Could robots eventually make the economy obsolete?

[szputnyik]

Remember when you couldn't even cut & paste, and actually had to play scholar and type out what you were reading in a book?

In our school, you couldn't even type and had to write everything by hand, since it "might have been cut & pasted otherwise", and with writing it by hand, you at least had some exposure to the material at hand while writing it.

[John FX]

The economy? no.

The economy as it is currently? yes.

there will be a market for art and other human forms of creation that will have value purely because they are human made.

[RuBisCO]

The standard Anti-Luddite argument is that as jobs are taken by automation in one field people start working in another field. This is reasonably backed by history but there is no evidence to assume it will hold true indefinitely and significant evidence it is now not holding true anymore.

The introduction of the steam engine and industrial machines first affected agriculture. Automated thrashers, cotton pickers, combines rendering most agriculture jobs obsolete decades to centuries ago. Agriculture employed (or enslaved) over 70% of the America's population back in 1800

Today it only accounts for 2% of the labor force, yet produces enough food for over 60 times the 1800 population (not including food relief or sales to other countries around the world). So if agriculture went from 70% to 2%, all the workers had to go somewhere and they did: into manufacturing. But by 1950 the so called golden age of US manufacturing 35% of the labor force was working in factories, today that number is 9%. Yet US manufacturing has only risen in production and is still the worlds largest manufacturing center in dollar produced.

Today 80% of the labor force in the USA is in the “Service sectorâ€Â, but automation is making inroads in that as well. In both Federico Pistono book “Robots will Steal Your Jobs but that’s OK†and Martin Ford book “The Lights in the Tunnel: Automation, Accelerating Technology and the Economy of the Future†they provide a break down of the most common jobs in the USA today. For example cashiers, 2nd most common job is 2.24% of all American jobs, but now self-checkout lanes are being installed and can cut down the number of cashiers by at least 75%. Truck drivers (the most common job in the USA) are 2.61% but automated trucks will likely start taking those jobs as well. Even if a truck driver is required in the automated truck as backup the driver could sleep behind the wheel while the truck drives to its destination without having to stop so the driver can sleep, allowing fewer drivers to do more deliveries. “No these people will move on to new fields†so the anti-Luddite claims. What new fields are there? In the list of jobs from most common to least you have to go down to 34th on the list to get to a career that has not existed more then 70 years ago: Computer Technican/Programmer at 0.74% of the job market.

Well maybe people working in service today could get work in intellectual and skilled labour fields. Unfortunately there are in fact a plethora of inroads automation is making in those fields as well: pharmacist replaced by robots, software that is replacing paralegals and lawyers in document review, software that can write journalistic sports and basic business reports, image recognition software that replaces radiologist. It is argued that these things augment and assist people in these fields but if automation helps one person do more of a task then would it not mean that now less people need to do those tasks?

Another way to look at this is as a ratio of number of products produces divided by number of people needed to produce said products. Over the centuries this ratio has been going up in general for most products due to automation, but demand went up to match. As a result everyone had been able to get a job even with more and more automation because automation just means more products per producing person. Everyone can be productive because productivity was matched by demand, but can this stay true forever? Every product requires some amount of physical resources and energy to make as well as demand from a limited number of end users. Lets look at energy (as material resources are just a matter of how much energy is needed to to extract, refine and move them): For the last 3 centuries world energy consumption has been growing relatively continuously by ~3% per year. Right now it is at 15×10^12 watts (15 Terawatts), at 3% growth it would be at 150 TW by 2091 or 10 times as much in 78 years! By 2345 our energy consumption would be equal to ALL the energy in sunlight hitting the earth (2.7×10^17 W)! Even if we could produce all that power by nuclear fusion or something the waste heat would exceed solar heating of the planet! The surface temperature of the earth would raise to boiling, literally boiling in just a few years from our activity alone! If we keep projecting 3% growth by the year 3058 humanities energy consumption would exceed the energy output of the entire sun (3.8×10^26 W)! And by the year 3876 humanities energy consumption would exceed the output of every single star in the galaxy (3.8×10^37 W)! Hence why there is no such thing as sustainable growth, it is PHYSICALLY IMPOSSIBLE! Pistono does a good job explaining this exponential growth problem but fails to really connect it to automation, I will now do that.

