
AI will create 'useless class' of humans - sidko
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2016/may/20/silicon-assassins-condemn-humans-life-useless-artificial-intelligence?sf=owgxvgy
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Udik
I see a lot of comments saying "this happened in the past, and the new
technologies never made the humans useless". Well, maybe a good way to state
the current problem is the following: the aim of this new technology is to
produce _humans_. A potentially infinite amount of them. Running on
electricity instead of food. Needing the space of a box. Without the need to
sleep, socialize, furnish their apartments, look for love and raise kids. _If_
the technology is actually possible, there simply can't be any space left for
old style, flesh and blood humans in the economy.

~~~
bsbechtel
When this happens, costs for virtually everything will more or less go to
zero, because we can make humans to make more humans to make everything else
in our society that costs money. Try to imagine a society where virtually
everything is free...visualize walking around and getting free coffee from
Starbucks, free rides from Uber, free meals three times a day, free
healthcare, free housing, etc. If everything is free, there isn't really a
need for work and income at all. We're much further off from what you are
suggesting than I think many proponents of AI realize, but this would be the
other side of that coin.

~~~
CuriouslyC
You're assuming that human brains and bodies are grossly inefficient. I would
argue that while humans are bad at some tasks, the brain is a fairly efficient
_low-order_ general probabalistic computer, and the body is a fairly efficient
as a highly general object manipulation system. I doubt for highly varied,
extremely low value tasks that robots backed by AI will be significantly
cheaper than humans for a long time, if ever. We're too close to the end of
Moore's law, and energy efficiency is such a survival advantage that life has
almost certainly optimized this variable fairly well.

~~~
albi_lander
Don't forget that natural evolution is a very slow and inefficient process,
essentially driven by randomness, and that there is no such "optimization"
that you describe, only selection. Moore's law may come to an end, but we have
many great things coming such as quantum computing or nuclear fusion.

~~~
CuriouslyC
The natural selection process, when paired with random variation, is a
functional optimization algorithm for things that impact survival. Energy
efficiency very directly impacts survival. Ergo, life has "optimized" energy
efficiency to some degree.

With regards to quantum computing and nuclear fusion, I prefer not to count my
chickens before they've hatched. We may get both (and more!) or we may find
that they are only functional under specific contexts that limit their
utility.

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yehosef
Typo - "AI will expand 'useless class' of humans"

~~~
dalke
Indeed. We have little need now for elevator operators.

But 100 years ago, when steam, electricity, and wide-spread mechanization of
the previous decades had brought huge advantages in efficiency, the thought
was that there would be increased leisure, and the time to pursue the
activities which make us more human, like friendship, raising children,
hobbies, and more serious avocations. Or watching TV, playing video games, and
getting high.

This isn't the "useless class" but the "leisure class." Of course, quoting
from the article:

> Harari, it turns out, has a specific definition of useless. “I choose this
> very upsetting term, useless, to highlight the fact that we are talking
> about useless from the viewpoint of the economic and political system, not
> from a moral viewpoint,”

If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.

~~~
LionessLover
> If you get to pick your definitions, you get to say what you want.

The term "useless" is inherently relative. The universe does not have a
natural position on "usefulness". So yes, you _do_ get to make it to mean
whatever you want it to be. That is not a basis to criticize anyone - any
framework you choose to set a basis is itself arbitrary. Unless you believe in
some "higher purpose", where all discussion ceases to be meaningful because
nothing can be proven and you can claim whatever you want, and the loudest
and/or strongest "wins".

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partycoder
It's not that they will be useless, it's just that their use does not make
financial sense.

AI replaces humans when:

\- AI is able to perform a new human intelligence task

\- Perform at a human level of reliability

\- Perform at a cost-effective level

\- It is wrapped in form of a product or service that makes it easy to
distribute and deploy

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dineshp2
> But our fate at the hand of clever cloggs robots may in fact be worse - to
> summon a class of eternally useless human beings.

Can't help but notice the sensationalist tone.

The author also seems to have a pessimistic view of the future and the role of
humans in it. Certain roles may be replaced by AI and humans will move on to
do different things, but that does not mean it will render those humans
useless. What exactly will humans move on to do is of course an open ended
question, but if history is any indication, it won't be bleak as the author
predicts.

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agentultra
These screeds have one grave misunderstanding: that AI can compete with a
human. It's like apples to oranges.

Alpha Go may have beat the best human player in the world but you can't ask it
to fold the laundry or how it felt about Angela's Ashes.

I think we'll be able to optimize away boring, repetitive jobs and tasks that
require vast numerical and statistical quantities. And that's a good thing.

