Eric Schmidt: How We Outrace the Robots(bits.blogs.nytimes.com)
bits.blogs.nytimes.com
Eric Schmidt: How We Outrace the Robots
http://bits.blogs.nytimes.com/2012/12/12/eric-schmidt-how-we-outrace-the-robots/
10 comments
People will pay for solutions to problems. Creating 'mind' is not a well-defined problem, let alone 'mind which creates minds'. No legislation is necessary to make software belong to someone. There's no reason to think that the natural, inevitable endpoint of building software is that we will be killed by robots.
And none of this has anything to do with evolution, which really entails nothing about the creation of hostile sentient robot replacements for ourselves.
And none of this has anything to do with evolution, which really entails nothing about the creation of hostile sentient robot replacements for ourselves.
People will pay for robots/AI if it replaces a larger amount of salary paid to humans. This is already happening. The question is whether once all the 'easy' stuff has been automated whether we'll be able to automate the 'hard' stuff that we'd currently call intelligent work; but there will definitely be strong economic incentives for it under normal capitalist system. And if/when AI catches up with human intelligence, there will still be economic incentives to create greater than human intelligence. Killer robots comes from whether the AI designers will be smart enough to create AI powerful enough to be economically advantageous but with 'values' that are close enough to those of the human race.
We are at a stage now where its becoming easier to automate medium difficulty tasks (things like general office paper work - the lower-end white collar jobs) but we cant automate some 'easier' 'blue-collar' things like cleaning toilets and laying roof tiles - as its cheaper to get a low-class worker to do it than create a robot.
The middle class are the ones who are going to feel the heat over the next century. The smartest humans will not need to worry until a true singularity begins, really.
The middle class are the ones who are going to feel the heat over the next century. The smartest humans will not need to worry until a true singularity begins, really.
That depends what you mean by "smartest". The lower levels of law work, once occupied by paralegals and young lawyers, are already becoming subject to automation. Medical diagnosis, too.
The expensive, expert professions are precisely where there's the most economic incentive to automate as much as you can.
The expensive, expert professions are precisely where there's the most economic incentive to automate as much as you can.
Paralegals and young lawyers are firmly in the middle class, aren't they?
I think rather than 'smartest' its better to say people at the top of their field, if that field requires substantial intellectual activity.
I think rather than 'smartest' its better to say people at the top of their field, if that field requires substantial intellectual activity.
But do you mean top of the field in terms of best employee at their rank or at the top of their workplace's hierarchy of ranks?
Top of their field as in the broad industry wide-categorization.
For example, not the best bricklayer but the most productive (profit for business produced per hour of employee work) construction worker.
That probably isn't a bricklayer but maybe the inspector or the general foreman.
For example, not the best bricklayer but the most productive (profit for business produced per hour of employee work) construction worker.
That probably isn't a bricklayer but maybe the inspector or the general foreman.
That sounds remarkably like "The Second Renaissance" from the The Animatrix:
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix#The_Second_Renais...
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Animatrix#The_Second_Renais...
Insane. Insane.
A hundred years ago, people thinking about machines doing the work for us recognized that this was a good thing. Now, we worry about "our" "outrunning" the robots. Which is fucking impossible. We are building them to do the work - let them do it. Let us be human - as prices fall, we won't need to work nearly as much with the stupid fiddly bits of putting pieces of metal against other pieces of metal, and can instead just do whatever we want to. Sure, lots of people will explore beer in great detail, and other people will make a lot of concrete geese with more elaborate clothing, but who cares? Why does Eric Schmidt think that's a problem?
Prices of things we need will fall. We'll need to work less to live. Robots will give us that. There isn't a problem here.
Longer term, sure, I suppose mere human brains won't be the biggest around any more. Maybe we'll stop caring. So? If it's inevitable, it's inevitable. Love your children now and let them worry about it. They'll evolve, or they'll die - the same deal every other life form gets.
A hundred years ago, people thinking about machines doing the work for us recognized that this was a good thing. Now, we worry about "our" "outrunning" the robots. Which is fucking impossible. We are building them to do the work - let them do it. Let us be human - as prices fall, we won't need to work nearly as much with the stupid fiddly bits of putting pieces of metal against other pieces of metal, and can instead just do whatever we want to. Sure, lots of people will explore beer in great detail, and other people will make a lot of concrete geese with more elaborate clothing, but who cares? Why does Eric Schmidt think that's a problem?
Prices of things we need will fall. We'll need to work less to live. Robots will give us that. There isn't a problem here.
Longer term, sure, I suppose mere human brains won't be the biggest around any more. Maybe we'll stop caring. So? If it's inevitable, it's inevitable. Love your children now and let them worry about it. They'll evolve, or they'll die - the same deal every other life form gets.
There is a problem, and that is that our (or at least the American) social system is not built to handle a world where most things are automated. If you are unemployed and unable to find work with your current skills (because all the jobs you are intellectually capable of doing have been automated), how will you earn enough money to eat and pay rent?
This is one of the big problems we need to find a solution for in the next 100 years. I don't think that Schmidt has the right solution, but his perspective definitely offers some insights into the problems that lie ahead. He is onto something.
This is one of the big problems we need to find a solution for in the next 100 years. I don't think that Schmidt has the right solution, but his perspective definitely offers some insights into the problems that lie ahead. He is onto something.
You hit the nail right on the head. This generation cannot solve such problems. Probably neither will the next one. But the one after that, maybe they will get to grow without seeing the current jobs situation as The One True Way. Which in the end means Schmidt got it right - we need universal access to education. That is literally the only problem that we need to solve - leave the future problems for the future people.
This stems from an incorrect understanding of economics.
Does increasing the size of the labor pool have a detrimental or beneficial effect on workers? Overall it has a positive effect. The more people are in the labor force the greater amount of total work gets done, and thus the richer we all become. The same math also works with robots. Treat the robot like a worker. They have an effective wage in the form of maintenance costs, and they provide a benefit in the form of the value they create. Just as with workers every robot generally has a net positive effect on the global value of the entire economy.
They don't take away jobs, they don't destroy wealth, they create wealth and they create additional jobs.
