Automation and the End of Human Work

[Hal No.6277371]

Automation is now happening at an unprecedented pace. The graph to the left depicts the decoupling between median income and productivity - productivity has continued to skyrocket while little human workers are needed as wages stagnate.

We are not simply overcoming the limitations of our muscles. We are overcoming the limitations of our minds, and this is happening on a scale that is completely unprecedented in human history.

We're seeing that artificial intelligence systems like IBM Watson have sufficient natural language understanding to beat the world Jeopardy champions simply by reading wikipedia. This same technology is now set to eat away at medical diagnosis by being able to better diagnose a patient than a panel of board-certified doctors.

At the same time, we're seeing self driving cars fast approaching, with 6 million driving jobs in the US under threat from this technology. Robotics is also encroaching in factories and buildings, and Amazon's recent purchase of Kiva robots for warehouse automation is a great example of this.

Self checkout counters, automatic instantaneous language translation, e-commerce, legal software, 3-D printing, and artificial helpers like SIRI are quickly becoming ubiquitous.

Soon, Amazon is planning on using drones to deliver packages, and Google is now buying up the most advanced robotics companies on the planet because they too see where things are headed.

Are we entering an era where there is little need for human workers? If so, what are the social and political ramifications of a populace that does not have a means of income?

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-505124_162-57578162/robots-are-going-to-take-your-job/

http://www.cbsnews.com/8301-18560_162-57601121/are-robots-hurting-job-growth/

http://www.wired.com/gadgetlab/2012/12/ff-robots-will-take-our-jobs/all/

http://abcnews.go.com/Technology/google-buys-boston-dynamics-acquires-robots-play/story?id=21233076

[Anonymous No.6277378]

allocate resources to STEM education and work

[Anonymous No.6277648]

Massive remilitarization in Asia and Middle East, followed by resurgent nationalism and re-arming in the EU and Europe

military drills and fitness training are the only activities left for the masses

[Anonymous No.6277655]

>>6277371
what happens when robots learn how to code?

[Anonymous No.6277699]

As a mechatronic engineer student i've been taught that no robot it's to be left unattended, never, so i think a growth in robot industry doesn't equal the end of human labor

[Anonymous No.6277712]

But if there is massive unemployment, then who can afford to buy all the cars that the robots produce?

[Anonymous No.6277716]

>>6277655
>what happens when robots learn how to code?

They won't anytime soon. Singularity is still long way away.

In the mean time CS people will destroy the world by making everyone irrelevant and will be getting rich in the process.

[Anonymous No.6277717]

>>6277648
Why, the robots can just fight the wars so that no one has to die.

[Anonymous No.6277760]

Hey let's use the same argument that's been used a million times for hundreds of years and ignore the economic realities of life.

[Anonymous No.6277770]

>>6277371
>Are we entering an era where there is little need for human workers? If so, what are the social and political ramifications of a populace that does not have a means of income?

>Old paradigm is quickly becoming obsolete.
>Fight the changes in order to sustain the old paradigm instead of working to create a new one to replace it.

[Anonymous No.6277778]

Idiots don't seem to realize that automation has already happened and pretty much completed it's cycle.

It happened about the time the US was able to feed it's whole population and more with just 3% of the labor. Everything after that has been excess, and don't worry, we will find plenty more excesses to ease our boredom.

[Anonymous No.6277784]

>>6277778
We haven't "needed to work" to work since then. If you gave a mandate that humanity must survive completely without any labor, we would fulfill that mandate in a year if we put our backs into it. Except we always want more, that's what makes us human and is what brought us here today.

For every 10 tasks you automate we will make 100 more.

[Anonymous No.6277898]

>>6277717
>I'll take skynet for 500 Alex

[Anonymous No.6277924]

The surplus attained by the capitalists will grow to the point where current capitalist economy will be unsustainable because the number of people who wouldn't be able to afford anything will grow beyond all bounds.

