Humans Need Not Apply

[Professor_Fennec]

[yt]7Pq-S557XQU[/yt]

If machines completely and utterly take over the economy, how are humans supposed to work for a living?  We may come to a point where machines are so good at our jobs that nobody will be employable anymore, even the most professional and creative among us.  Not even the jobs of doctors, lawyers and CEOs will be safe. 

Do these machines of the future completely take care of us and manage our lives as we fear the state would manage them?  Do we all enter a state of existential crisis because machines have robbed us of our sense of purpose?  Do we embrace technology to such a degree that we transcend our humanity, allowing us to compete with advanced AI and robotics?  Is that even possible?

[MrBogosity]

Assuming there's no government monkeying with the economy going on, the only way that could happen is if robots were able to satisfy absolutely every desire that humans have. As long as there's even one person out there with needs and desires that the machines aren't meeting, there's a job for someone else who can fulfill them.

So at that point, why would we NEED to work?

[Travis Retriever]

https://www.bogosity.tv/forum/index.php?topic=2576.0
We already have a thread on this, which I already commented on.

But I'll add a question I thought of as I watched the first minute or so of the video (starting after the timestamp t=100 seconds)...a question they didn't seem too keen on answering as they were talking about, "This robot only costs about $0.001/hour" or whatever it was.  And I'm thinking, "Okay, so that's the marginal cost.  What's the set cost?  Because no chance in hell that thing cost only a few pennies to design, test, build, program, debug, manufacture, etc."

[Dallas Wildman]

One possible scenario is that we rent our brains out to this large automoton complex.  Sort of like the Matrix without it's obviously impossible energy extraction, or for that matter enslavement of the human race.  Specifically we rent our brains out to be used as extra memory or processing power.  Even then our population would still decline but it wouldn't be due to war.

[Lord T Hawkeye]

I was in a discussion with some ancom when he started up the whole "technology creates unemployment" nonsense and posed me the question what would happen when the robots take all the jobs.

I said "then...we'd have a perfect world where we didn't have to work.  And the problem with that is what exactly?"

[Altimadark]

And then you have the Zeitgeist religion on the other side of the coin. Yes, they understand making work obsolete would be a good thing, but also think the way to do this is to establish a worldwide socialist commune.

[Professor_Fennec]

Assuming there's no government monkeying with the economy going on, the only way that could happen is if robots were able to satisfy absolutely every desire that humans have. As long as there's even one person out there with needs and desires that the machines aren't meeting, there's a job for someone else who can fulfill them.

So at that point, why would we NEED to work?

What I am afraid of is that one day machines will be able to satisfy all the needs and desires of humans, meaning that their is no job that a machine can't do better or more cheaply.  But you really don't even have to get to such an absolute point to see an effect.  All you need are fewer human jobs available than you have humans to work.  As more and more jobs get replaced, more people will be unemployed. 

But you might ask, why bother working if machines do everything we need?  We work because we need to exchange the value of our time so that we can buy the things we need to live, and if at all possible, have enough excess to live a good life and maybe even build our own little empire. 

But if machines are doing all the work, and you don't own the machines, you are pretty much screwed by your own obsolescence.  Without an economic demand, the monetary value of our lives will be less than zero, because keeping unproductive humans alive is a net loss, like a man-child that won't leave his parent's basement because he can't find work.

People talk as though this future will bring about a post-scarcity economy.  But my worry is that it will bring us to a post-human economy. 

[evensgrey]

What I am afraid of is that one day machines will be able to satisfy all the needs and desires of humans, meaning that their is no job that a machine can't do better or more cheaply.  But you really don't even have to get to such an absolute point to see an effect.  All you need are fewer human jobs available than you have humans to work.  As more and more jobs get replaced, more people will be unemployed. 

But you might ask, why bother working if machines do everything we need?  We work because we need to exchange the value of our time so that we can buy the things we need to live, and if at all possible, have enough excess to live a good life and maybe even build our own little empire. 

But if machines are doing all the work, and you don't own the machines, you are pretty much screwed by your own obsolescence.  Without an economic demand, the monetary value of our lives will be less than zero, because keeping unproductive humans alive is a net loss, like a man-child that won't leave his parent's basement because he can't find work.

People talk as though this future will bring about a post-scarcity economy.  But my worry is that it will bring us to a post-human economy.

This fails the most basic of economic principles:  Desires are INFINITE, so there will ALWAYS be more work to do, and there is no such thing as "post-scarcity", there is only changes in what is scarce.

[Professor_Fennec]

This fails the most basic of economic principles:  Desires are INFINITE, so there will ALWAYS be more work to do, and there is no such thing as "post-scarcity", there is only changes in what is scarce.

Your desires don't get fulfilled unless you have something of value to exchange for what you want.  If you have nothing of value, you have nothing to trade with.  If machines offer a better deal than what you can offer in every conceivable way, you are worse than worthless.  So, the problem isn't a lack of abundance of resources, but a looming problem of access to resources.  In other words, famine without government being the cause.  Instead, the cause is our inability to evolve fast enough to compete with technology. 