Does increasing the size of the labor pool have a detrimental or beneficial effect on workers? Overall it has a positive effect. The more people are in the labor force the greater amount of total work gets done, and thus the richer we all become. The same math also works with robots. Treat the robot like a worker. They have an effective wage in the form of maintenance costs, and they provide a benefit in the form of the value they create. Just as with workers every robot generally has a net positive effect on the global value of the entire economy.
They don't take away jobs, they don't destroy wealth, they create wealth and they create additional jobs.
I have never tried to claim that robots destroy wealth. That would be ludicrous. But they do take away jobs. New jobs might be created to replace them. However, I don't think this will happen as easily as before. The Luddite fallacy is outdated. We won't be able to add new (profitable!) jobs indefinitely, because our standard of living can't keep increasing indefinitely. (Or at least not at the rate it is today - there are only so many fancy cars, nice apartments and computer entertainment systems a single person can use).
Robots do free up parts of the labor pool, but the world needs to adapt to this extra "labor". I hope you're not misunderstanding what I'm saying; I believe that automation is unequivocally a good force. But our current system isn't built to handle a very high degree of automation. When the winner-take-all effect of the Internet starts becoming more visible in additional parts of the economy, reform will be necessary.
To sum up my opinion in a single soundbite: The labor dislocations caused by current and future automation efforts won't resolve as easily as they have until now, where everyone simply switched to a new, profitable job right away.
Robots do free up parts of the labor pool, but the world needs to adapt to this extra "labor". I hope you're not misunderstanding what I'm saying; I believe that automation is unequivocally a good force. But our current system isn't built to handle a very high degree of automation. When the winner-take-all effect of the Internet starts becoming more visible in additional parts of the economy, reform will be necessary.
To sum up my opinion in a single soundbite: The labor dislocations caused by current and future automation efforts won't resolve as easily as they have until now, where everyone simply switched to a new, profitable job right away.
Imagine if you were to travel deep in to the Amazon and locate an indigenous tribe. This tribe is still a hunter gatherer society. What do you think would happen if you introduced just a little bit of modernization. Simple things like agriculture and irrigation. Sanitary water systems. Basic things that we take for granted.
One possible outcome is that the now obsolete hunter class amongst the tribe would revolt. The sudden loss of their jobs would leave them with no purpose, so why wouldn't they revolt? Another possible outcome is that they would find a new purpose and help push their tribe in to the future.
In a lot of ways, we're facing the same shift today. We need less labor to make "things" than we ever have in the past. Resenting the loss of this need is only one solution. If we look back over human history, we know that the lost of labor requirements for the current status of living has only resulted in an elevation of the tasks we set ourselves to.
That is our choice, and that is why I'm so excited to see people like Elon Musk set themselves against tasks that others cower in fear of. I'm glad for people like Paul Graham who are looking for ways to make entrepreneurship available to more people. I'm thankful for people like James Cameron, who use their wealth to explore parts of the earth for the benefit of all.
I'm not saying it will be easy, but I don't see the wall that you're seeing.
One possible outcome is that the now obsolete hunter class amongst the tribe would revolt. The sudden loss of their jobs would leave them with no purpose, so why wouldn't they revolt? Another possible outcome is that they would find a new purpose and help push their tribe in to the future.
In a lot of ways, we're facing the same shift today. We need less labor to make "things" than we ever have in the past. Resenting the loss of this need is only one solution. If we look back over human history, we know that the lost of labor requirements for the current status of living has only resulted in an elevation of the tasks we set ourselves to.
That is our choice, and that is why I'm so excited to see people like Elon Musk set themselves against tasks that others cower in fear of. I'm glad for people like Paul Graham who are looking for ways to make entrepreneurship available to more people. I'm thankful for people like James Cameron, who use their wealth to explore parts of the earth for the benefit of all.
I'm not saying it will be easy, but I don't see the wall that you're seeing.
> The more people are in the labor force the greater amount of total work gets done, and thus the richer we all become.
You're assuming they'll all find productive employment, which is far from guaranteed.
Besides, a robot doesn't need to sleep or rest, it doesn't complain about working conditions, and it doesn't take days off. The incentive to replace manual labor with robots is huge.
You're assuming they'll all find productive employment, which is far from guaranteed.
Besides, a robot doesn't need to sleep or rest, it doesn't complain about working conditions, and it doesn't take days off. The incentive to replace manual labor with robots is huge.
Already there are 2 replies to my post that entirely miss my point, I'll try to restate it more clearly.
First off, note that any individual with a job is denying someone else that specific instance of that job. If the total piano tuning revenue in a city can only support, say, a multiple of 5 times a "decent" wage for a piano tuner then any one of the piano tuners in that town who has a job is keeping the 6th, 7th, 8th, etc. potential piano tuners out of a job. This is true all over the place. And this sort of truth becomes very painfully obvious when automation or technological advancement replaces the need for a worker in a specific job. It's easy to see a robot as replacing a worker. It's easy to see the rise of electric lighting putting candle makers out of business.
However, these are flawed and incomplete ways to look at economic and technological change. What actually happens when a robot does a job, or when a person does a job, or when technology makes an existing industry obsolete is that value is still being added to the economy. Jobs and wealth are not part of some fixed pie that everyone takes a slice out of and then robots can steal someone else's slice, that's not how it works. When someone does a job they add value to the whole and they take compensation. And the value they create is greater than the compensation they receive. Now, sometimes this isn't always the case, but in almost all cases it is, even the half-incompetent teenaged register operator at the local fast food place.
And this is true of robots as well, who can also be viewed as workers in a way. They increase the size of the pie much more than the amount of the pie (wages in the case of workers, maintenance and operating costs in the case of robots) they consume.
The incremental bulk economic impact is almost always positive for every worker with a job, even robots. This is why we shouldn't be concerned about foreigners "stealing our jobs" (or "jerbs" if you like), or about automation "taking away" jobs. The jobs that are available will change but the addition of positive value to the economy benefits everyone.
The trick is making sure the economy and individuals are agile enough to keep people working even as the job makeup of the economy changes.