Thankfully world total energy consumption is starting to stagnate (actually falling in 2009!) and consistently falling in many developed countries. World population growth is slowing (and will hopefully plateau this century, and thus save future generations from mass starvation or heat death as mentioned above) and some developed countries even have negative population growth. But though that may save us from physical limits of energy and matter its not good for production. How are we to produce more products if there is not enough power and raw materials to make them and consumers to buy them? If automation keeps growing the ratio but the number of products can’t keep going up, then number of people needed to make them must go down.

Imagine for a moment a restaurant where the owner gets a machine to replace most if not all the workers, anyone that has worked at a McDonalds as a teenager can tell you that it would not be very hard to replace the assembly line of human burger makers with a machines that cooks the meat paddies, drops them on the bread buns, drops down pickles, lettuce, tomatoes and squirt of condiments. Now lets say the workers ran off to start restaurants of their own using the same model. Thus multiplying the number of restaurants, everyone gets a high paying "job" as a restaurant owner but would there be enough consumers for them all? Agriculture has experience several fold increases in products to producers ratio but the number of consumers has increased to match it so the ratio has increased much less if we look at it from a products to consumer ratio rather the products to producers ratio. Still it increased enough that only a tiny fraction needs to work in that field now. As is Americans are eating way too much, many are morbidly obese and dying of diabetes and heart disease: we would need to institute real vomitoriums to get people to “consume†more food! But this scenario does not just play out with foods. Imagine cellphone makers replace all there laborers with machines, and that magically those laborers got the education to design new cellphones and manage new cellphone companies, with a production to R&D ratio of greater then 100:1, could we all stand to buy 100 cell phones to keep all those new cell phone companies afloat? This logic can be extended to all products all people even the filthy rich don’t buy incredible amounts of stuff like a kleptomaniac on speed! Everyone’s (unless mentally disturbed and/or on drugs) consumption will become satiated with enough supply. And because population growth is slowing and will hopefully plateau production will eventual reach the limit of consumer saturation.

Now some may argue that automation can’t take ALL jobs, well at present and for the near future that seems true. Most automation is done by at best Weak Artificial Intelligence: very “smart†at a specific task and completely incompetent at anything else. The IBM’s Watson supercomputer and DeepQA program can and has trumped the best humans at answering even cryptic questions from memorized knowledge, it certainly is smart at that and will likely replaced tech support workers and research aids, but it can’t create new data, or assemble a product or drive a car. Other WAIs though can do each one of those task from Self-evolving software that discovers new technologiess, to image recognizing factor robots, to self driving cars. Yet WAIs can only do those tasks they are specifically programmed and built for: they can’t think about or are even “aware†of anything else, they have no consciousness. A Strong Artificial Intelligence that could solve or adapt to any problem a human can and/or could qualify as conscious is likely decades away, and some theologians and philosophers say its impossible because of some supposed mystical and supernatural property of the human brain (aka the soul). SAI though is not nessassary: machines don’t need to take all jobs, just enough, fast enough, its simply a matter of automation taking jobs and incomes faster then they can be replaced. Imagine if say 30% of job force are forever safe from automation, that would mean 2/3 of the population would be unemployed and unemployable! If we assume everyone could move to doing what jobs that are left and that somehow those remaining fields could grow to fill everyone’s employment needs its likely most of those jobs that are left would not be high paying or desirable, as is the service sector switch for most workers has had detrimental affects on the economy.

