Are we Nearing "The Age of Plenty?" and Possible Ramifications

[dgiharris]

Right now, the political forum is beset with the "Socialist vs Capitalist" arguments and I had an interesting thought...

I'm wondering if political science and political philosophy are properly taking into account technological advancement.

More and more of our manufacturing is being automated. More and more people are being put out of jobs by machines and computers. In fact, as more and more "narrow" AIs come into operation, jobs previously thought to be impossible by machines will become dominated by them. Take automated driving. Google is easily 3-4 years away from having automated vehicles in every city in the US and dominating Uber.

Taking a step back... For the sake of argument, lets say that machines can manufacture 90% of all human goods with "minimal" help from a person. Imagine an entire factory that cranks out televisions, microwaves, and other electronics by the thousands per hour and yet only requires 50 human beings to oversee everything.

What if the 90% didn't only apply to electronics but everything, that is 90% of all of our needs could be obtained via machines with minimal human oversight: Food, agriculture, power generation, utilities...

Now extend this to services as well, imagine being able to get a massage from a machine, or your hair cut, dentistry, tatoos....

So, what is my point?

Well, we've been taught to regard the above as an economic catastrophe. We can't help but think "What kind of job can people have?" with the above system.

It occurs to me that this is 18th, 19th, and 20th century thinking.

However, I don't want to poison the well with my thoughts.

I'd like to ask this forum the following questions:

What would be possible ramifications if machines could produce 90% of humanity's needs with minimal human oversight?

What adjustments would/could we make to our various economic systems to deal with the possible ramifications?

Is it all doom and gloom?

 

[nonaeroterraqueous]

Imagine an entire factory that cranks out televisions, microwaves, and other electronics by the thousands per hour and yet only requires 50 human beings to oversee everything.

The result is that all of these things will become much cheaper to buy. As a consequence, we will need less income to live wealthier lives. The question is whether the number of jobs will be cut when our government makes it impossible to hire people for lower wages (take, for example, the situation of Mac Donald's replacing people with automated machines in order to survive a hike in the minimum wage).

 

[USincognito]

Subbing.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

You may come to realise there are other countries outside US. Most of them are nowhere near being in a position to even think about automation, let alone having the money to implement it. Even US isn't that close, and (you'll be pleased to hear) you're one of the most advanced countries.

 

[dgiharris]

You may come to realise there are other countries outside US. Most of them are nowhere near being in a position to even think about automation, let alone having the money to implement it. Even US isn't that close, and (you'll be pleased to hear) you're one of the most advanced countries.

In 1910, majority of people still got around using horses or walking or running; the Airplane was barely invented, majority of homes were without electricity or running water.

35 years later, we detonated the first atomic bomb
60 years later, we put a man on the moon

I would easily argue that in the next 20 to 30 years, we will possess the technology to achieve the 90% automation I posit above.

I think that the powers that be will try to hold off on it and push it out as long as possible... similar to how the mass produced electric car was delayed (first one debuted in the mid 90s)

Regardless, I think this is a discussion worth having now, before the 90%+ automation happens.

 

[Bungle_Bear]

In 1910, majority of people still got around using horses or walking or running; the Airplane was barely invented, majority of homes were without electricity or running water.

35 years later, we detonated the first atomic bomb
60 years later, we put a man on the moon

I would easily argue that in the next 20 to 30 years, we will possess the technology to achieve the 90% automation I posit above.

I think that the powers that be will try to hold off on it and push it out as long as possible... similar to how the mass produced electric car was delayed (first one debuted in the mid 90s)

Regardless, I think this is a discussion worth having now, before the 90%+ automation happens.

I'm not sure you really considered what I said, but meh. Global economics will play a big part in the US's future roadmap.

Increased automation simply means some jobs will be taken over by AI/robots (data entry, tax accounting, freight and cargo forwarding etc), some will require reskilling (military, machine operators, maintenance engineers etc) and some will just use more technology but remain basically human operated (majority of healthcare and therapists, teachers, police etc)

Sure, unskilled manual workers will struggle, but there will be a demand for more skilled employees. More importantly, there will be new jobs. The industrial revolution moved people from agriculture to manufacturing, reduced manual labour and created new jobs. Sure there were social changes, but that's part of a vibrant society.

