
Have you had the “AI talk” with your kids? - cyanbane
https://anxiousrobot.net/have-you-had-the-ai-talk-with-your-kids-a276c672e549
======
deftnerd
I have three children with my wife and we decided to teach our kids the hard
way how to lower expectations and survive the last year.

We quit our jobs and moved to Puerto Rico and moved to a mountain top in the
center of the island. Our goal was to show them what life is like in most
other parts of the world where people struggle.

They run around and play in the forest, help tend the garden, and learn from
us, books, and exploration. It's been our year of "disconnecting" from the rat
race and learning how to thrive as a family of 5 on under $1200 a month.

We're packing up and moving to Ithaca, NY at the end of the summer but I hope
none of us go straight back to a consumer-based lifestyle even though we'll
have the income to do it.

When regular employment dries up and all they have is self-sufficiency, maybe
they'll now have the tools to be content.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
I hope you enjoy Ithaca. If you want to avoid cookie cutter consumerism, here
are a few suggestions:

-Join a farm share. We have a zillion around here and it helps plan out meals ahead of time instead of being pulled into the event horizon of Wegmans.

-Speaking of, consider getting a meat freezer and hunting for deer. We have way too many and venison will last you for months. Just be mindful of your weapons - IIRC rifles are banned in Tompkins County.

-Don't take off the snow tires until at least May. Trust me on this.

-If you need contracting done, look to the Mennonites first. They work hard, they're affordable, and it's real quality.

-Take vitamin D supplements. The sun doesn't exist here.

~~~
deftnerd
Excellent suggestions, thanks!

We're looking at renting a house at the Ithaca Eco Community to help the kids
with socialization and to continue the intent to let the kids open the door
and just go out and play with friends in nature. One of the other benefits is
that there are lots of other residents that grow food and they let you set
aside land to grow your own stuff.

We're not really hunters, but it's never too late to learn. We'll get a
freezer and probably try to find a local hunter willing to let me pay for
processing in exchange for half of the meat.

Excellent suggestion about the Mennonites. Our goal is to buy some land within
10 minutes of town and build a small cabin during our first year. Then we'll
use that as a stepping stone to build a real home over a few more years,
depending on disposable income. We don't like financing things.

~~~
rm_-rf_slash
Great plan! If you don't plan on hunting you can get a cow/half cow easy.

Best place to buy land is to the east in the Dryden/Freeville area. Mostly
because it's cheap and it has good bus connections. Anything in the town or
city of Ithaca is (seriously) at San Francisco levels of cost relative to
average income. The real house might be best placed to the south in the Danby
area, since it's also cheap and there's a lot of south hill development (past
IC) being planned, so the value is gonna go up in the next few decades. It's
also the best way to get to New York (south via Owego).

I hope you enjoy the most good enough place in the world :)

------
kaosjester
Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew McAfee, two MIT economists, recently wrote a book
about this, called The Second Machine Age (here:
[http://www.amzn.to/0393239357](http://www.amzn.to/0393239357)). We're
teetering on the edge of economic shifts, and we have a lot of questions we're
going to need to ask about how people will live in a world where jobs simply
aren't available.

When 60% of the workforce is unemployable, either there will be massive
unemployment, and the crime, poverty, and starvation associated, or there will
be a massive paradigm shift in how we think about employment, money, and
scarcity.

I'm hoping we get to the latter before the former.

~~~
dnautics
50 years ago, society operated just fine with (to a first approximation) 50%
of society not working. What happened was we had created an political
structure and economy where the metric of "employment" became something to be
optimized and effectively achieved an economic system driven to optimize that
one number (mostly by screwing the poor) [0].

1) obsessing about employment numbers is exactly the problem.

2) it will be catastrophic unless we change our economic system.

[0] I'm talking about the weird "dual mandate" of the central banks -
"maintain employment numbers" and "keep inflation in check": Mostly they have
chosen to attack the first with policies encouraging positive inflation,
occasionally ignoring the second altogether. A great way to keep employment up
is to require people to get jobs in order to stay on a compounding treadmill
of currency devaluation. So we see a lot more people entering the workforce
too, with collateral damage that families now have to have two working
parents, single parents can barely support their children, people go into
massive debt to get past the first jobs gatekeeper (college) etc.

~~~
thevibesman
> 50 years ago, society operated just fine with (to a first approximation) 50%
> of society not working.