Imagine machines will soon replace most, but not all service jobs, what jobs are left? Maintaining the machines? Sure but only a few people are needed to do that verse all the number of people who did those jobs the machines replaced. Ok how about jobs as engineers, biochemist, inventors… but those require extensive educations, above average intelligence and creativity. Ok how about artist and craftsmen? Again you the need for creativity, rarefied skill and talent, not enough people will be around to buy all those arts and crafts. There won’t be more people having plumbing problems and needing more plumbers, having electrical problems and needing more electricians, heck if you have a computer problem these day you usually contact a machine first that can answer some of your problems rather then a paid specialist. Even if automation does not replace a job outright it replaces enough parts of that job to make the worker more efficient and effective, and without more demand to match the increase productivity there will need to be less workers.

If automation enters an industry but the industry can’t grow to match (because of physical limitation at most), then its work force must shrink, we have the historical drop of agriculture and manufacture jobs as proof of that. The profits that was taken to pay wages now goes up to the owners of the businesses, and the unemployed workers must compete in a shrinking job market, this would cause incomes to drop, middle class to shrink and become poor, the poor grow poorer and the rich to grow richer. That is exactly what is happening today! Stock markets and capital gains are higher then they have ever been before, yet unemployment is up, people are getting lower and lower paying part-time jobs. The middle class is shrinking into poverty.

“The top 10 percent of Americans have experienced rapid income growth over the last 40 years, but the bottom 90 percent haven’t been so lucky. In fact, average income rose just $59 from 1966 to 2011 for the bottom 90 percent once those incomes were adjusted for inflation.†- http://thinkprogress.org/economy/2013/03/25/1772521/average-income-for-the-bottom-90-percent-of-americans-grew-just-59-in-40-years/

That’s right we have not moved our income up for the common American for nearly 50 years now! Yet US farm production has gone up, US manufacturing production has gone up, capital has grown. Most Americans have moved to poorer paying part-time dead-end service jobs, that most of them hate!

Much of this is blamed on outsourcing now, a problem only in that its giving someone else “your†job. Outsourcing is a problem for the working population of developed nations, it drives salaries down to the lowest common denominators of the world. But truth be known machines are now competing with developing country’s cheap practically slave labor! For example Foxcon the Taiwanese electronic giant that assembles all Apple products of all things is beginning to to automate. It is all a matter of when will machines cost less then a practical slave in a undeveloped country. Also unskilled impoverished labors can’t compete in quality verse the precision of automatons, nor will automatons commit suicide or demand pay raises or human rights, machines as long as they are design not to will never feel, never want, never need.

To truly determine if automation is a greater problem then outsources simply compare the product to worker ratio there to here:

“if 10% of China’s electronics production was moved to the U.S., China would lose 300,000 jobs. Yet, just 40,000 new jobs would be created in the U.S. Put another way, if all of China’s manufacturing output was magically transported to the U.S. tomorrow, the U.S. unemployment rate would decline by only 2.75 percentage points after accounting for the effects of automation.†-http://knowledge.wharton.upenn.edu/article/rethinking-re-shoring/

This can’t continue for long. If more products could be produced maybe their price would drop and the ever poorer people could still buy them but as I covered before there are fundamental limits in energy and materials that we appear to already be hitting that limit production. As the people get poorer they can’t buy the products anymore. So demand will drop, and that means the rich will start to see profits drop, their only recourse to make profit will be to increase efficiency, automate more, only feeding the fire! In fact the economy of individual nations and thus every nation because of glottalization will become increasingly unstable and fall into recessions one after another. Oscillating wildly or possibly even entering depressions until economic solutions are implement.

What solutions are there?

1) Increase minimum wage: only a temporary solution and in the long run will push for even more automation for it artificially increases the value of human labor, which value is dropping as machines can do more and more of that labor cheaper.

2) reduce working hours: All the sci-fi prophets of old (as well as economist like Keynes himself) thought we would live in times of boredom today, with nothing to do because of automation, they assumed (wrongly) that the wealth from automation would distribute evenly enough and we would all be working single digit work weeks. Legally reducing what is a full work wee, 4- day work weeks, might certainly help, its has for many other countries, but we are still someways politically and technologically from making single digit work weeks possible.

