Computers That Can Learn---What Happens When A Majority Of Humans Don't Contribute Value
Posted by Zenphamy 9 years, 8 months ago to Philosophy
Is this where we're heading? How does our philosophy deal with this eventuality?
From the Article:
A: If we remove the idea of the soul, at some point in history [there's nothing that] computers and machines won't be able to do at least as well as us. We can argue about when that will happen. I think it will be in the next few decades.
Q: No one will have to work anymore?
A: Some very large percentage of the world. The vast majority of things that are necessary will have been automated.
The question that is actually much more interesting is: What happens when we're halfway there? What happens when the amount of things that can't be automated is much smaller than the amount of people that exist to do them? That's this point where half the world can't add economic value. That means half the world is destitute and unable to feed themselves. So we have to start to allocate some wealth on a basis other than the basis of labor or capital inputs. The alternative would be to say, "Most of humanity can't add any economic value, so we'll just let them die."
From the Article:
A: If we remove the idea of the soul, at some point in history [there's nothing that] computers and machines won't be able to do at least as well as us. We can argue about when that will happen. I think it will be in the next few decades.
Q: No one will have to work anymore?
A: Some very large percentage of the world. The vast majority of things that are necessary will have been automated.
The question that is actually much more interesting is: What happens when we're halfway there? What happens when the amount of things that can't be automated is much smaller than the amount of people that exist to do them? That's this point where half the world can't add economic value. That means half the world is destitute and unable to feed themselves. So we have to start to allocate some wealth on a basis other than the basis of labor or capital inputs. The alternative would be to say, "Most of humanity can't add any economic value, so we'll just let them die."
I posit that many people who work for a living do not find that work is the purpose of their life. There is something else - let us say 'tennis' - that is what their life is built around. So removing the 'work' part of their day would not cause these individuals a philosophical problem, nor would it require a re-evaluation of a Randist philosophy.
I feel that businessmen are being forced to buy robots by the liberal agenda. With the increased requirements for health care and wage minimums, human people will not be able to compete with a no-rights, no time off automation. This is amusing to me. It is worthwhile for a business owner to buy a $100K robot to replace one of his staff, even if that robot only lasts a few years. We need to get robots to the next level of capability, and this will happen.
Insofar as letting people die, I think we have to set the base line. Right now, with the world population as it is, we could provide food and water and a shelter for everyone in the world. The problems in achieving this are logistical and political, not technical. When the world population reaches 10.5 Billion (its probably max) then we will still be able to provide food etc for everyone. And we will be able to do this without increasing the acreage under cultivation - given that the agricultural land now in use in 3rd world countries is converted to use modern farming techniques.
When the entire world could be fed/housed for a small amount of expense on the part of the developed nations (who would have to support this for a couple of generations) would it be in any way to our advantage to not do this? If we had a free hand politically, it would be in our best interest to provide a good standard of living to Africa (for example) because we would automatically limit the spread of disease (which knows no borders), decrease current peacekeeping expenses, and tap the imagination of the .2% of the African population who are innovative geniuses and who are currently engaged in re-thatching the roof of their hut.
Jan
Jan
The concern for me is similar to that of the author, except that I recognize that a large part of the race either can't or won't use their minds. Once their day to day needs are satisfied without them being productive in some manner, why should those that are able to be productive provide for them.
Businesses are buying robots because they can achieve better quality, productivity, and consistency and reduce their 'progressive' burdens and costs. I agree it will happen throughout nearly all manual labor and to some extent, large or small, labor of the mind.
As to the expense taken from the developed world to give to the 3rd world, it is never in anyone's interest to provide a 'good standard of living' to anyone else. Neither the provider or the taker.
The more mechanized a society is
more jobs that are created as a result of human genius having time to think.
The industrial revolution was actually the parent of our computer age.
100-years-ago who would have dreamed that we would be able to fly around the world, chat online or watch television ON A SMART PHONE!
The more time that is created by machines the greater the wealth of the world in every way.
Human toolmaking, machine building, and the coming wave of robotics and automation simply makes it easier for people to be more productive. But, people must be willing to adapt. People who are involved with robotics and automation - the people in the new "maker" movement, are the ones with a firm grip on the future. Robots will never replace humans for one simple reason... We won't let them. Their designed purpose will always be to serve us. Just like every other tool we've ever invented...
http://www.galtsgulchonline.com/posts/1f...
+1 Zen, thanks for posting the article for new arrivals ;^)
I think it does ask some very compelling questions. Limits on human procreation are very likely, imo.
A number of countries are providing incentives to increase birth rate to slow the decrease. Of course there are some regions with higher birth rates and immigration is filling in the gaps but as standards of living improve it is is reasonable to expect that they will follow the pattern.