Are you referring to the fewer women in the workforce 50 years ago? If so,
with the increase of women in the workforce during and after WWII, I think
"50% of society not working" sounds like a rough overestimation.

~~~
dnautics
sorry, maybe 50 years is a bit too low, but yes that is the general gist.

------
scalio
The solution is obvious: education. Education, education, education. Making it
a truly common good will require a massive shift in the way most people are
brought up in the west, which is why it won't happen over a couple years but
rather over a couple generations, which is why it's high time we got going.

Once you can _do things_ in and with your head, the world becomes your
playground. Once the kids understand that hurting people in any way is
literally senseless, that the civil servant state and nine-to-five work is
destroying intellect, once they realise the awesomeness that lies within that
big melon everyone of us is carrying around, I think humanity as a whole can
get out of this mess properly.

And I think enlightment is the _only_ way humans are going anywhere other than
destruction, by whom- or whatever it may be. The consumer (a.k.a. mind-
numbing) industry everybody seems to be so happy about is definitely _not_ the
way to go. Forgive the metaphor, but plugging everybody into the matrix and
feeding them bullshit 24/7 just to keep them _happy_ is not how we can stay on
top of things and our intelligent machines. If the complex machinery that is a
Human is reduced to a consumer, it is of no value to electronic machines out
to solve the galaxy's problems (other than maybe as an energy source ).

It seems as though we won't be going anywhere far away from the solar system
for a while, so instead let's go deep. Let's go into ourselves and discover
the worlds inside that nature has provided us with.

~~~
Animats
_" The solution is obvious: education. Education, education, education."_

That's the traditional answer. It's obsolete. We've already reached "peak
school", where sending more people to college doesn't pay off. (Especially if
you have to pay for the schooling with loans.) About half of new US college
graduates are not doing a job that requires their education.

Teach someone to do something, now one person can do it. Teach a computer to
do something, now millions of computers can do it.

~~~
scalio
Sorry, I did not mean more, but better education, so that by the time you get
out of school, you can use your brain. That includes for example little things
like reading food stickers to judge wether the ingredients are appropriate or
not. In that context, I'm thinking about common sense, really. Now, common
sense can't be taught, but it can be destroyed with pointless exercices, of
which teaching programmes are chock full of.

Once you have a certain base knowledge (which wouldn't necessarily be the same
for everyone, not sure about that), the brain, if given the freedom to do so,
starts exploring possibilities, all by itself. Children need to have
interesting, fascinating things to play with. Learning the tools then becomes
part of the games and starts happening automatically.

> sending more people to college doesn't pay off. (Especially if you have to
> pay for the schooling with loans.)

That's an economic problem, i.e. one humans have created themselves, thus it
can, with the appropriate effort, be solved. In the perverse case of american
student loans, it's just one issue in a whole system that cannot be profitable
for more than a tiny fraction of its constituents.

> About half of new US college graduates are not doing a job that requires
> their education.

So now that AI is taking over, let these people finally do something with
their knowledge that they enjoy. (edit) That means stop with this productivity
madness. Creativity, be it graphical, musical, philosphical, mathematical,
whatever, is not productive. Let the machine be productive, let the human mind
roam free.

> Teach someone to do something, now one person can do it. Teach a computer to
> do something, now millions of computers can do it.

We are still a long way off artificial human intelligence, for a very simple
reason: we do not understand ourselves. How do you plan on replicating our
intellect as long as the same is misunderstood?

~~~
iofj
> So now that AI is taking over, let these people finally do something with
> their knowledge that they enjoy

Because that's not a Nash equilibrium. Translation: if you do this you're
dead, because anybody can come in, give a slight nudge to this system and
it'll topple over entirely.

> We are still a long way off artificial human intelligence, for a very simple
> reason: we do not understand ourselves. How do you plan on replicating our
> intellect as long as the same is misunderstood?

Sure but most of the misunderstanding that we know existed came from
OVERestimating human intellect. Not from underestimating it.

Example: chess.

------
zer00eyz
Presently I think we undervalue creative endeavors.

Something like this: [http://www.wired.com/2016/05/mysteries-chickpea-water-
magica...](http://www.wired.com/2016/05/mysteries-chickpea-water-magical-
substitute-eggs-no-really/) springs to mind as an example.

Are there going to be unemployed truck drivers, and ditch diggers... yes. Will
there be a larger place for craftsmenship, and art, I would sure hope so. The
question is how we get through the transition.

~~~
maaku
You're assuming machines can't be creative.

~~~
AdamFernandez
While they may one day be 'creative', I feel this will be the last bastion of
human capability beyond AI. Luckily, the interesting thing about creative
endeavors is that they are often a unique synthesis of many things. AI may
create wonderful art, music, entertainment, etc., but this does not mean
things created by humans won't still be valuable to other humans. Things would
just be created in parallel and in communion with AI. That being said, the
percentage of the population that can 'create' for income/profit may be very
small. Hopefully by that point, we will create for the intrinsic value of
creating and sharing, and not for money.

------
bitJericho
My son is young and being silly he said he could drop out of school to become
a truck driver for a relative. I had to break it to him that by the time he
started to get somewhere with such a job he'd become unemployed due to self
driving trucks!