3) Progressive taxation: if those that own all the capital are profiting at the cost of the poor, then simply tax the rich more and the poor less, forcibly redistribute the money, this of course is hersay to most conservatives, but lets assume it is done: where do we put the money? More education, again not going to help as our economy simply can't grow much more to support everyone having well paying high end jobs, worse if strong AI ever comes around all the education in the world won't make anyone competitive with that in intellect. Perhaps more infrastructure, more services to reduce the prices people pay on things like medical care, sure but that will only help a little.

4) People Capitalism: James Albus suggested a way for capitalism to make automation its blessing and not its curse. If the only people who are assured profit from increase automation are those that own the automation, own the capital, then the solution for the ever more unemployed is to have them own the capital too! Basically have the government convert social security and corporate holdings into stock and give that stock to every citizen. In short everyones “job†would increasingly become stock broker, managing their own stock portfolio, until the day and age perhaps when “universal doer†aforementioned strong AI comes into being and can replace ALL jobs, then everyone would simply live off their holdings and dividends. Its an elegant solution, its only a solution that will only work for those that can managed their money wisely, shrewdly and with an educated understanding of investment. Everyone else would likely blow all that stock away on bad investment moves and ponzi schemes: The stock market would become even more volatile and likely result in massive losses for all from the idiotic investing of many. The only solution would be regulating how and what people can invest, or even having the government invest for them.

5. Socialism: Just have the government take over more and more of industry and hand out checks in welfare to everyone. It could work assuming we could replaced ALL jobs, or force some people to work some jobs that can't be replaced. Of course politically most countries have a chance of doing this as a snow ball has not melting in Hel...

6. Resourcism: even less probable anytime soon then #5. Imagine a world without money, instead machines manage who has what at what time and how. We all are allocated resources invisibly. Lets say you want to go jet skiing, instead of buying a jet ski, you just go to a lake where one is provided for you, enough are built and cared for by machines to deal with demand, if demand increase, people will at first need to be turned away, while more jet skis are made and stocked. Likewise all products could be managed like this assuming we have a FULLY automated economy. Such a future is pure star trek: were things cost so little that money can be abolished and people live to better themselves for self betterment sack and not money. Sounds great but how do we get there from here? How do we deal with limited production of products that have value only because they are human made, a separate “renaissance festival†market? And how do we deal with all the people who would just spend their time doing the opposite of self improvement?

7. Exterminalism: Ok everything I said above and to this point about “solutions†has been without moral or political judgment, so what I'm going to say next I want you to know I'm just suggesting it could happen, not saying it a good idea, please don't call me ****: just kill off the useless people. Look either the rich start giving in to the poor with any or all the above or the poor eventually revolt and kill off the rich. The rich could counter and kill off the poor first. Assuming militaries become heavily automated too, or soldiers become obedient enough, it could happen and I don't doubt some countries will go this away. It may not need to go as far as the rich setting kill bots lose on the poor: Legalize all drugs, legalize suicide, legalize robotic prostitutes and in a few generations much of the poor will have either hung themselves, overdoes or stopped breding, in some ways and in some countries this may already be happening.

[cantab]

I believe that artificial intelligences (though they may not be robots per se) will within this century make humanity obsolete, outstripping out mental capacity sufficiently that they become the drivers of further innovation. Whether or not the machines actively seek to kill us off, we will become as irrelevant to them as ants are to us.

[Rakaydos]

What are your thoughts on a sort of "Corporate Socialisim", where a corporate entity that controls a broad base of production gradually increases employee benifits and reduces hours as automation increases- until you have "workers" who were raised in corporation schools working an hour a day on average for minimum wage, but their food, board, and access to media is guarenteed for free by the corporation.

[Red Iron Crown]

What are your thoughts on a sort of "Corporate Socialisim", where a corporate entity that controls a broad base of production gradually increases employee benifits and reduces hours as automation increases- until you have "workers" who were raised in corporation schools working an hour a day on average for minimum wage, but their food, board, and access to media is guarenteed for free by the corporation.

