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A comment on Should economists be more concerned about AI?. Parent comment

Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by hetman on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @08:46PM (#13770680)
I feel like that difference is overstated. Weaving was once a highly skilled profession requiring intricate control by an intelligent operator yet it was increasingly automated even before the advent of computing.

I think the difference in what we consider "force" work and what is "mind" work is highly subjective to the things we've grown used to thinking of as menial based on the technology we've learned to take for granted.

The new forms of automation seem to be doing nothing but continuing the same gradual trend rather than offering some kind of paradigm shift. For example I have yet to see any automated systems replacing human creativity, when that begins to happen then we really will be in uncharted territory.

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Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by gpawl on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @09:49PM (#13771005)
Weaving is clearly a mechanical task that required a mind to control the hardware. Problem-solving is not a mechanical task.
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Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by K0SM0S on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @11:59PM (#13771541)
> Problem-solving is not a mechanical task

Food for thought: how sure are we that this statement is true? What does it even mean, seen from a cybernetics perspective? How complex does a task need to be until it's not considered mechanical anymore? Isn't the brain, eventually, a very complex biological machine?

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Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by tomjen3 on Thursday March 02, 2017 @12:11AM (#13771590)
Weaving is mechanical yes.

It is also very difficult to do unless you are just making plain single color fabric.

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Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by novos on Wednesday March 01, 2017 @09:07PM (#13770800)
https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Computational_creativity has some links to examples but I'm on mobile.
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Re:Should economists be more concerned about AI? by hetman on Saturday March 04, 2017 @05:13PM (#13793177)
These tend to be imitations of an existing style at best with a sprinkling of randomness thrown in, and nonsensical at worst. Certainly nothing fascinating enough to have people queuing to experience it paid ticket in hand. Still, artistic creativity seems like a pretty lofty goal at this point so it wouldn't be the first place I would expect to see genuine creativity emerge.
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