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Humans may not Apply: The future of Jobs

How bad is Automation?

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Aaron Fox

SB's Minor Junker Descendant and Hunter of Nazis
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Current situation:




PEOPLE NOT HANGING FROM STREETLAMPS SOLUTION:


No one here is really talking about this topic so... yeah.

In the end, humans are outdated and thus are getting replaced with machines of all sorts. An automation revolution to outdo the industrial revolution as it were. Where dumb artificial muscles were seen as automation, now it is digital minds that is the automation. General Robots are starting to replace factory workers on a scale that only the days of the Gracchi Brothers before the dumpsterfire that is the late Roman Republic period can be equated to.

Here's the rub though, the ones who are seeing this situation for what it is... don't have the power to change it. There is far too many vested interests to basically rewrite economic models entirely (which automation is now doing). There is far too many people on the top that don't have the enlightened self-interest necessary to change their minds without forcing it at gun/sword point. There are far too many people that have been born and raised on mentalities that are so outdated that it's insane...
 
See... the problem is we have this mentality that "all humans need to work" which is going to be a problem as automation increases. We need some form of BIG or restructuring of the economy just to keep things functioning as robots and machines replace humans because at some point there's just not going be enough work to go around. Hell, we already create more food than we need and throw a lot of it away in the US, yet so many people go hungry which is an issue of efficiency. That we have a huge surplus of resources should mean that everyone should have to not work as hard.

This isn't a bad thing when you get down to it. Humanity increasingly creates more and more labor saving devices. Letting machines do all the menial labor so humans can engage in hedonist, intellectual, or creative pursuits should be the ideal, that is, things we actually want to do not things we need to do.

A relevant quote on the subject by Richard Buckminister Fuller (and this guy died back in the 80s):
"We should do away with the absolutely specious notion that everybody has to earn a living. It is a fact today that one in ten thousand of us can make a technological breakthrough capable of supporting all the rest. The youth of today are absolutely right in recognizing this nonsense of earning a living. We keep inventing jobs because of this false idea that everybody has to be employed at some kind of drudgery because, according to Malthusian Darwinian theory he must justify his right to exist. So we have inspectors of inspectors and people making instruments for inspectors to inspect inspectors. The true business of people should be to go back to school and think about whatever it was they were thinking about before somebody came along and told them they had to earn a living."
 
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@V4Guss, problem is that humans are in the equation and thus this little thing called 'vested interests'. Vested interests is the sort of thing that causes people to keep inefficient systems over more efficient ones. It got to the point where Machiavelli mechanics come in, as those who are ruthless win over those who aren't... and it is this ruthlessness that has gotten us to this point...

In a funny way, Marx was right. He's probably laughing his ass off right now at the irony...
 
They've literally been predicting this for the last 200 years, so far...not much has come about
 
They've literally been predicting this for the last 200 years, so far...not much has come about
From what I can tell, this only started happening in the 1950s... although they assumed that they work out a short-work model instead of a 'jobs vanishing' one.
Given how laziness is on the rise, people would love complete automation and not having to work. They would love a WALL-E scernario.
No it isn't. Technology simply made humanity obsolete...
 
The future is inevitably going to be corporations that extensively use automation being heavily taxed to fund the welfare to support a large portion of the populous existing in the lower middle class, of those people some will wish to work in some capacity and that money will supplement their income allowing them to possibly become upper middle class or eveb upper class depending on the work. Doctors and Lawyers are still going to be needed in the future for example.

If governments don't implement this walfare and tax the rich the poor rising up and killing the rich and the politicians is inevitable. We'll then gett a bloodier and slightly delayed version of the above.
 
The future is inevitably going to be corporations that extensively use automation being heavily taxed to fund the welfare to support a large portion of the populous existing in the lower middle class, of those people some will wish to work in some capacity and that money will supplement their income allowing them to possibly become upper middle class or eveb upper class depending on the work. Doctors and Lawyers are still going to be needed in the future for example.
Nope, doctors and lawyers are vulnerable to the new automation regime. Literally no job is safe this time around... and that means no job will exist.
If governments don't implement this walfare and tax the rich the poor rising up and killing the rich and the politicians is inevitable. We'll then gett a bloodier and slightly delayed version of the above.
No, it is more likely that the rich uses killbots and basically kill anyone that tries to take their money.
 
The future is inevitably going to be corporations that extensively use automation being heavily taxed to fund the welfare to support a large portion of the populous existing in the lower middle class, of those people some will wish to work in some capacity and that money will supplement their income allowing them to possibly become upper middle class or eveb upper class depending on the work. Doctors and Lawyers are still going to be needed in the future for example.

If governments don't implement this walfare and tax the rich the poor rising up and killing the rich and the politicians is inevitable. We'll then gett a bloodier and slightly delayed version of the above.
Unfortunately, the latter seems more plausible today, even though there are public figures and leaders today who seem like the type of people to implement the former
 
Nope, doctors and lawyers are vulnerable to the new automation regime. Literally no job is safe this time around... and that means no job will exist.
Doctors and Lawyers will exist till human level volitial AI is common place, at the very least you need someone to make decisions regarding patient care and client defense.

The violent revolution will occure long before that.


No, it is more likely that the rich uses killbots and basically kill anyone that tries to take their money.
Kill bots will be among the last things automated, soliders will be among the last professions like doctors and Lawyers and the elite need to have the foresight to prepare for this rebellion and stop living on long Beach, it is not a defensible postion. I would know.
 
