Ironic conundrum

[Ashful]

Also, I look forward to a future where nobody has to work miserable jobs for scraps.

I agree, but I anticipate a few negatives:

1. Greater elimination of menial jobs will negatively impact those who make unwise choices early in life. Let’s face it, for a host of different reasons, there are a lot of people who don’t wake up and “get it” until a little later in life. I saw a lot of my friends go thru this in their mid-thirties. Fifty years ago, these people could go out and get a manufacturing job, and do okay. Today they’ll struggle a bit more, but can still usually find a way to make ends meet. When jobs that require little or no experience or education are much fewer, it will really pinch these people out of the system.

2. If you pay attention to the absolutely scary-fast development of AI, you’re probably fully aware that the educated white-collar crowd is about to go thru a revolution very similar to what their blue-collar brothers experienced in the 1970’s. This is going to be very rough, and upset quite a few families who thought they were doing all of the right things to set themselves and their children up for a comfortable future. Goodbye doctors, AI is already proving better at diagnosis of symptoms, most of us will only need RN’s and technicians to implement the treatment. Goodbye bachelor’s-level engineers, AI is already proving better at implementing a set of requirements into a solution, within existing technology constraints. Goodbye to litigators, accountants, and many other roles that rely on structured linear thinking or problem solving. The creative folks can rejoice, they’ll be safe for a bit longer, until those lucrative lawyers and doctors run out of money to fund their creative efforts.

The question for our kids and grandkids, is what will they do? They can’t all make a living as baristas or artists, cyclically serving one another. The opportunity for feudal-level concentrations of wealth is so real and so likely, due to a few people or organizations owning the technology that will replace all of these various human needs and services, that it is truly frightening. It’s easy to forget for those living in the last 300 years, that human history is not a straight line of increasing social well-being, but full of enormous dips that set us back a few hundred years at a time. I don’t think it’s “tinfoil hat” to believe another such dip may be coming within the next two generations.

 

[SpaceBus]

I agree, but I anticipate a few negatives:

1. Greater elimination of menial jobs will negatively impact those who make unwise choices early in life. Let’s face it, for a host of different reasons, there are a lot of people who don’t wake up and “get it” until a little later in life. I saw a lot of my friends go thru this in their mid-thirties. Fifty years ago, these people could go out and get a manufacturing job, and do okay. Today they’ll struggle a bit more, but can still usually find a way to make ends meet. When jobs that require little or no experience or education are much fewer, it will really pinch these people out of the system.

2. If you pay attention to the absolutely scary-fast development of AI, you’re probably fully aware that the educated white-collar crowd is about to go thru a revolution very similar to what their blue-collar brothers experienced in the 1970’s. This is going to be very rough, and upset quite a few families who thought they were doing all of the right things to set themselves and their children up for a comfortable future. Goodbye doctors, AI is already proving better at diagnosis of symptoms, most of us will only need RN’s and technicians to implement the treatment. Goodbye bachelor’s-level engineers, AI is already proving better at implementing a set of requirements into a solution, within existing technology constraints. Goodbye to litigators, accountants, and many other roles that rely on structured linear thinking or problem solving. The creative folks can rejoice, they’ll be safe for a bit longer, until those lucrative lawyers and doctors run out of money to fund their creative efforts.

The question for our kids and grandkids, is what will they do? They can’t all make a living as baristas or artists, cyclically serving one another. The opportunity for feudal-level concentrations of wealth is so real and so likely, due to a few people or organizations owning the technology that will replace all of these various human needs and services, that it is truly frightening. It’s easy to forget for those living in the last 300 years, that human history is not a straight line of increasing social well-being, but full of enormous dips that set us back a few hundred years at a time. I don’t think it’s “tinfoil hat” to believe another such dip may be coming within the next two generations.

The future is scary, but perhaps it always has been. I can't imagine all of the current wealth holders suddenly being ok with their current amount of wealth, so I expect any and all measures to be taken to maintain the status quo.

 

[begreen]

I agree that robotics can reduce drudgery and injury. However, along with treating people better, we need to treat the planet much better as well. Those 10x cheaper Sonys now produced at 10x volume take 10x the resources and are ending up in landfills 10x as often. I manage an annual local electronics recycling event and am floored at the number of tvs and computers we collect from our small community. Just like jobs becoming finite, so are our resources.

 

[Ashful]

I agree that robotics can reduce drudgery and injury. However, along with treating people better, we need to treat the planet much better as well. Those 10x cheaper Sonys now produced at 10x volume take 10x the resources and are ending up in landfills 10x as often. I manage an annual local electronics recycling event and am floored at the number of tvs and computers we collect from our small community. Just like jobs becoming finite, so are our resources.

I agree with the premise, but keeping with the current example, there was no recycling in 1970, and the pollution and waste generated at every step of the process is likely approaching 10x less per unit. We seem to be experiencing a ground-swell of public awareness on issues surrounding pollution and waste, and so I expect this trend toward minimizing both (per GDP or capital) will only accelerate.

 

[begreen]

The future is scary, but perhaps it always has been. I can't imagine all of the current wealth holders suddenly being ok with their current amount of wealth, so I expect any and all measures to be taken to maintain the status quo.

To worry about the future, there needs to be one. And that will require a much more dramatic change in businesses and lifestyles than one that robotics and AI may bring about. Hopefully, these new technologies will aid us in accomplishing this goal much more efficiently than our current path.

I agree with the premise, but keeping with the current example, there was no recycling in 1970, and the pollution and waste generated at every step of the process is likely approaching 10x less per unit. We seem to be experiencing a ground-swell of public awareness on issues surrounding pollution and waste, and so I expect this trend toward minimizing both (per GDP or capital) will only accelerate.

I'm not sure I can agree with that assumption. There are magnitudes more people buying electronics now (think globally not just locally). Second, there are tons of plastics in modern electronics that weren't present in 1970. The extraction, transport, refining of fossil fuels just to make those plastics is significant. Only about 9% of plastics produced are recycled globally. There may be a groundswell in awareness about recycling, but the facts show that we are poor about actually doing it. And most electronics are not recycled, they are landfilled or worse. (our county won't take electronics at all) Add to this that people are junking electronics much faster now than in 1970. The attitude back then was that if it broke you had it fixed. Now the attitude is it will cost too much to repair (if you can even find someone to do the repair), so just replace it.

 

[SpaceBus]

"A Brave New World" was right about the future, "ending is better than mending". I never guessed my senior English reading list would ever be relevant!