The coming ludite apocalypse

[d00mGuArD]

Yes but the human race has an overall net growth in population in a globalized world with immigration we have to factor in the whole

Well, countries that have high automation will have higher unemployment, so it makes sense for them to have as little immigration as possible. They will need less population, not more. They may even end up with emigration as people may go back to their countries if they are unemployed. Probably countries will give incentives to encourage emigration (or they won't offer them incentives to stay), if they reach high levels of unemployment as automation rises

Automation and lower birth rates go hand in hand. Maybe by accident but it happens, and I see it as a potential (partial) solution to the future unemployment. Emigration may be another potential solution

tl;dr:
Automation = Less jobs. Low birth rates = Less people. Emigration = Less people
Less people + less jobs + emigration, should balance things out a bit

[StayTuned]

Society, workfields, life will adapt as it always does. Things just get more complex but it's nothing to be afraid of.

When steam engines where invented during industrialisation in the 18th century people feared for their jobs, when PC's where invented they did, etc...

The truth is you will more likely just become an operator on a more complex job, i.e. while you where only trained to operate the handle of a machine in past your are now also trained to program it.

What if you're too stupid to program, and that's the reason why you were operating the handle in the first place?

[Deleted]

What if you're too stupid to program, and that's the reason why you were operating the handle in the first place?

That was what's been kinda proven via tony Blair's initiative we have more degree's than any generation yet still the same shortage of doctor's engineer's and scientists. Not every one can do it and not every one who can wants to. They would rather do art even though careers in that field are far less than the number of applicants :/

Study have found that intelligence is a combination of genetics and environment you need the genes and a good stable upbringing that fosters intellectual growth a relatively rare combination hence why we aren't all doctor's engineers and scientists and why we can't all be. The world will always need roles for the averedge and below averedge

[melodramocracy]

It's ironically delightful to realize that the ultimate goal of capitalistic efficiency (no headcount) makes the very same economic model unsustainable. Robots, unlike employees, do not spend money.

It will happen in small enough chunks that the transition won't be as shocking as one might think, but the puritan ideal that everyone 'needs to earn a living' absolutely has an expiration date on it. And that's a good thing. Humans do not, and should not, exist to slave most of their waking hours away making an extreme minority wealthy. The competitive aspect of capitalism has ensured that many great ideas were sidelined for fiscal reasons, and I suspect that society would be quite different if that weren't the case.

Baby steps will include, but not be limited to: dropping the work week from 40 to 32 hours, UBI, federally mandated employee sabbaticals.

[Independent voter]

Universal basic income and a general shift toward creative/cultural jobs rather than menial/labour. Writing, music, making games, movies, art, etc.

You assume AI won't be able to do any of these things.

[melodramocracy]

Universal basic income and a general shift toward creative/cultural jobs rather than menial/labour. Writing, music, making games, movies, art, etc.

Society has already established the value of most music / creative endeavors at 0. Unless housing suddenly becomes free, you aren't going to see a much higher percentage of artistic endeavors than you do now.

How society views money itself will need to change eventually.

[Raakel]

What if you're too stupid to program, and that's the reason why you were operating the handle in the first place?

It's not that average people stay stupid as they where 100 years ago. Their skills and knowledge evolves as well. Sure there might be the ones that will only be able to operate the handle but in the future that would be even less. You have to see it in a wider scope.

[melodramocracy]

Society, workfields, life will adapt as it always does. Things just get more complex but it's nothing to be afraid of.

When steam engines where invented during industrialisation in the 18th century people feared for their jobs, when PC's where invented they did, etc...

The truth is you will more likely just become an operator on a more complex job, i.e. while you where only trained to operate the handle of a machine in past your are now also trained to program it.

The difference this time around is that the operator is being taken out of the equation.

The invention of the cash register in the late 1800's meant that someone had to build all the parts for them, repair them, and you still needed an individual operating it.
The self checkout register needs no operator, or, at the very least, one person can overlook many of them. That sort of thing is why analogies between the IR and modern automation fall flat.

Effective automation is absolutely a net job loss.

[cuafpr]

some form of UBI when we are not longer a resource scarce race... Those that make things will have to accept the fact that in order to make money for themselves they need to have buy their stuff, and if they are not employing workers, they must support a system that pays people a form of UBI.

[Ealyssa]

Become a multi-planetary species, with aspirations to spread out among the stars. This is our future and our destiny.

That doesn't solve the problem, like at all.

[Violent]

- - - Updated - - -



The lidites lost because they were the minority. If it's the majority redundant and rising up that's a different story yet to be told.

I'm sorry but No.... Luddites will always lose, and they always have. This same exact scenario has played out through-out history, over and over again.
It was the same thing when the "Written" word came out, "opposing" the "Spoken word".