Back when I was a child we all looked to the future of a paperless office. Are we there yet?

The job I do now did not exist when I was growing up.

Why do you think things will be so gloomy in the future?

 

[ThievingMagpie]

I've seen a number of articles positing a universal basic income (UBI) as an answer to mass automation of jobs - this would essentially be a basic income paid as welfare which amalgamates all existing benefits like jobseekers allowance, assisted living etc. into a flat rate which you can earn on top of. I think it's an interesting idea but would likely need to involve extreme taxation on a diminished market. You'd also likely see a race to the bottom on preferable tax rates as different countries try to outcompete other.

You've also got to ask, what will people do with all the free time? Currently recreation is something we manage to sneak in around work or on weekends but if 90% jobs are automated we'll have a significant task of ensuring that the human population is enriched and feels like they can lead meaningful lives.

Edit: I'm not in a place to say whether 90% job automation seems likely but I do find it interesting as a thought experiment

 

[Jonathan Walkerin]

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

There has already been a great deal of automation - computers, ACMs, whole factories of robots, in agriculture, etc., but unemployment is lower than ever; the jobs have changed and new kinds of jobs have emerged. This may just be a feature of the initial stages of automation, but it gives some breathing space for rejigging the economics of automation to redirect some portion of the job cost savings.

The results of Universal Basic Income trials I've seen show little change in numbers working, but a significant improvement in health, especially mental health, of the poorer families, and this seems to particularly benefit the children, whose behavioural, social, and educational indicators move upwards towards the mean. This suggests UBI is a strong investment for the future, and is likely to have beneficial social effects, including a reduction in health-related costs. The financing of such schemes seems to be the fly in the ointment, even if their overall benefits might exceed their costs.

 

[Strathos]

And what happens when the robots take over and decide that they don't need us anymore?

 

[Bungle_Bear]

And what happens when the robots take over and decide that they don't need us anymore?

We hope John Connor is a real person?

 

[essentialsaltes]

The utopian dream: No one would have to work at a job unless they want to. People live fulfilled lives writing poetry and dining on Michelin-star class food prepared by kitchen robots.

The dystopian nightmare: There will be no work (and no source of income) for all but a very few. All wealth will flow toward the robot manufacturers, and the employee-less businesses that use them to generate wealth more efficiently than any human labor could.

The question is how we adjust society to navigate closer to the one and away from the other.

A bizarre idea that occurred to me was that individual people could buy robots to work in their stead. Instead of saving money for college, young people would mortgage themselves to buy the most productive robot they can afford. The robot is rented to some factory, and that rent is the person's income.

Like in the Civil War when wealthy people would hire soldiers to serve in their place to avoid military service.

Maybe poor people would be issued a sad little 20-year-old government Roomba to own that generates a small amount of floor cleaning income. The rich stay rich, but at least the poor can get a foot into this new economy. (Haha, just kidding, they will be stuck at the bottom forever as social mobility becomes a thing of the past.)

 

[dgiharris]

I'm not sure you really considered what I said, but meh. Global economics will play a big part in the US's future roadmap.

Increased automation simply means some jobs will be taken over by AI/robots (data entry, tax accounting, freight and cargo forwarding etc), some will require reskilling (military, machine operators, maintenance engineers etc) and some will just use more technology but remain basically human operated (majority of healthcare and therapists, teachers, police etc)

Sure, unskilled manual workers will struggle, but there will be a demand for more skilled employees. More importantly, there will be new jobs. The industrial revolution moved people from agriculture to manufacturing, reduced manual labour and created new jobs. Sure there were social changes, but that's part of a vibrant society.

Back when I was a child we all looked to the future of a paperless office. Are we there yet?

The job I do now did not exist when I was growing up.

Why do you think things will be so gloomy in the future?

