[ExI] The Real Threat of Artificial Intelligence

Stuart LaForge avant at sollegro.com
Thu Jun 29 05:48:39 UTC 2017


BillK wrote:


> The AI that the author is worried about is the initial, simpler AI
> that just automates production in factories and offices. For example,
> software like Amazon is implementing to automate running their
> distribution centres without human intervention, ordering by computer with
> collection and delivery by robots.
>
> This automation will spread to all factories and offices, with
> lower-grade employment being the first group affected. So corporations will
> become richer, with few employees. This software will be of little use to
> the large number of unemployed or script kiddies.

>From what I have heard, working conditions in those places can be pretty
brutal: walking something like 10-12 miles in total, carrying up to fifty
pound pakages for ten hours a day while on your feet the whole time.
Employment is usually seasonal with only a small cadre of permanent
employees. Any job that treats its employees like machines is probably
best done by machines.

> Top-level jobs are much fewer in number and will require much more
> advanced AI to replace. This will come in later years, but mass
> unemployment will arrive first.

One would hope that low-level workers would be seen by their higher ups as
the canaries in the coal mine. I don't think that many top-level jobs
would require much more sophisticated software than many lower-level ones.
Is an AI that decides to buy, sell, or hold a stock based on market data
that much more sophisticated than an AI truck driver having to constantly
adjust to traffic, road conditions, and enviromental cues?


> The public sector will be the cause of great unemployment as the
> mostly paper-shuffling jobs will be automated throughout national and local
> government. Again, the few top-level political jobs will be the last to
> disappear.

Yes, mass unemployment will likely be inevitable, but it cannot occur
without the resultant changes rippling throughout all of society. And if
the elite think they will not be affected, they are sorely mistaken. For
example, who would you want to run a fully automated government bureau?
The smarmy political type which is today's norm or an engineer with a
cursory legal background?

> Hiring humans for 'busy work' is pointless. Production will be much
> cheaper, so prices will reduce drastically and become more affordable. If
> the government gives everyone a basic allowance (funded by company
> taxation and taxing the few remaining high-paid human workers), then the
> population should still be able to buy the much cheaper goods. This
> enables human survival, but doesn't provide 'meaning' to human life.

I agree that UBI will become necessary if civilization is to remain
intact. If our so called leaders want to keep their heads attached to
their shoulders, they will have little choice than to enact it. What I
disagree with is the notion that UBI will cause people to lose their
"purpose" or "meaning".

It is preposterous to think that flipping burgers or waiting tables gives
people purpose. I would instead warrant that the majority who work such
menial jobs do so because they must and not necessarily because they want
to.

At worst such jobs distract them from questioning the meaning of their
lives and at best those jobs afford them the resources to pursue their
desired purposes which could range from anything from supporting their
families to allowing them to pursue their hobbies or even keeping them
sedated on their drugs of choice including religion. All automation and AI
will do is eliminate the middle-man that stands between someone and his or
her purpose.

> Being flexible and adaptable is useful at present, but in a future
> where automation runs everything? Giving all the unemployed humanity a
> reason to live will be required when they can survive without effort.
> Society will have to be restructured. Entertainment, caring for each
> other, games, sports, and yes, many will become couch potatoes or VR
> addicts, drug addicts, etc. Oh, and a large police force will probably be
> required (with robot assistance) to keep the unemployed from creating too
> much havoc.

Flexibility and adapability have served us well for 3.5 billion years
since the days that we were primordial slime. I seriously doubt a few
thinking machines will change all that. In the spirit of the creative
destruction of evolution, some niches will disappear completely while
whole new others will open up. That's how it has always worked since the
first life and how it will work up until the last life.

Automation and UBI cannot take away any more meaning from human life than
existentialism as a philosophy did over a century ago. Life has always
been absurd so sometimes you just have to laugh, dance, and enjoy the
moment. And just think, in a scant few decades, humans will for the first
time ever have fellow minds with which to share the joke of conscious
experience.

> It will indeed be a Brave New World.

I don't know about you, but courage and novelty turn me on. We all see the
writing on the wall and that cannot but work to our advantage. I say let
this new world begin! :-)

Stuart LaForge







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