[ExI] robotic lunch counters

[Rafal Smigrodzki]

On Wed, Jun 25, 2014 at 6:13 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> The future doesn’t need everyone here, and the future’s need for some of
> us is only declining, with no end in sight.  Eschewing robo-cafés will not
> make the problem go away; embracing them will not make it go away either.
>
> What do we do now?
>

### Let me give you a Marxist answer: Everything depends on who and how
controls the means of production (that's the usual commie word for capital).

In our society capital is controlled by a relatively large group of
citizens, using the social conventions of firms, stocks, private ownership,
state ownership, and other social technologies where these social
conventions rely on widespread acquiescence achieved through habit,
self-sustaining social pressure, and calculation of self-interest. The
system is ultimately backstopped by machine guns and nuclear weapons but,
as the salient point here, it depends on widespread human attitudes because
many humans can sabotage it or use it to their benefit. Both are important
- ability to break stuff means partial control, ability to benefit provides
incentives to be involved. It is a stalemate of mutually assured
impoverishment, a moderately efficient Nash equilibrium.

The new development is that human skills are no longer needed. The question
is whether human attitudes will remain important as well.

Let's for the sake of argument think about mining investment in Freedonia.
Today the international investor knows that the locals could decide to take
his mine away, increase taxes, loot, nationalize (I am using multiple
synonyms), and both the political elite and the unwashed masses are a
danger to the owner of capital which is why the owner has to pay off the
elites to keep the masses at bay. Things do not run smoothly - there are
always some rebels running around, coups happen and new leeches have to
paid from scratch, and small time thieves exact their toll as well. All of
them can break your shit, so their attitudes matter. Furthermore, many of
them can directly benefit from breaking or taking your stuff, so they are
incentivized to get involved.

Now, let's say that a fully automated mine is built. Big progress - most
activity is underground, there are automated trucks laden with refined
metal driving out but otherwise humans see nothing stealable, not even
office supplies. Control over capital no longer has intermediaries - there
are no engineers, managers, janitors. The capitalist is the one who has
legitimized root access to the control software. Attitudes of human workers
don't matter, since there are no human workers. Ned and his friends can't
break your looms anymore.

Maybe you can pay the elites to let you use your robots for defense against
thieves, for now using only non-lethal devices,  The masses can no longer
directly pressure you. Their attitude towards you no longer matters. The
robots cannot be diverted to other uses, like stolen cars or guns, since
they are programmed to self-destruct if stolen. There is less incentive to
steal.

Let's go a step further. The elites still get paid and they use some of the
loot to buy a robotic army, to deal with the rebels. Whoever has a robotic
army, wins. The attitudes of others don't matter. They don't have to paid
off. Whoever has root access to the army control software is the sovereign.

Of course, Freedonians didn't write the software. Somebody somewhere in the
cloud has root access. If the Freedonian elites try to take your mine, you
pay for their army to refuse orders. You may consider keeping the elites as
an ornament but their attitudes don't matter. Root access is the key.

Rinse and repeat - Freedonia, Nigeria, Turkey, China, USA - their time of
decisions and change will come. There will be variations but all will face
the question of how to control potentially sentient capital when humans do
not matter.

To summarize: The shape of the future will depend on the information
technologies used to control access to capital. Labor will be irrelevant,
economically and politically. Will technology would be compatible with wide
access to capital, and using what criteria, what feedback loops? Or will
technology favor increasingly centralized control of capital?

Maybe multiple independent makers and owners of robots could achieve a
stable stalemate of mutually assured destruction. But maybe technology
wants something else.

No doubt there will be some path dependency - societies with strong
traditions of participatory politics may be able to retain distributed
control of capital, through stock markets where each share gives partial
root access to a company's financial structure, or through widespread
private ownership of robots. Maybe future Solarians will use brain implants
to maintain cryptographic control over the laboring multitudes of asimos
(at least until Blissenobiarella intervenes).

Others may use more stupid methods like sovereign investment funds
spreading robot-made largesse to the human drones, and a state-owned robot
army programmed to obey duly elected commanders.

Yet other societies may end up with a very narrow elite, possibly a single
supreme and direct controller of all capital. And of course, even before
the dust settles, new disruptions in the form of self-owning non-human AI
as well as uploaded and modified post-humans will introduce yet another
layer of unpredictability.

The only thing I am certain of is that these will be interesting times.

Rafal
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