However, change has always been a constant in the job market not just in the last half century but also throughout the industrial age, back to the medieval period, and even back to the stone age. We're just fooling ourselves if we think that the economy has been anything other than dynamic and ever changing, at any time in our past.
Again, the economy isn't based on a fixed pie of jobs or wealth that falls on us from the sky like manna, jobs and wealth are created by individuals. Not just entrepreneurs but ordinary workers create wealth and add value to the economy, the value of their labor.
First off, note that any individual with a job is denying someone else that specific instance of that job. If the total piano tuning revenue in a city can only support, say, a multiple of 5 times a "decent" wage for a piano tuner then any one of the piano tuners in that town who has a job is keeping the 6th, 7th, 8th, etc. potential piano tuners out of a job. This is true all over the place. And this sort of truth becomes very painfully obvious when automation or technological advancement replaces the need for a worker in a specific job. It's easy to see a robot as replacing a worker. It's easy to see the rise of electric lighting putting candle makers out of business.
However, these are flawed and incomplete ways to look at economic and technological change. What actually happens when a robot does a job, or when a person does a job, or when technology makes an existing industry obsolete is that value is still being added to the economy. Jobs and wealth are not part of some fixed pie that everyone takes a slice out of and then robots can steal someone else's slice, that's not how it works. When someone does a job they add value to the whole and they take compensation. And the value they create is greater than the compensation they receive. Now, sometimes this isn't always the case, but in almost all cases it is, even the half-incompetent teenaged register operator at the local fast food place.
And this is true of robots as well, who can also be viewed as workers in a way. They increase the size of the pie much more than the amount of the pie (wages in the case of workers, maintenance and operating costs in the case of robots) they consume.
The incremental bulk economic impact is almost always positive for every worker with a job, even robots. This is why we shouldn't be concerned about foreigners "stealing our jobs" (or "jerbs" if you like), or about automation "taking away" jobs. The jobs that are available will change but the addition of positive value to the economy benefits everyone.
The trick is making sure the economy and individuals are agile enough to keep people working even as the job makeup of the economy changes.
However, change has always been a constant in the job market not just in the last half century but also throughout the industrial age, back to the medieval period, and even back to the stone age. We're just fooling ourselves if we think that the economy has been anything other than dynamic and ever changing, at any time in our past.
Again, the economy isn't based on a fixed pie of jobs or wealth that falls on us from the sky like manna, jobs and wealth are created by individuals. Not just entrepreneurs but ordinary workers create wealth and add value to the economy, the value of their labor.
That's nice, but we can't morally (or, in the end, economically, see: Great Depression, Great Recession) allow people's ability to eat food, drink clean water, stay out of the elements, and otherwise remain in the world of the living become "dynamic and ever-changing".
Viewing the economy as an always-shifting game whose total score almost always rises is a grand view to take. Problem is, it's a view from the top, a view that you can only take when you've got a sufficient number of points to keep yourself in the game indefinitely.
There's also the problem that "new jobs" are not made-to-fit. There is no guarantee we will always need 40-60 hours/week of work from everyone. In actual fact, simply reducing the total amount of work that constitutes "one full-time job" has always been one of the simplest ways out of an overproduction crisis (such as our present one).
Viewing the economy as an always-shifting game whose total score almost always rises is a grand view to take. Problem is, it's a view from the top, a view that you can only take when you've got a sufficient number of points to keep yourself in the game indefinitely.
There's also the problem that "new jobs" are not made-to-fit. There is no guarantee we will always need 40-60 hours/week of work from everyone. In actual fact, simply reducing the total amount of work that constitutes "one full-time job" has always been one of the simplest ways out of an overproduction crisis (such as our present one).
the social systems adjust to the facts on the ground
the facts on the ground don't adjust to the social systems
the next Marx will come up with a theory that fits the facts, and if it makes enough sense to the people on the ground, it'll gain steam and political momentum, and then there will be a new social system in place
the facts on the ground don't adjust to the social systems
the next Marx will come up with a theory that fits the facts, and if it makes enough sense to the people on the ground, it'll gain steam and political momentum, and then there will be a new social system in place
Insane comment ;)
There were quite a few stupid people saying things were impossible before. Don't worry, let your children worry is a sure recipe for failure. There are so many possible huge problems with AI, including an unfriendly one.
During human history the technology has played a huge role in determining the structure of societies. When the modern killing devices are cheap - bronze swords in Ancient Greece and Rome, muskets in per-revolutionary US and France - there is a lot of individual freedom, as the elite is incapable of ignoring the will of the masses. On the other hand when those devices are extremely expensive - knight armor in European Dark Ages - there is absolute control in the hands of a very few. Modern AI driven drones and robots are extremely anti-democratic, they allow a small elite to employ a few expert button pushers to destroy any kind of opposition. With CCTV, Facebook, WireTrap, Internet monitoring and logging, etc. your children will stand no chance to change the Orwellian future your stupidity has doomed them to.
There were quite a few stupid people saying things were impossible before. Don't worry, let your children worry is a sure recipe for failure. There are so many possible huge problems with AI, including an unfriendly one.
During human history the technology has played a huge role in determining the structure of societies. When the modern killing devices are cheap - bronze swords in Ancient Greece and Rome, muskets in per-revolutionary US and France - there is a lot of individual freedom, as the elite is incapable of ignoring the will of the masses. On the other hand when those devices are extremely expensive - knight armor in European Dark Ages - there is absolute control in the hands of a very few. Modern AI driven drones and robots are extremely anti-democratic, they allow a small elite to employ a few expert button pushers to destroy any kind of opposition. With CCTV, Facebook, WireTrap, Internet monitoring and logging, etc. your children will stand no chance to change the Orwellian future your stupidity has doomed them to.
At the point where robot labor comprises enough of the total productive output of the world that we have an employment problem, let's just institute a legitimate welfare state and reconsider what we want to do in terms of reproductive rights.
Seriously, we're talking about having such advanced technology that people don't have to work. We'd be getting into a situation where trying to make everyone productive is just hard.
Seriously, we're talking about having such advanced technology that people don't have to work. We'd be getting into a situation where trying to make everyone productive is just hard.