Trotsky said that for real classless society post-scarcity is required. We'll see, maybe he was right and the revolution will finally happen.

[Anonymous No.6277927]

>>6277712
Loans. Loans everywhere.

>If people are not earning that much, how can everyone afford these houses?

[Anonymous No.6277942]

>If so, what are the social and political ramifications of a populace that does not have a means of income?

Basically, the human is taken out of the picture.

Integrated circuits are now designed and made nearly entirely by machines. No human being can physically produce the circuit, and they're too complex to be comprehended by a single person; human designers now 'click and drop' components in computer program, never once knowing how those components work or relate, except in the vaguest sense.

An engineer friend of mine has told me he's very disappointed with his work, since he doesn't get to use any of the knowledge he learned in school; his company has him use a piece of software that does everything for him, which he claims someone without a HS diploma could learn to use. He says it's no more complex then photoshop. I'm pretty sure he's talking about some sort of CAD program.

Here's the trick though; we're learning to use software that uses the software for us, which is, I think what you're talking about. Soon, we'll hand the software a set of criteria, and then click until we get what we want. Speaking of photoshop, consider the Liquify tool; it's basically software that automates the modification of tens, hundreds, or thousands of pixels at once.

What happens when you have a totally automated industrial base, where humans do nothing but give orders? This isn't something that's going to stop at the supply side of economics; the demand side wants the same equipment.

[Anonymous No.6277949]

>>6277942

On top of that, what industry is capable of doing is growing in leaps and bounds. Not only is the total industrial base of humanity growing, as well as the total mass of resources under our control, but it's becoming cheaper to implement that base and use those resources; 3D printers' real use is in producing custom parts on demand, that otherwise would take huge complexes or giant CNC machines to make.

3D printers won't replace industry; they'll make it possible to set it up anywhere. At that point, the only obstacle is obtaining the materials. We're solving that problem too; recently, nanoparticles of cellulose, produced as industrial byproducts, were found to have the strength of steel. Hemp can be grown nearly anywhere, and can be used to provide fuel as well.

While all this is going on, we're miniaturizing things like never before. Computers have now gotten so small, that the physical human interface is the majority of the device; phones are now getting bigger, because people want bigger screens.

There's no reason you couldn't miniaturize a 3D printer either, or any other piece of industrial equipment. Eventually, we'll get to the point where we have microbots building nanobots, and at that point, we'll have obtained a true Philosopher's Stone; an object that that can become anything, transmute anything (Molecularly,) or make anything.

[Anonymous No.6277952]

>>6277949

If the above statement sounds absurd, take a look at your body; you're a colony of nanobots that contain the information necessary to make more of themselves, endlessly until their internal code becomes corrupted and the colony ceases to be able to maintain homeostasis.

Biology and our artifacts will merge, or rather our artifacts will gain the complexity and size of biology. At that point, we have nanotech.

I'm really just repeating what's been said decades before I was born. The snowball has already been falling down the mountain for years, and we're about to have an avalanche. This will simultaneously change the entire face of the mountain by exposing the rock, and bury countless people beneath the snow.

The implications of this are massive. Immortality. Super-powers (Go look up carbon nanotube muscles.) Unlimited wealth, as we dredge up the Earth to it's core, just like the cyanobacteria did two billion years ago. Death on the scale of the oxygen crisis. The evolution of and domination of Earth by new domains of life, which are built and function on a scale as larger then we are to microscopic life; brains and bodies the size of mountains, eyes the size of lakes.

How lucky we are to be live in this time, and a still more glorious dawn awaits. Not a sunrise, but a galaxy rise. A morning filled with 400 billion suns. The rising of the milky way.