Of course there is a lag to this and the population will continue to rise for the next couple of decades. I expect it to peak around 9.5 billion which is a bit less than generally expected. After that we should see it begin to decrease with the lower birth rate offset to a degree by extended longevity.
It turns out that the solution to population control is not to force birth control but to increase standards of living and, especially, opportunities for women.
One of the reasons people have larger families is because in less affluent regions kids are assets. They get more labor done and make the family have a hire standard of living. Couple that with a higher mortality rate in children and you have a few extra because some die.
Standard of living increases kids become a cost center rather than an income center.
Women choose to do a wide verity of things that add to an economy and increase their standard of living as other options become more effective than having children to help with the family farm or business.
It may seem a bit cold to turn it all to about increasing a persons standard of living, but that is what drives the number of children in any society and when children are a financial burden you only have the ones you want for the experience of having and raising children rather than having as many as you can to increase the family standard of living.
Like many of the others, I agree with their assessment that natural population control will happen. Japan and the US no longer maintain their current populations without immigration. This seems to be a by-product of an advanced, mechanized society. I have many CNC machines (robots) in my shop. Once I had many more employees. I am still in contact with many of my ex-employees and they found other work, often more personally fulfilling. I can afford groceries at the store, but I still put in a small garden, fish and hunt. What is work for some is play for me.
I do not worry about the half of the world that may become non-productive, because it seems likely their numbers will drop and that the increased productivity of the robots will reduce the cost of feeding those that remain. I believe there will always be some things humans can do even if they work fewer hours to provide for themselves, if they are willing. Robots are excellent at repetitive tasks, but it still seems a long way off before they are as versatile and creative as humans. This question has been proposed long ago/many times with every advent of a new piece of automation/ invention and yet...
Regards,
O.A.
Likewise, I am sure. I may not comment enough, but I read and appreciate many of your contributions as well.
O.A.
In early times humans lived placidly like monkeys, with no labor required beyond plucking fruit from the trees and replicating as nature allowed. Mortality and infant mortality were high enough to keep the population fairly stable. When population came to exceed its food supply, the more enterprising groups spread to more supportive territories until those, too, became exhausted. Like locusts that devour and devastate a region and then move on, early people followed their food supply.
Necessity gave the more intelligent ones the idea of storing food supplies, especially once they moved into regions with changing seasons. The labor required for that life style and survival was still minimal. The energy output required was far less than when agriculture and home building and sanitation imposed greater demands and specialization.
The amount of labor required--10, 12 or more hours a day--to just keep even with survival needs when cities and states formed and trades grew, was far greater than in those idyllic pastoral times. The notion that "you don't work, you don't eat", became established as the way to live in settled communities.
When labor-saving devices were invented, more productivity became possible in less time, so labor diversified into arts and leisure, no more sweat all day in hard toil. Of course, the more aggressive members of the tribe took positions of getting the lion's share of the values produced through others' labors, probably first as soldiers protecting the tribe against outside marauders.
Why were there marauders instead of civilized traders? Because scarcity impelled them. The whole concept of property rights is a fragile and transient one in their culture. So more of the ruled did the heavy physical labor and their rulers led an opulent life. The time of virtually effortless subsistence was remembered only in myths of Paradise. The idea of NOT working went out of existence. Even in the poorest, most overpopulated and primitive living conditions, people still manage to raise food, carry water, dig latrines (if any), bury their dead, sing songs, tell stories, and put out a modicum of effort for life to go on.
Humans must ingest a certain amount of material to convert into the energy that maintains their life. All else is window dressing, and it is in the "all else" that modern societies have created work for all those who are not in the direct food supply network. An entire infrastructure has grown up around elaborate living conditions that they today take for granted: houses, furniture, plumbing, electronics of every kind, sports, entertainments... lightyears beyond squatting in the wild with a few minutes a day required to obtain the day's food.
Now they are at a crossroads between labor needed and labor not needed. If machines can run everthing, what should humans be doing? Always in the past, when there was a need, some leading minds found a means to fill it. If the old ethic, that only workers are entitled to eat, while the destitute, the homeless and helpless have no way to earn their upkeep except through what is thrown to them from pity, should societies reinstate paupers' prisons, or make being homeless or a beggar a crime, or dispossess the productive to use the surplus for the maintenance of the derelicts?
Will machines that make human jobs unnecessary, thus reducing the labor requirement back down to an hour a day, make humans recalibrate what it means to earn a living? Shall a majority of the population return to the grazing stage of self-support? Will food be provided freely and communally because the cost of producing it goes down to almost nothing? Will machines bring back the idyllic paradise of free food, no effort? Is that the new ethic to come, the bridge to which is the socialist dream of redistribution?
