Technology and Our Core Values

[darkwing_duck1]

Really, would you advocate the removal of robots from the assembly line so we can replace them with people, driving up the cost of goods for everyone else and lowering everyone's overall purchasing power in the process?

Funny, up until about 25-30 years ago it worked quite well. In order for people to consume, they must have resources. Labor is the source of resources.

Human labour is much more inefficient than robot labour in certain areas - meaning human labour produces much less resources/products.
Less products translate into less wealth for the society in general and poverty for a much larger faction of it - yes, they'll be paid, but they'll barely be paid enough to manage to stay alive.

Again, the evidence of history is against you. When we had MORE people and LESS automation we had a more prosperous society.

One side of this debate argues that sociesty should be stagnant/practically stagnant - historically, this was ALWAYS a bad ideea.
The other side, on the other hand, argues that society should change, but either thay have no ideea what changes should be made, or the ideeas amount to nostalgy.

"Let us redefine 'progress' by understanding that the ability to do a thing does not necessarily mean we MUST do that thing..." (or words to that effect)

 

[ProtoAvatar]

Funny, up until about 25-30 years ago it worked quite well. In order for people to consume, they must have resources. Labor is the source of resources.

Human labour is much more inefficient than robot labour in certain areas - meaning human labour produces much less resources/products.
Less products translate into less wealth for the society in general and poverty for a much larger faction of it - yes, they'll be paid, but they'll barely be paid enough to manage to stay alive.

Again, the evidence of history is against you. When we had MORE people and LESS automation we had a more prosperous society.

Is it?
Look at communist countries. Everyone worked, and (almost) everyone lived at the limit of decency.
Or should we be looking even further back - when there were no 'machines'? (Almost) everyone lived a short and brutal life.

You may be speaking about yourself - which is why I used the term 'nostalgy'.

One side of this debate argues that sociesty should be stagnant/practically stagnant - historically, this was ALWAYS a bad ideea.
The other side, on the other hand, argues that society should change, but either thay have no ideea what changes should be made, or the ideeas amount to nostalgy.

"Let us redefine 'progress' by understanding that the ability to do a thing does not necessarily mean we MUST do that thing..." (or words to that effect)

Were you not advocating reverting aka changing? Now you're supporting 'not changing'.

And with regards to what 'thing', exactly? Your nostalgic ideea that we should revert to?

Your statement's value depends on the change that is discussed and what it could bring.
In other words, your statement is so general as to be only rhetoric without being useful.

 

[FordSVT]

Human beings shouldn't be doing manual labour. We are thinkers, we should be using our brains to create, not shovelling ditches. Society's problem isn't advancing technology replacing shitty jobs, it's society not finding other more interesting things for those people to do. You think hundreds of millions of people living on Earth in Star Trek are manual labourers by profession?

This is the real world, not Star Trek. In the real world, if you do not labor, you do not eat as a general rule.

No, this is a discussion board, not the real world. The claim was made that we'd all be better off doing more manual labour, I'm trying to think of any positive vision of the future (or the past) where that is the case.

Really, would you advocate the removal of robots from the assembly line so we can replace them with people, driving up the cost of goods for everyone else and lowering everyone's overall purchasing power in the process?

Funny, up until about 25-30 years ago it worked quite well. In order for people to consume, they must have resources. Labor is the source of resources.[/quote]

You're right, we need more people putting rivets through things and doing repetitive menial tasks because that's what good little capitalists do. It's not like they could be doing something more meaningful than turning a wrench over and over again in the same spot.

A lot of these thoughts are dangerously close to favouring a government planned and mandated economy. Make sure all the comrades have a job, no matter how stupid or unskilled the job is or how much they get paid. That doesn't work well, ask the USSR.

No one is talking about USSR central planning. The system we had worked quite well, as the USA from the late 30s through the late 70s demonstrated.[/QUOTE]

"The system"? Exactly what, pray tell, is this "system" the USA had from 1930 until 1980 that we don't have now? And how does it relate to the economic realities of a completely different political and economic situation worldwide? World War Two had a great influence on our economy during that period, perhaps another world war and the mass killing of people aged 18-24 would be beneficial to the economy in your vision of the future?