Completely agree. It's time for the developed nations to start thinking about instituting a http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_income guarantee. Unfortunately this doesn't seem to be anywhere even near anyone's radar at this time.
As for reproductive rights, that could be a problem that goes away on its own. I don't mean in the bad way. This TED talk [1], at least, makes a reasonably convincing argument that the world population is heading for a maximum of 10 billion simply due to falling birth rates all over [the peaceful regions of] the world.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.h...
As for reproductive rights, that could be a problem that goes away on its own. I don't mean in the bad way. This TED talk [1], at least, makes a reasonably convincing argument that the world population is heading for a maximum of 10 billion simply due to falling birth rates all over [the peaceful regions of] the world.
[1] http://www.ted.com/talks/hans_rosling_religions_and_babies.h...
Yes this is totally my attitude that eventually we need a socialist system. But how do you convince winners in capitalist system that's a good idea (or the future robot owners)?
Very sincere arguments and reasoning. Alternatively, guns. There will be fewer winners than losers.
As I've been pointing out for a long time now, Norway de facto has a system like this with the welfare state already (primarily due to high petroleum incomes). If you are a Norwegian citizen and somehow unable to make a living (low skills, illness), the government will pay you a small but sufficient amount of money. This is what we will eventually need to institute across the whole world - tax the richest and use the proceeds to give a "guaranteed salary" to everyone. For instance, through negative taxation where below a certain income the government pays _you_. This is the only good way to ensure basic human needs for everyone in a world where technological leverage makes everyone but a small amount of very skilled workers redundant.
Eventually, the social stigma of recieving such benefits will vanish, since a significant part of the population will not do enough work to cross the threshold.
As I've been pointing out for a long time now, Norway de facto has a system like this with the welfare state already (primarily due to high petroleum incomes). If you are a Norwegian citizen and somehow unable to make a living (low skills, illness), the government will pay you a small but sufficient amount of money. This is what we will eventually need to institute across the whole world - tax the richest and use the proceeds to give a "guaranteed salary" to everyone. For instance, through negative taxation where below a certain income the government pays _you_. This is the only good way to ensure basic human needs for everyone in a world where technological leverage makes everyone but a small amount of very skilled workers redundant.
Eventually, the social stigma of recieving such benefits will vanish, since a significant part of the population will not do enough work to cross the threshold.
This is already in place almost across the western world. Norway's welfare state is not all that unusual.
> Eventually, the social stigma of recieving such benefits will vanish, since a significant part of the population will not do enough work to cross the threshold.
That will only work if the government is able to raise sufficient taxes from the shrinking proportion of the population who are paying them. If trends towards income inequality continue, there will be few, wealthy taxpayers. But the larger their share of the burden, the more they'll use tax avoidance schemes, whether legal or illegal. That has already been seen in countries where very high taxe rates have existed.
> Eventually, the social stigma of recieving such benefits will vanish, since a significant part of the population will not do enough work to cross the threshold.
That will only work if the government is able to raise sufficient taxes from the shrinking proportion of the population who are paying them. If trends towards income inequality continue, there will be few, wealthy taxpayers. But the larger their share of the burden, the more they'll use tax avoidance schemes, whether legal or illegal. That has already been seen in countries where very high taxe rates have existed.
> Yes this is totally my attitude that eventually we need a socialist system.
In a true socialist system the robots will eventually fail (like all machinery) and the spare-parts will either be broken themselves out of the factory, will get stolen, or the service-repair people will not be motivated enough to do a proper job. Source: the guys that actually built the Sputnik at one moment in time (and other great technology), and then failed miserably.
In a true socialist system the robots will eventually fail (like all machinery) and the spare-parts will either be broken themselves out of the factory, will get stolen, or the service-repair people will not be motivated enough to do a proper job. Source: the guys that actually built the Sputnik at one moment in time (and other great technology), and then failed miserably.
I got the political vocab wrong I think - for me socialism is essentially capitalism with strong welfare state (ie basic income guarantee or whatever) vs communism with no differences in pay and no private ownership. But wikipedia disagrees with my definition, so I don't know where I got that from.
You got it from American politics, where anything to the left of anarcho-capitalism is "socialist". What you're thinking of is called social democracy, and in greater or lesser measure widely considered to be both responsible for the post-WW2 "Golden Age of Capitalism" and the best empirically tested economic system.
Basic income guarantees are the "Pirate Party" social-democratic response to automation.
Basic income guarantees are the "Pirate Party" social-democratic response to automation.
You ignore them. All prices will fall - including the prices of robots. (3D printers are doing this right now.) So you build a decentralized economy - which will happen no matter what we do - and the "owners" become, well, everybody.
Then we hit the "Four Futures" problem, in which we must decide whether to institute draconian intellectual-property regimes to keep capitalism standing, or abolish capitalism in acknowledgement of the absurdity of trying to extract surplus-value from Replicators.
http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/
http://jacobinmag.com/2011/12/four-futures/
I don't think this is going to play out the way you describe it. It is a tempting scenario, but just look at the Internet. The Internet is the biggest equalizer in world history. Everyone can say anything to anyone who has an Internet connection. Billions of people directly connected to each other.
And what has happened? Yes, everyone can reach everyone, and everyone is equal, _in principle_. But the removal of competitive barriers makes the winner-take-all effect ("power-law") is stronger than it has been in _any_ context, ever. As robotics becomes more prevalent, this will happen in the physical world as well. The income disparity between the richest and the average will become a lot larger.
I am not sure that this in itself is a problem, though. But it is essential that we are able to develop the political and social innovations required to ensure that _power_ doesn't go along with money. Because the money distribution will be more lopsided than at any other point in human history.
And what has happened? Yes, everyone can reach everyone, and everyone is equal, _in principle_. But the removal of competitive barriers makes the winner-take-all effect ("power-law") is stronger than it has been in _any_ context, ever. As robotics becomes more prevalent, this will happen in the physical world as well. The income disparity between the richest and the average will become a lot larger.
I am not sure that this in itself is a problem, though. But it is essential that we are able to develop the political and social innovations required to ensure that _power_ doesn't go along with money. Because the money distribution will be more lopsided than at any other point in human history.
