From Tim Worstall, a fellow at the Adam Smith Institute, felt appropriate with the current talk of automation, aliens and AI going on at the minute.

Paul Krugman is here actually addressing a slightly different question: have we reached a slow down in technological innovation? But in the answer to this question is the answer to what’s going to happen to us once the robots can do everything better than we can, what will happen when the robots take all our jobs.

"Well, suppose that we learned to build true androids – robots that could do more or less anything humans can do. Surely that would be transformative; it would effectively end diminishing returns to capital accumulation, and raising GDP per capita would simply be a matter of multiplying the androids."

That Krugman thinks we’re closer now to building androids than we were isn’t relevant to this next part of the argument. But that argument that “if we can build androids then” is exactly the same one as what happens when the robots take all our jobs? They’re the same statement in fact.

And the answer is that we humans all become immensely rich. Because if we want to have some more of something we just construct an android to go off and make more of whatever good or service it is that we want more of. We find ourselves in a world of pretty much no material scarcity. We’re still bounded by resource scarcity of course: we cannot have more energy or atoms of copper than is to be found on the planet. We also still have a scarcity of positional goods. But actual real material scarcity pretty much disappears. There is one further question though:

"You might also be a pessimist in the sense that you wonder what happens to wages once androids can do most human work."
 
That will depend upon the economic system we adopt. If we’ve pretty much abolished material scarcity then of course real wages have just soared. Real wages being, really, a measure of how much consumption is possible rather than the nominal value of earnings. If you are of a Marxist persuasion you might think that all of the money from those androids will just go to capital, leaving the workers starving and destitute without any jobs and thus not earning at all. But to do that you would have to believe in Monopoly Capitalism, this idea that the capitalists as a class will gang up on everyone else and keep all the good stuff for themselves. But note that this does depend upon that monopoly.

If the monopoly is broken then the various capitalists will be competing with each other for the custom either of building and selling androids to people or of selling the things made by robots and androids to people. Competition does, as we can see from the world outside the windows, bring prices down somewhat. And if everything is being made by robots (including the robots themselves of course) then there is effectively no cost of production. Or rather the only cost of production is the original capital investment in the androids, the hard limits of resource availability and the inherent shortage of positional goods. For everything else, as no human has had to drip the sweat of their brow to produce it then no human being needs to get paid to do so. Which is what is being complained about of course, the absence of jobs. But that very absence of jobs in producing anything means that the cost of production is zero.

At which point we’ve legions of competing capitalists attempting to outdo each other at selling us the production of their armies of robots. Prices collapse and we’re all near infinitely rich.

Amusingly, at this point, those of a Marxist cast of mind should be able to recognise the scene. For this is what Marx called true communism. When the productive capacity of industry has reached the point where all needs and desires could be met then we will indeed be at that communist nirvana. Marx though that this would means that people could do much as they wished, be a farmer in the morning and a philosopher in the evening. Or as we might put it, do a bit of gardening and then yakk with the guys over a few beers. If we’re honest it doesn’t sound like such a bad world either. And it is what will happen in a competitive marketplace if the robots ever do get good enough to steal all our jobs. We’ll have a cornucopian river of goods and services to consume that are produced for us by said robots. That is, we’ll all be rich.

There is no bubble. We will see years of relative contraction to the growth, merely because technology seems to develop in an S shape when represented graphically.

It'll only become obsolete when automation can replace them, but that isn't a crash.

Now, if you want to see a bubble, look at higher education.

"This video is not available in your country."

Commit suicide you fucking britbong terrorist.

How about now?

But there's programming behind that. Why would any programmer give a robot the function to defend itself? Self defense if the only real reason why it would bother to evolve itself. I can understand a robot that's programmed to adapt to the ever-changing stock market, but that's different from evolving to where it'll protect itself from a human trying to deactivate it.

Don't get me wrong, the gulf between our current state and artificial intelligence is huge; we're off on a tangent here.

The problem, however, isn't that we would "disallow" it to improve itself, it simply might not be an option when you reach a threshold of machine intelligence. That said, there are ideas that, if we ever do create an artificial general intelligence, to ensure it is "human friendly" and then putting it in charge of the development of all other intelligences.