 

[FordSVT]

Human beings shouldn't be doing manual labour. We are thinkers, we should be using our brains to create, not shovelling ditches. Society's problem isn't advancing technology replacing shitty jobs, it's society not finding other more interesting things for those people to do. You think hundreds of millions of people living on Earth in Star Trek are manual labourers by profession?

This is the real world, not Star Trek. In the real world, if you do not labor, you do not eat as a general rule.

No, this is a discussion board, not the real world. The claim was made that we'd all be better off doing more manual labour, I'm trying to think of any positive vision of the future (or the past) where that is the case.

Really, would you advocate the removal of robots from the assembly line so we can replace them with people, driving up the cost of goods for everyone else and lowering everyone's overall purchasing power in the process?

Funny, up until about 25-30 years ago it worked quite well. In order for people to consume, they must have resources. Labor is the source of resources.

You're right, we need more people putting rivets through things and doing repetitive menial tasks because that's what good little capitalists do. It's not like they could be doing something more meaningful than turning a wrench over and over again in the same spot.

A lot of these thoughts are dangerously close to favouring a government planned and mandated economy. Make sure all the comrades have a job, no matter how stupid or unskilled the job is or how much they get paid. That doesn't work well, ask the USSR.

No one is talking about USSR central planning. The system we had worked quite well, as the USA from the late 30s through the late 70s demonstrated.

"The system"? Exactly what, pray tell, is this "system" the USA had from 1930 until 1980 that it doesn't have now? And how does it relate to the economic realities of a completely different political and economic situation worldwide? World War Two had a great influence on our economy during that period, perhaps another world war and the mass killing of people aged 18-24 would be beneficial to the economy in your vision of the future?

 

[Crazy Eddie]

As important as the issues of privacy and "net neutrality" are, technology poses a more fundamental threat to our values and way of life, and that is economic. We are conditioned to think that technology=progress and that such progress is always beneficial.

Consider though, the role that technology has had in replacing human labor. One can argue that allowing one worker to do the work of three (increased productivity) is good, but what if you're one of the two workers out of a job because of it?

We are nearing, if not already at, a "tipping point" where technology simply put will/has rendered a substantial proportion of the population as essentially unneeded and unnecessary from a labor point of view.

Given that our social values tie access to resources to a person's labor contribution, that is and will become an ever increasing problem.

^ All true, but as I've often theorized this leads to "singularity" considerations where, at a certain point of complexity, artificial laborers smart enough to replace humans are also smart enough to make human demands (civil liberties, payment, etc). Beyond that, there are always workarounds that would allow employers to still keep humans in the loop without totally alienating low-knowledge workers.

If that fails, of course, you can always give tax breaks to companies pay a certain amount of their income to their employees.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

Why would it cause more suffering?
Isn't it sometimes better to go with a clean start?

Depends on what you try to replace it with, and how. Arguably, the Soviet Union was created by an attempt to create a "clean start." Arguably, the Soviet Union was infinitely superior to the monarchy that preceded it, but thousands of people still got executed and tens of thousand still wound up in gulags for the long haul. On the other hand, the "clean start" offered by the Rwandan government involved the annihilation of an entire ethnic group...

Just sayin. Change for change's sake isn't always desirable. Alot of times, you're lucky if it's better than the thing you replaced.

Also, explain to me the reason why would the present system collapse faster with advancement of technology?

Because the present system is predicated on the concentration of power in the hands of a handful of wealthy elites who for some reason or another control that power through legal/financial connections. As technology becomes more advanced, that concentration of power is eroded, and new technologies begin to empower people outside of that elite clique to take more productive actions.

This is fine as long as successful "new money" technocrats become a new elite class themselves (as has happened with, for example, bloggers and web developers) but at a certain point the technology becomes so widely available that it becomes incredibly difficult to "make it big" with a new innovation, and even then the fruits of that success are almost not worth the trouble because you can't possibly make a profit from it.