[Anonymous No.6278081]

>>6277952
> you're a colony of nanobots that contain the information necessary to make more of themselves, endlessly until their internal code becomes corrupted and the colony ceases to be able to maintain homeostasis

I like this perspective :)

[Anonymous No.6278125]

>>6277378

THIS.

if robots are the primary labor force, humans should spend their time trying to improve the productivity and usefulness of that labor force.

our minds allowed us to step back, and stop being the muscle of civilisation. we must continue to be the "minds" of civilisation, while the robots continue to make up an ever expanding portion of civilisation's muscle.

[Anonymous No.6278140]

>>6277952
This post is truly repulsive. Too much underaged ignorance and anti-scientific fantasy nonsense. /sci/ is not your kindergarten role playing board. Please don't come back before you finished high school.

[Anonymous No.6278153]

>>6277371

Correlation doesn't implies causation, you should know that, and even implying it does, why would the median income stop rising around 1975 ? Did we invent technology all of the sudden ?

What happened is that in 1971, the gold standard was ended, so the wages had to stop rising to prevent a massive inflation.

[Anonymous No.6278355]

>>6278125
Material abundance and freedom from labor will only let the vast majority of mankind waste themselves on wanton excess, party, sex and drugs. Take a look at the people around you.

[Anonymous No.6278413]

>>6277770
You don't know how to greentext very well...

[Anonymous No.6278429]

The drop in median household income has much more to do with class warfare and income inequality and reaganomics than it does robots. We've shown that new jobs are created when old ones are destroyed by machines because standard of living and wealth increase so luxuries and services increase creating new jobs. The problem is that all the money is going to the very wealthy and standard of living and wealth aren't increasing any more.

[Anonymous No.6278444]

There will never be an end to human work, just dehumanizing work.

Also, the change already happened: the welfare state. As automation progresses, more and more of the populace will be in the welfare pool. Better yet, more and more underemployment to spread the labor around. The 40-hour week was already a reduction, and we will soon move to 30-hour and 20-hour standard work weeks.

There are also things that will never be automated. Got a hobby? Like to craft or knit or paint? Now you will do it for supplementary income.

[Anonymous No.6278449]

Have a story about the far future obsolescence of humankind:

http://sifter.org/~simon/AfterLife/

[Anonymous No.6278453]

Well all the wealth produced by the robot goes to the owner. Tax that shit and redistribute and you solve the problem. MOAR ROBOT TAXES!!!!

[Anonymous No.6278458]

>>6277371

So given

- How slow social attitudes are to change ("get a job you lazy faggot" will remain the consensus for the foreseeable future)
- How humans are extremely good at holding onto power and not letting go
- How humans are also extremely good at pretending to be more useful than they are and turn a blind eye to others who do the same as long as they mutually reinforce each others positions (think of middle managers who do nothing at all but "manage" people who actually do the work for their company, think also office workers who sit on reddit all day long doing almost nothing but because they do SOMETHING and their boss also wants to keep his job [firing them would mean noone to manage which would mean no need for a manager] everything motors on unchanged)

How on earth will this play out? Jobs will be unneeded, but not having a job will remain a sign of failure/laziness. Where does the transition happen. Will we all move to pointless token jobs like the modern day office worker? Doing something utterly pointless but not being fired because you're just one in a chain of useless people all doing useless inconsequential things?

[Anonymous No.6278469]

>>6277371
we'll just all make youtube videos for one another with no negative consequences

[Anonymous No.6278479]

>>6278125
>if robots are the primary labor force, humans should spend their time trying to improve the productivity and usefulness of that labor force.

Except that 99.999% of people when presented with free time and the ability to do whatever they want do nothing at all. They consume degenerate shit like Big Brother, America's got Talent, Jersey Shore. This is where we are headed. Mindless entertainment

Sorry but a Star Trek utopia is just not going to happen. No-one has any interest in furthering humanity. The goal of most people is to carve some niche and seem like they're being productive in order to get the things they want. The rest of the time is dedicated to having sex and consuming mindless music/tv/films.