The old school way of thinking is that as technology and manufacturing progress, sure, jobs may be eliminated but new jobs will be created and thus you just have to "retrain". It is my belief that this is not a linear exchange, it is not one job created for one job lost. As technology progresses, there could very well be a region where it is 3 jobs created for every job lost. Or, as I fear, it could be 10 jobs lost for every 1 job taken over by a machine...

It is my opinion that we are within 30 years of reaching that point where we have a mass assimilation of human jobs taken over by machines.

Computer AIs and Machine Technology are coming to the point where they will be able to do 90% of all human jobs. It isn't just "unskilled" labor that needs to worry.

Instead of a hospital having 300 nurses they have 75 autonomous robots that can do the job of the 300 nurses (robots work 24/7 so need for "shifts") and these 75 robots are managed by 15 human operators, that is, the robots can "ask for direction" whenever they encounter a task their programming can't handle. (In this system I'd imagine there'd be 10 human assistant nurses per shift that would likewise help/support the robots)

Instead of Google or Microsoft having 90,000+ software engineers and employees that number drops to 200 software engineers and they mostly just direct or oversee the AIs that now write the software. The rest of employees drop to 900 and they likewise have overseeing or supporting roles for the robots and AIs that take over the vast majority of jobs.

Instead of 3 million Uber drivers in the US the number drops to 30,000 as automated drivers dominate the market.

Why do you think things will be so gloomy in the future?

Because we are entering an era where technology, specifically Narrow AIs, now exceed mankind's mental abilities and I'm not just talking about computational abilities like crunching numbers.

Boeing had a load bearing wall/section designed in its plane it used for years. Human engineers had spent a good 30 years designing it over the evolution of different models of planes. They recently gave this "solved" problem to a narrow AI just to see what the AI could do as an experiment. Within a few days the narrow AI came up with a design that, decreased the surface area by 25%, decreased the weight by 25%, and was 40% stronger. In those few days, the narrow AI did 20,000 years worth of human work.

These AIs can "teach themselves". They aren't programmed by human beings, they learn via trial and error in a simulated world that can run millions of iterations per second.

But does the above mean that things are all doom and gloom?

It depends.

It is my belief that the above has the potential to actually usher in the Utopia that we've been dreaming of as a species for thousands of years. If we create the right economic and social systems that PROPERLY utilize the above.

However, I fear that if we do not create the proper economic and social systems, and we try to stick to our current economic and social systems we are going to slide really close to the Dystopia future models

 

[dgiharris]

The utopian dream: No one would have to work at a job unless they want to. People live fulfilled lives writing poetry and dining on Michelin-star class food prepared by kitchen robots.

The dystopian nightmare: There will be no work (and no source of income) for all but a very few. All wealth will flow toward the robot manufacturers, and the employee-less businesses that use them to generate wealth more efficiently than any human labor could.

The question is how we adjust society to navigate closer to the one and away from the other.

I think that we need to completely redefine what we think money is and what is valuable.

We can't help but to equate money and value to Maslow's hierarchy of needs and we can't help but to start at the bottom.

The bottom of the pyramid is where we subconsciously are "stuck" when we think of money, economy, and value.

But what if every single person on Earth had a Star Trek-esque black box that just magically created any material you wanted: gold, diamonds, Televisions, phones, computers, food, clothing... Now what? If those things became as easy to procure as air they would essentially be worthless as a commodity to trade?

Then we would go to the next rung. Safety Needs: That would be where we start to equate things of value. But again, lets say I can create a robot that is a great body guard and watchdog for my property. So my Safety Needs are met.

Then we go to the next rung. Love and Belonging...
How can you trade on Love and Belonging? How do you monetize Friendship, Intimacy, family, sense of Connection??? Well, one way would be through Social Media Likes. The Black Mirror had a great episode on your Social Media Profile Likes being directly linked to your socio-economic worth.

My point really is to challenge what we actually perceive as "wealth" and "money" and "things of value".

