But this one interests me: Mankind will therefore have become largely a race of machine tenders.

I think, by and large, this is true in western society. We, here on this site, mostly tend to machines, giving them instructions, altering their potentials and adjusting their parameters, as Asimov might have said (he had a quite analog conception of automated thinking). Almost all the people I meet in a day tend to machines, except for binmen, mailmen, shelf stackers and the like - and they too have machinery that forms a greater or lesser part of their job.

But that is not a new prediction. Socialism for example came about in the mid 1800's on the basis of an optimistic view of what would be possible thanks to the industrial revolution - the idea that machines could put us in a position able to eradicate poverty - but also pessimism about how it would turn workers into cogs in a machine.

This latter view came to shape a a lot of thinking and art for decades. In the cinema there are many obvious examples, such as Fritz Lang's Metropolis (1927) to Charlie Chaplins "Modern Times" (1936).

The latter makes it literal: Chaplin goes crazy due to the monotonous, high speed work and horrible treatment (including being used as a guinea pig for a machine designed to feed the workers lunch more efficiently). He starts seeing everything, such as buttons, as machine parts and nuts and bolts, and keeps trying to fasten them.

Eventually he gets pulled into the machine he is tending to and is shown as being moved along by the giant cogs.

All sound like roles easily ascribed to machines. In fact, my garbage man is a truck driven which has a giant hydrolic hand which grabs the bin and dumps it into the truck. The driver has to minimally tend to the mechanical arm only when the bin needs a slight relocation (moved away from a different class of bin) to allow his arm to grab the right bin.

Look at what's going on in US public education with the move to Core Curriculum. The focus is on reading and math, with outcomes measured via computer based testing. You think when cash-strapped state legislatures realize they could reduce the number of teachers down to a single proctor watching over self-paced computer based instruction that they won't go for it, especially when "the test" (since that's what we're doing here... teaching to the test) is computer-delivered?

This isn't to say that teachers will go away anymore than retail clerks, or buggy-whip makers or barrel makers before them, will go away, but their ranks will thin and where they are employed will change. There will still be people willing to pay for personal instruction and there will still be courses that are difficult to deliver via CBT alone.

I always thought online / computer-based education, especially for grade school, sounded terrible. But once I saw how little my kids are actually getting in public school, and especially with federal meddling ala No Child Left Behind and Core Curriculum, I would actually embrace it - at least it would be self-paced and allow more advanced students to move ahead rather than sitting bored waiting on their peers.

Look what's happening at the university level with MOOCs already. That's only going to accelerate, and university professors are teachers by another name - maybe calling it "automation" isn't exactly right, but we'll certainly see a thinning of the ranks.

In the early years when teacher is more like supervised play I think teachers better serve the children, but middle school and beyond, I'd vote to kick out all the useless teachers, keep the few that are good and massively switch to computerised learning.

In California education has sunk so low that one of my daughter's teachers explained the common core standards now being taught as a last ditch attempt to get most of the children that leave school to be able to do something as basic as read an instruction manual. Half her class are children with parents that have no more than 3rd grade education themselves, and the other half have parents that work at google, twitter, oracle etc. When parents were recently surveyed how to improve the school district, less than 2% of the immigrant parents completed the survey citing they couldn't understand the questions, which had even been translated (at an unfathomable cost of $24k) into Spanish. While we have such a huge range of abilities, a self-paced learning computerised scheme would at least mean the children that are capable of learning will do so and not just sit twiddling their thumbs while the children struggling to do last years level work soak up the educators time.

Over a century ago, stop signs and traffic lights were optional for some locations / situations / vehicles, and traveling long distance without using roads was permissible. Now, whether you choose to use a car or not, you must obey traffic laws or else. You don't get a choice in the matter.

Kevin Kelly wrote pretty well about this, a few years back:

http://kk.org/thetechnium/archives/2009/02/the_unabomber_w.p...