The general public couldn't give two shits about science or technology, only what it can do for them (ie. they want to buy a new flatscreen tv but they don't care how it works). This won't change.

[Anonymous No.6278526]

>>6278458
This. The only reason we are not seeing a society like what OP describes is because people cannot shed the prevailing ideology.

[Anonymous No.6278574]

>>6278125

So, basically the roles have reversed then?

Because currently robots spend their time trying to improve the productivity and usefulness of our labor force.

Then, as you describe, we will be spending our time improving the usefulness of their labor force?

How soon the shepherds become the flock.

[Anonymous No.6278637]

>>6277371

Seems like this has already happened. Effects are easily predictable and completely unavoidable within a capitalist system. Consumer base is reduced which leads to recession which leads to further reduction in consumer base and so on.

[Hal No.6279024]

>>6278429
This is only true of machines that replace human muscle. This is not true of machines that replace human minds (Artificial intelligence). A machine does not have to be conscious or even complex, but it needs to be able to perform a human cognitive task sufficiently well to replace a human being.

Furthermore, reaganomics does not explain the divergence between productivity and wage. Technology is the very thing that has allowed us to continue increasing productivity without having to rely on as many people.

[Anonymous No.6279827]

>>6277760
this.
there isn't enough energy if you want to replace human workers by robots.

[Anonymous No.6279843]

Y'all stopid, and this is not on 4chan that the future will be predicted. human will go on its way and he will most likely fuck everything up, while not realising. we are going for another century or more of funny, useless innovations.
We should have stayed in the oceans.

[Anonymous No.6279859]

>>6279843
100%/10

[Anonymous No.6279862]

>>6277371
Economist here, laughing. This has been said literally every time something new has been invented and the opposite has always been the case. Sewing machine saw the raise of the number of seamstresses from something like 1,000 to 100,000, machines have to be repaired, replaced, reworked, and as more wealth is generated more is allowed for even unskilled labor etc, etc.

[Anonymous No.6279884]

>>6279862
There aren't an infinite number of jobs to be done; while human labor will always have some value (such as social status, i.e. "oh I'm rich enough to hire a human butler instead of a machine") this token value won't be enough to keep everyone employed unless you have a nation of butlers that work for butlers that work for butlers.

[Anonymous No.6279888]

>>6279884
>an infinite number of jobs to be done
yeah, growth every year but fixed number of jobs.

[Anonymous No.6279903]

>>6277712
Basic wage. The government gives everybody enough money to live off of, and if they want they can pursue a job to get more money.

[Anonymous No.6279919]

>>6277371
electrical engineer major
robotics minor

bring in on lol

[Anonymous No.6279954]

>>6277371
Lawyers, modern AI use statistic to approximate human thoughts and behAviour, but until the can make logical deductions that make sense to a human jury i think we'll need human lawyers.

[Anonymous No.6280050]

>>6278479

You're not getting it; when you can replace the people that repair and install the machines, what kind of job do you have?

No one breaks rocks into spear points and knifes anymore, and unemployment only exists because it's no longer viable in most countries to exist as a subsistence farmer.

Laugh all you want, but you're wrong. The jobs are going away. I no longer need someone to tell me how to invest, to edit my text, or create my graphics; I do it all myself.

Like it or not, the jobs are going away. The only job that's going to exist in the future is 'central planner,' and even then only of a small part of humanity's total industrial base.

In twenty years, no one will work for anyone else; they'll operate and organize their own industrial base. Call that work all you want, but it won't be within the current economic paradigm.

Work as we know it is over. No longer will you be able to rely on someone else putting work on your plate; you'll have to make it yourself, and figure out how to use that work to benefit yourself.

The 'psycheotype' of humanity has currently been adapted for over 30,000 years for slavery to others; now, we must adapt to self-directed 'slave-master' labor over robots. It fills me will joy to know that those that can't work without getting money for their labor will stave to death, unable to exist without someone to sell themselves to like a whore.

