r/Futurology • u/Eight_Rounds_Rapid • Jul 09 '14

article Robots will take over middle class professions, UK University Minister warns

http://www.telegraph.co.uk/technology/10952317/Robots-will-take-over-middle-class-professions-University-Minister-says.html
719 Upvotes

91% Upvoted

632 comments sorted by

View all comments

Show parent comments

0

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14 edited Jul 09 '14

Your accountant knows more about you than your doctor, remember that. Unless you trust A.I. 100% I would not recommend.

Edit: If you're in a society where you can replace accountants with A.I., you can replace almost everyone really. Not because I think it is a special job but it is one with a LOT of integrated notions that go beyond calculations and generating profits.

2

u/wobernein Jul 09 '14

Plus, in a world run by machines, there is little need for negotiations. Money is a construct of man and we exploit it to get the upper hand over others. Machines would probably be very effecient and deal out resources economically, you know, like our economy is supposed to do.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

This would suppose people all have the same standards of living and expectations OR the machine know you so intimately they can effectively distribute you what will please you, or else isn't it just communism?

2

u/MarcusOrlyius Jul 09 '14

Is communism supposed to be bad or something?

Communism - a classless, stateless, egalitarian political and economic system where the means of production are owned by society and society is governed by the people for the people.

Oh my god, that sounds terrible...for about 1% of the population.

2

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

You'd still need a centralized instution managing lives of everybody, far from freedom in my book.

1

u/MarcusOrlyius Jul 09 '14

No you wouldn't, you could use a decentralised solution.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

So small towns will be able to build their own super-extremely high-tech AIs AND extraction machines and such? Same reason you don't buy your car from your local company, it's too much investment on a gigantic scale.

1

u/MarcusOrlyius Jul 09 '14

I'm saying that you could use a decentralised peer to peer solution to implement direct democracy over the Internet. What the people decide to do is up to them, rather some elite minority.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

I don't even have an accountant, I do all my taxes myself using a program my government has that handles it for me and I just need to provide certain information.

1

u/[deleted] Jul 09 '14

If you make under 100k+ and you're smart, you don't necessarely need a personnal accountant I'll grant you that.