...except that Marx was concerned with "mere" capital while we're talking about automation, robotics, etc.. It turned out that capitalism on its own did not create the social unrest Marx predicted (at least in societies which didn't already suck for other reasons), but it may be that automating the workers out of being able to earn even a subsistence might in fact do so.

Another way of looking at it is that while Marx identified a real problem, his solution was essentially a bunch of wishful thinking which, when pitted against free market economics did rather poorly. But, free market economics is all about managing scarcity; automation points the way to a post-scarcity society (at least post-material-scarcity). Free market economics doesn't have anything to say about how to handle this -- so we're all in the dark.

It seems to me that as the marginal value of material goods diminishes relative to say the marginal value of not being beaten and robbed we should see a natural progression towards some kind of redistribution of wealth -- driven as much by enlightened self-interest as anything. ("We'll pay you welfare as long as you keep taking your contraceptive pills...")

Seems to me we're already seeing the natural progression you described in your last paragraph - basic income initiatives. This really looks to me like the anti-segregation movement from the 60s - a radical idea at the time, then 50 years later people don't understand how it was possible to have a society without it.

So a not-unreasonable guess as to "what's next" might be socialism, regardless of whether we're post-scarcity or not, and regardless of the success of basic income initiatives. Maybe ACA will be considered the first sign 50 years from now...

I would propose we are somewhat in that situation already, where many employees are nearly useless in the capacities they are supposed to be working because they just aren't capable, though in possibly all cases this is solely a temporary problem due to inefficiencies in the system. It is logical to assume that problem will only get worse though. Hopefully this will lead to advancements in education, and in means of organizing and developing the abilities of those whose skills are obsolete in addressing the many problems that we still need to tackle. Essentially, mining and engineering humanity for unrealized potential.

Moving beyond McDonalds workers, think about doctors even. Many of the tasks currently performed by doctors will be automated in the next 50 years (and many tasks earlier than later). So their job description will change drastically, which hopefully means their efforts will be redirected to the areas we are currently deficient, leading to better care and health for everyone.

Efficiency and productivity advancement is of course a large net positive, as long as the benefits do not go increasingly disproportionately to a smaller subset of humanity (as has been the case the last 20 years in the US for example), and that the obsoleted workers can be redirected effectively to other tasks. Similarly, I am concerned that many human skills could be increasingly devalued as natural resources become the limiting factor, as is already happening to some extent. I don't have an elegant solution, but we really need to find a better means of balancing rewards for shrewd trading/management with maintaining a high level of parity between contribution to society and consumption of goods and services (including capital accumulation for eventual consumption). If we don't, I could certainly see a future where, despite vast increases in efficiency, wealth/power is far more concentrated in the hands of a few: natural resource owners(which China seems to realize), shrewd businessmen/politicians, engineers/scientists in frontier fields that haven't been mastered yet like AI, biotech, etc. I suppose this is really just more of the same situation we have now, but I am concerned about it being exacerbated by this trend. Hopefully political/economic/social dynamics will keep this effect in check.

Up until recently the forces of natural selection have largely applied to the human race. Since we have become more civilized and are trying to live in harmony, we attempt to respect everyone's right to exist and ensure everyone is given opportunities to thrive. It will be very interesting how policies regarding reproduction evolve as we approach the manageable population limit. Certainly the current US policy cannot persist indefinitely, which offers substantial assistance in providing the basic needs and education for an unlimited number of offspring. How will this be limited? How will it be enforced? Will we enact an equal limitation as China did? Will we adjust policy to reintroduce elements of natural selection, such as requiring some proof of genetic utility to society (perhaps simply as ability to financially provide for the child without external support). If so, will this trend in automation etc play a role in shaping the genetic evolution of the human race? I expect it will in one way or another once population growth becomes a problem, just as societal changes had for centuries before our recent socialist policies (and in many ways still does globally). Perhaps this will be a part of how the question raised by parent comment is addressed (though I am certain it wouldn't be McDonald's workers in question, it would be many many years down the road, not to mention that "McDonald's workers" comprises a very non-homogenous set).