Only masters will exist in the future. Slaves, who will be self-selected will die.

[Anonymous No.6280052]

>>6279862

You're not getting it; when you can replace the people that repair and install the machines, what kind of job do you have?

No one breaks rocks into spear points and knifes anymore, and unemployment only exists because it's no longer viable in most countries to exist as a subsistence farmer.

Laugh all you want, but you're wrong. The jobs are going away. I no longer need someone to tell me how to invest, to edit my text, or create my graphics; I do it all myself.

Like it or not, the jobs are going away. The only job that's going to exist in the future is 'central planner,' and even then only of a small part of humanity's total industrial base.

In twenty years, no one will work for anyone else; they'll operate and organize their own industrial base. Call that work all you want, but it won't be within the current economic paradigm.

Work as we know it is over. No longer will you be able to rely on someone else putting work on your plate; you'll have to make it yourself, and figure out how to use that work to benefit yourself.

The 'psycheotype' of humanity has currently been adapted for over 30,000 years for slavery to others; now, we must adapt to self-directed 'slave-master' labor over robots. It fills me will joy to know that those that can't work without getting money for their labor will stave to death, unable to exist without someone to sell themselves to like a whore.

Only masters will exist in the future. Slaves, who will be self-selected will die.

[Anonymous No.6280060]

>>6277371
So we have a global economy that is dependent on people working to earn money to buy shit and we're going to take out the "people working" part? Yeah, this isn't going to be a total disaster.

[Anonymous No.6280064]

>>6277699
>a whole factory full of people
vs.
>a factory full of robots with no lights and a single person keeping watch
yeah that'll never "end human labor"

[Anonymous No.6280067]

>>6277770
>>Fight the changes in order to sustain the old paradigm instead of working to create a new one to replace it.
You really expect Americans to give up their "wealth" and economic system? If barely anyone can work then you can't do the things we do now.

You're going to have a massive power struggle coming against this "new reality".

[Anonymous No.6280143]

More important than recognizing the trend itself, which people have been doing for decades, is recognizing that this is inevitable, a good thing and figuring out a way to transition in to an economy in which robots do most of the production and services.

It's inevitable because people ultimately are not interested in doing these jobs unless they have no choice, businesses will always choose a robot to do a job over a human, and because governments will soon realize that the only way to grow they economy as their population shrinks is to grow the workforce with robots. That pretty much covers everyone.

It's a good thing for the same reason that citizens passively in favor of it - it's not fulfilling to a human being to be relegated to lifelong toil in a job that isn't intellectually or creatively stimulating. It's also good for obvious economic reasons.

But how do you make the transition? It's a really tough question, but for starters the obvious solution is to begin an incremental process of reducing the work-week so more people can stay employed and socializing economic sectors as the automated labor makes them efficient enough. As people earn less from smaller work weeks you would need to simultaneously produce all of the basic needs at a lower cost (which robots do, of course) so too many people don't fall below the poverty line. If an economic sector becomes efficient enough that either you can't fake the scarcity anymore or socializing it would be relatively cheap, you do it and slowly relieve the populace of economic burden in lock-step with their decreasing earning potential (so that their earning decreases but buying power stays the same or gets better).

Ideally you end up with an automation socialist economy in which large sectors of the economy are both automated and socialized, providing basic needs for everyone plus the possibility for other goods and services. Human labor is optional and exclusively creative.

[Anonymous No.6280152]

so what happens when we have the tech to automatically manage robots?

[Anonymous No.6280154]

>>6277942
what happens when the tech is automated enough to no longer need 'orders'?

[Anonymous No.6280169]

>>6277949
>>there's no reason why we can't miniaturize arbitrary industrial equipment

Scaling laws suggest otherwise.

And we still haven't figures out if diamonoid mechanosynthesis is possible yet....

[Anonymous No.6280229]

>>6280143
>signing a screen cap from a movie you didn't make
full autism