[MrBogosity]

What I am afraid of is that one day machines will be able to satisfy all the needs and desires of humans, meaning that their is no job that a machine can't do better or more cheaply.

Why are you afraid of that? Wouldn't that be the best of all possible worlds? No one would have to work and we would all have our needs taken care of!

All you need are fewer human jobs available than you have humans to work.  As more and more jobs get replaced, more people will be unemployed.

Again, in a free market, the only way that could happen is if absolutely each and every need of those humans was taken care of by the machines. 

We work because we need to exchange the value of our time so that we can buy the things we need to live, and if at all possible, have enough excess to live a good life and maybe even build our own little empire.

Do we? Why not have the machines do that for us?

But if machines are doing all the work, and you don't own the machines, you are pretty much screwed by your own obsolescence.

The one part of a computer or network that is NEVER obsolete is the user. That's why they EXIST!

[evensgrey]

Your desires don't get fulfilled unless you have something of value to exchange for what you want.  If you have nothing of value, you have nothing to trade with.  If machines offer a better deal than what you can offer in every conceivable way, you are worse than worthless.  So, the problem isn't a lack of abundance of resources, but a looming problem of access to resources.  In other words, famine without government being the cause.  Instead, the cause is our inability to evolve fast enough to compete with technology.

This is starting to sound remarkably like those predictions of 20-hour work weeks, and it's wrong for the same reason.

Long before we could get into this state, we're going to be physically transformed by our technology, and the entire scenario you present will be mooted.  This is why the doomsayers of The Club of Rome failed as well:  You cannot predict beyond the singularity BY DEFINITION.

[dallen68]

This is starting to sound remarkably like those predictions of 20-hour work weeks, and it's wrong for the same reason.

Long before we could get into this state, we're going to be physically transformed by our technology, and the entire scenario you present will be mooted.  This is why the doomsayers of The Club of Rome failed as well:  You cannot predict beyond the singularity BY DEFINITION.

Which predictions of 20 hour work weeks are these? The only ones I'm familiar with basically say that someday it will only be necessary to work 20 hours a week to meet your needs (with varying opinions about what level of "need" we're talking about). If we're talking level one need (i.e. basic food shelter clothing) we're already there. But let's say we're talking level three needs (entertainment and socialization), how is it a doomsday scenario? It means "wonderful, now I have time to be doing what I actually want to be doing."

[evensgrey]

Which predictions of 20 hour work weeks are these? The only ones I'm familiar with basically say that someday it will only be necessary to work 20 hours a week to meet your needs (with varying opinions about what level of "need" we're talking about). If we're talking level one need (i.e. basic food shelter clothing) we're already there. But let's say we're talking level three needs (entertainment and socialization), how is it a doomsday scenario? It means "wonderful, now I have time to be doing what I actually want to be doing."

Back in the 1972, The Club of Rome predicted total economic collapse unless we stop economic growth, on the claim that resources will run out.

So far, all predicted resource exhaustion has entirely failed to happen, due to improved technology (the lack of the models allowing for being a well-known criticism that started almost immediately), and the original models used are completely inapplicable now because we've been through at least one model-invalidating round of technological change (there's no possibility that anyone in 1972 could have predicted the effects that improved computers would have, for instance, or what biotechnology would allow).

[MrBogosity]

Which predictions of 20 hour work weeks are these? The only ones I'm familiar with basically say that someday it will only be necessary to work 20 hours a week to meet your needs (with varying opinions about what level of "need" we're talking about). If we're talking level one need (i.e. basic food shelter clothing) we're already there. But let's say we're talking level three needs (entertainment and socialization), how is it a doomsday scenario? It means "wonderful, now I have time to be doing what I actually want to be doing."

If we wanted to live like we did 200 years ago, we'd only need to work a few hours a week. But, of course, we'd have to do without electricity, running water, etc. As time goes on, the concept of the things we "need" changes. What were once pie-in-the-sky desires become necessities. Think of how necessary we consider vaccines to be (and rightly so), but how recently it's been that we've actually been able to make them well enough to eradicate the world's worst diseases!

[MrBogosity]

Back in the 1972, The Club of Rome predicted total economic collapse unless we stop economic growth, on the claim that resources will run out.

So far, all predicted resource exhaustion has entirely failed to happen, due to improved technology (the lack of the models allowing for being a well-known criticism that started almost immediately), and the original models used are completely inapplicable now because we've been through at least one model-invalidating round of technological change (there's no possibility that anyone in 1972 could have predicted the effects that improved computers would have, for instance, or what biotechnology would allow).

That's how it always is! They make the same Malthusian mistakes and never learn. A few years ago, there was an episode of Horizon (which I love) with David Attenborough (whom I love) talking about how many people this planet could ultimately sustain, and when we might reach that level. He came up with 18 billion (with no analysis of economic or technological factors, which has been the death of every Malthusian prediction ever, or even how birth rates converge on replacement fertility as wealth increases) and said that our food production would have to double in the next 40 years to avoid disaster, expressing incredulity that this could happen despite the fact that Norman Borlaug's contributions alone increased food production fivefold!