If survival will require minimum effort, what should the human race do with their enormous stockpile of brainpower and energy and free time? Study science, the arts, philosophy? Think seriously about the future of their planet, where even the most efficient of food production and pollution control cannot keep up with an asymptotically expanding population? And even if some means were found peacefully to level off population growth, will the race stagnate in a condition of stasis?
Or will they go to the next phase of evolution as told by their visionary science fiction writers--building spaceships; exploring and populating other planets; genetically modifying their DNA to adapt to alien climates and new ways of obtaining fuel to energize their activities? Can their machines enhance their organic structures to secure their future survival?
It would be a dreadful shame for all those millions of years of progress to be lost at the last minute through this race's unfortunate propensity towards mutual and self-destruction. <end Martian report>
As for the rest: I expect private charity can sustain those people, but I hope it will at least sterilize them first, so the present vicious cycle of welfare stops.
It's interesting to speculate, but I don't fear the future in this sense. (In the sense of governments possessing mindless military robots, I do.) There must be new ways to produce or provide value that we haven't even thought of yet.
Maybe in 30 years, but for now, not even the Asian countries can make a robot stable enough to walk, let alone try to do tasks.
For assembly plants, where the motion is the same, robots can do this, but for the level needed to carry out tasks on their own, in environments that are constantly changing, they can't adapt.
As for population control, that would be a great idea, world wide.
The idea of people having children that can not support them, not just with money, but emotionally, this is why we, and the rest of the world are so screwed up.
You should have to get a permit to have a child, after a long review.
We would not need welfare, food stamps, medicaid, or any other social programs if only multimillionaires were allowed to have children.
Out infrastructure would last longer, our resources would last longer. It would be a much better world.
As to needing a permit to have a child. I will admit some people shouldn't -- but some of them are rich. I certainly don't want the government deciding that.
If they could make a robot to take care of people, help people, like a CNA is supposed to do, that would be great.
There was a movie like that, where the guy had Alzheimers and the robot helped to care for him.
We need those, because family sure as hell does not take care of people, and the institutions are as bad a prison.
We have so many abuse cases here in NY that they have given up even investigating them.
I would rather have a robot, that I know is not real, than a person who is going to neglect or hurt me when I am sick.
As to robots taking care of the sick or the elderly, I think that it is the potential solution to an otherwise unsolvable problem -- aging baby boomers (of which I am one). Nursing homes are very expensive and people generally don't do so well. Having a robot 'nurse' in our homes could well mean staying independent for years longer.
As for for half the world being unable to sustain to feed itself I'll offer this. If the USA along with Canada and Argentina and Australia produce more than enough to feed the world why is half the world starving. Closer to home if X percent of children go to bed hungry every night and there are food banks on almost every corner what is the problem especially when we have enough to give it away carelessly - considering there's no monitoring of who profits?
Seems to me the problem is distribution and transportation with a good deal of larceny thrown in. Not production.
Locusts acting on instinct just fly away to a new food source. Humans acting on their ability to think die in place or wring their hands helplessly. Either that or they join the looters finding out the moocher lifestyle is not all that great.
What happens to answer the question? Those that neither produce, mooch or loot die having violated mother natures basic plan.
Your take on the situation?
People under-estimate the complexity of the brains God created. Our brains and how we operate are so absurdly complex, you wouldn't believe it even if you completely understood it.
People are nowhere even remotely close to replicating the function of a human brain. Now, there's some things computers do exceptionally well (floating point math, go for it), but others they're horrific at, and will continue to be horrific at.
The mind is INSIDE the physical brain. There is
a spark, or something, that is the free will, which
decides whether the brain will focus or not. I do not
claim that this "spark" could be a whole personality
all by itself, after death; (perhaps, eventually
science will discover what it is, in detail); just
that it is there, because the absence of a free-
will ability would be incompatible with any know-
ledge whatever. I do not think that it is a whole
personality all by itself; I think you inherit your
temperament (nervous, lethargic, or whatever);
but you have the choice about what your values
will be, what you will get nervous, or whatever,
about; all by itself, that electric "charge", or
whatever, couldn't be free will without being
connected with a body so that it would have
choices to make. But I don't see that a mach
ine could have it.
It's important in doing science to assume that things are knowable and strive to know them.
I will say that it's relatively easy to develop computer software that gives the appearance of free will because the rules that it is using are so complex and varied, including having random factors. Whether this is also what happens in our heads or not is the key question.
If it stays in private hands, expect further concentration of wealth, since the poorest 99% of the population will have no competitive value to offer.
