DunkingDognuts t1_j9th49o wrote
So more jobs lost. More people on welfare or unemployed while the ultra rich buy another private island to fly to in their fleet of private jets.
I don’t hate technology, but I’ll be goddamned if we should be rushing headlong into “OMG, AI is a miracle that will release us from all of our obligation to work” without contemplating the reality of tens of millions of people not having any employment or means to support themselves.
And to all of those who say “ B, but… Universal, basic income!“ I ask you where are the money for that is going to come from? Taxes? From the unemployed? The corporations that are getting rid of employees so they can use AI to take the cost of salaries out of their balance sheet? You really think those corporations are going to not fight tooth and nail not have to pay a cent to support universal basic income programs? They own the politicians.
It’s amazing how eagerly we are rushing into literally a “hunger games” dystopia.
Nobody thinks they are going to be the person living under a bridge because they don’t have a job as a programmer anymore.
Think it through people, don’t be blinded by the new shiny thing.
reidlos1624 t1_j9tmetn wrote
Automation adoption is mostly driven by the current condition of the labor market (unemployment at 3.5% in the US with similar issues in other countries). Automation adoption has largely correlated with job growth not loss. Everyone seems to forget that offshoring is the reason for the majority of job loss to the US manufacturing core. In fact, anecdotally as an engineer who consults in manufacturing, automation is allowing many companies to bring jobs back to the US since the chaos of Covid has shown the dangers of an optimized supply chain.
Key word here is also "could". We could automate most industrial applications but the tech is unreliable and there's a lot of limitations that drastically increase costs.
Furthermore most domestic tasks aren't done by an employee so this just represents an opportunity for people to get time back, not an impact to jobs.
Outrageous_Nothing26 t1_j9tsqms wrote
Yeah i hate management consultants for the myopic views and incredibly damaging decisions
reidlos1624 t1_j9ucba0 wrote
I don't consult on a management level, we helped with automation implementation. Specifically how automation systems could be designed to solve problems that the client's engineers already found and worked closely to provide expertise and band width that they currently didn't have. I've worked with bad consultants (currently have one that I gotta keep tabs on cause his ideas are stupid and insane) and what we did was very different, far more collaborative approach.
Outrageous_Nothing26 t1_j9uho79 wrote
I wasn’t referring to you, i was referring to the outsourcing. Instead of innovation they always go for the low hanging fruit, the hell with everything else, that’s my experience with them
EconomicRegret t1_j9xtoa0 wrote
They are the same everywhere. They are not gods, thus can only have myopic views, anything else is almost impossible.
However, in the 90s and 2000s, Nordic countries, Switzerland and Germany chose instead to keep jobs at home and heavily automate their industries instead. While their industry leaders, elites and consultants were pushing for outsourcing to Asia, just like America.
And that's not because they are smarter, but because their unions and workers are free. They have their "myopic" views too (e.g. wages, jobs, mouths to feed, etc.). So they resisted (e.g. general strikes). Thus forced renegotiatons and found good compromises (e.g. huge investments in automatization, in up-training workers, in updating education, and in social safety net for those that can't keep up).
Nobody is a god. We need each other to find good solutions, that work for everybody. Unfortunately however, it's illegal in America to organize general strikes and solidarity strikes (also piquetting, joining a union outside your company, and having unions represent whole industries, instead of branch levels.)
US capitalists have shut down certain nerves and almost all pain receptors (e.g. 1947 Taft-Hartley act, that strips US unions of their fundamental rights and freedoms that Europeans take for granted). While in Europe, in general, the elites still get horrible "headaches", whenever they "blink wrong".
Ok_Letter_9284 t1_j9tl49l wrote
Hi. So, lets look at it from a Marxist perspective.
Karl Marx advocated for socialism, NOT communism. Communism was the GOAL. An economic utopia.
“Marx's concept of a post-capitalist communist society (https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Communist_society) involves the free distribution of goods made possible by the abundance provided by automation.[28]
(https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy#cite_note-28)” https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_economy
Marx was taking about Star Trek. You can’t just “switch” to communism. You need robots doing all the work or else you have scarcity!
Socialism, Marx said, is the PATH to communism. This is because of the problem of automation. What happens when one man owns an army of robots that does most jobs better and faster than humans? That’s where socialism comes in (UBI).
Where does the money come from? Think of it like us splitting the robots paycheck rather than it going entirely to the “owner”.
Please notice that socialism in this context is about what to do with surplus. As we approach full automation (communism) we need to split the surplus or else extreme wealth inequality and economic collapse.
ChainmailleAddict t1_j9tp5ic wrote
Legit, he asks where the money comes from when literally we HAVE the resources. The real question is how we get this translated into policy and overcome conservatives.
DunkingDognuts t1_j9tuxkz wrote
Your comment is exactly what I’m talking about.
That one owner has no obligation whatsoever to share any profit in any way shape or form.
Unless there was a massive change in the way society views, corporations, and profit-based strategies, the only end result will be more money at the top, no money at the bottom, and a literal corporate feudalism.