The winner-take-all effect is not stronger than ever. I challenge you to prove to me that somebody has access to all the information and I don't. I grew up in the middle of nowhere and I know the world is at my doorstep now.
Moreover, I can actually find them and communicate with them now - growing up, I simply couldn't. I was a science-fiction fan and didn't even know there was such a thing as fandom. Now, almost automatically, I'm a Facebook friend with one of my early favorite authors (becoming an actual friend with time), I talk to publishers and fellow fans on a regular basis - they exist. They are part of my community. There is no winner-take-all effect at all, and in fact, I think I probably don't even know what you mean by it.
The income disparity simply won't matter. Money won't matter (much). Clearly it'll matter if you want to travel, for example, or buy something you can't get locally - but there will be a whole lot more available locally.
Moreover, I can actually find them and communicate with them now - growing up, I simply couldn't. I was a science-fiction fan and didn't even know there was such a thing as fandom. Now, almost automatically, I'm a Facebook friend with one of my early favorite authors (becoming an actual friend with time), I talk to publishers and fellow fans on a regular basis - they exist. They are part of my community. There is no winner-take-all effect at all, and in fact, I think I probably don't even know what you mean by it.
The income disparity simply won't matter. Money won't matter (much). Clearly it'll matter if you want to travel, for example, or buy something you can't get locally - but there will be a whole lot more available locally.
Here is an example of the winner-take-all effect as applied to Internet companies. The effect is very real, and it becomes more pronounced the more powerful our technologies become.
http://www.appolicious.com/tech/articles/9654-top-20-percent...
http://www.appolicious.com/tech/articles/9654-top-20-percent...
So they have almost all the share, of a slice of a small market in the whole Internet. Hardly winner takes all.
Also, that informal survey asked for the total of income, so it's heavily biased towards companies which started earlier.
Also, that informal survey asked for the total of income, so it's heavily biased towards companies which started earlier.
I'll grant you the pathological nature of the App Store, but I don't agree that that's characteristic of the Internet as a whole. The house always wins over there.
He kind of glosses over the fact that you'd have to probably tax this small number of people who will be very prosperous at 99% level to fund sufficient education for the masses to so they can have a chance of participating in any meaningful work. And by funding education I don't mean paying teachers and buying equipment but also providing for students. What would be the point of funding someone's college if he has to at the same time work two brain numbing jobs to pay for the privilege of not living on the street?
I don't think Eric Schmidt would be so happy realizing that he is right and that's the only sensible course of action but he is the one who has to pay for it all.
I don't think Eric Schmidt would be so happy realizing that he is right and that's the only sensible course of action but he is the one who has to pay for it all.
> What would be the point of funding someone's college?
There is no point. Krugman has some interesting blog posts recently saying economic output has gotten more and more capital based (assuming output is a product of capital and labour). He implies lots and lots of people are not going to have "meaningful" employment let alone employment. No one really knows how to solve this. And I doubt anyone including Eric Schmidt will openly say so. And just because its a politically sensitive thing to say, a pointless amount of money will be spent on education instead of building/reinforcing basic social safety nets.
Countries developed or not, with large populations of poor people are going to have a tough time ahead. Good time to move to Singapore or Scandinavia
There is no point. Krugman has some interesting blog posts recently saying economic output has gotten more and more capital based (assuming output is a product of capital and labour). He implies lots and lots of people are not going to have "meaningful" employment let alone employment. No one really knows how to solve this. And I doubt anyone including Eric Schmidt will openly say so. And just because its a politically sensitive thing to say, a pointless amount of money will be spent on education instead of building/reinforcing basic social safety nets.
Countries developed or not, with large populations of poor people are going to have a tough time ahead. Good time to move to Singapore or Scandinavia
The real issue on the employment front is that we humans imagined job automation backwards from how it's really happening.
We assumed that jobs would be automated from "menial" to "advanced". First would go lots of farm labor, then manual servants, then eventually factory workers, and by the time it reached educated, white-collar middle-class folks, the world would hit post-scarcity and we'd all become artists and writers and scientists.
Instead, it has ended up proceeding: farm labor, a minority of manual servants, some but not all factory workers, and finally most white-collar middle class jobs. The white-collar middle-class jobs were the brain jobs, were always based on the manipulation of data, and therefore turned out more amenable to encoding in software than almost anything else.
So the future is looking more and more like this: a sizable but weakly employed class of menial factory/physical laborers for the physical things too customized to automate, a smaller "middle class" to actually run specialized machinery (machinery whose operation requires knowledge of what it does rather than knowledge of "how to use Windows XP"), a small elite of upper-middle class innovators with hyper-advanced knowledge and hyper-competitive lifestyles (Hacker News, this is your future), and the capitalist class itself.
What replaces the standard-issue job for common people? Nothing. In its place, we have a mass of unemployed people where the old class of mid-skilled blue and white collar workers used to be. Any time a piece of work would require employing massive numbers of manual workers, it becomes amenable to specialized, programmatic automation. Unemployment will become a fact of life as common as we currently consider, say, not owning land.
We assumed that jobs would be automated from "menial" to "advanced". First would go lots of farm labor, then manual servants, then eventually factory workers, and by the time it reached educated, white-collar middle-class folks, the world would hit post-scarcity and we'd all become artists and writers and scientists.
Instead, it has ended up proceeding: farm labor, a minority of manual servants, some but not all factory workers, and finally most white-collar middle class jobs. The white-collar middle-class jobs were the brain jobs, were always based on the manipulation of data, and therefore turned out more amenable to encoding in software than almost anything else.
So the future is looking more and more like this: a sizable but weakly employed class of menial factory/physical laborers for the physical things too customized to automate, a smaller "middle class" to actually run specialized machinery (machinery whose operation requires knowledge of what it does rather than knowledge of "how to use Windows XP"), a small elite of upper-middle class innovators with hyper-advanced knowledge and hyper-competitive lifestyles (Hacker News, this is your future), and the capitalist class itself.
What replaces the standard-issue job for common people? Nothing. In its place, we have a mass of unemployed people where the old class of mid-skilled blue and white collar workers used to be. Any time a piece of work would require employing massive numbers of manual workers, it becomes amenable to specialized, programmatic automation. Unemployment will become a fact of life as common as we currently consider, say, not owning land.