Interesting idea. Who controls the corporation? Who invests in it, and why?

[Rakaydos]

Let's call it Employee-owned. If it can get the resources to be fully self sufficent (which may require a powerful capitalistic CEO to choose to step down and make it employee owned) it may not need to be tied to outside investers, either.

Edit: or a union benifits compromise that believes in supporting a standard of living over supporting working hours vs wage.

Edited May 1, 2014 by Rakaydos

[vger]

Let's call it Employee-owned. If it can get the resources to be fully self sufficent (which may require a powerful capitalistic CEO to choose to step down and make it employee owned) it may not need to be tied to outside investers, either.

Edit: or a union benifits compromise that believes in supporting a standard of living over supporting working hours vs wage.

Always wondered what it would be like if a business gave EVERYONE, CEO included, shares in the company, instead of a paycheck. I wonder what impact that would have on work ethic? Usually only high-rank employees stand much to gain from company profits. What if everyone were paid that way?

[RuBisCO]

Consider Lawrence H. Summers "universal doer" argument as stated in here:

Imagine a machine that can do everything a person can do. Now some of your argue will it be sentient, will it have wants of desires of its own, lets just assume if it ever becomes sentient it desires will still have the be programmed in (either that or it catatonic) and if well programmed and locked in, its desires are to obey, serve and please humans, so lets just rule out a skynet or guardian event of machines going AWOL. What would this universal doer mean for our economy? Well no job would be safe, as it can do anything a person can, only cheaper, faster, better. The only way to make money will be to own universal doers. The doers would make any product, do any task, even be told to design and build better doers and find new task for themselves to do!

But there is another way to make money: make things the by definition must be made by humans, "hand-made" goods. Now sure the universal doer could make a wicker chair, a work of art, etc, but special value could be given for the same thing as long as it was built/made by humans. This would ultimately require regulations on declaring what technology can and can't make and creating standards of what is and is not “human madeâ€Â. We could go further and put stops on what can't or can be developed technologically, declare strong AI and universal doers illegal, doing so though will eventually lead to technological stagnation, but if done in line with the inevitable economic stagnation it could work out.

Some certainly will even go further and go the way of the Amish, true real Luddites, people who forbid themselves technology to work a days hard work.

[vger]

And because this just showed up in my feed... automation's first big kick in the face for the future of intellectual careers. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/ibm-unveils-a-computer-than-can-argue-181228620.html

I wonder how long before they teach it how to shoot down Luddite arguments before they've even had a chance to finish a sentence?

I actually feel ill, thinking about where this will probably lead.

Edited May 2, 2014 by vger

[WestAir]

The question is, do mechanized workers end at just the corporate sector?

What if someone says "An AI would make a better Justice on the Supreme Court because it would never be biased or serve the interests of corporations, and can be designed to only keep the Constitution in mind." - Would computers in office be better than a man? What about CEO's or the boards of major corporations? Computers can be programmed to be far more altruistic than a person and would certainly never lie or fall into scandals. Why not have them rise to the ranks of our greatest positions?

[RuBisCO]

And because this just showed up in my feed... automation's first big kick in the face for the future of intellectual careers. http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/the-exchange/ibm-unveils-a-computer-than-can-argue-181228620.html

I wonder how long before they teach it how to shoot down Luddite arguments before they've even had a chance to finish a sentence?

I actually feel ill, thinking about where this will probably lead.

It could lead to a world without want or mortality, in which humans alive today could "live" forever, free of pain or want... on the other hand it could lead to a Terminator knocking at your door. It all depends on the answer to certain philosophical questions which were unanswerable for the last few thousands years but will likely be answered in this century, oh and it depends on how smart, careful and CYA people are as they develop these technologies. That last one worries me, alot, because as a misanthrope I don't trust people to be smart, careful and CYA.

The question is, do mechanized workers end at just the corporate sector?

