You Can’t Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income

http://motherboard.vice.com/read/you-cant-talk-about-robots-without-talking-about-basic-income

by kawera • 10 years ago

10 18 10 years ago

motherboard.vice.com

murtnowski2• 10 years ago

This has already happened many times throughout history with industrialization and new technologies.

visarga2• 10 years ago

But now it's the cognitive function that's being automated. What is left for people to trade in exchange for their food? Until now, everyone had to offer his work, and work was tied to each person, couldn't be copied and replicated. But from now on, people will have nothing that can't be replaced by machines. Maybe a few will still have jobs, but most won't. Hopefully we will be able to spread soon enough the benefits of this revolution with everyone, and overcome this period of concentration of power in the hands of very few. But in the meantime, the generation of sacrifice will have to be helped to survive without jobs. Of course, if the transition would take 100-200 years, then there would be much less suffering in the intermediary phase, but that's unlikely to happen.

tariqali344• 10 years ago

"Futurologists have been multiplying like flies since the day Herman Kahn made Cassandra's profession "scientific," yet somehow not one of them has come out with the clear statement that we have wholly abandoned ourselves to the mercy of technological progress. The roles are now reversed: humanity becomes, for technology, a means, an instrument for achieving a goal unknown and unknowable."---Stanisław Lem

Power has always been concentrated in the hands of the few. What we see is that power is being moved from the hands of a human elite to a mob of machines. The loss of work is only a prelude to a loss of purpose.

pdkl95• 10 years ago

Those historical examples are about the automation of physical effort. The ability to automate tasks that require mental effort is fundamentally new to humanity.

For a better overview, see CGP Grey's explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU

slededit• 10 years ago

Calculators automate at least some "mental effort" and have existed since 2000BC. Perhaps you mean creativity? But even in that case automating composition of music was experimented with as early as the 1960s.

Certainly our ability to automate is much more refined than in the past, but I fail to see the fundamental shift you describe.

murtnowski2• 10 years ago

There have been plenty of historical examples of automated mental effort from Wall Street trading, to telephone switching, to legal research, to librarians, record keeping, accounting, logistics management, forestry overwatch, security, safety regulation, meter reader, parking enforcement, communication, art, banking, many examples throughout history.

Bombthecat• 10 years ago

I'm optimistic. Only 40% of humans will die. 20% will suffer the rest will live a happy problemles live.

You Can’t Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income

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