------
swalsh
A machine probably isn't going to make unique hand-made tables. There's a
trend right now, we mock hipsters for their love of "artisinal" products....
but in an age where machines make everything the same, I think people make
things that aren't. If you just want a table, you can go to ikea and get the
machine made table that everyone else who doesn't care bought too. If you want
that "one good" product, you can ask an artist to make one. Or you can find a
place with tools, and make it yourself.

To me the future is one where we all have access to the basics, and you choose
to have a few things that are of quality.

The catch is, making things by hand isn't very profitable. I think a minimum
income paid for by machine "owners", distributed to everyone frees normal
people find the work they LOVE instead of just "work".

If I didn't have to worry about money, i'd split my time between the woodshop,
and designing a new programming language.

~~~
Johnny555
Well, no, the machine will make custom tables that look just like the "unique
hand-made table" at a fraction of the price, with customization, so if you saw
a table that you like but you wanted yours to seat 6 instead of 4, you upload
a couple pictures of the table, and tell the machine to replicate it with a
larger tabletop.

Some people will still pay the artisan to create the table, but most will
continue to take the cheaper route.

~~~
spc476
There's still creativity though. In one video
([https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc907FbLK4U&t=3m30s](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dc907FbLK4U&t=3m30s))
the woodworker is using electricity to obtain a unique burn pattern in some
wood (the details of which aren't given, sadly). This is something I would not
have thought of doing.

Could this be automated? I guess, once someone has thought of it. But could
the thought of this be automated?

~~~
qbrass
>(the details of which aren't given, sadly)

Looks like he's using an electric stick welder clipped to some nails driven
into dampened wood.

------
calhoun137
>> "and rehashing that tired trope about how old jobs that got displaced by
new technologies eventually were replaced with new, but different jobs we
couldn’t fathom at the time.

That’s not the case this time. This time it’s different."

I guess the point here is that the author cant fathom new job types in the
future, so therefore there will be no new job types in the future. Glad we got
that one settled!

This argument has been going on literally for hundreds of years. Just because
the author cant fathom new job types proves nothing.

People lose jobs because of decisions made by other people. Science will not
ever come to an end, and there will always be new job types because of that.

Just imagine when commercial space travel becomes a serious thing. They will
look back and say "did you know once a month they used to argue on HN about
how in the future there will be no jobs? They were so silly because they didnt
know about space travel."

And then someone else will say "yea they were wrong then, but this time its
different..."

~~~
neogodless
We already see hints of previously unfathomable jobs.

OK, so in Wall-E, no one did squat because the ship was self-contained and
fully automated. But let's ponder the world that exists somewhere between
today and Wall-E.

Entertainment is a profession. It's "kind of a rare one" right now, but it's
becoming more and more of one. Whether you're "YouTube famous" or "that kid on
Vine" or you've got a Twitch channel that makes you money, people pay just to
watch other people _be entertained_ or do something "useless" but somehow
interesting.

Obviously, the bigger question in that article was "how money will be
distributed and exchanged." Can a huge plurality of people be "Wall-E
entertained" sustainably, while some do "critical" jobs (if there are any
critical jobs that are still done by humans - hardware/network maintenance,
software programming, will the vision of the future be determined by humans or
AI?)

~~~
CocaKoala
How are the people supporting the entertainers getting money? By doing their
own entertaining?

~~~
neogodless
Yes - that was a big part of my question. Can the masses simple be entertained
(a la Wall-E) without contributing anything?!

~~~
CocaKoala
I'm not certain you understood my question, or perhaps I misunderstood your
statement.

It seems to me that you're saying a small minority of people will work as
entertainers (and presumably get paid for doing so) while another small
minority fulfills critical functions that can't be automated, and the majority
sits back to be entertained.

What I'm not clear on is where the money comes from to pay the entertainers
and the critical maintainers, if the majority aren't working. The money can't
come from the masses, because the masses aren't employed. Are you suggesting
that in this scenario, it's a post-scarcity society, money is never
transferred at all, and that's why it works?

------
thotpoizn
What strikes me as odd about apocalyptic "the perils of the singularity"
navel-gazing is that we automatically assume that machines, and ONLY the
machines, will improve far beyond our capabilities - perhaps even infinitely.

Why shouldn't we improve as well? Every day it seems there is a new story
about further advances in amazing / fast / cheap / etc. gene splicing
technology, or some new breakthrough in understanding how cancers work, or how
longevity may be achieved, or how to correct color-blindness, etc.

Is it any less presumptive to assert that humans will make ourselves more and
more amazing, as it is to assert that machines inevitably will?

------
davesque
Maybe, in my rosy colored view and after some really serious growing pains,
widespread AI would finally allow humans to pursue art and knowledge without
worrying about the basics.

~~~
civilian
I think it would just be hard to justify pursuing knowledge and art when the
AI will also do that better than you, in it's spare cycles.