You are assuming: - cost of materials and the energy consumed by an AI manual laborer or scientist would be negligible compared to a human for every n beneficial position, including the last position at the margin. That is, we would run out of resources to make AI scientists and laborers before we ran out of uses for scientists and laborers - Zero R&D costs to build that AI, or that they have been sufficiently recooped so that the end-user cost is negligible - AI can be equivalent (or superior) in every way to a human being in every possible task - An AI scientist would be able to perform every function as well as a human, and yet would not demand an income, equal rights, etc. Essentially, disabling those parts of the human psyche would have no limiting effects on the capabilities of the AI system in any useful task. That seems unlikely, and at least is impossible to know at this point.

And then, if your assumptions hold, then given appropriate population controls so resource contention isn't an issue, I imagine it would be a pretty remarkable upgrade in quality of life for everyone across the board. In which case, the sentiment is not that no one is exempt, but that no one is left out.

It's called the fertility transition (1), and the current below replacement fertility in countries like Spain and a few others were seen as the future. For a while the US was thought to be exempt from this trend, but recent headlines suggest otherwise (2).

(1) http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Demographic_transition

(2) http://money.cnn.com/2013/09/06/news/economy/birth-rate-low/

Among a rather select set of those interested in the subject.

Yes, a great deal of fairly short-term (on a civilization/species perspective) issues arise when your birthrate suddenly falls, especially if it had previously been rising markedly. But concerns over the Earth's carrying capacity and how many humans can be supported, sustainably, and at what level of per-capita resource consumption (and hence, at what standard of living) are, without exaggeration, the single biggest challenge of the next 50-100 years.

And all three factors come into play: population, per-capita resource consumption (PCRC), and sustainability.

You can get a large sustainable population at a low level of PCRC. Do you really want a world of 10 billion living in the conditions of Kolkotta, Bombay, Manilla, or a Brazilian favela?

You can get a large population and high PCRC ... but low sustainability. Do you really want modern technological civilization to run into a brick wall / off a cliff in 20, 40, 80 years? A fair number of people reading this can expect to be alive then.

You can get a sustainable but smaller population at a higher PCRC. At which point the questions become, what's the minimal level of consumption you want to support, how many people can it support, and how do you get from n(0) to n(t) where t is the end of the transition period. History shows that periods of depopulation tend not to be particularly tranquil.

For the HN twist: thinking about these sorts of problems seems rather more pertinent then trying to craft the next Uber for windsurfing or video ad pre-roll monetization scheme for Mexican K-Pop tweens.

But the problem's hardly easy. A bit posted a few weeks back on how Kleiner-Perkins has stumbled in trying to pursue a green strategy struck me as immensely sobering. A business whose business is making money hand over fist over commercializing new ideas losing money hand over fist failing to commercialize on new ideas suggests that cracking this nut is going to be really, really fucking hard.

And I sincerely believe John Doerr put his all into it. Watching him brought to tears is hard to watch: http://fixyt.com/watch?v=nuXJFbJNltg

Posted 18 days ago -- December 14.

https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=6906635

http://gigaom.com/2013/12/13/the-shakeup-of-kleiner-perkins-...

Heh.

When the birth rate is much above replacement, we worry about overpopulation. AND THAT'S TERRIBLE.

When the birth rate is near or below replacement, we worry about underpopulation. AND THAT'S TERRIBLE.

It wouldn't be nearly as funny if it weren't the same people worrying each time.

But too low birth rates mean there won't be enough kids to replace the current workers, and we will have fewer people supporting a larger population of retired people (though this might be possible with technology and of course, immigration.

