Automation to replace millions of workers in major cities

[Shadowferal]

Taxing the people that still have incomes.

Good luck with that.

[Elegiac]

Good luck with that.

If you like a consumer market economy, that's the only way of going about it. Otherwise a new economic system will have to be devised.

[Shadowferal]

If you like a consumer market economy, that's the only way of going about it. Otherwise a new economic system will have to be devised.

Something new is what I believe will have to happen.
Because until government revenue is secured, automation is going to be a shitty idea.

[PC2]

I thought this already had been established. Employment-to-population ratio is declining (slowly, but it's happening), and population numbers are going up.

How large of a non-working population percentage can be supported with the safety nets already in place, and what can be done to start to expand those? That's the immediate future sort of question that needs to be asked and solved.

Sure but tech should only be blamed if it lowers the actual job amount. The employment to population ratio getting worse means the birthrate is higher than replacement level, which is irresponsible.

[msdos]

I feel like there's too much hate going around on top of huge stigma against being "unskilled" and "poor" simultaneously.

I'm afraid things will be a lose/lose no matter what happens. There's so much hate and greed right now, I don't see automation benefiting anyone but the very top.
And a UBI? Lmao, yeah, sounds great on paper, then start factoring the hate and loathing people have for each other and you can smash that idea.
Safety nets for workers who lose their jobs? I find that to be wishful thinking honestly.

Why would people change the way they treat and perceive people at the bottom overnight? All this speculation is speculation for aliens or some race of being that can actually co-exist with each other and not want to keep a portion of their own people destitute (we always have to have welfare for the handicapped and elderly, it's not going anywhere).
These discussions are a giant elephant in the room, the giant elephant is how no one actually wants to part with any money, only make it and how people want to literally hate those beneath them, just because they can.

[Shadowferal]

Sure but tech should only be blamed if it lowers the actual job amount. The employment to population ratio getting worse means the birthrate is higher than replacement level, which is irresponsible.

Try and get legislated a law that forbids children, or a "one-child" policy.

[PC2]

Because mental processes can't be automated, apparently.

Except Yvaelle implied that billionaires would be running the world. If human mental processes were automated then AI would be running the world, not people.

[Elegiac]

Except Yvaelle implied that billionaires would be running the world. If human mental processes were automated then AI would be running the world, not people.

There's a difference between ownership and administration.

Or do you honestly think the richest people in the world actually work to administer their respective empires, as opposed to hiring people to do the legwork?

[IIamaKing]

Millions will be replaced but millions of new jobs will also be created by new technology. The data shows that job quantity has gone up even as automation got better in the last several decades.

Even if there are millions of new jobs, joe floor sweeper or jack button pusher, is not equipped for them. Some people are janitors.

[Yvaelle]

Maybe, but I don't see how shifting all the power to the govt instead of private individuals solves that issue.

Democratic government is to some degree accountable to the people - private individuals are not. Individuals don't need to be a unified body, because they can be separate little kingdoms with different 'divine' techno-monarchs. No unification of perspective is expected or required, because they can be as gods within their domain. Whereas a government is limited precisely by the bureaucracy and distribution of power that exists today because it consists of many people/citizens.

Consider the US right now - our state department consists of thousands of diplomats and ambassadors and economists and etc - many of whom don't agree with the POTUS's policies - so hundreds of them have left. Essentially the only way a government functions successfully is by appealing to their citizenry (including these government workers) - if it doesn't - they quit out of protest - and our state department collapses (as it kind of is right now).

Without a state department, the military needs to step in to fill the gaps - to play at diplomacy so they don't need to wage wars or violently resolve conflicts - but if the people the government represent become the enemy - presumably an army recruited from the people may end up with massive dissent if told to attack the people: their own cities and families and friends.

With an automated state department where policy and trade is adapted by a soft AI to negotiate and sign contracts that generally hold the spirit of the POTUS's proclaimations - there is no opportunity for dissent, by the citizenry or the government workers. With an automated military, killing a terrorist and killing a citizen have equal opportunity for dissent: none - the robot does what it is told by the trillionaire-king.

So inequality inexxorably leads to tyranny, since any democratic system can dissolve to tyranny - but returning from tyranny to democracy requires meaningful dissent by those supporting the tyrant: and that's impossible in a highly automated society.

If anything individuals are less of a unified body than the govt. I wouldn't really worry until you can automate a military.

The military is one of the leading minds on automation. Drones, robots, AI simulations - most of the funding for all of these types of automation come from national defense budgets. The potential here is to eliminate the human cost of war, at which point war can be waged indefinitely without war fatigue or emotional burdens or draining economic impacts - you can run a peace-time economy with a peace-time news cycle - while still conquering at a rate never before seen.

Naturally, no country wants to be behind in that race - so every nation considers automation a major arms race right now, and in the near future.

So again - not saying the ultimate outcome is necessarily dystopian - I'm generally optimistic - but the potential for a dystopian outcome is not to be downplayed.

[msdos]

Even if there are millions of new jobs, joe floor sweeper or jack button pusher, is not equipped for them. Some people are janitors.

