None of this has led to people getting fired. It has cost a massive amount of jobs though. All unnoticed because we simply didn't rehire for positions when someone retired because the digitization hadn't eaten whole workflows but only 5 minutes here and there.

The next thing we're going to do is AI. We've already begun the proofs of concepts. We've gone through 6 million case files with 5-70 page documents, and sorted them in a particular way. A process which too 25 full time jobs half a year to do. Our proof of concept AI and 1000 servers in azure, did the same thing in 5 hours.

Computers didn't really change the office landscape like robots did to the assembly lines. AI will.

At one point in our history, one of the most important jobs in a large city, was removing the endless tones of horse shit from the streets every day. Cars made those guys as obsolete as AI will do almost everything.

Sure there will be new jobs as well, but technology stopped creating more jobs than it ate almost 10 years ago, and it's an exponential curve.

I think this is a very important part of automation in the knowledge worker sector that people often miss. Automation doesn't have to get a single person fired to lead to high unemployment, it just has to make managers stop and ask, "do we really need to replace that person who left?". I've been seeing the same thing as you over the last decade with companies I've consulted with where headcount gets pared down here and there every year, and the remaining employees are expected to use more technology tools and wear more hats to fill in the gaps.

Which was replaced by lots of mechanics, factory workers, marketers, office workers and salesmen. A lot of jobs were created by automating away the horse. I wonder how many people predicted that back then?

I don't see much evidence yet that AI is going to automate most existing jobs, unless Google, FB, Hitachi, etc is secretly on the cusp of AGI. The current machine learning isn't anywhere near that. This is being blown out of proportion, but it's always been since the beginnings of AI.

Maybe someday. Or 20 years from now, along with cold fusion and flying cars.

I already talked about how nobody noticed that jobs were being lost to retirement, but that's really only part of it. Another important factor has been the size of workforce generations, which had been decreasing for the past decades, meaning that our overall unemployment rates didn't go up.

We're at the bottom of that curve though, and if you look at unemployment rates solely for young people, then you'll notice how they have exploded.

It's NOT that Robots are going to take all the jobs, it's that automation and productivity advances are going to reduce the people necessary by a drastic degree.

There's lots of stats like Ikea factories making 17x the bookcases they did in 1985 but with the same number of staff. But even in our technical and development niche, look at something like Instagram. They went from idea to billions of users with what a decade ago would have been a laughably small staff.

The future is the top 10% of staff executing with an army of automated services at their command to do the work that 90% of their colleagues used to do.

That's been happening for hundreds of years. It's actually going more slowly now - productivity growth is some of the slowest that we've seen over the past 70 years[1].

It seems more likely that flashy tech (like articles about self driving cars and drone delivery) helped people believe a false narrative about the high unemployment that followed the financial crisis. It was also a narrative that exempted the political leadership - hey, we can't do anything to fix things, it's just a brave new world.

But the numbers are show that the theory is bunk. Not just the productivity numbers I mentioned, but also the employment participation rate[2].

[1] https://www.bls.gov/lpc/prodybar.htm [2] https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/LNS11300060

From another thread:

Today I have already consumed more sugar than most of my distant ancestors would see in a year. The device i hold in my pocket reminds me that it is time to perform the action, and so i will perform the action. I sit down about 10 hours a day, and I have never once hunted for an animal I would eat, nor retried food from nature to consume, aside from a few raspberries on the hill in my parents' back yard when I was a child.

The contours of my life are dictated largely by a curious system called 'capitalism', a distributed computational mechanism whereby larger numbers of agents act with only one goal: to maximize their own utilities. I think capitalism is a mostly benevolent AI attempting to limit the oppressive conditions of our reality's scarcity, and to allow billions of us to live on a planet that can only support so many hunter-gatherers per square meter. Many suspect it is not benevolent. They may easily be right.

The singularity is already upon us; it's unevenly distributed. It started with the sedentary shift. Agricultural societies dropped the egalitarian nature of their ancestors, they had lower average health, and they had a tiny elite cast of nobles presiding over a much larger population of what were essentially slaves. As hunter-gatherer population increased, fighting was more frequent. An army of slaves beats a smaller contingent of well-fed free men. This terrible knowledge was the apple in the garden. What we call our written history is essentially the singularity playing itself out, as knowledge accumulates, depends, reflects itself, and expands.