And experimental fusion-power plant or two will already exist in 2014. (Even today, a small but genuine fusion explosion is demonstrated at frequent intervals in the G.E. exhibit at the 1964 fair.) Large solar-power stations will also be in operation in a number of desert and semi-desert areas -- Arizona, the Negev, Kazakhstan. In the more crowded, but cloudy and smoggy areas, solar power will be less practical. An exhibit at the 2014 fair will show models of power stations in space, collecting sunlight by means of huge parabolic focusing devices and radiating the energy thus collected down to earth.

Especially considering how people always get a little overexcited about how close we are to nuclear fusion.

As you can see here - http://www.zetterberg.org/Lectures/l96bTab/doubling.htm. More industrialized regions have slower growth rates. Africa will double in just over 20 years while North America will double after over 100 years, for example.

Many countries, like japan and Italy are finding their population is actually shrinking, this tends to be bad for economic reasons. The US gets a lot of population growth from immigrants which keeps the country growing despite having only about 2.0 children per family (2.1 is optimal for maintaining a steady population.)

The "current doubling time" is kind of a misnomer -- it's how long it would take the population to double given the current growth rate, but the rate itself is also shrinking. Human population growth reached its peak (percentage-wise) in the early 1960s [2] and most credible estimates now have the world population leveling off in the 9-12 billion range (less than a full doubling from current levels) [3].

[0] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/An_Essay_on_the_Principle_of_Po...

[1] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Logistic_function#In_ecology:_m... -- note that some populations follow very different trajectories in special circumstances. The Kaibab Deer are a rather tragic example: http://depts.alverno.edu/nsmt/youngcc/research/kaibab/story3...

[2] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Population_growth#Human_populat... - see also http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil_files/image... , which is taken from the article http://www.growth-dynamics.com/articles/Kurzweil.htm

[3] http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Projections_of_population_growt...

World has produced lot more in terms of GDP than in 60s but our investment in science, research and technology bets haven't gone up in proportion. Looking forward to trends for next 50 years this only seem to getting worse. Governments are pretty much either bankrupt or would spend most of its resources for retirees or defense. Corporations would get even more vicious due to never ending expectation of that 10% increase in revenue each quarter. Most of these produces of human being would ultimately benefit few people to get even more rich instead of advancing science and technology. Those advances would eventually come through but the pace of it has been slown down so much that what is possible in 50 years would now be achieved in 200 years.

I think it is more likely a sad indication of how we have moved away from spending money on space exploration, and instead spending it elsewhere. We certainly could have moon bases if we had continued spending and researching into space.

And of course, which technologies the futurist is personally familiar with can vary widely. Asimov, for example, had a blind spot for robots.

I think one of the factors is romance -- SF writers want certain things to happen and just wish it into being, regardless of how plausible it really is (faster than light travel, time travel, anti-gravity, artificial gravity, laser pistols).

On the reverse side they tend to ignore technologies that are either unromantic or make stories more complicated or seem to fight against cliched dramatic opportunities. (Fast travel adds to romance and drama, but fast communications detract from romance and drama.)

And I would dare to argue that the AI is at the beginning of the s-curve. The field of study have been around for many decades already, many applicable results found and it is used in the industry. It's kind of like saying that current transportation technology is at the beginning of the s-curve, because I am waiting for near light-speed transportation, and current speeds are very small compared to my arbitrary expectation.

Though you're definitely right that literary biases play into it. While not not all SF writers are futurists, most futurists are trying to tell stories. Even some who aren't primarily SF writers: Kurzweil has a narrative arc to his ideas.

If SpaceX actually does manage to crack efficient rocket re-useability that will certainly help with the cost side of things. The potential there is really exciting, but since there are plenty of uninhabited bare rocks on Earth for people to establish colonies on if they want to, it's still hard to see why they'd choose to do so on the Moon.

I think our current focus and bias will drive much of it. A lot of our worldview is apps, internet, computers and mobile devices. Most predictions will extrapolate this, perhaps with Moore's law. We'll probably miss the 1 or 2 huge leaps that will redefine society.