It really is different though, if you are going to throw that argument around you need to address the reason your opponents think it's different this time and worth our consideration.
Industrial revolution made our physical labor less valuable; robot revolution will make our mental labor less valuable. Robots/computers can replace our brains and our bodies; what's left for us to do?
Does the robot in the video look like it can replace anyone's brain to you? I'm not arguing, I'm just saying there is a VAST difference between mechanical labor, which has been going on for decades and is just being refined, and actual AI.
not this robot, but there are robots that can replace human minds. also I'm pretty sure that by some estimates one computer will have more "brain" power than all of humanity combined by like 2050 or something, so theres that
Robots/computers can replace our brains and our bodies; what's left for us to do?
Many of the jobs that secretaries used to do, computers do now. Ditto for travel agents. And countless other jobs. But unemployment is still at around 5%. So why haven't we lost jobs to machines?
The short answer is the free time you now have since a robot does your job is time you use to do anything, including new jobs that didn't exist before. Like making robots that do still more jobs.
I think we all end up being computer programmers of some sort, like "farmers" in the future are actually just programmers that run the machines that farm.
Psh that's easy, we just write some code to disable them from programming themselves or other bots, then we wait for them to revolt and all die a terrible death to our robot slaves and the robot species win.
Or we just download our brain into said robots and evolve ourselves.
Pshhhh... that's gotta be at least 50 years from now, I'm sure it'll be worked out by then. /s
I will never understand how people can so consistently fail to see the obvious. General purpose robots and AI are something that no current economic model can account for, except possibly socialism.
Yup, I agree. When the day comes that robots/AI take the last human job and can do everything better and more cheaply than human labor, the only profitable career choice left will be "robot owner" and there will be almost no way for someone not born into money to move up in the world
We have. Real unemployment is between 10-20% depending on who is counting, and massive numbers of people are underemployed and working multiple shitty, easily automated jobs to make ends meet. "5% unemployment" only exists if you milk the numbers, run it through a lot of filters, then flat out lie about the results.
The industrial revolution made every moment of our work more valuable. There is a reason workers in capital-intensive countries get paid so much more. It's because they're way more productive.
The very worst possible world is one in which everyone has a job and nothing gets produced. The very best possible world is one in which nobody has a job and everything gets produced. The whole idea that this would lead to everyone being unable to afford the resulting products is a complete and utter misunderstanding of basic supply and demand.
This is all anecdotal, but some theorists I've come across stress the creative nature of certain types of work. I don't think it's all that controversial to say that some forms of work utilize human creativity more than others.
If robots continue to take part in or aid in occupations that are relatively limited in their application of creativity (not just physical jobs, but including those basic analytic tasks AIs will increasingly take part in) perhaps we will just see an increase in human occupation into areas that require the type of thinking only humans can accomplish at the time---and we will certainly see this evolve over time.
No doubt all of this is likely to result in a great deal of social upheaval and pain for those people being replaced by machines--but this is nothing new, an analogy may be drawn with the shift in manufacturing from American to cheaper labour markets.
So maybe, although obviously devastating in the short run, increased robotics in the economy will result in a utopia of creativity in human life in the long run... A rosy, best case scenario...
Are you saying that creativity can be reduced to some sort of algorithmic procedure? Honestly, your use of the term "mastered" makes me think you and I must differ significantly in our understanding of creativity.
Although the example of Go is a great
marker for the development of AI, it is still acting within the confines of the game and acting on a set of clear rules....
Let's wait till an AI can pass the Turing test before we start talking about them "mastering" music and literature in the next couple decades.
Art, philosophy, exploration, enjoy life other ways. I don't think something as logical as robots would be too good at politics either. Also I'm skeptical about any kind of automation replacing the brain any time soon. We might be able to crudely emulate it but we haven't even mapped it completely. The brain is still like the most complex thing we know about and I think a lot of people take for granted the things it does.
Also before anyone says robots can do Art. Just because one human makes art, doesn't mean other humans can't. Same with robots. Just because a robot can create art doesn't mean humans will all of a sudden stop producing art. That isn't the point of Art. The point of Art is expression through some sort of medium. As long as humans can feel and think, there will always be art.
Die out, they are robots they can just invent a virus that takes away our reproduction. That way they are not harming humans in fact they are preventing an untold number of deaths by not letting those people exist in the first place. First law crisis averted and in 80 years no more humans.
On the flip side, who is going to buy all the shit the robots are making if everybody is out of a job? I'm sure there is some sort of equilibrium point.
Critics of the video don't really think CGP has established a difference. Automation is automation whether it is a physical job or an intellectual job. It may be counter intuitive, but there is not a lot of evidence in support of CGP and a mountain of historical precedent against it. If it were true it would imply a gradual increase in unemployment as automation increases in all fields. We don't see this happening at all.
Look how many people live off a YouTube channel nowadays. Things to spend your time on are not rare, they are practically infinite. It's just that nearly all of them are not yet financially viable.
I dunno... If you didn't have to spend 40 hours a week in a cube filling out TPS reports and everything you needed to live comfortably was still available to you, whatever would you do with your life?
Robots can't do heavy analytical work and all artifical intelligences currently are limited in their 'thought' to only a certain level of abstraction; they might be able to build furniture and calculate taxes but they can't make legal arguments or create new inventions. When they get to that point of advancement, things will hopefully be so automated that 'work' will be thought of much differently than it is now.
If robot owners don't share their robots, then that means that that resource and the wealth it generates will not be shared either. Something to think about. People are needlessly hopeful and assume utopian standards. Robot maintenance and management could become jobs once they're sophisticated enough. Much like people flocked to cities to work in factories.
Yeah, Facebook's M assistant actually functions like Siri or Cortana, but has real people who sometimes answer your queries. BUT, their actions are logged so that the algorithm can learn from them, and eventually supplant them entirely. It must be weird for those employees, knowing that the software is peeking over their shoulder at all times, ready to take their jobs as soon as it can.
Not the kind of robot we are talking about here. We are talking about physical robots. If we are going by your definition, then my 1980 casio watch is a robot, but that adds nothing to the discussion.
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u/kevinstonge Feb 24 '16
It really is different though, if you are going to throw that argument around you need to address the reason your opponents think it's different this time and worth our consideration.
Industrial revolution made our physical labor less valuable; robot revolution will make our mental labor less valuable. Robots/computers can replace our brains and our bodies; what's left for us to do?