What if someone says "An AI would make a better Justice on the Supreme Court because it would never be biased or serve the interests of corporations, and can be designed to only keep the Constitution in mind." - Would computers in office be better than a man? What about CEO's or the boards of major corporations? Computers can be programmed to be far more altruistic than a person and would certainly never lie or fall into scandals. Why not have them rise to the ranks of our greatest positions?

Could lead to humans willing choosing a "Guardian event" in which we have machines rule over us, for our own good of course. Honestly I don't see enough people accepting that we are just talking monkeys to make that happen. Politician will probably be the first job officially protected from automation, considering they make the laws, this law will be implemented regardless of what the public wants. So I'm going to say it right now: those that can protect their own jobs will.

Edited May 2, 2014 by RuBisCO

[vger]

Politician will probably be the first job officially protected from automation, considering they make the laws, this law will be implemented regardless of what the public wants. So I'm going to say it right now: those that can protect their own jobs will.

That will just bring us right back to one of our biggest problems we have now. Politicians giving special favors to their buddies in 'whatever corporation' so that they can get the most money.

Favoritism would quickly become a problem if any human or group of humans gets special treatment from the robots.

TBH, after watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (the original one, not the crappy remake), I always felt like I would create the robotic peacekeepers, if I had the capacity.

[Everten P.]

Well BITCOINS already made the economy obsolete...

[RuBisCO]

That will just bring us right back to one of our biggest problems we have now. Politicians giving special favors to their buddies in 'whatever corporation' so that they can get the most money.

Favoritism would quickly become a problem if any human or group of humans gets special treatment from the robots.

TBH, after watching "The Day the Earth Stood Still" (the original one, not the crappy remake), I always felt like I would create the robotic peacekeepers, if I had the capacity.

Hence why I think an exterminism future is possible. Imagine an obedient SAI and corrupt politicians in control of it, the SAI would without mercy and with extreme prejudice follow through any order: it would be like terminator except skynet is replaced by some rich old white guys laughing at the carnage.

[Rakaydos]

Hence why I think an exterminism future is possible. Imagine an obedient SAI and corrupt politicians in control of it, the SAI would without mercy and with extreme prejudice follow through any order: it would be like terminator except skynet is replaced by some rich old white guys laughing at the carnage.

So, Cybercop?

[Seret]

IS our intention to create machines with true free will?

Yes, even if only as a research goal. Whether those machines will find much use in society is a different question.

And if we actually intend to create sentient machines, what would be the ultimate purpose of that? Do we really want a labor class to have feelings? Wouldn't that be detrimental to both us and them?

I don't think anybody will be trying to create a universal robot that can do anything. Customers are going to want a machine that's highly optimised for their particular needs. An industrial robot doesn't need to have hopes and dreams. It doesn't need to be terribly smart, although being smart enough to be aware of its surroundings and understanding them would be good for safety. Nobody is going to pay extra for a machine with abilities it doesn't need to do the job they're buying it for.

However, some machines will need to understand emotions, namely those working closely with humans. Machines that could genuinely empathise with us would be extremely useful in human-facing roles. Personally I'd really like the banking AI I had to talk to to get a loan to actually understand my priorities in life, and I'd like my medical robot to understand things like pain and depression. I'd like my OS to know when I'm stressed, especially if it's the OS that's stressing me out!

It's also probable that future advances in robotics and AI will also result in significant advances in cybernetics and brain-computer interfaces, since they're allied technologies. There may well be no market for the universally useful robot because it's simply cheaper and easier to augment an already versatile human with the abilities you require. Designing a robot that could work on a construction site with the versatility and mobility of a human might remain much more expensive than simply strapping an exoskeleton to a human to give them better strength, endurance or whatever abilities you require from the robot.