A lot of people thought it was the end of honorable actions, people motivated to do the "right thing" due to giving your "word".
They tried burning down printing houses, calling books "evil" and "lies".

Luddites lose because they are meant to lose. You cannot stop or hinder progress, and if you try to, it will steam-roll right over you.

[Raakel]

The difference this time around is that the operator is being taken out of the equation.

The invention of the cash register in the late 1800's meant that someone had to build all the parts for them, repair them, and you still needed an individual operating it.
The self checkout register needs no operator, or, at the very least, one person can overlook many of them. That sort of thing is why analogies between the IR and modern automation fall flat.

Effective automation is absolutely a net job loss.

If you just reduce the example to that one operation / machine you might be right but in reality the whole workfield shifts and changes to something new. It's not a static setting and that's what I meant with wider scope. People said jobs will be killed for decades and here we are near full employment (in my country) with lowest unemployment since almost 30 years. A few decades into the future you'll simply do a completly different job than today.

And you can place a stupid worker into a complex environment as long as the tools he operates are smart enough. And I guess that's what's going to happen.

[Deleted]

If you just reduce the example to that one operation / machine you might be right but in reality the whole workfield shifts and changes to something new. It's not a static setting and that's what I meant with wider scope. People said jobs will be killed for decades and here we are near full employment (in my country) with lowest unemployment since almost 30 years. A few decades into the future you'll simply do a completly different job than today.

And you can place a stupid worker into a complex environment as long as the tools he operates are smart enough. And I guess that's what's going to happen.

thing is were talking AI here. something that can do any job better than any human.

[Independent voter]

Which is why I think Lafargue's solution is ultimately the best. Every work that can be cut down to multiple shifts SHOULD be, then we have people working for 2-3 hours a day so they at least feel somewhat productive. And yes, you are right that ERP can cut down management a lot (though it's not as easy on all forms of management, I've been trying to obsolete myself for years now and while I am slowly getting there, it's not at all close) the problem remains that what works does have to be done cannot be easily split into shifts. And the same is true for several fields, experts of any kind working in R&D while they certainly work in collaborative environments still need to work long shifts to get their work done as soon as possible since R&D usually increases aggragate utility; that is at least unless we are talking about a future with AGI which could replace as entirely in R&D but I am not at all convinced this is a viable alternative (that doesn't get society destroyed).

But giving humans something to do, show up at a job for 3 hours a day, when there is no real purpose behind the job, it's just busy work, isn't going to give people a sense of self worth.

[Mihalik]

sip

How do we avoid society collapsing?

The "liberal solution" is not a "nation of scientists" but https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income combined with a service and a creative economy.

[Deleted]

In the next 100 yrs we will face

I'll be dead by then, and maybe everybody will.

[Gravity2015]

We stop acting like it's not going to happen and burying our heads, and work to adapt and work to reinforce what is important about the details of humanity and our experiences not the bullshit people cling to because of simple selfish nostalgia.

the vanilla classic server forum is that way ---- >

haha i kid, i kid.

Truthfully I fear automation and how it will change the way we live ..

[Zelk]

automation is good, automation being controlled by the rich is catastrophic.

[Torrasque]

Luddites will always lose.

^This. The nature of new technology is to adapt, either at the personal level or the governmental one to make sure that your population doesn't have its economy destroyed from automation claiming both skilled and unskilled workloads from humans. On the long term, it is inevitable, most to all labor is threatened by automation in one way or another and automation is increasing speed of its implementation faster and faster as time goes on.

[Narwal]

I'd like to make a post about something greatly plaguing my mind.

We live in a world where automation / ai is advancing at a faster and faster pace we see it every day in our local supermarkets with self service tills, self service petrol pump's and its only set to get more prevalent. Now on the face of it this seems like such a great thing but we forget for every self service till that's 1 job no longer needed imagine a whole supermarket that's run by only 2-3 humans?

In the next 100 yrs we will face a world where the majority of the population will be redundant as all minimum wage jobs will be automated. We have seen through Blair's university for all initiative that intelligence isn't learnt but a combination of nature and nurture so we can't create the liberal solution of a nation of scientists. So when the majority are unemployed we know from history civil unrest follows.

How do we avoid society collapsing?

I've come to the conclusion that the doomsday you're talking about is not realistic. Looking through history this story has been told several times over. At one point, 90% of people in the US were farmers. Technology improves efficiency and reduces the need for the jobs that a great number of people are doing. As those jobs die, people filling those jobs age and die as well. Younger people are raised with the new jobs in mind, and go into those fields. This is the cyclical pattern of progression.