Our lives are already controlled by this embodied, accumulated knowledge. Capitalism, rule by the head, our tools are knowledge condensed into matter, and we are controlled by them, living lives as far from our natural environments as cows in a farm or chickens in tiny cages, towering over the streets of hong kong.

I don't think it's destroying us, any more than we seek to destroy chickens or cows. Well, sometimes we do. I had a veggie burger for lunch today though.

:)

The real question is what happens to the 90%.

The worst outcome, on the other hand, is rather more dystopian. A society with a very large percentage of young, unemployed people with no particular path to success is not a stable society.

I suppose it matters how comfortable the 90% is when they become unemployed. Is basic income enough to fulfill individual passions and interests? What happens to a large body of humans whose needs are taken care of but who aren't strictly needed for anything?

Study after study indicates that wealth provides opportunities, and that most people don't move up to become wealthy but are born that way. So basically society systematically advantages people who have wealthy parents, over people who work hard.

Bill Gates father was relatively wealthy. Imagine how many bill gates there are who are poor.

If Elon Musk hadn't had his father's money for his first company, there might not be a paypal or tesla.

So the question is how many potential bill gates and elon musks are there who's parents couldn't risk supporting them, who settle for doing something less innovative and interesting because they need to pay the bills or support family members?

You're setting up a chicken and egg problem for yourself. Wealth had to start somewhere, as I doubt you'd argue that it was handed down to certain families by a deity.

Heritage is important. A person does not just have more opportunity because of the wealth of an ancestor - they exist because of that ancestor. Does everyone not deserve to have whatever their ancestors chose to give them?

The only argument that can be made is if you can show that someone's ancestors only had wealth because they unjustly stole it from others. But that's a tall order.

A lot of new wealth has been created by people born into poor / middle class families in last 1-2 centuries for sure, especially 20th century.

But there are still families today that are wealthy and their wealth have been with them for 400-500 or more years. And in those cases it's very likely the original wealth was stolen.

It could be that original wealth was gathered during robber baron times by exploiting workers or it could be even older, being passed from generation to generation since medieval times. Which means the original aristocracy probably gained this wealth in a violent conquest.

I don't think it's society's responsibility to look back further than the formation of that society. For the US, I think you can safely use 1776 as a starting point. The US formed itself with the express purpose of creating equality for the original settlers.

If someone is violating those principles, society should punish accordingly. If not, society is not "rewarding wealth". They are allowing for the fact that everyone is someone else's child, and that comes with it certain rights.

After industrialization, a lot of people were able to leverage first-mover advantages and unrealized frontier opportunities into vast fortunes. But even then, having one extra dollar from daddy in 1790 meant having many, many more to give your own kids by 1820, even if you had 12 of them. That extra dollar might have meant you carried a full feedbag and got there a day before the guy who had to stop to let his horse forage, and getting there first was worth thousands.

Now, daddy's dollars might allow you to start from second place, and grow faster than the first-mover, who might be trying to bootstrap. Or you could do the same with investor money, but with corresponding loss of equity. If mommy or daddy fund you, you probably get to keep more of your own company.

As well the marginal utility of another dollar to someone who is already wealthy is low and they are less likely to use that money, whereas someone who is poor or middle class not only benefits more from another dollar, but is much more likely to spend that money in a way that stimulates the economy.

Those simply trying to avoid getting crushed by the system already know: "Them that's got shall get; them that's not shall lose. God bless the child that's got it all." If you want to get rich, you usually have to be rich. Making your first fortune is always the hardest.

If you aren't already in a position to invest anything--if you are living paycheck-to-paycheck or worse--the only way to own a robot is to build one, because you can't buy one. You can be outbid by anyone with a dollar that isn't already spent. You're already screwed. But you knew that, because you're pinching pennies so hard that Lincoln cries out, then the Lincoln in the monument on the reverse side squeaks out a protest. And if you do manage to build a robot, you'll probably have to sell it at some point for less than it its true worth, due to a crisis.

