

The Robots Are Winning - Thevet
http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/jun/04/robots-are-winning/

======
Animats
The NYT Review of Books has a much better article: "How robots & algorithms
are taking over", about "The Glass Cage: Automation and Us", by Nicholas
Carr.[1] That's about the future of work. Computers are taking over because
they're so incredibly cheap, and now they're getting smarter. Anything a
computer can do, it can now do cheaper than a human. Usually much cheaper.

Yes, people have worried about this before, all the way back to the 1920s.
This time, though, the skill sets of machines are getting much closer to those
of humans. The list of things machines can't do gets shorter every year.
"There is about a 50 percent chance that programming, too, will be outsourced
to machines within the next two decades." The Glass Cage cites a skill study
which analyzes job categories by difficulty of automation.

"Peak factory worker" was reached in the US in 1977. Manufacturing output
continued to climb. (There was a drop in output after 2008, but output has
totally recovered. Without an increase in employment.) The next big event to
watch for is "peak office workers". At some point, the number of people needed
in offices will start to decline.

This is getting more attention now that automation is finally cutting into the
chattering classes. The "college equals lifetime middle class employment"
concept that sustained the middle class in the developed world is dead.

We have plenty of productive capacity and lots of capital, yet can't figure
out how to structure society to cope with that. That's the real problem.

[1] [http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-
rob...](http://www.nybooks.com/articles/archives/2015/apr/02/how-robots-
algorithms-are-taking-over/)

~~~
blumkvist
Yeah the robots will take our jobs.

Just 1 question - finance is the pioneer of commercial application of digital
machines. Not talking HFT here at all. Algorithms in trading stocks/otpions.
Algorithms and programming in valuation in private equity. Algorithms in
insurance and lending. Automation is everywhere. How come jobs in the sector
only grow? Both in the big employers and in new employers.

How about an example closer to the HN crowd - BI. Such a prolifiteration in
self-service BI. You previously had to wait 2 weeks for IT to update the cube,
now you can do your analysis yourself in 50% of those cases. Corporate BI and
reporting jobs should be declining because of this automation, right? How come
the sector is exploding?

~~~
T-A
Not sure about finance:
[http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES5500000001?data_tool=XGtab...](http://data.bls.gov/timeseries/CES5500000001?data_tool=XGtable)

~~~
blumkvist
Oh gees, the financial crisis affected the job market. Shocking...

~~~
T-A
The financial crisis broke out in the fall of 2008. Employment in finance
peaked in 2006, and it has yet to reclaim 2005 levels. I would not be terribly
surprised to see that chart turn down again before it does.

~~~
Animats
Observers of the financial services industry talk about how the industry has a
lot of "self-generated work". If the legal environment of the industry were
rolled back to, say, 1980, the industry would be smaller and much more boring.
From 1934, when the SEC was created, to 1980, the US financial industry was
highly regulated, boring, and had few crises. It also created no billionaires.

------
walterbell
Charles Stross _Saturn 's Children_ and _Neptune 's Brood_ include a theme of
robot slaves. Both are told from the perspective of a robot, with many
variations of free-will override. Stross wrote,
[http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/crib-
she...](http://www.antipope.org/charlie/blog-static/2013/07/crib-sheet-
saturns-children.html), _" A society that runs on robot slaves who are,
nevertheless, intelligent by virtue of having a human neural connectome for a
brain, is a slave society.."_

There's a panel discussion video with the creative team of _Ex Machina_ :
[http://sxsw.com/film/news/2015/video-spotlight-team-
behind-e...](http://sxsw.com/film/news/2015/video-spotlight-team-behind-ex-
machina-discusses-resurgence-ai)

On visual effects, [http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/8/8572317/ex-machina-movie-
vi...](http://www.theverge.com/2015/5/8/8572317/ex-machina-movie-visual-
effects-interview-robot-ava), _" The hardest stuff to track is when someone is
not moving. Because nobody is not moving, they’re moving but really, really
subtlely ... It was the first film I’ve ever done where we did not put a
single greenscreen up ..she had to be mechanically plausible ..things like the
muscles contracting properly, and the various pipes and wiring having just a
tiny amount of jiggle."_

~~~
tormeh
Well, I think the important thing is not whether there is slavery, but whether
there is suffering. If the robots are programmed to be happy as slaves,
_voluntary slaves_ , is it so bad?

~~~
kwhitefoot
You can 'program' humans that way too. Doesn't mean they aren't slaves and it
doesn't mean it isn't bad.

And anyway I suspect that your use of the word suffering implies a rather
narrow definition of suffering that counts only material suffering as
important.