We'll just need to adapt our economic models away from the indentured
servitude to the Protestant Ethic.

~~~
terhechte
Something I never see answered in these discussions: What are the previous
workers to do, those whose jobs were so simple that a properly configured AI
can perform it faster and better. Every other job that they would be capable
of is just as likely to be replaced by another properly configured machine. If
every possible tasks a person would be capable of handling can be solved by a
specific machine in a better way then what should these people do? I am not
talking about engineers or white collar workers. I'm talking about people who
were unfortunately born with what I'd for a lack of a better word call "low
IQ" though I know that the term and the science behind it is highly flawed.
Currently, those persons are in the vast minority. Only a small percentile of
the human population falls into this category. But as AI gets smarter, year
over year, the minimal job requirement will grow.

I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where not
everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.

~~~
agentultra
First there's a slippery slope there. You presume that all menial tasks will
be taken over by AI or robots. You also assume that some or all people who
presently perform these menial tasks are not smart enough or capable of
performing tasks beyond the menial ones.

The problem I have with that is that economic and political forces often keep
people, intelligent people, in menial jobs for no better reason than
circumstance. There are plenty of smart, capable people with real passions for
music or mathematics who are stuck filling forms in an office because they
need to a job to pay the rent and bills. There are many ways they could have
ended up at that job.

But if they were given the opportunity to be free from that circumstance, what
do you think they would do? If the economic output of the region is the same
regardless, does it matter if they do nothing?

I have a belief that people will find more productive things to do that they
previously never could.

> I, personally, think that we have to accept that there'll be a world where
> not everybody will be able to have a job. And we should prepare for it.

That's what I meant when I suggested we would need to shift our economic
models away from the ideals set out by Max Weber. Criticisms about the
formation of capitalism aside it traded serfdom for indentured servitude. It
allowed us to transform our world and build great things... but I think it's
time is nearing an end.

But yet the greatest opponents to change are those with the most to lose. And
they have quite a lot of money and power.

 _update_ grammar.

------
DarkContinent
Humans with fewer skills than the elite were not pushed out of the employment
market by the invention of dishwashers, laundry machines, or vacuum cleaners.
The invention of AI is hardly different.

~~~
terhechte
A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need
to create a very particular machine. AI is different, you just train it on the
task like you'd train a human worker and that's it. No need to invent a new
machine.

~~~
crdoconnor
>A dishwasher or a laundry machine can do one thing. For every task, you need
to create a very particular machine. AI is different

It's absolutely not. Siri's never driven a car or beaten a human at Go.

~~~
vinceguidry
Even if it was, unless you're saying robots are going to buy and sell things
to each other, all economic activity is oriented around humans. There's no
point to AI without us. As well put a dishwasher in the jungle. The monkeys
might like it, but they sure won't use it to wash clothes.

~~~
thomasahle
> There's no point to AI without us.

But all of us? That's where the class thing comes in.

~~~
vinceguidry
If AI is truly useful, then it'll be put to use for everybody. Technology has
been dicking around with our social classes for thousands of years.

You could argue that technology is the whole reason we have social classes in
the first place.

You have to ask yourself what's so different about AI. It's an interesting
question, but none of the more dramatic answers are really unprecedented. It's
a "what is true isn't new, and what's new isn't true," sort of deal.

Is it going to make some of us useless? Then it's going to make all of us
useless, because there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only
the elites. All technology eventually filters out to serve everyone.

~~~
thomasahle
> there won't be any point in just deploying AI to serve only the elites.

Why? If it's the elites that deploy it?

~~~
vinceguidry
Technology is always deployed first by the elites to serve the elites. But
those elites don't live in a vacuum and are never completely self-sufficient.
So eventually they'll want to trade access to their technology for something
they do want.

An example of this is military tech. The US sells surplus military equipment
to anybody that will buy it, even sophisticated kit like F-16s. Naturally,
they keep the best stuff to themselves, you can't buy an F-22 at the moment
for any price. But eventually even the F-22 will be old tech and you'll be
able to buy one.

------
Tistel
In terms of obsolescence, it's dog eat dog within the tech world too. On
Friday, our new COO told the dev team (we were not consulted, just the CEO) of
his plans to move the back office to the cloud (salesforce). Nobody but the
coo knows salesforce. The guy beside me was devops (the guy who deals with
AWS, docker and the server) he was basically made obsolete for the company. I
have the weekend to decide if I want to learn salesforce (some shitty version
of Java ( which is shitty already) called apex) or start looking for a job. So
I have a lot of empathy for the workers who have these automation obsolescence
dropped on them. It will hit us all.

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Tistel
I am a programmer. Its totally possible for this to happen. But, bugs will buy
us time. We are too stupid (for now, a new language or proof system could
change this) to write good enough software to destroy ourselves. Also energy
efficiency. Organic life is crazy efficient at turning food into work (If you
have access to abundant clean water). Give a person a happy meal and they can
walk for days. A robot of the same size/weight/strength will kill it's battery
or exhaust it's fossil fuel tank in a few hours.

The last programmer putting the finishing touches on artificial _general_
intelligence (the one that will put programmers out of work too) just needs to
make sure "love the meat bags who made you" is the second last instruction.
The _last_ instruction is don't alter the second last instruction.

Personally, I would enjoy hiking the west coast trail, drawing and painting
more. I will miss coding through. I love the feeling when it finally work the
way you want it to. The point being: if we are smart enough to automate all
the jobs, we are probably smart enough to provide food/healthcare to everyone
for free (basic living wage or whatever). It's not the end of world. There are
lots of ways to spend your time.