It even says it in the article. All you need to do to buy enough Amazon stock to retire is to already own a chain of grocery stores in New Jersey! Meanwhile, the employees of those grocery stores have to cut each other's throats to get an Amazon warehouse job, because that game of musical chairs took so many seats away all at once.

"Just own the damn robots" is a surrender to the zero-intervention inevitability of an ownership class that owns everything, and a dispossessed class enslaved to them economically, yet also almost entirely useless to them. Owning things is a solution that only works for problems that rich people have. It's advice maybe good enough for the top 10%, worried that they will backslide. It doesn't do anything for the bottom 90%, who either can't get ownership of a robot, or can't keep it long enough for it to solve their financial problems.

It will always result in revolution. The 90% will demand an equal share.

The sad bit is that the revolutions seem to destroy the robots, not share the wealth. The 90% elect a different 10%, who then build more robots. See Animal Farm for details.

The 10% have to share the pie, at least enough to prevent revolution.

What power the 90% have when its opposed to drones, or some other hi-tech weapon?

We hope that there would be enough good people among the wealthy and powerful to avoid such a scenario--but would there? Do we know that for certain? I don't think we do. Look at how the wealthy and powerful already exploit people on both small and large scales, from Hollywood execs satisfying their sexual desires one victim at a time, to corporate execs exploiting cheap overseas labor that, to them, are merely numbers on a screen, helping them increase margins.

It all boils down to the same problem in the end, that of evil, and it's not going away, merely taking different forms throughout the ages.

What's changed since then is that an extreme minority can kill far more people. For instance, automated drones.

yes. i seriously question the need for the "top" 10%. whatever spread of percentile that maps to the right sort of people would do.

We need a better solution than basic income.

No, if you want to look at basic income, look at the children of the wealthy, who never have to work. Most still pursue education, get degrees, and work in a variety of fields including art.

Also it's important not to conflate your interests in art with the universe of art appreciators. Because there is plenty of artistic work that I don't personally enjoy, but which there is a demand for. Jewelry comes to mind... I've bought cuff links but that's about it for the past year, but necklaces, earrings, bracelets and rings still get sold despite my lack of interest.

Only the most short-sighted of the wealthy do not realize that there are many ways in which their wealth could dry up. This provides an impetus to use the money constructively while you have it, because it might not be around forever.

Basic income does not give the same drive. You can watch TV all day, doing nothing to better yourself, doing nothing to manage your money, and you know that there will always be more where that came from.

But if you want more from life than sitting at home and watching TV all day, you have to take some initiative.

2. Someone in the family history had to be a diligent/industrious/successful. And that person probably tried to pass those values down to their children and so on and so on.

If you give people wealth, no such ideals will be passed down to their children.

Money doesn't dry up, it increases thanks to investment and hedge funds. You just need to ensure you never dip it below net-positive+base inflation rate.

Suppose you have a billion dollars invested, and you're only receiving 0.1%/year on top of the base inflation rate. 0.1% of $1 billion is $1million, so you have a perfectly sustainable stable $1 million per year. That's more than enough to spend forever dicking around.

Actually, drop that down to $100 million. At 0.1% above, you get sustainable $100k/year.

Now, perhaps that doesn't seem too lavish, but consider that you could afford to take way more than 0.1% off your interest every year, and you'll find that that money isn't going anywhere.

1. That wealthy people's money can dry up.

2. That wealthy people know this and it provides an impetus to spend.

3. that that impetus to spend is constructive.

4. That poor people, promised basic income, will differ markedly from wealthy people in this respect.

I can't speak to all of these but I can speak to some of them.

1. Certainly wealthy people may lose their wealth. But most don't.

https://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2016/05/19/the-wealthy-in-fl...

https://www.washingtonpost.com/news/wonk/wp/2014/10/18/poor-...