The most extreme example of this is micromanufacturing, as in replicators/nanomachine assemblers. If you have a device that can make anything, then you've left the entire manufacturing industry out of the loop. If you want to invent something new, you can't sell your idea, because anyone else who has the designs can easily copy it without bothering to pay you. You can sell the designs, but THAT can be copied too and distributed a hundred times over. You can use your machine to make finished products and sell those, but sooner or later somebody will figure out your design and start making bootlegs and you're out of luck again. When you get to that point, the economic system as you understand it falls apart and you have to find a new way to allocate resources (or possibly stop bothering to allocate resources, since only a few things will still be scarce at this point).

 

[Crazy Eddie]

You're right, we need more people putting rivets through things and doing repetitive menial tasks because that's what good little capitalists do. It's not like they could be doing something more meaningful than turning a wrench over and over again in the same spot.

You could make the case that they could. The problem comes when the situation becomes such that they HAVE to, and then a huge portion of your labor force discovers that not everyone CAN or SHOULD.

There are people in this world who are ill-suited to sophisticated creative tasks and would probably be lucky enough to make a living parking cars. These are in contrast to people who can look at a sunflower and use this as inspiration to design the top-selling video game of the year and do this continually year after year. The problem comes when you treat people in the former category as potentials for the latter, and vice versa; Communists have a way of disempowering the gifted and capitalists have a way of disempowering everyone else.

Of course "from each according to his gifts" is still an applicable principle, communism or not. First and foremost is recognizing that not everyone IS gifted and isn't going to contribute anything to the economy other than turning over a wrench and putting rivets into things. Likewise, some people are gifted in ways that are hard to compensate monetarily (the world's best parents, for instance) and should at least have the option of earning a living in some way that doesn't require their full lifetime attention and a four-year degree.

 

[publiusr]

And the private market doesn't often reward creativity. I had a stack of paper disks around a wooden dowell. I rotated the wooden rod--but did more than rotate it in place, but described a cone. Even though a caused the rod to circle in a clockwise fashion, the bottom disk moved counterclockwise. (the disk were the Detex watchclock disks and quite thin)

And yet I have no money to pursue this strange effect.

 

[Lindley]

^ All true, but as I've often theorized this leads to "singularity" considerations where, at a certain point of complexity, artificial laborers smart enough to replace humans are also smart enough to make human demands (civil liberties, payment, etc).

We're nowhere near that level of AI, and the notion that sentience must follow from good capability is a Hollywood conceit with little basis in reality.

Don't worry, if we did develop actual AI, it would be far too big a deal to waste on an assembly line.

 

[scotpens]

We are nearing, if not already at, a "tipping point" where technology simply put will/has rendered a substantial proportion of the population as essentially unneeded and unnecessary from a labor point of view.

That's exactly what the Luddites -- I mean the ORIGINAL Luddites -- feared 200 years ago.

They were wrong.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

^ All true, but as I've often theorized this leads to "singularity" considerations where, at a certain point of complexity, artificial laborers smart enough to replace humans are also smart enough to make human demands (civil liberties, payment, etc).

We're nowhere near that level of AI, and the notion that sentience must follow from good capability is a Hollywood conceit with little basis in reality.

But I never said anything about mere capability. A huge segment of the workforce that COULD be replaced with AI necessarily requires a certain degree of simulated sentience in terms of goal-seeking and interpersonal communications. Teachers, secretaries, administrators, quality control inspectors, craftsmen, electricians, soldiers, etc. The type of machine that could effectively replace humans in these operations would necessarily have to replicate human function, and if it's designed to do that--regardless of its other capabilities--then at a certain degree of complexity it gains a human's ability to complain.

Don't worry, if we did develop actual AI, it would be far too big a deal to waste on an assembly line.

We already have "actual" AI working on assembly line positions. SENTIENT AI is another matter, and there are all kinds of roles such machines could fill in society. The problem is alot of those roles would eventually amount to slavery and you run the risk of those newly sentient AIs being smart enough to realize this.

 

[Lindley]

The type of machine that could effectively replace humans in those roles are at least a century away. Not this generation's problem.

The kind of AI we have now is basically just a matter of mathematical tricks to speed up state-space-search. It has nothing to do with intelligence in the human sense.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

Respectfully speaking, I think you're wrong

 

[Daedalus12]

So what part of Lindley's post do you disagree with?