However, the only situation where I could ever, ever see such a limitation working is where humans are part machine instead of just inefficient meatbags. You can have as many programmers as you want, but the more intelligent the machine is, the smaller the ability of humans to restrain it.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 23, 2014, 05:05:22 PM

Quote from: challengerX on September 23, 2014, 05:04:14 PM

That isn't my point. My point is we can prosper without compromising our humanity. Becoming cyborgs is not what we need to do. Nothing is inevitable. I, personally, would fight until my dying breath to stop something like this from happening.

Machines don't deserve rights. I don't care how sentient it is. They're tools.

I'd argue it isn't at all compromising one's humanity.

Directed, self-imposed evolution? It's practically godhood.

The only problem I see is that robots would never do more than what they're programmed to do, even if they're fully capable. Unless they're programmed to self-defend, like humans are programmed to, they're not going to evolve themselves on their own accord.

Part of the reason that automated mental labour will outpace human mental labour is the capacity, not only for them to teach themselves how to accomplish something (as with the stock market), but to actually re-write themselves.

Actually another thing that's incredibly odd is, granted the civilization that relayed the signal does exist, is how it's not that far off from our own technological capability/evolution. Hundreds or thousands of years might seem like a big difference, but there's been 14 billion years of time since the Big Bang. The probability that a species developed just about the same time as us is incredibly odd. It makes you wonder if technologically advanced species really do die off and that's why you don't see any around, just those species that are still developing.

I thought scientists concluded that if the Wow! signal was legit it'd be from quite an advanced civilisation?

Nonetheless, it doesn't seem unreasonable to think that once a society produces bona fide artificial general intelligence, if given the opportunity, their creation would destroy them.

Chances are, some race has found us and put a big old NOPE sign on our planet. A planet run by a bunch of hairless apes running around killing each other seems scary if you ask me.

Any enterprising alien race should realise the fantastic opportunity to indoctrinate and breed an army of this bunch of hairless apes.

Oh God. . .

What if we're all currently in training?

If privacy is maintained in communal housing just as if it were private, then it probably couldn't be too bad. But I'm really not all that interested in having people walk in on me taking a shit.

And free love... *shivers in fear*

Private property =/= personal property.

The latter is shit like your car, your house, your possessions.

Private property are things like businesses, capital, et cetera.

You can't have a functioning society without the first one.

Quote from: Meta Cognition on September 23, 2014, 04:53:19 PM

I'd rather live in techno-socialist society than our current one

>can't tell if real meta or not

Nobody seriously thinks capitalism would work in an economy where there is general abundance and no need for human labour.

Nobody.

I'm just saying don't let the government fuck it up now so it perhaps isn't as bad when the really interesting shit starts happening.

Although, I only use the word socialist because I imagine a completely automated workforce could only operate when owned socially. What's the point of private property if nobody is earning wages to compensate you for it?

Quote from: SoporificSlash on September 23, 2014, 04:52:25 PM

Quote from: Not a Dustbin on September 23, 2014, 04:48:57 PM

Quote from: SoporificSlash on September 23, 2014, 04:28:56 PM

Oh yeah I was wrong earlier. I was thinking of a different intercepted signal. The Wow! signal hasn't been disproved.

But do you personally think it's legit?

If they haven't been able to disprove it after 35 years then I would say it seems like a good sign. I'm probably way too much of an optimist when it comes to the extraterrestrial life discussion.

Is it even optimistic to think that there's intelligent life out there? Is it not pessimistic?

Only if you're religious.

I mean couldn't the government just... ban robots?

Well, no. History is full of examples of unions trying to lobby the State for the expulsion of automation from the economy and they've failed every single time. The business-owners, if forced to lobby the State, would ultimately win out.

Besides, it's too far gone at the moment to even contemplate that, and the government, if it tried, would undoubtedly fuck it up beyond belief.

Nonetheless, I don't want to live in a world where automation doesn't go ahead. I'd rather live in techno-socialist society than our current one, even if the ride is incredibly bumpy.

Just look at nearly everybody glued to their smartphones to the point they're willing to risk their lives and other lives to send a text while driving or take a damn self-shot

That's down to a bias of immediacy, not some fault with technology.

Naw, I done fixed it.

kek x2

All of my kek.