[ExI] self driving truck

[John Clark]

On Tue, Oct 25, 2016 at 12:53 PM, spike <spike66 at att.net> wrote:


> ​> ​
> Cool!  So now we have a demonstration using an 18 wheeler:
>
>
>
> http://www.foxnews.com/auto/2016/10/25/ottos-self-driving-se
> mi-truck-made-beer-run.html
>

​It is cool, but I got to thinking about the social implications of
driver-less trucks and of AI in general. In the USA alone 4.1 million
people make their living driving a vehicle, those jobs are likely to go
away in the very near future. I think the next to go will likely be the 9.7
million who work in restaurants. Traditionally the fast food industry was
where somebody with no skills could still get a job, but not for long.
After that its
 bookkeepers, travel agents
​ and​
legal aids
​.
And it's not just the unskilled that need to worry
​ about the increased power of AI​
,  if I were a hedge fund manager I'd make as money now
​as I could ​
while I still
​had a job.
​
​ ​

>From the start of the industrial revolution there has been a linear
relationship between wages the average person received and the increased
productivity cause by improved technology, but about 2002 that changed, the
amount of wealth produced still increase but real wages plateaued, and
since 2007 paychecks have actually declined. GDP has increased but median
income has not because the increase in wealth went exclusively to the top,
the richest 1% have as much money as the remaining 99%. And even among the
1% most of the increase in wealth went to the top 1% of the top 1% of the
top 1%.

As
​ recently as ​2010 the richest 388 people in the world had as much money
as the poorest 3.6 Billion people, by 2014 the richest 85 did, in 2015 it
was 80, in the latest results made just this year the richest 62 people had
as much wealth as half of the entire human species, 3.6 Billion people.


Unless something is pushing in the opposite direction the advances in AI
are likely to accelerate this trend so before long fewer than 62 will be
required. But does anybody on this list think
​
nothing will push back? Does anybody think
​ ​
this trend can continue without grave social unrest?  I don't. And I think
​
that
​
is the root cause of the anger
​
in
​
the electorate and the reason some bizarre
​
illogical
​
dangerous people may be voted into office in democracies all over the
world.

So what is to be done? I hate to say it because it stands
against everything I've believed since I was a teenager but unless somebody
has a better idea I'm starting to think it may be time to consider some
form of the nanny state. After all, no matter what you job is sooner or
later a machine will be able to do it better than you can. And it will
probably happen sooner than you expect, that's why it's called a
singularity.

 John K Clark​

.
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