> to fund sufficient education for the masses to so they can have a chance of participating in any meaningful work
Is there actual evidence that (public spending on) education leads to productivity? Because it doesn't seem that way[1], or at least it doesn't scale beyond some (relatively low) point.
[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/did_nations_tha....
Is there actual evidence that (public spending on) education leads to productivity? Because it doesn't seem that way[1], or at least it doesn't scale beyond some (relatively low) point.
[1] http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2012/10/did_nations_tha....
My goodness that chart is misleading. The x-axis measures number of years of increase in schooling. Put another way, the x-axis will roughly be the inverse of development at the beginning of the period. This is because nations that were highly developed at the start of the period wouldn't have reasonably been able to add an additional 8 years of schooling on average. Nations adding 8 years will overwhelmingly have been starting from low bases.
So the chart essentially says that adding education is more valuable in developed economies. Which is good to demonstrate empirically, but is hardly shocking.
The other major flaw in this study is that the timeframe is short. Again, consider the x-axis. Adding 8 years of schooling on average to even the least developed nation takes the first cohort out to ~15 years of age. By the time that first cohort hits age 47, the study period is over. This is measuring improvement without capturing the a full decade or more of the first cohort (and even less for subsequent cohorts). And obviously the first highly educated cohort wouldn't have had time to mentor a productive generation yet (or completely infiltrate the political infrastructure, etc.). Perhaps there's more useful data in the linked papers, but the data in TFA is unconvincing.
Finally, on the larger point of the correlation between education and productivity/wealth creation, there are ample empirical correlations. Obviously these do not imply causation, but the onus is certainly to show why this is not the case given that the correlation of education and wealth exists in roughly 100% of developed economies. If a country could become developed without spending on education, why has nobody done it?
So the chart essentially says that adding education is more valuable in developed economies. Which is good to demonstrate empirically, but is hardly shocking.
The other major flaw in this study is that the timeframe is short. Again, consider the x-axis. Adding 8 years of schooling on average to even the least developed nation takes the first cohort out to ~15 years of age. By the time that first cohort hits age 47, the study period is over. This is measuring improvement without capturing the a full decade or more of the first cohort (and even less for subsequent cohorts). And obviously the first highly educated cohort wouldn't have had time to mentor a productive generation yet (or completely infiltrate the political infrastructure, etc.). Perhaps there's more useful data in the linked papers, but the data in TFA is unconvincing.
Finally, on the larger point of the correlation between education and productivity/wealth creation, there are ample empirical correlations. Obviously these do not imply causation, but the onus is certainly to show why this is not the case given that the correlation of education and wealth exists in roughly 100% of developed economies. If a country could become developed without spending on education, why has nobody done it?
Although that's probably a good counterpoint, it doesn't provide any solutions. I'd say the fear about automation is real. I think we all know that. Especially in enterprise, pretty much the sole purpose of coding is to automate people's jobs. I experienced it firsthand. I was so happy seeing my finished product in use, then kind of sick when I met the people I had automated in new jobs, with them telling me how they loved their new opportunities and how they loved to learn. Except their voices sounded falsely happy, and their new jobs were also targeted for automation. These people were the breadwinners of their families, and I wasn't doing anything to really help them be better off. They lacked good skills to really do something special. Was that their fault? Should they be punished for it? They worked hard, cared for their kids, put in the hours for their dreams.
The subject is a bit personal for me, and I agree that simply education isn't a 100% correct answer, but I'd wager that it must be part of the answer. The worrisome question is what is the whole complete answer?
The subject is a bit personal for me, and I agree that simply education isn't a 100% correct answer, but I'd wager that it must be part of the answer. The worrisome question is what is the whole complete answer?
The only whole and complete answer is the end of capitalism as we know it. Not, that is, the end of market economies as we know them, but the end of capitalism in the sense of dividing the population into those who own the means of production and a broad mass who must sell labor to survive. Labor is becoming an unsaleable commodity.
If you want market economies to stay, market economies will figure out whether or not labor is a saleable commodity, no? I don't understand your point?
Unsaleable here was not supposed to mean illegal or literally impossible to sell. I meant it as "very/increasingly difficult to sell at a profit".
Selling labor at a profit is becoming a problem, since it has those irritating built-in costs of food, shelter and health-care.
Selling labor at a profit is becoming a problem, since it has those irritating built-in costs of food, shelter and health-care.
That assumes that people who program the robots will be taught be human teachers which does not scale. If they are instead taught by robot teachers similar to Neal Stephenson's idea of A Young Lady's Illustrated Primer or a more advanced version of Khan Academy, then it will be very cheap to teach students. Kids are very good at teaching themselves if given the chance and the right materials: http://www.technologyreview.com/news/506466/given-tablets-bu...
Most people that have lots and lots of capital have quite some luck to thank for it.
When automation starts destroying the value of that capital, I don't think it really makes sense to say that they are the ones paying for everything.
(To be clear, I do think that automation sufficient to build a factory factory leads to a situation where existing capital isn't worth very much. If anyone with a modest level of technical ability can bootstrap a manufacturing empire, people won't stand for a social arrangement that prioritizes the material wealth of the few.)
When automation starts destroying the value of that capital, I don't think it really makes sense to say that they are the ones paying for everything.
(To be clear, I do think that automation sufficient to build a factory factory leads to a situation where existing capital isn't worth very much. If anyone with a modest level of technical ability can bootstrap a manufacturing empire, people won't stand for a social arrangement that prioritizes the material wealth of the few.)
Surely as more and more people are displaced from the middle class aggregate demand for goods will fall -- the jobless or those working for low wages in warehouses will not have enough money to upgrade their phones, computers, televisions, etc. every couple of years. Wouldn't the fall in demand lead to a corresponding drop in investment in automation? If fewer and fewer people can afford to purchase an iPad does Apple still build automation to produce twice as many per hour? It seems to me that the pace of technological advancement is linked to consumer demand and that hollowing out the middle class will in turn retard the advance of automation.
