"AI will lead us into the mother of all tech revolutions. The last time anything came close was around 1900, when the automobile, telecommunications, the airplane and mass electrification all came together at once, radically changing the world from the late 1800s to the 1920s'


Humanoid robot bartender "Carl" fills a cocktail glass with spirits to prepare a drink for a guest at the Robots Bar and Lounge in the eastern German town of Ilmenau, July 26, 2013. An Oxford University research paper estimates that half of all work done by humans can be done better, faster and cheaper by robots

Fascinating article. Over a year ago i started investing in ROBO which is a global robotics and automation Index ETF.

http://www.newsweek.com/2016/12/09/robot...ing-526467.html

I have never understood how they expect the "unwashed masses" to pay for anything when there aren't any jobs left for them to get money to pay for it anymore. Not everyone is PHD material and that pool of jobs is not that large anyway.


Wheels

Read all of the article as it goes into detail as to how in the past technology actually created more jobs and wealth than it destroyed and elevated many, many people into a more prosperous future

I did not read the thread, only the headline.

Here is a true life story that happened today and my opinion of the headline.

My renter was layed off (spelling?) from from his job because the brick and mortar store, who is also a mail order distributor, has suffered lower sales and profits.

Since we are both older and in the motorcycle industry, were were lamenting how ones ability to earn a living in this field is changing. He is in the retail side of a medium size distrubuter and I am self employed,mobile mechanic. We were talking about our friend who died and his parents KTM store could not have a negotiated transfer of the dealership because of KTM's abandonment of the mom and pop store.

We both laughed when the conversation turned to the internet postings of poor customer service and dealership charges for inexperienced techs from "schools" who could not fix the problem.

True but that economy needed workers whereas this new economy is creating its own.


Wheels

Telsa - one of the most advanced robotic automotive assembly lines - click & watch the video
https://www.wired.com/2013/07/tesla-plant-video/

Good question wheels. There's talk right now about people who lose their job due to automation to receive some kind of "minimum guaranteed income" that is of course backed by public funds. Some economists and politicians have suggested a "robot tax" levied on companies in order to make up for the fact that a government can't collect income tax directly from a robot.

U need money to buy food, shelter. If robots grow and distribute your food, and they harvest, transport and build your shelter with these materials, what would you need money for?

Even medical care can be administered by robots. You know, when your fat tub of lard finally gives out on you from sitting around all day eating doritos.

That's a valid point but the only way that would work is if ALL low skilled/low income workers benefit from that. If there are some jobs that can't be roboticized you will have a hell of a time trying to get people to do them unless they are offered some additional perks.

It's always very difficult to predict the future but I can easily foresee a future where all low skilled/manual labor is automated while higher skilled/creative jobs will be done by humans but will require a high level of intelligence and education.


Like what wheels alluded to in his post, not everyone has the brains to be an engineer or is Ph.D material.

There are certain medial functions that can be programmed and automated but robots can't do medical R&D unless we are talking about sentient robots and if they do become sentient that opens an entirely new can of worms.

There's the additional problem that people without an (or an extremely low) income tend to not purchase "unnecessary" products. Which in turn means companies sell less of their products, which means they'll need to lay off employees, which in turn means even less people with an income.....you see where this is going.

Siemens CEO Joe Kaeser - hardly a socialist - recently said some form of unconditional basic income will be inevitable in the near future. He did not say who is going to pay for that, though.

Of course he didn't because I'm sure he knows deep inside that the tax will fall mostly on the businesses.

If robots really take off, then we would be living retired lives since we are born... nothing to do, nothing to work to pay for, everything is done for us and thus free, who cares about money when nobody is asking for it to do a job.... and it will get boring.

Humans don't like to be bored, so I expect either big advances in all sort of sciences, people having children like rabbits :), and/or highly stinky crap happening, of the violent variety.

I'm sure there are some people who would pursue their artistic/creative passions if they did not have to work for a living but let's be honest, that's not most of the population. Like you said, I think most people would be bored after a while and would be lost without having a concrete purpose.

On the contrary, it wouldn't be a world of retirees, it would be a world of nobles.

It would be nothing but palace intrigue without palaces. Dangerous Liaisons would be a user manual for life.

Watch The Animatrix segments on how the world of the Matrix came to be. Robots did almost everything for everyone, people became hedonists, they treated the robots like slaves, then the robots evolved the ability to fight back.
More to it than that, but that's the basic thread.

However, yes, there is a self-defeating aspect to these business runners continually trying to reduce their overhead (head count) while increasing sales. If ALL companies did that, then there are few paid workers who can afford to buy their products and the companies will collapse for lack of sales while the people all go broke.




The Jedi Master

What also is likely to happen though is that since advancements in AI and robotics will continue to do away with a lot of boring & repetitive manual labor across many business sectors which in turn will free up people to pursue trades requiring more education and training. In the longer term picture .... humans will have elevated themselves even further from the toils of manual labor.

There is no stopping it .... everywhere you look now you see it coming. Artificial intelligence will revolutionize human societies in some ways we can predict and perhaps in others we can't and it will likely happen fairly quickly at this point.

that little iRobot Roomba vacuum cleaner is only on the shores of a coming brave new world

Nope. It's not politically correct to say but a significant portion of the population doesn't have the required IQ to be anything more than a custodian, dish washer or retail register worker. It's simple genetics. The ONLY types of jobs they can do are the jobs that robots will be taking over eventually. Thus, they are the ones who will be needing that "minimum guaranteed income".

Well can we then say that the custodian and dish washer can be trained to supervise the robots to ensure they are doing their jobs and to notify operations if they stop working or he spots some other issues ? While the robots are busy working the custodian could be reading Shakespeare

The way neural net AI is going, as long as they are successful
in producing the hardware now in development which can deploy
billions of neurons consuming femtowatts of power such that
an AI will draw no more power than a human brain (~20W), the
AI will be able to easily outcompete humans at all the PhD
level tasks as well, in about 20 years, maybe less.

...Once you get to a certain point, you go over the edge, and
things snowball, as the AI gets sufficiently clever to be set
to work creating the next generation of AI, and they're cheap
to build and operate and happy to run 24/7. At some point it
will become important to conceal the fact that we've completely
lost the ability to keep up with what it is they're coming up
with.

And when the jobs go, do you really think the rich will share their wealth with the jobless? Let's not get too deep into other political issues. The very subject of this thread opens it to philosophical/moral/economical and political discussion but let's keep it away from blatant politics.


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I gotta finish this novel. Only a few chapters left...