I agree that there is a timeless quality to learning sports or arts that are
obsolete, but at some point... it might be kind of depressing.

~~~
davesque
That sort of assumes that the point of doing either of those things is to be
better than everyone else. I personally find the activities alone to be
worthwhile.

Besides, the reality of superior ability wouldn't be anything new. For
everyone of my abilities, it seems incredibly likely that there exists another
human somewhere that might be considered "better" than me.

~~~
civilian
So, with art, I can acknowledge that the point isn't to be better.

But what about collecting knowledge? Sure, you could help analyzing the genome
& biology of a rare butterfly with all your free time. Say, maybe it would
takes computer-assisted humans several years. But the AI could finish it in a
month! Wouldn't you feel silly about that?

------
civilian
I think we should think about Advanced Chess (aka Cyborg Chess) in this
context.
[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Advanced_Chess)

Humans already operate on a very high level of abstraction. I'm not aware of
how my food is being digested, I'm not aware of how my muscles are being
maintained. (Although, come to think of that, I do wish I could direct my
muscles to get swole without going to the gym.) I'm not really aware of every
photon my eyes capture, I'm given a blurry "executive summary" that has the
contrast in the center turned up to 11, and the color spectrum I see has had a
clustering algorithm run on it.

Similarly, executives in a company don't always know what's going on in the
day-to-day of their reports. They have an idea, but they don't actually solve
the problems, and in same cases they don't even know how to solve the
problems.

We use computers to help inform our decisions. As long as we can continue the
path where humans work _with_ AI, we will have some place with them.

------
Nevermark
The people who will reap the rewards of machine work will be those that own
machines, directly or indirectly through corporate ownership, or own valuable
assets, like mining rights or intellectual property.

These people will end up with the lion's share of money.

Then who will the machines produce value for? The hyperrich in this situation
of course.

So a few people will be both the owners and the superrich consumers. From a
purely mathematical standpoint, this will result in a vibrant economy.

From the perspective of the 99% or 99.995% this will be a disaster. But the
history of life is the history of the winners.

The only way to change that will involve a serious redesign of civilization
from the bottom up. I am for that, but human beings don't seem to be well
suited for that task. The mindless muddying of every important political issue
of our times by news, corporations and politicians suggests most of the human
race is going to take a huge hit and then waste its miserable time fighting
about why instead of coming together.

~~~
CM30
And who exactly will buy their products or services if they have most of the
money?

Machines don't buy stuff. Selling only to billionaires isn't much of a market.

There is the idea of universal income, but then that theoretically just keeps
this sort of insanity going longer.

~~~
bdavisx
>There is the idea of universal income, but then that theoretically just keeps
this sort of insanity going longer.

Yeah, that's the real issue, at some point, AI will likely render capitalism
as "unmaintainable" \- but humans aren't very good at changing, and switching
from capitalism to some kind of post-scarcity Star Trek economy is going to
"hurt" too many of the rich and powerful for them to agree to it - so it will
be fought. It will be fought with the armies that the rich and powerful
control - and it will be very, very bloody. I don't think I'll live to see it
(I'm almost 50), but I think it will happen.

------
stevetrewick

      I like to think 
      (and the sooner the better!)
      of a cybernetic meadow
      where mammals and computers
      live together in mutually
      programming harmony
      like pure water
      touching clear sky.
    
      I like to think
      (right now, please!)
      of a cybernetic forest
      filled with pines and electronics
      where deer stroll peacefully
      past computers
      as if they were flowers
      with spinning blossoms.
    
      I like to think
      (it has to be!)
      of a cybernetic ecology
      where we are free of our labors
      and joined back to nature,
      returned to our mammal
      brothers and sisters,
      and all watched over
      by machines of loving grace.
    

Richard Brautigan, 1967.

(Edit, format)

------
fsloth
Well, if we establish a basic income and produce enough to suffice then people
will live as the aristocracy lived the past hundreds of years. Basically
European gentlemen of means did not work.

The major _if_ is the basic income part - if this is established,
psychologically people will adapt to the eternal weekend just fine.

------
tracker1
Two points... First, never underestimate the power of middle management and
custom automation tooling. Second, you aren't really going to be able to
outsource the plumber, mechanic and electrician any time soon.

~~~
swalsh
A plumber is a person who has knowledge of plumbing, tools, and a will to do
it.

What if AR helped people with the knowledge part, the "sharing" economy helped
people with the tools part, and "wanting to save money" helped people with the
"will" part.

~~~
jhallenworld
"Massachusetts law prohibits any one but a licensed professional from
installing, removing or repairing plumbing. The reasons for this may not, at
first, be obvious, but public safety blah blah blah..."

------
valine
I'm looking forward to the day AIs post intelligent comments on Hacker News.
Perhaps there will be a new AskAI section.

~~~
tracker1
I think Microsoft already tried that on twitter... it didn't end well.