Also see this swedish study which indicates that wealthy kids save less then their parents but still tend to be wealthy, and that this is true for both adopted as well as natural born children, indicating that it's not some sort of genetic advantage http://www.nber.org/papers/w21409

as for 4, I think you have this idea that poor people are poor because of intrinsic characteristics. This is a more common belief among conservatives (http://www.people-press.org/files/legacy-pdf/1-23-14%20Pover...).

Here's some evidence that it's not an intrinsic quality.

https://www.nytimes.com/2015/05/04/upshot/an-atlas-of-upward...

There's also evidence from things like free meals and early childhood education. Links are probably easy to search for if you google free lunch benefit and HeadStart benefit. Basically giving kids proper nutrition and free preschool make a big difference.

There aren't a lot of studies on giving adults help to get out of poverty though. People like helping kids and young adults, but once you are grown up you are kinda out of luck. I think there is some micro loan data out there though. That said there was canadian basic income, which showed only modest decreases in hours worked, and better health outcomes overall.https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mincome

But even if basic income only effects children of poor people and not the poor people themselves, it seems like it could provide a marked difference in a generation.

pretty sure i live in one of them, so tell me what i see.

"People need a reason to exist and meaningful work to do."

how are they managing now? most people have a lot of meaningless work and i don't know anyone that can tell me the reason they exist beyond empty platitudes.

"Very few have the drive and discipline to become artists/inventors/philosophers/musicians/actors."

you only need some special drive for that stuff, (collectively called playing), to push forward with it while working a day-job.

"Plus the majority of those who do become artists are unlikely to create anything that the rest of society would value."

roughly all of them, really. at least that's how it is right now and i don't see why it would change.

"We need a better solution than basic income."

k, let's do basic income, then see what needs improving ;)

You mean like retirement communities?

Judge Dredd or the Culture.

Arguably.

> Why is this any different?

Even if it wasn't, massive changes to politico-economic systems to redistribute gains were needed to mitigate the adverse distributional effects of the industrial revolution, so...

Computers can already infer sentiment, not to mention recognize patterns extremely well, and are likely trainable to provide example feedback to any given cultural current. Is culture really any more diffuse than something like conversation, which computers already do reasonably well?

Furthermore, it seems odd to suggest that computers would have trouble in numbers games like war/trade war/resource allocation. These are essentially reducible to games, and with Go out the way, it doesn't seem that figuring out the best tariffs to pass or best places to bomb would require much more logic.

Maybe I'm being naive, but I think your conceptions of the limitations of machines are founded on essentially nothing. There's little, philosophically or scientifically, in the way of physicalist/functionalist conceptions of the mind that supports your viewpoints!

There's little reason to doubt, in my eyes, that our brains are extremely complex machines, running on electrical impulses and neurotransmitters, to produce responses to stimuli. As such, I don't see why you would privilege our machines over another machine. Why is our learning experience different from that of a machine? Do we not learn from trial-and-error, from explicit (social) rule-programming, from inference? Is evolution really at odds with computers? Some ML algorithms already boast "evolutionary" traits. And are our 5 senses really so sharp? What about beings who "see" all EM radiation or feel rumblings deep in the earth, like a seismograph does?

In reference to the first 3 paragraphs of your response, I believe there are a few orders of magnitude (at least) difference between "computers can already infer sentiment" to, for example, "a computer that manages a construction firm that uses Mexican commodities realises that Trump has come to power and THAT wall, that is promised, isn't going to happen. Mexico won't be happy, and there might be a trade war. Perhaps start supporting Anti-Trump causes. Certainly don't waste time bidding to build the thing."

In reference to the flesh vs machinery question. I think I don't believe it because I don't think we have a good way of designing a good AI.

An AI needs to be like a slave that is motivated to serve some goal other than itself. A human brain would not be a good model for such an AI, as our brains are trained to serve ourselves. (Or our selfish genes?) So we cannot copy human brain design and development processes to make an AI that we can trust. We need to design a new brain, based on perhaps similar, but different processes.

Evolution with different selectors? Deterministic design? I don't think we could do it.

Now remember truck drivers are the most populous single occupation in the US, and commercial trucking is expected to be largely automated within 20-30 years by most major shipping companies.

We don't need an science fiction style singularity to destroy our world, just a couple of small changes in the fringes will be enough.