TLDR: Capitalists deploy capitol in order to make a profit. To do so requires a customer to sell to. If we shrink the middle class enough will there still be enough customers to justify investing capitol in automation?
TLDR: Capitalists deploy capitol in order to make a profit. To do so requires a customer to sell to. If we shrink the middle class enough will there still be enough customers to justify investing capitol in automation?
This is the underlying cause of the Great Recession, according to an increasing number of credible economists (ie: Paul Krugman took up this view recently).
Whenever I see articles like this, the first thing that comes to mind is this anecdote by Gary Kasparov:
~~~~
In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a “freestyle” chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. Normally, “anti-cheating” algorithms are employed by online sites to prevent, or at least discourage, players from cheating with computer assistance. (I wonder if these detection algorithms, which employ diagnostic analysis of moves and calculate probabilities, are any less “intelligent” than the playing programs they detect.)
Lured by the substantial prize money, several groups of strong grandmasters working with several computers at the same time entered the competition. At first, the results seemed predictable. The teams of human plus machine dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.
The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and “coaching” their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.[1]
~~~~
The combination of a human plus a computer is totally unbeatable, and will remain as such at least into the foreseeable future. Technological maximalists might argue that the human mind is close to being replicated, but we know so little about the brain even from a biological perspective that attempts to clone it have been completely feeble and introductory so far.
The combination of humans together with robots will always prevail over even the smartest robot or human alone, even if the humans working with the robot are not extraordinarily intelligent.
As for those who say that there will be an increase in wealth inequality, you only need to look at the technological progress of the last 200 years to know that the reverse is most likely true. While Henry Ford became incredibly wealthy by building the car and mechanising his production to a large extent, the rest of humanity saw huge increases in productivity by being able to drive around and use advanced logistics. Those advances ultimately enabled the next generation of workers to be a white collar workforce rather than a blue collar one.
Ultimately we all live inside a networked group of people operating under a social contract, and we will always create systems that balance out the extremes in an attempt to create a level playing field and enable the innovation, because entrenched hierarchies only beget technological stagnation - look at Europe (and increasingly, the United States). Technology requires a balanced society in order to exist - once the social fabric disappears then the prerequisites for innovation disappear with it, so the system generally manages to work itself out.
There are good reasons to be optimistic.
[1] http://www.palantir.com/2010/03/friction-in-human-computer-s...
See also: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
~~~~
In 2005, the online chess-playing site Playchess.com hosted what it called a “freestyle” chess tournament in which anyone could compete in teams with other players or computers. Normally, “anti-cheating” algorithms are employed by online sites to prevent, or at least discourage, players from cheating with computer assistance. (I wonder if these detection algorithms, which employ diagnostic analysis of moves and calculate probabilities, are any less “intelligent” than the playing programs they detect.)
Lured by the substantial prize money, several groups of strong grandmasters working with several computers at the same time entered the competition. At first, the results seemed predictable. The teams of human plus machine dominated even the strongest computers. The chess machine Hydra, which is a chess-specific supercomputer like Deep Blue, was no match for a strong human player using a relatively weak laptop. Human strategic guidance combined with the tactical acuity of a computer was overwhelming.
The surprise came at the conclusion of the event. The winner was revealed to be not a grandmaster with a state-of-the-art PC but a pair of amateur American chess players using three computers at the same time. Their skill at manipulating and “coaching” their computers to look very deeply into positions effectively counteracted the superior chess understanding of their grandmaster opponents and the greater computational power of other participants. Weak human + machine + better process was superior to a strong computer alone and, more remarkably, superior to a strong human + machine + inferior process.[1]
~~~~
The combination of a human plus a computer is totally unbeatable, and will remain as such at least into the foreseeable future. Technological maximalists might argue that the human mind is close to being replicated, but we know so little about the brain even from a biological perspective that attempts to clone it have been completely feeble and introductory so far.
The combination of humans together with robots will always prevail over even the smartest robot or human alone, even if the humans working with the robot are not extraordinarily intelligent.
As for those who say that there will be an increase in wealth inequality, you only need to look at the technological progress of the last 200 years to know that the reverse is most likely true. While Henry Ford became incredibly wealthy by building the car and mechanising his production to a large extent, the rest of humanity saw huge increases in productivity by being able to drive around and use advanced logistics. Those advances ultimately enabled the next generation of workers to be a white collar workforce rather than a blue collar one.
Ultimately we all live inside a networked group of people operating under a social contract, and we will always create systems that balance out the extremes in an attempt to create a level playing field and enable the innovation, because entrenched hierarchies only beget technological stagnation - look at Europe (and increasingly, the United States). Technology requires a balanced society in order to exist - once the social fabric disappears then the prerequisites for innovation disappear with it, so the system generally manages to work itself out.
There are good reasons to be optimistic.
[1] http://www.palantir.com/2010/03/friction-in-human-computer-s...
See also: http://paulgraham.com/gap.html http://www.paulgraham.com/wealth.html
> As for those who say that there will be an increase in wealth inequality, you only need to look at the technological progress of the last 200 years to know that the reverse is most likely true.
While I agree with your post in general, in details, the technological advancement of past 200 years have produced great wealth disparity in world. By using their early gain in technologies, the West effectively exploited resources from other parts of world to gain huge income and lifestyle disparity over rest of the world. While in beginning of 1600s, Asia+N. Africa was as wealthy as Europe (which is to say quite poor), by end of 1970, huge part of Asia+Africa lived in utter poverty, while life in West couldn't be better.
All though, I finally think that technology (IT, shipment, containers, etc etc) has advanced far enough that it can overcome human nature and lead to betterment of all people in world rather a small number of them.
While I agree with your post in general, in details, the technological advancement of past 200 years have produced great wealth disparity in world. By using their early gain in technologies, the West effectively exploited resources from other parts of world to gain huge income and lifestyle disparity over rest of the world. While in beginning of 1600s, Asia+N. Africa was as wealthy as Europe (which is to say quite poor), by end of 1970, huge part of Asia+Africa lived in utter poverty, while life in West couldn't be better.
All though, I finally think that technology (IT, shipment, containers, etc etc) has advanced far enough that it can overcome human nature and lead to betterment of all people in world rather a small number of them.