Doctors and Lawyers will exist till human level volitial AI is common place, at the very least you need someone to make decisions regarding patient care and client defense.

The violent revolution will occure long before that.
I'm not so sure about that. We've already got Robot Lawyer and Robo-Nurse is a thing...
Kill bots will be among the last things automated, soliders will be among the last professions like doctors and Lawyers and the elite need to have the foresight to prepare for this rebellion and stop living on long Beach, it is not a defensible postion. I would know.
Eh, we're already having killbots now... and then it is only a matter of time before the Rich gets their hands on them.
 
I'm not so sure about that. We've already got Robot Lawyer and Robo-Nurse is a thing...
Show me a robot whose successfully defended someone in court. Nursing isn't doctoring.



Eh, we're already having killbots now... and then it is only a matter of time before the Rich gets their hands on them
And its Just a matter of time before the rich find their heads on pike do to the mass mods of unemployed workers.

I don't see how autonomous terminators are going to show up advertised on the wealth channel for the average elite to buy. These things when they finally get around to being made will be extreamly expensive to maintain and to buy, and you still haven't convinced me ultra lethal kill bots will be an option when this goes down, much less an automatic win card for the elite.
 
Technology that allows automation of everything is not there yet, robots can only do a very small range of monotonous actions where everything needs to be prepared for them in perfect precision, no fishing screws from the box to assemble the chair. Also, maintenance still needs to be done by actual humans, and even fully automated lines need a human oversight. Tesla car manufacturing actually moved back from the automated lines to normal assembly lines maned by normal, living people, as nothing beats the versatility of the human yet.

Automation also can't handle anything that require a creative process, and .... actually, forget terminators, humans are still the most creative force when it comes to killing a fellow man. Actually, we can't re-enact anything from the terminator movie except hooking a launching mechanism to the computer, that's pretty much it.
 
Technology that allows automation of everything is not there yet, robots can only do a very small range of monotonous actions where everything needs to be prepared for them in perfect precision, no fishing screws from the box to assemble the chair. Also, maintenance still needs to be done by actual humans, and even fully automated lines need a human oversight. Tesla car manufacturing actually moved back from the automated lines to normal assembly lines maned by normal, living people, as nothing beats the versatility of the human yet.

Automation also can't handle anything that require a creative process, and .... actually, forget terminators, humans are still the most creative force when it comes to killing a fellow man. Actually, we can't re-enact anything from the terminator movie except hooking a launching mechanism to the computer, that's pretty much it.
Actually, you are wrong. Say hello to Baxter the General Purpose Robot:


He's the equivalent of a 1980s computer in terms of general purpose robotics. Remember Moore's Law and how it pretty much applies to everything technological? Yeah... that puts a pit into your stomach when you actually look at the implications...
Simple, we just zerg-rush the killbots until they shutdown.
They'll likely use AoE weapons like smart grenades and artillery as much as bullets.
 
Actually, you are wrong. Say hello to Baxter the General Purpose Robot:

He's the equivalent of a 1980s computer in terms of general purpose robotics. Remember Moore's Law and how it pretty much applies to everything technological? Yeah... that puts a pit into your stomach when you actually look at the implications...
Smarter, general purpose robots may be in development, it has to start somewhere and somehow, and it obviously did, but technology to actually make them isn't there just yet, and it will not be here for a quite a while.

Also, it is a nonsense to use Moore's Law as an argument for technological singularity, even though number of transistors did indeed doubled every two years, this grow is impossible to continue infinitely, as there is simply a limit what we can achieve with our current materials. Actually, having more processing power doesn't equal the intelligence or even the creativity, it doesn't improve upon the software or the other technological fields, it also doesn't suggest that all tasks can be automated.
 
The future is inevitably going to be corporations that extensively use automation being heavily taxed to fund the welfare to support a large portion of the populous existing in the lower middle class, of those people some will wish to work in some capacity and that money will supplement their income allowing them to possibly become upper middle class or eveb upper class depending on the work. Doctors and Lawyers are still going to be needed in the future for example.

You're thinking too flat here. What profit exists for capitalists to make, when essentially everything is automated? They make money, it gets taken away from them, given to private individuals, who spend it to the companies, and then given right back to the individuals. Profit comes from human labour, and when no one is doing labour anymore, there's no more profit. Capitalism fundamentally wouldn't function at that point, eking a slight profit from the small elite who actually have work to do.
 
You're thinking too flat here. What profit exists for capitalists to make, when essentially everything is automated?
Find & create new industries that people want. Not everything can stay automated until we're being directed by some kind of AI. at that point the only thing left to humanity is to not fuck it all up.

But I don't expect the AI director to come about anytime soon.

Profit comes from human labour, and when no one is doing labour anymore, there's no more profit.
Profit comes from eliminating human labor.
 
Why would capitalist ever strive to create society where they make little to no profit?

Yes, they can theoretically reach the point where they reach enlightenment or are overthrown, but a result won't be pursuing profit and thus can't be capitalistic by design or intent.
 
Why would capitalist ever strive to create society where they make little to no profit?
Capitalist aren't top-down society engineers.

Competition is what drives down profit. Competitors who see the space the capitalist is thriving in and think they can do better. The result is we have options to choose from and from that point its up to the market to decide who wins or loses.
 
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