good example though. For example when the cotton gin
was invented Whitney thought it would reduce the number of slaves but didn't
account for the surplus of demand for cotton once it was cheaper. There is a
difference because there was still a human worker involved, but I do think
some areas will see spikes in employment. But will that be enough to offset
the unemployment, and how do we attempt to prepare for that?

------
nsgi
> After all, human errors literally kill over a million people a year, whereas
> the statistical likelihood of dying from a self-driving car is like falling
> off a building and being struck by lightning on the way down.

I don't see any evidence for this. While I'm sure self-driving cars have the
potential to be this safe, the death from Tesla's autopilot suggested the risk
of death from self-driving cars might currently be similar to that of human-
driven cars.

~~~
SubuSS
I think I mentioned this elsewhere: It is not about the exact stat comparison
between self driving cars and humans. It is actually about

1) the perceived and real adaptability of humans. (given an 'unknown'
situation, what does the machine do?)

2) Non epidemic nature of faults in humans. (one version update bug nuking all
teslas - we have seen this happen in software, no reason they can't happen in
self driving software)

3\. Non epidemic nature of coordinated events in humans (GPS satellites fail
or leap seconds occur and suddenly all self driving cars go nuts - usually
doesn't happen amongst humans).

4\. Ethical decision making concerns from machines which are considered 'cold'
and 'calculating' and whether that can be construed as murder. (Would the
machine choose to kill the pedestrian family over car's current occupants in a
purely two choice scenario?)

5\. Degree of 'control' considerations. (Would you enjoy a remote turn off
switch that denies you entry to your house / mobility etc.)

6\. Anonymity considerations. (That's why money economy is still a thing.
Possibility of 3rd party tracking vs. knowing about tracking are two different
things).

FWIW, I am not against either situations, I am just collating info :)

------
dang
We replaced the baity title with a (hopefully) representative phrase from the
article body. If someone suggests a more accurate and neutral title, we can
change it again.

------
aluhut
I wonder what the impact will be where a digital replacement seems very far
away, like in psychology. Will a machine end up being a better psychologist or
worse because he's not a human? It may even end up being better. It will
surely clean up the theory soup there.

~~~
stevens32
I don't see how a robot psychologist wouldn't fall into an uncanny valley.
Though, the automaton from Pohl's Gate seemed friendly enough.

------
davidw
Speaking of which, anyone read Ryan Avent's new book, "The Wealth of Humans" (
[http://amzn.to/2i91FE4](http://amzn.to/2i91FE4) ) ?

Is it worthwhile?

------
constructive
I am one amongst those who don't _completely_ buy into the AI hype, yet.

In the grand scheme of things, AI right now can identify patterns. And this is
possible because everything in the AI universe is tied to a number. Now, this
mathematical view of the world does help solve a lot of problems, such as
security, prediction, recommendations, etc., however, I don't think AI maybe
able to completely, autonomously replace us humans.

For example, computers see the world using sensors that translate pictures
into "pixels". In contrast, we don't see pixels, we see objects. We natively
see objects. Now, in a computer's world, it can still do something called
object recognition, but, again, this is based on the fundamental idea of
pixels and a lot of math around is around this concept, which is vastly
different from how humans perceive the world.

The problem is, because, everything is based on math, there isn't much native
intelligence to a computer and someone needs to impart it mathematically into
the computer's brain. Because, math and intelligence are two different things.
This is why you're able to fool a computer with an A4 sheet printout of your
face but, not a real human. You can only program so much logic into a math
wizard. But, that doesn't necessarily translate into intelligence.

Take cars for instance, I drive a 6 speed manual transmission. In the real
life, I'm also a street racer. I love manual because it gives me full control.
Right when I'm about to hit the corner, I downshift knowing in advance (based
on what I saw minutes earlier "objects" in front of me, not pixels) that there
is a curve ahead and I may need to reduce my speed in 3 seconds, after which I
will need the full power available to overtake the guy infront of me. With an
automatic car, first you must brake, then the system will downshift for you,
and then you hope it doesn't upshift in the wrong instance leading to a window
for others to over-take you. Where is the intelligence in that?

I recently saw a Tesla auto-brake even before an accident happened. That was
cool. But, let's say you're in a situation where the car in front of you is
trying to block you so the thieves can then break into yours and steal your
stuff/murder/etc.? This is not from a Hollywood movie, this is something that
is very common in some parts of Asia. IF the Tesla brakes at that instance,
you're screwed, probably even dead. So, then you take manual control. But, to
me, all this AI isn't real AI unless the computer can understand the context
of what's happening around you and reacting accordingly.

When I narrated this to a friend, his first reaction was "How can you expect a
computer to..do this?" I don't care, because I, as a human can do all this. My
friend's way of thinking is our problem - Starting out with the limitations of
what a computer can or cannot do. Instead, we should be asking "If I can do
this, why can't my computer?"

And until a computer can really do what we can do without assistance, it's all
just a bunch of neat, shiny mathematical algorithms packaged inside a program
doing X number of tasks it knows to do. Maybe some day it will, and I hope
that day isn't very far.

/end rant

~~~
nojvek
you are correct, the article is over hyped. The current AI is very fragmented
and computers can't do we do very easily. On the other hand computers do stuff
very easily that we find very hard. As computers approach to things we do
easily this is where it gets scary. Its like they have a super power over us.

What if someone were to deploy a virus into all Teslas. If you identify a
human, then go identify them as a threat and go full speed at it. A simple
tweak in the algorithm makes all teslas man hunters.

------
shadytrees
people's underestimation of how i can spin out one anecdote about myself into
a caustic vision of the future

------
gtrubetskoy
If your job is creative, you have nothing to worry about.

~~~
krapp
Tell that to the rug weavers of a century ago.

Creative work will be automated as well - at the very least most production
work and all acting will be, since all of the sets and actors will be entirely
digital as soon as it becomes feasible. We've already seen the beginnings of
that, and software generated music, literature and art already exist. Entire
multimedia campaigns centered around a single property could be generated and
distributed by AI at once. The movie, the novelization, the soundtrack, the
video game, heck even the sockpuppet accounts shilling it online - all of that
can be automated.

Creativity isn't magic - any human process can be simulated with sufficient
power, and made efficient and automated with sufficient time.

~~~
pmyjavec
What's going to be the value of mass produced art work? Will teens just attend
concerts with robots playing guitars? Will kids just give up learning music
because a computer can do it ? If that's the case, there's probably not going
to be much incentive for people to get out of bed.

The point of creativity is not about money (though people think that's the
case), it's really about expression. Sure you can monetize the product, but
that's not what happens when people go out dancing together. It's about
community, communication and enjoyment.

Besides, who is to say that people wouldn't actually prefer a hand crafted rug
created by a master craftsperson? Or watch their daugher play a concert?

We have mass produced rugs in our house now, but if I could afford it, I would
have the hand-crafted rug, they're really nice.

------
coldcode
I get to program the robot. Therefore my job cannot be taken.

~~~
bigdubs
Everyone says this until their job is taken, in this case by automated code
generation directed by a product manager.

~~~
rhizome
We've had CASE tools for almost 50 years.

~~~
bigdubs
We've had computers for 60 some odd years as well, but only recently are they
driving cars for us.

~~~
rhizome
Like CASE tools, not for lack of trying!

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_autonomous_cars)