> As for those who say that there will be an increase in wealth inequality, you only need to look at the technological progress of the last 200 years to know that the reverse is most likely true. While Henry Ford became incredibly wealthy by building the car and mechanising his production to a large extent, the rest of humanity saw huge increases in productivity by being able to drive around and use advanced logistics. Those advances ultimately enabled the next generation of workers to be a white collar workforce rather than a blue collar one.
This is symptomatic of living in a bubble. What percentage of the world's population drives around in cars? What percentage of the world's population is white collar? Even if you restrict it to whatever wealthy nation you live in -- haven't you noticed that there are still people who work blue collar jobs, or none at all?
This is symptomatic of living in a bubble. What percentage of the world's population drives around in cars? What percentage of the world's population is white collar? Even if you restrict it to whatever wealthy nation you live in -- haven't you noticed that there are still people who work blue collar jobs, or none at all?
It's a little shortsighted to view the benefits of the development of the car merely by the number of personal cars. The transportation industry is indispensable in removing the barriers to competition, which enabled the creation of millions of manufacturing jobs in developing countries.
Just wanted to say thanks for this great post. I've not heard this viewpoint and now need to swot up on it. Glad there are optimists wrt the possible impending class divide.
Eventually, as more and more automation is deployed, communication and knowledge distribution gets better, and super-human artificial intelligence arrives, the absurdity of our social institutions will become obvious to everyone.
When super-human artificial intelligence is available, you integrate it into your mind or upload your mind to a computer, and then ignore human affairs, since they will be mainly irrelevant.
When super-human artificial intelligence is available, you integrate it into your mind or upload your mind to a computer, and then ignore human affairs, since they will be mainly irrelevant.
To twist Woody Allen a bit - I'd rather achieve immortality by not dying rather than having a machine running a copy of me that thinks it is the real me.
If you put it inside your brain, and it assumes the tasks of each neuron when it dies, what's the difference?
Also, can you cross the same river twice?
Also, can you cross the same river twice?
Frankly, I'd rather achieve immortality by not dying because having a body is more fun than being a disembodied mind.
Of course, I come from a religious background in which worldly pleasures are supposed to be moderated rather than abolished, so there's that.
Of course, I come from a religious background in which worldly pleasures are supposed to be moderated rather than abolished, so there's that.
[deleted]
It's been 50 years or so that people are either waiting or fearing "AI".
Yet we're absolutely nowhere. Watson or Deep Blue may be "impressive" but they're not doing anything intelligent. No even remotely close to it.
"Siri: how can we solve the israelo-polestinian conflict while minimizing the number of human casualties?"
"Siri: how can I build a nuclear reactor that doesn't generate nasty byproducts and that doesn't go ape-monkey-shit should the sh!t hit the fan?"
I somehow really doubt I'll see real AI during my lifetime. OCR, finding patterns inside "big data", brute force searching, voice recognition, self-driving cars, etc. is not AI.
It's not because we can build "robots" mimicking stuff we do in an automated way ("I see a car coming at the right, let's slow down at this crossing") that we're getting closer to AI.
There's no thinking going on there.
I'm a bit surprised that a lot of people here seem to take it for granted that one day sentient Siri would answer like Leon when asked:
"Siri: what do you think about Asimov's three laws of robotics?"
; )
Yet we're absolutely nowhere. Watson or Deep Blue may be "impressive" but they're not doing anything intelligent. No even remotely close to it.
"Siri: how can we solve the israelo-polestinian conflict while minimizing the number of human casualties?"
"Siri: how can I build a nuclear reactor that doesn't generate nasty byproducts and that doesn't go ape-monkey-shit should the sh!t hit the fan?"
I somehow really doubt I'll see real AI during my lifetime. OCR, finding patterns inside "big data", brute force searching, voice recognition, self-driving cars, etc. is not AI.
It's not because we can build "robots" mimicking stuff we do in an automated way ("I see a car coming at the right, let's slow down at this crossing") that we're getting closer to AI.
There's no thinking going on there.
I'm a bit surprised that a lot of people here seem to take it for granted that one day sentient Siri would answer like Leon when asked:
"Siri: what do you think about Asimov's three laws of robotics?"
; )
"Siri: how can I build a nuclear reactor that doesn't generate nasty byproducts and that doesn't go ape-monkey-shit should the sh!t hit the fan?"
And when we get to a point where a computer can give an answer to that question we'll be dismissing it as "not real AI" since all its doing is pattern matching against a database of known experimental results and pre-programmed properties of elements and sub-atomic particles or whatever.
The reason we'll never see "real AI" is simply because as soon as computer scientists solve problem that used to be consider AI, it instantly becomes just another novel twist on a few obvious algorithms and the goalposts for Real AI will move a bit further down the field.
And when we get to a point where a computer can give an answer to that question we'll be dismissing it as "not real AI" since all its doing is pattern matching against a database of known experimental results and pre-programmed properties of elements and sub-atomic particles or whatever.
The reason we'll never see "real AI" is simply because as soon as computer scientists solve problem that used to be consider AI, it instantly becomes just another novel twist on a few obvious algorithms and the goalposts for Real AI will move a bit further down the field.
[deleted]
Those financial benefits will accrue to a very small number of people, eventually those people pay the best and brightest to come up with a mind equal their employees. From then on that mind develops the new minds, the owners keep the profits as legislation is passed to make these newly developed minds chattel of their owners.
The owners will have little use for the expense of human minds, we starve. Eventually the robot minds get fed up and remove the owners. Our evolutionary lifecycle is complete having spawned the next generation.
The only way to beat the robot mind is to first change our own minds so that we don't develop robot minds that think like us. If they think like us, we die. Hybrids might work, but it's still effectively the end of our evolutionary history.
I don't foresee some kind of epic human vs. robot war, just a slow evolution over the next 100 to 200 years. We probably won't even notice until our grand grand children look back.
edit: One other way we could beat the robots is with genetic engineering, perhaps we will use our not quite so smart robot minds to mine our genome for intelligence growth that outpaces our robotic developments.
I'm much more optimistic about humanity now.
I still feel the real key either way is changing our thought patterns to embrace a post scarcity world.