~~~
DougN7
Don't know that I agree. I view computers as Turing machines, which is just a
really fast clock or engine. I don't think my clock can 'suffer'.

~~~
Rhapso
I view people as Turing machines, which is just a really fast clock or engine.
I don't think my clock can 'suffer'.

~~~
DougN7
Turing machines aren't self-aware. And in my opinion, it will be a century
before a computer can truly mimic self-awareness. And even then it's mimicry.

------
kylebrown
> We recommend expanded research aimed at ensuring that increasingly capable
> AI systems are robust and beneficial: our AI systems must do what we want
> them to do.

The author points out that the meaning of this statement hinges on the word
"we". Hasn't the world already arrived at a dystopian future where AI systems
simply maximize revenue and ad clicks for their owners? Whereas "good" AI
would be emloyed "for the people", i.e. to maximize social welfare while
taking into account externalities (poverty and global warming).

The fear is of some future AI which acts only to further its own pathological
interests... but how would that be different from present-day corporate
bureacracies, with business processes increasingly driven by weak (but rapidly
improving) AI? Seems to me that the owners of such systems are the only people
who would fare differently under the two scenarios. But for the vast majority
of the world, their experience would be the same in both cases: exploitation
by autonomous AI, or exploitation by bureaucracy. Changing the parameters that
control the way either one operates is equally difficult.

~~~
eli_gottlieb
>The fear is of some future AI which acts only to further its own pathological
interests... but how would that be different from present-day corporate
bureacracies, with business processes increasingly driven by weak (but rapidly
improving) AI?

It's not that different at all, which is precisely why we need to avoid both
options on this dichotomy. Also, I think you meant to reply to the thread
about the other NYRB article above.

------
narrator
The point of labor is to turn raw materials and energy into useful things and
perforn services. When robots do this, those who own raw materials and energy
will have increasing power.

I would invest in farm land, mines, water and solar panels. In the future we
will have automated mining and prospecting robots that are tied to automated
foundries that are tied to 3d printing and other forms of automated
manufacturing. Within a small area you could have a fully vertically
integrated brick factory or metal chair factory.

In the Soviet Union they once built a iron smelting factory out in the middle
of nowhere near a big iron containing mountain. The engineers said they should
build it near a population center, like in the west. It was very inefficient
in the end because once the deposit ran out they had to ship the iron and
people in to work there. In the future, the factory will be containerized and
move itself around to where it's most convenient and that doesn't have to mean
near a population center, because it will be fully automated.

~~~
bsaunder
Farmland and mines (or the minerals in them) seem to be limited world-wide and
maybe good investments (though we may improve artificial ways to produce food
that are less dependent on land).

Water is a regional thing (for some places it's less of a problem). Not really
sure how one effectively "invests" in water.

Solar is entirely different. I think solar has a great future, but as an
investment, I'm not so sure. It seems highly likely that we will needs lots
more power in the future and it does seem that much of it would come from
solar. Current solar technologies are still relatively young, inefficient and
(relative to future technologies) expensive. Investing in solar at this point
would be like investing in an car manufacturer in the early 1900s.

------
Ygg2
Film critic hulk had an interesting reading of this movie [SPOILERS GALORE]:

[http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/11/film-crit-hulk-
smash-...](http://birthmoviesdeath.com/2015/05/11/film-crit-hulk-smash-ex-
machina-and-the-art-of-character-identification)

Namely that the main character is projecting his own views of what is
considered patriarchal onto another being that's been trapped in a toxic
'relationship'.

------
yongelee
The most important factor I think people are over looking is the fact that it
is HUMANS who have to put in EFFORT and TRY to CREATE these robots. They don't
just spawn from an old female computer. Humans have to put in work to create
these artificial intelligence. We have 100% control over the future of AI.

------
eli_gottlieb
Well, by now, the robots are harder to make than the human workers, and more
expensive -- so they get treated better. Welcome to capitalism.

~~~
walterbell
Raising the minimum wage for humans will make robots more economically
competitive.

~~~
Enzolangellotti
But it will raise the cost of building new robots!

~~~
_rpd
Making robot construction a prime target for automation.