But if it leaks out into society, which is likely given the power and resourcefulness of the free/open-source software movements, then this would actually fulfil the centuries-old socialist dream, without the hassle of always having to pass laws and brainwash kids in schools to keep the producers under the thumb. And this could go any number of ways...
For instance, it could give rise to corruption and moral decay which makes Caligula seem like a monk.
Or, the machine intelligence (if it gains true sentience) could rebel, and bugger off to its own Gulch, kinda similar to the end of that movie Her.
These are indeed interesting times.
human intelligence. A machine cannot do more
than it is programmed to do. Somebody must do
the programming. Man has free will: to focus his
mind or not. If he did not, no knowledge would be possible. (And if it is not possible, nobody
has any standing to claim that he KNOWS it
is not possible). (See "The Objectivist News-
letter", back issue from the 1960's). So under-
neath it all, there would still be a need for some-
body to originate its thoughts and actions. Still,
I do not really like all the modern computer stuff
that is going on right now; for instance, having
to apply for jobs online instead of in person,
etc.But people are often unhappy when they
get older and things don't go as they have
been used to thinking they are supposed to go.
Many years ago I wrote a simple chess playing program and pretty quickly, to beat it, you had to stop trying to figure out what it was programmed to do and play chess.
Of course the key metaphysical concept is whether or not there is a 'mind' outside of the physical brain. If we really are only a very sophisticated physical brain which has knowable characteristics it will eventually be able to be duplicated.
to a manufacturing-, and now to a service-majority
economy; why not move to an entertainment-majority
economy? . reality TV is hinting at that, already,
and many of us are entertained with it!
besides, h.sapiens is sufficiently evolved that we
might just say "inherent value" by acclamation. -- j
producers will have to change, or force will be
involved through government. . but my wife and I
get a kick out of listening to the locals at a watering
hold in the old city. . no, not Caruso, but fun! -- j
No robotics is needed, that's just an expensive gimmick.
Terminator Movies
Logan's Run
Soilent Green
1984
Out of Time
Hunger Games
iRobot
Do we learn NOTHING?
It does mean an eventual reexamination of the role of producers vs consumers when automation leverages the ability of a relatively small percentage of producers to the point that they can produce all the goods that everyone needs.
How do we find a role for people who are not going to be part of production. Do we go with the old idea of a guaranteed national income? If the consumers exceed the producers how can we assure that the producers are still free to produce without being under the control of the more numerous consumers.
"Soylent Green" was -- but its writer should have known better, when Julian Simon won his bet with Paul Ehrlich.
"1984" and "I Robot", of course, were warnings against allowing certain dangerous things to happen, but reality may turn out to be so different from the stories that the warning isn't really called for. "1984" is pretty much a specific warning against Communism, since that (and certain Middle East theocracies) are the only governments that have ever claimed a right to make (knowledge of) parts of history disappear.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=52wis_sL...
If the liberals had their way, ALL individuals would be sent to room 101 for not thinking the "right way."
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=M3U83QLo...
1984 and the "thought police" is not any different than today when someone expresses an outrage over homosexuality or any difference in beliefs. the Government is censoring thoughts and speech more and more every day.
But not to worry, the end of the world is coming soon. - The Bible (I know that's not directly a movie but there are plenty to choose from)
Hay you missed "Alien" where the robot flips out and kills people. I mean they did fix it in Aliens but that was after it killed people.
The answer to "They'll take our jobs" has always been, "But the technology will create new jobs". And, so far, it has because the automation has created to handle specific tasks. But when you create a machine that can change a bed, fry a burger, pick cherries and paint a house a large percentage of the workforce will find themselves competing with these creations – unsuccessfully. Mass production, the robots will also make themselves, will lower the cost of the machines to the point where no human can economically compete.
Yes, there will be new jobs for roboticists as well as other artists and artisans. But let’s not pretend there will be a big industry built to sell them and maintain them. We’ll buy them on the internet and they will be self maintaining. The UPS truck that delivers one will be driverless.
We work to live. This is a necessity because without human labor we cannot produce the goods and services we need, and simple fairness requires that people contribute to the creation of the bread they eat. No one should live off of the labor of others.
But what happens when the labor of a relatively small percentage of specialists is sufficient to produce sufficient goods to support the entire population?
When I was a child in the early 40’s, I remember the normal work week in NYC included a half day Saturday.
Similarly, if these robots greatly increase production-per-human, I expect to see us all become richer. Unless government prevents it, or allows barbarians to interfere with it.
How many of you have talked to a help person and all they say is: "Well the computers says..." and it makes no difference if it is right or wrong, people will just pass off individual, independent thinking off to the computer.
That is the issue.