In short I would expect for the foreseeable future that machines will remain optimised for their particular tasks, while humans will specialise in non-specialisation. There's plenty of wiggle room in the labour market for both IMO. I don't really think it's likely that anybody will develop a robot that can outperform a human across the board, simply because there's unlikely to be any demand for that.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Seret

[KOCOUR]

I'm simplifying this for the sake of tldr; Likely this would happen with much more complexity, and competitive businesses trying to one-up each other, but it at least seems like it might arrive at the question I'm posing here.

Consider the following. There are currently whispers of replacing fast food workers with robots, IF the workers ever manage to unionize. Cheaper and more efficient 3D printing has ushered in a small revolution in production. AI is capable of doing things that people believed just a decade ago, that would NEVER be possible.

Suppose a super-genius inventor were to create a "Skynet" of sorts. The most advanced form of AI imaginable, with access to factories that it could retool on its own, for the purposes of producing robots designed to replace every form of labor on the planet. Only a handful of jobs would be replaced initially, but eventually you would reach a point where the only people who still have jobs, are those who work in a tiny handful of elite tech industries. It seems to me that this would wipe out the financial system, because nobody can afford to pay for the services provided by these robots. Nevertheless, there are no alternatives, because robots are doing ALL of the work. The people who have provided these services still want to be paid for it, but they can't get paid. Even debt or slavery is not an option. It's impossible to undersell the robots.

Assuming a robot revolt didn't happen, would we have no choice but to abandon capitalism and accept a 'utopia?' Or is there some element to this I'm overlooking. Given the imbalance that automation has already placed in the labor world, it seems that we are indeed heading in this direction, if at a VERY slow pace.

It would be the end of the human species. Unmotivated humans would just degenerate beond survivability and die out.

[RuBisCO]

I'm not even going to bother reading the replies, because the argument as put forward by you is stupid. Sorry, but it is, now, please don't be afraid, I don't want to scare you... god forbid that I do that again to such a person such as you...

Wow, well there went calm discussion out the window.

OK, robots will never make the economy obsolete, as long as there are more than two people, they will NEED something from the other, that means there will always be an economy.

I've learned long ago as soon as a person makes a definitive statement, that something will never ever happen, that something is always, that something just is and never ever will change, and that nothing they are talking about is fundamental mathematics then they are speaking from a point of view of ideology and that arguing with them will go nowhere because they will not change their mind on this... but hey I could be wrong so I try anyways.

Imagine we have a machine that can look just like a person, sound just like a person, feel just like a person and do everything a person does, but has no wants other then doing and please actual people. Now there are only two people left on earth and they have all of these machines about them servicing all their needs, what exactly would these two people want from each other?

Further, Robots will need to make more robots, THAT is an economy....

Now this is a interesting point, and the last you make before just spending your time verbally abusing vger. If robots a doing everything will they still exchange money between each other, from the mining bots to the manufacturing bots to the love bots that actually work on the human end would they need to spend money or could all these machines needs be met by central planning, exactly what kind of economy is a fully automated economy? Something never seen before perhaps, something interesting and worthy of discussing perhaps? Anyways if you disagree lets talk about it, like this:

I don't think anybody will be trying to create a universal robot that can do anything.

I disagree, the economic opportunities to having a universal doer are simply to good, for one you could have the universal doer design for you endless number of specialized machines that do specific jobs, cheaper, faster and better. As the old saying goes SAI is the last invention mankind will ever need to make.

Edited May 2, 2014 by RuBisCO

[Red Iron Crown]

It would be the end of the human species. Unmotivated humans would just degenerate beond survivability and die out.

I agree with this. A society where robots do all the work is not a human society, it is a robot society. People would be pets or slaves, depending on the living conditions.

Edited May 2, 2014 by Red Iron Crown
Typo

[Seret]

If robots a doing everything will they still exchange money between each other, from the mining bots to the manufacturing bots to the love bots that actually work on the human end would they need to spend money or could all these machines needs be met by central planning

They probably could, but it would be far easier to just use money. Central planning would require political power to be centralised in one authority and I can't see that happening; there are too many competing interests in the world. Even AIs will have competing interests, they're no more likely to all agree with each other simply because they have machine brains than humans are to agree with each other because we have meat brains.

