“Via a combination of machine intelligence and humanoid robots, are we humans set to be crowded out of the workforce altogether? If there’s little work for people to do, how do they earn a living? What new purpose will they find?”
Important questions. Here is another one: Who will own the operating systems on which the humanoids run--operating systems which will surely be managed centrally?
Meaning, for instance, a government might be able to remotely gain control of locally owned humanoids in order to put down a local protest or manage civil unrest.
Political and economic elites will continue to exist in the future, just as they do now, and a massive population of centrally controlled AI-bots can create some unpleasant and unintended consequences for a democracy.
I don't buy we need humanoid robots anymore than I buy that the future of aeronautics is planes with flapping wings.
"But their thinking is often marked by the same species of mistake" is exactly that point. Emphasis on species. We have AI scientists talking about artificial superhuman intelligence as if it has to exactly mimic and pass through humans - even with all our flaws, violence, irrational fears, fragile egos. Is it built for purpose or for the flattery of imitation and all the limitations that brings? Less time taking selfies, more time looking forward, please.
And while I am no degrowther, I'm not seeing robot armies as saviors for GDP standards. As if that's what's most worth saving for humanity.
No pearl clutching to "God Save the GDP" here. Ever-increasing GDP as a purpose unto itself remains a Ponzi scheme, an old utopian capitalist promise of infinite exponential growth free from undesirable side-effects or trade-offs. It's arguably making our world less inhabitable by the day.
Grossly ignoring the systemic limits of all that growth, and the crutch of power-sucking robots made from boundless mineral extraction from the earth, pretends like none of that is actually happening in our hermetically sealed vacuum. We need to challenge ourselves more on our out-of-date models and ideas.
A few badly structured thoughts crossed my mind (also agreeing with the comments made by the other two commentators before me). Just jotting them down here
1. We keep thinking in GDP as the central metric to think about economic health. However, with a decreasing population, we might need to think of other ways to measure and value our economic activity. Not only from a diminishing resource and planetary health point of view, but also as growth will not make sense anymore as a metric. Maybe we should start to think about how we can produce enough for the existing population at any point, to live a safe and reasonably comfortable life? Defining what would be 'enough' in terms of food, housing, mobility, Healthcare, clothing and modest entertainment, instead op a continuous cycle of growth. (Communism 2.0? ;-)
2. The need for bipedal robots has been totally lost on me. They are much slower and less efficient than a lot of robots that do not have to worry about hazardous balancing acts and the limited directionally of a human, to name a few things. Why make human like robots, with all our limitaiations, when we are free to make much more agile machines?
3. If we will have robots and the accompanying software networks to do our work for us, why would we even continue thinking in the way of human associated work with all its inefficiencies. We still think in terms of locality that embodiment brings, where in a lot (most) of situations things can be solved more efficient through networked software. As our cars can be checked and mended remotely by centralised software. Now still directed by humans, the last inefficient wheel in the system. Office work (me emailing you) can be cut out as it is 80% communications. Systems might work seamlessly towards a certain transaction, production machine or distribution system. Only the last steps in repairs or highly human body focused activities like healthcare, might still suffer from old world 'inefficiencies'.
4. Why would we even need money? The system might just feed, cloth, house and entertain us just enough through points or other non-monetary system.
5. My last big and very scary question though would be: when we have fully automated our lives, are even less able to produce anything ourselves anymore, and have made ourselves fully dependent on an opague system, who would be controlling and have the ultimate power to manipulate all of this?
“Via a combination of machine intelligence and humanoid robots, are we humans set to be crowded out of the workforce altogether? If there’s little work for people to do, how do they earn a living? What new purpose will they find?”
Important questions. Here is another one: Who will own the operating systems on which the humanoids run--operating systems which will surely be managed centrally?
Meaning, for instance, a government might be able to remotely gain control of locally owned humanoids in order to put down a local protest or manage civil unrest.
Political and economic elites will continue to exist in the future, just as they do now, and a massive population of centrally controlled AI-bots can create some unpleasant and unintended consequences for a democracy.
I don't buy we need humanoid robots anymore than I buy that the future of aeronautics is planes with flapping wings.
"But their thinking is often marked by the same species of mistake" is exactly that point. Emphasis on species. We have AI scientists talking about artificial superhuman intelligence as if it has to exactly mimic and pass through humans - even with all our flaws, violence, irrational fears, fragile egos. Is it built for purpose or for the flattery of imitation and all the limitations that brings? Less time taking selfies, more time looking forward, please.
And while I am no degrowther, I'm not seeing robot armies as saviors for GDP standards. As if that's what's most worth saving for humanity.
No pearl clutching to "God Save the GDP" here. Ever-increasing GDP as a purpose unto itself remains a Ponzi scheme, an old utopian capitalist promise of infinite exponential growth free from undesirable side-effects or trade-offs. It's arguably making our world less inhabitable by the day.
Grossly ignoring the systemic limits of all that growth, and the crutch of power-sucking robots made from boundless mineral extraction from the earth, pretends like none of that is actually happening in our hermetically sealed vacuum. We need to challenge ourselves more on our out-of-date models and ideas.
As always an interesting piece.
A few badly structured thoughts crossed my mind (also agreeing with the comments made by the other two commentators before me). Just jotting them down here
1. We keep thinking in GDP as the central metric to think about economic health. However, with a decreasing population, we might need to think of other ways to measure and value our economic activity. Not only from a diminishing resource and planetary health point of view, but also as growth will not make sense anymore as a metric. Maybe we should start to think about how we can produce enough for the existing population at any point, to live a safe and reasonably comfortable life? Defining what would be 'enough' in terms of food, housing, mobility, Healthcare, clothing and modest entertainment, instead op a continuous cycle of growth. (Communism 2.0? ;-)
2. The need for bipedal robots has been totally lost on me. They are much slower and less efficient than a lot of robots that do not have to worry about hazardous balancing acts and the limited directionally of a human, to name a few things. Why make human like robots, with all our limitaiations, when we are free to make much more agile machines?
3. If we will have robots and the accompanying software networks to do our work for us, why would we even continue thinking in the way of human associated work with all its inefficiencies. We still think in terms of locality that embodiment brings, where in a lot (most) of situations things can be solved more efficient through networked software. As our cars can be checked and mended remotely by centralised software. Now still directed by humans, the last inefficient wheel in the system. Office work (me emailing you) can be cut out as it is 80% communications. Systems might work seamlessly towards a certain transaction, production machine or distribution system. Only the last steps in repairs or highly human body focused activities like healthcare, might still suffer from old world 'inefficiencies'.
4. Why would we even need money? The system might just feed, cloth, house and entertain us just enough through points or other non-monetary system.
5. My last big and very scary question though would be: when we have fully automated our lives, are even less able to produce anything ourselves anymore, and have made ourselves fully dependent on an opague system, who would be controlling and have the ultimate power to manipulate all of this?