Some people are janitors, but everyone has to take a dump.

People just need to stop condescending down to people, they literally clean poo to survive. You don't know their circumstances, you should just be grateful anyone is willing to clean poo at all.

[PC2]

Try and get legislated a law that forbids children, or a "one-child" policy.

There's no need for that though. Africa is the main place left increasing the population. That's their problem.

[Yvaelle]

Not from automation. Automation is only referring to jobs that are about a physical input. Businesses will still have to hire massive amounts of people based on knowledge and creativity. For example many of the people at Apple who design the next generation of smartphones are getting paid to think, there's nothing physical to automate about those jobs.

Automation for mental tasks is actually the leading automation field lately. Example, lets say building a house requires 4 dudes who earn an average of $50,000 each = $200k.

Performing surgery requires an OR team full of specialist doctors - surgeons, anesthesiologists, OR nurses, etc - lets say 8 people are involved and they earn an average of $150k each (some of the surgeons drag up the average a bunch) = $1.2M

You can build 1 robot. That robot either needs to learn how to build a house - carpentry, masonry, electricity, plumbing, etc - or the robot can perform a team's worth of surgery. Once the robot is complete, it merely costs an appliance's worth of electricity to run (ex. a dishwasher).

The pay-off for building a surgery robot - something brainy and complex - is way higher than building a house-building robot - and actually not all that much more complex. Most of what make surgery difficult is retaining the vast, vast knowledge required to perform on that surgery team in each role - and being able to apply any/all of that knowledge whenever needed. For a robot, remembering it all is the trivial part. Even applying the appropriate algorithms is trivial. The other difficult bit for a human is developing the dexterity, experience, and feel to operate tiny instruments, blind, with your hands inside someones body. For a machine, that's resolved with tiny cameras and precision tools that make this dexterity and experiential component trivial.

So the three hardest things about surgery are trivial to robots - but take decades or even centuries of combined academic study and field experience to perform optimally. Once automated, you fire your entire surgery team, hire a surgery robot, and for the maintenance cost of a dishwasher or drying machine you perform surgeries that would take 8 people 8 hours to do.

It's not just surgeons that are in trouble. Most of the big law firms are already applying soft AI to researching precedents. Soft AI for the big firms will sift through 400,000 similar cases in similar jurisdictions, and tell you that in 90% of cases (360,000), a defense based on X, Y, and Z - results in a winning verdict for your client. Law firms used to have entire teams who would sift through dozens of similar cases to find previous precedent - now all those research teams are already gone - replaced by a search engine. You can have a dozen legal experts that earn $100-200k a year and take weeks to get you a legal strategy, or you can have one search engine that will review 10000 times more cases then them and give you an answer in 2/100th's of a second.

Pick any brainy profession, and I guarentee you research is already being done in how to make a soft AI that does their work better, cheaper, faster. Why replace manual labourers when you can replace surgeons and high-end lawyers.

[Deleted]

Automation will replace cheap unskilled immigration, then what do we do with them?

Soylent green.

[Rennadrel]

It's exactly why we don't need immigration, there won't be near as many jobs in 50 years as there are now because every big business continues to put profits before people through means of automation.

[PC2]

There's a difference between ownership and administration.

Or do you honestly think the richest people in the world actually work to administer their respective empires, as opposed to hiring people to do the legwork?

The problem is that you're assuming that you can automate the human mental process without the concept of agency and ownership inside the software. Billionaires could employ narrow AI, but an AI with the complete mental process can't be owned. Or at least no more than a slave owner can completely control their slaves inner thoughts.

[Deleted]

It's not just surgeons that are in trouble. Most of the big law firms are already applying soft AI to researching precedents. Soft AI for the big firms will sift through 400,000 similar cases in similar jurisdictions, and tell you that in 90% of cases (360,000), a defense based on X, Y, and Z - results in a winning verdict for your client. Law firms used to have entire teams who would sift through dozens of similar cases to find previous precedent - now all those research teams are already gone - replaced by a search engine. You can have a dozen legal experts that earn $100-200k a year and take weeks to get you a legal strategy, or you can have one search engine that will review 10000 times more cases then them and give you an answer in 2/100th's of a second.

The problem with law is that there is a lot of vague hidden politics behind them that can throw a case.

[melodramocracy]

Sure but tech should only be blamed if it lowers the actual job amount.

That's exactly what it does. Productivity is on an upward tilt, and has been for a very long time, despite the the E2P ratio dropping. Automation is all about reducing headcount at the end of the day. People are expensive.

The employment to population ratio getting worse means the birthrate is higher than replacement level, which is irresponsible.

It could mean several things. It could be that consumption of 'all things' is slowing down, or that new products simply do a better job at eliminating the need / desire for things they replace. Dunno (it'd be a fun thing to track over the years I suppose)

[Elba]

Yeah, it is.

Nah, it is righteousness.

[PC2]

Nah, it is righteousness.

So if Jeff Bezos(the richest bourgeois) was guillotined that would be righteous to you?

He is making the world a better place with Amazon.