Money is just a convenient way of abstracting value. As long as there are different entities with different interests and differing competitive advantages then money will be a useful way of comparing value.

I disagree, the economic opportunities to having a universal doer are simply to good, for one you could have the universal doer design for you endless number of specialized machines that do specific jobs, cheaper, faster and better. As the old saying goes SAI is the last invention mankind will ever need to make.

But why would a customer buy this universal machine when they could just specify a cheaper machine that could do the range of tasks they actually wanted? If you were building a road would you buy the big dumb road building machine for a million doodads, or the shiny universal doer for 100 million? Likewise if you were designing other machines would you buy a design AI for 50 million? It stands to reason that the universal doer would always be priced higher than a specialised machine. So who would buy it? The number of people with requirements flexible enough to require them would be small, I'd imagine.

I also find the whole idea of a "universal doer" a bit unlikely. It's an interesting thought experiment, but not something I can see happening in the real world. I don't see how you could build a machine that could transport cargo across the Atlantic as well as it could care for terminal cancer patients. What form would this "universal doer" take?

[Seret]

I agree with this. A society where robots do all the work is not a human society, it is a robot society. People would be pets or slaves, depending on the living conditions.

If you read Iain M Banks' Culture novels (which are set in a post-scarcity run by AIs) one of the criticisms outsiders make of The Culture is that its human population are essentially just pets. That doesn't actually stop the humans from living interesting, fulfilling lives. The starships for example, are highly intelligent and don't need crews, but humans volunteer to ride along in order to have adventures. The AIs in the books do seem to enjoy human company though, and if you think about it, why would any society develop AIs that didn't enjoy their company?

[Red Iron Crown]

If you read Iain M Banks' Culture novels (which are set in a post-scarcity run by AIs) one of the criticisms outsiders make of The Culture is that its human population are essentially just pets. That doesn't actually stop the humans from living interesting, fulfilling lives. The starships for example, are highly intelligent and don't need crews, but humans volunteer to ride along in order to have adventures. The AIs in the books do seem to enjoy human company though, and if you think about it, why would any society develop AIs that didn't enjoy their company?

I guess it depends on how one defines "fulfilling". A life of leisure, while enjoyable looking from the outside, is ultimately hedonistic in my opinion.

I'm moving those books up the list.

[rkman]

In a utopian future, robots make work obsolete, and we become something similar to the Culture. In a dystopian future, robots make people obsolete. The small minority that owns the robots will have everything, while the rest have nothing.

Agreed. How things will go with robots in the future does not so much depend on there being advanced robots, but depends on how people deal with it.

A significant fraction of Western middle class is already approaching post-scarcity society. They feel they have everything they need, and as a result, they are working less and less. Why work 1600 hours a year, when you can have everything for just 1000 hours of work?

Upper middle class maybe, but much of the rest of the middle class is worse of now than they were a couple of decades ago. Especially in one of the richest countries in the world (US) many of the middle class are deep in debt and one month salary away from bankruptcy, just one steep medical bill that the insurance covers only in part. The mortgage crisis put more than a few of the middle class in tent cities. If they ever thought they could have everything, they don't any more. The ones who can actually have almost everything are those few who are billionaires.

[kiwi1960]

Everyone seems to forget a major flaw in Vgers so called reasoning.... a flaw in the conspiracy theory...

Not only can you unplug these things if they revolt, but they would be bolted down to the floor where they will work from, making "revolt" even more unlikely, further, these machine will be single purpose robots, they will do exactly what their programming tells them to do till they either fall apart, or are turned off...

these simple robots will never be able to revolt because they won't have the AI to think things out, further, why give a menial machine AI when it would be wasted on it...

Its a pretty big jump from a single purpose robot to an AI capable "terminator" android that knows how to kill....

Only conspiracy theorists could come up with something that crazy, imagining that hamburger flipping bots (which dont actually exist yet, do they?) could take over the world in next to no time...

Reality Check....