1. You disagree with his prediction on the future state of AI.
2. You disagree with his summary conclusion of the current state of AI.
3. You disagree with 1 and 2.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The type of machine that could effectively replace humans in those roles are at least a century away. Not this generation's problem.

I should hope so.

The kind of AI we have now is basically just a matter of mathematical tricks to speed up state-space-search. It has nothing to do with intelligence in the human sense.

Intelligence in the human sense is a bit tricky since it involves processing different types of information than current generation machines are designed to. It would take a paradigm shift in electronics to produce human-like software/processing.

The thing is, once that shift occurs, the rest will happen VERY quickly. You probably won't have enough time to say "Uh oh" before a race of cylons suddenly unionizes and demands living wages and access to hacker insurance.

 

[ProtoAvatar]

The type of machine that could effectively replace humans in those roles are at least a century away. Not this generation's problem.

I should hope so.

The kind of AI we have now is basically just a matter of mathematical tricks to speed up state-space-search. It has nothing to do with intelligence in the human sense.

Intelligence in the human sense is a bit tricky since it involves processing different types of information than current generation machines are designed to. It would take a paradigm shift in electronics to produce human-like software/processing.

The thing is, once that shift occurs, the rest will happen VERY quickly. You probably won't have enough time to say "Uh oh" before a race of cylons suddenly unionizes and demands living wages and access to hacker insurance.

Doubtful.
I base this on the human brain, his complexity.
Processing information like him will require more than a few transistors which one could then make smaller in repetitive advances that don't require much creativity.
The neuron works at the molecular scale, and the brain uses a LOT of them, arranged in complex patterns. Creating an artificial analog to the brain would require major breakthroughs every step of the way - aka it will take time every step of the way.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Daedalus 12,

So what part of Lindley's post do you disagree with?

1. You disagree with his prediction on the future state of AI.
2. You disagree with his summary conclusion of the current state of AI.
3. You disagree with 1 and 2.

Predominantly 1, especially as neuroscience is being used to help generate better computer designs, it won't be long before the state of A.I. will reach and exceed that of humans all humans.


Newtype Alpha,

I should hope so.

No shit -- look I hope this will be a century away or more, or never, but I sincerely doubt it will take anywhere near that long.


CuttingEdge100

 

[Lindley]

Neuroscience has little to do with AI.

 

[CuttingEdge100]

Lindley,

There has been a lot of work by DARPA among other organizations into using knowledge gained from neuroscience to help create future A.I. technology, actually.

 

[Crazy Eddie]

The type of machine that could effectively replace humans in those roles are at least a century away. Not this generation's problem.

I should hope so.

The kind of AI we have now is basically just a matter of mathematical tricks to speed up state-space-search. It has nothing to do with intelligence in the human sense.

Intelligence in the human sense is a bit tricky since it involves processing different types of information than current generation machines are designed to. It would take a paradigm shift in electronics to produce human-like software/processing.

The thing is, once that shift occurs, the rest will happen VERY quickly. You probably won't have enough time to say "Uh oh" before a race of cylons suddenly unionizes and demands living wages and access to hacker insurance.

Doubtful.
I base this on the human brain, his complexity.
Processing information like him will require more than a few transistors which one could then make smaller in repetitive advances that don't require much creativity.
The neuron works at the molecular scale, and the brain uses a LOT of them, arranged in complex patterns. Creating an artificial analog to the brain would require major breakthroughs every step of the way - aka it will take time every step of the way.

Yes and no. Your iPod already has more transisters than the human brain has neurons, so all it would really take is to design a type of integrated circuit that duplicate the functionality of a neuron. A "neurosister" for lack of a better term. Once the basic technology has been fleshed out, the development of "human-like" artificial intelligence is already a short-term inevitability; the only question is how intelligent and how sophisticated that intelligence will become and in what time frame.

Put that another way: the gap between solid state electronics and the first personal computers was in a timeframe or less than ten years; this at a time when information technology itself was still in its infancy. A more experienced IT industry confronted with a new technical revolution could be expected to refine the new paradigm into a working product model in less than half the time.