~~~
Houshalter
First, read the article before commenting. This is about automation replacing
jobs, not the singularity.

Second energy efficiency isn't a big deal. A robot army that runs on petrol is
still scary. Energy efficiency has not kept machines from beating humans
physically, at all.

Lastly, it's impossible to code "love the meat bags who made you". AI's do not
take English language instructions. You need to specify exactly what you mean
by "love" and "meat bags", etc, and not make any mistakes at all.

------
scandox
Jack Williamson attempted a kind of exposition of these issues in The
Humanoids (1948), the follow up to his classic story With Folded Hands
([https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands](https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/With_Folded_Hands)).

What's interesting about the book is his attempt to validate a human existence
in which it is not necessary for humans to do anything practical
whatsoever...unless they wish to.

Personally I think we are hundreds of years away from needing to start to
worry about this problem. We're more likely to get destroyed some other way
first.

Fun times.

------
jimmcslim
Always worth linking to Marshall Brain's "Manna" with a title like that;

[http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm](http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm)

------
exit
it could also unleash a lot of currently stupidly-employed people to do what
they'd actually excel at.

~~~
danieltillett
Do we really need more of them?

------
decayy
Every time a new tech emerges someone will always say, that the new tech will
take away human jobs.

The new tech will take away human jobs. But the humans will just go do other
newly created jobs.

~~~
danieltillett
That has been the general trend over time, but AI breaks this trend. The basic
problem is there is minimum wage below which humans can't survive. No such
lower limit exists with AI. At some point every job can be performed for less
by an AI.

~~~
Figs
> No such lower limit exists with AI.

Not true. The price of materials and the energy needed to run it determines
the lower limit on cost for AI. The cost of energy to run computers is pretty
low -- low enough that a lot of people don't really think about it until you
get up to clusters of the size found in computer labs and data centers -- but
it's not _nothing_ either.

I will agree though that the minimum cost to run a super-human AI (once it
becomes available) is likely to be substantially less than the minimum wage
needed to pay humans to do equivalent work.

~~~
danieltillett
I should have been more precise - no such lower limit is known. Given how
inherently inefficient the human brain is in turning energy into output then I
would not want to bet that AIs will cost more than humans indefinantly.

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exratione
Comparative advantage isn't abolished just because the advantage is large.

Economic participation by a class of entities who have a lower capacity for
production than every other class of entities is still useful to all involved.

A great many of the world's prejudices, fears, and passionate causes are
driven by ignorance of basic economic principles, and this is another example.

~~~
Houshalter
Comparative advantage only works if you have something of value to trade. If
AIs automates away your job, then you no longer have anything of value to
trade with.

~~~
exratione
Your comment rather illustrates my point.

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manicdee
A lot of weird stuff happens close to zero. Dropping from $1/loaf of bread to
$0.50/loaf is only fifty cents, which for some people seems tiny. For someone
who doesn't have a job or any assets generating income, the fifty cents means
they can afford to eat.

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andrewclunn
Seems to me that a large section of the population is already at this point
without AI. The other weakness of this argument is that in order to perform
many of the human jobs, the AI will need a robotic body. Human labor will
easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

~~~
mac01021
> a large section of the population is already at this point without AI.

Which section? Just about any able-bodied person can create enough value to
feed/house themselves by washing dishes, stocking shelves, mopping floors,
staring at security camera monitors, etc.

> Human labor will easily win on cost for many of those jobs.

A human will not work a job that doesn't pay their cost of living (or if they
do it won't be for very long because that's not sustainable). If that means
$20k per year, then I would guess robots will have no problem competing on
cost. When the software is ready, anyway. Probably not within 10 years.

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collyw
Management structures in existing companies have already created this in some
places I have worked.

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jasonpeacock
When AI can create prize-winning art (literature, art, film) then I will
become scared, as the only role left will be consumer.

------
hnarayanan
People of leisure!