Based on non-uniform binning criteria. Bin differently and other jobs might be on the top. Although they might be just as susceptible to automation. It's a nice example, but it is about as solid as pluto's planetary status.

Note that truck drivers are not in the top 10 chart even though the American Trucking Association estimates 3.5 million truck drivers in the US since BLS puts the number at about 1.7 million. I don't know where the discrepancy comes from.

[1] http://www.businessinsider.com/most-popular-jobs-in-america-...

What do they do?

This isn't a rhetorical question, I don't know the answer, and I'm kept up at night for the coming storm.

In quite a few places, the former are basically paid like baristas and office clerks. That certainly seems to be the case at the web development end (and I guess more mainstream side in general) in a lot of places in Europe.

Humans might be so bad at figuring out whether Alice can work with Bob or whether we should bomb Iran that a magic 8 ball could do a better job, never mind the anthropomorphised superintelligent computers which exist only in the imaginations of futurists past and present. But humanity is going to continue to insist on getting people to sort that sort of thing out.

This seems to assume advertising will continue to be aimed at humans. Why would it be? Why would purchasing stuff not be done by AIs in the future as well? In that scenario, things like culture would become irrelevant, as marketing AIs would advertise products/services to purchasing AIs.

I'm not sure what a Rubics cube has to do with intuition. But solving a Rubics cube is so firmly within the realm of doable that no one is going to call it AI anymore.

Now that we have computers, it's not at all clear that this will be true anymore; machines need to be designed, but that requires much less people working on them.

And I take tech hype from the media with a healthy dose of salt.

You're trolling, right? Intuitive leaps are the bread and butter of neural nets.

You train it to walk, and it won't understand how to climb. You train it to climb on a climbing wall and it won't understand that it can't climb on glass, or string, or a waterfall without additional training.

Whereas you and I wouldn't need to try and fail to climb a waterfall. We would just know it isn't going to work. We would also understand, without having tested it, that those climbing skills would enable us to climb a tree, or a rope net, or ladder.

We might even be able to make a judgement about how well we could climb each before disaster.

If I were wrong on this, and I could see an AI trained to do X and then apply it to Y then it would cause me to review my beliefs on AI.

An "80 IQ" manager will fail at the list of six tasks, and a "120 IQ" manager will be a success, by most peoples analysis.

Surely, an intelligent but inadequate AI would be mentored like an intelligent but inadequate human manager. We have millennia of experience proving humans can't do that successfully. Therefore if we invent an inadequate AI, regardless of being close to human performance, we know we can't improve performance to make them useful. We play games with re-rolling the dice, but the clock time and human labor time make that too expensive (although it works for mere numerological metric number optimization problems). We play games with pretending that the history of flipping honest coins implies something about the honest coin although it implies more about self delusion and statistics. We play political games where the leader is useless but at least the leader is our guy, our kind of people.

Sure, for the sake of argument, I'll take it on faith we can build a mentally disabled AI manager. But we know based on centuries of experience we have no idea how to "fix" a mentally disabled manager into something successful. This is not necessarily a complete black pill. A developmentally disabled AI might, if its merely disabled and not evil, be handy to provide minimal supervision to small children or animals in a safe controlled environment. Its just not going to be very useful.

Maybe rephrased, that's nice that some believe we can run a marathon, and maybe we can get part way, but if we absolutely know based on substantial experience we can't upgrade an athlete to run the critical last 100 feet to break the tape and finish, then why bother? Or if we have to build a bridge 1010 feet long if in separate experiments we know we can't extend a bridge past 1000 feet long then it doesn't matter if we have faith or belief that we can build it 10 feet or 950 feet or 999.9 feet because we know once we hit 1000 feet we have no idea how to get it to 1010 feet based on centuries of trying really hard using off the shelf cheap self reproducing biological bridges of 1000 feet length.

My greatest fear of AI is it will turn political and we'll no longer be able to talk about the science and technology of AI; it'll just be another dog whistle signal for one side or another, like many other topics "discussed" here on HN. Kool kids will have the right blind faith, the enemy will have the wrong blind faith.