Once we stop thinking in terms of the bottom rung of the pyramid as the standard for things of value we will see that you can "monetize" any rung of the pyramid. To some extent we kinda do monetize all the rungs of the pyramid but we still "default" to the bottom rung for the vast majority of what we consider money and value. Food is more important than poetry if you have no food. But if you have all the food you can ever eat then poetry becomes way more important than food (if that makes any sense).

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

A bizarre idea that occurred to me was that individual people could buy robots to work in their stead. Instead of saving money for college, young people would mortgage themselves to buy the most productive robot they can afford. The robot is rented to some factory, and that rent is the person's income.

The principle sounds good, although it wouldn't make sense to buy a particular robot, since the technology and tasks would likely change too fast. But maybe you could have a system where you buy a policy, shares, options, or other investments, with a company that supplies (& maintains) robots to industry and returns a dividend on that investment. Better yet, invest in a robot supply & maintenance industry tracker fund... and hedge it with a used robot repurposing, recycling, and 2nd market supply fund

 

[essentialsaltes]

The principle sounds good, although it wouldn't make sense to buy a particular robot, since the technology and tasks would likely change too fast.

Sure, but it makes for a better Bradbury-type story.

Better yet, invest in a robot supply & maintenance industry tracker fund... and hedge it with a used robot repurposing, recycling, and 2nd market supply fund

Yes investing is a more standard capitalist way to reap these rewards. And more people should. [Disclaimer: I doubled my money on IRBT] But we know the have-nots mostly do not invest, so they will be left behind and will miss out on the positives of the robot revolution.

 

[FrumiousBandersnatch]

Sure, but it makes for a better Bradbury-type story.

Perhaps you end up in late middle-age with a back yard full of obsolete robots, and use them to build yourself a better life [in some wonderfully creative way].

Yes investing is a more standard capitalist way to reap these rewards. And more people should. [Disclaimer: I doubled my money on IRBT] But we know the have-nots mostly do not invest, so they will be left behind and will miss out on the positives of the robot revolution.

Yes, it will take a major cultural shift for the have-nots to ever become haves...

 

[Steve Petersen]

Right now, the political forum is beset with the "Socialist vs Capitalist" arguments and I had an interesting thought...

I'm wondering if political science and political philosophy are properly taking into account technological advancement.

More and more of our manufacturing is being automated. More and more people are being put out of jobs by machines and computers. In fact, as more and more "narrow" AIs come into operation, jobs previously thought to be impossible by machines will become dominated by them. Take automated driving. Google is easily 3-4 years away from having automated vehicles in every city in the US and dominating Uber.

Taking a step back... For the sake of argument, lets say that machines can manufacture 90% of all human goods with "minimal" help from a person. Imagine an entire factory that cranks out televisions, microwaves, and other electronics by the thousands per hour and yet only requires 50 human beings to oversee everything.

What if the 90% didn't only apply to electronics but everything, that is 90% of all of our needs could be obtained via machines with minimal human oversight: Food, agriculture, power generation, utilities...

Now extend this to services as well, imagine being able to get a massage from a machine, or your hair cut, dentistry, tatoos....

So, what is my point?

Well, we've been taught to regard the above as an economic catastrophe. We can't help but think "What kind of job can people have?" with the above system.

It occurs to me that this is 18th, 19th, and 20th century thinking.

However, I don't want to poison the well with my thoughts.

I'd like to ask this forum the following questions:

What would be possible ramifications if machines could produce 90% of humanity's needs with minimal human oversight?

What adjustments would/could we make to our various economic systems to deal with the possible ramifications?

Is it all doom and gloom?

Got a book and a website for you:

Book: Enlightenment Now, by Steven Pinker

Website: Our World in Data.

No, it is not gloom and doom.

 

[Steve Petersen]

Perhaps you end up in late middle-age with a back yard full of obsolete robots, and use them to build yourself a better life [in some wonderfully creative way].

Yes, it will take a major cultural shift for the have-nots to ever become haves...

Declining global poverty: share of people living in extreme poverty, 1820-2015

 

[Steve Petersen]

.