Ok_Letter_9284 t1_j9tvfj0 wrote
Unfortunately there’s no short way to discuss complex topics, so I apologize in advance. Please bear with me, I’ll be as clear and brief as possible.
Lets imagine an explorer discovers an iron mine. Society wants to promote exploration so it decides to reward the explorer.
There are two main ways of doing this.
Capitalism. The explorer KEEPS the mine. He hires workers from society to mine the mine, and sells the iron to society. The explorer keeps the profits.
Socialism. Society keeps the mine. The explorer is paid a finders fee. A manager who specializes in managing iron mines is hired to hire workers from society to mine the iron. The iron is sold to society. Society splits the profits.
Notice a couple of important points. One, in both scenarios, everybody is being paid for their work. There’s no “free shit” in socialism unless you count the windfall of the iron. But if you do, the same is true of capitalism, it is just the explorer who gets the free shit.
Two, its important to understand where the profit comes from. Its LABOR the town must provide to the explorer. Not the mining, that happens anyway. But to pay the profit, society must do more labor to get the same iron. More doctoring, tailoring, farming, etc. To the benefit of the explorer.
Lastly, its more than just the profit. Under capitalism, the explorer gets “property rights” to direct the workings of the iron mine, despite his lack of expertise. And the operation of the mine VERY MUCH affects society.
DunkingDognuts t1_j9ty77r wrote
I completely understand the difference between capital and labor.
The reality is, in our world today, an explorer, discovers a mine. That explorer receives a grant funded by taxes to develop that mine. A businessman purchases the mine from the government for a pittance (because they have a friend in the government who tip them off to a bargain). Businessman hires people at substandard wages to develop the mine into a profitable business and pockets the majority of the profit.
In the businessman’s mind, he owes nobody anything because he is the person who developed the mine, and therefore anything that comes out of it is his to exploit in any way he wants to. He has no obligation to support workers, in fact, he resents having to pay them for their labor
A new technology that comes along which can replace 10 laborers with one machine that is less likely to break down or refuse to work overtime.
The owner fires those 10 laborers who now are unemployed and have no income.
The owner, seeing the profitability of having machines, instead of people, do the work, purchases several more machines, run by a staff of engineers, which is much smaller than the large number of laborers employed earlier.
As a result of not having to pay wages, the business owner sees a dramatic increase in profits, reinforcing his belief that automation is the solution to profitability.
Eventually, the machines become automated enough that the engineers are not even needed.
More profit!
Now, the businessman has an automated business that produces a product which he can sell and not have to incur the cost of any employees.
Everyone who is employed previously at that business is either unemployed, or has found other employment elsewhere, but the total number of employed people will never recover to the level. It was when the mind was using 100% human labor
The government,lobbied by the businessman lobbies, asks him to contribute to a fund to pay for the out of work miners living expenses.
The businessman tells the politicians to go get stuffed because he owes the former employees of his company nothing (and he is absolutely correct about that because he has no contract with them stating he is responsible for their welfare.)
So now we have end state capitalism, which is we have a small number of business owners who rely upon automation to produce their products and a huge under class which relatively speaking is a modern day peasantry.
How do you fix this without a bloody Revolution?
Ok_Letter_9284 t1_j9tyx46 wrote
Right, that is the reality now. That’s the point. We make the rules. They’re completely made up. By us.
We should pick rules that have the greatest overall benefit to humanity. I.e. its time to change the rules.
Let me dispel one more myth while I have your attention.
Capitalism has not “lifted more ppl out of poverty.. blah blah blah”. PROGRESS has. That is, science and technology.
I can prove it.
Imagine a circle of ppl, a book, and $5. We can make the rules of our economy any way we choose. We can make the book and money go round the circle faster, slower, clockwise, counter, etc.
But we cannot improve anyones life outside of ensuring equitable access to the book and money. The only way to do that is to WRITE MORE BOOKS!
Big-Sleep-9261 t1_j9ts71k wrote
I don’t think AI would feel dystopian if we didn’t have corruption in our government. “By the people, for the people” isn’t where it’s at. We need to push getting money out of politics. Campaign finance reform, government leaders shouldn’t be able to own individual stocks, create a generous pension for congress that gets taken away if they start getting money from the private sector at any time in their life.
DunkingDognuts t1_j9tu527 wrote
I really hate to be a downer on that because I agree with you.
But what are the odds that the people who are already corrupt, in a corrupt government, owned by corporations, who themselves are corrupt, and only driven by profit motive would view AI as anything but something to enhance their quarterly profitability and would fight tooth and nail to take any of those profits and attempt to better society.
I would love to see it, but that would be a miracle on the scale of Moses, parting the Red Sea.
45rghy5 t1_j9topw2 wrote
We could go Venus project instead or hunger games
DunkingDognuts t1_j9tudlb wrote
I don’t disagree that there are better things out there than what we have, the problem is our corporate culture. These days is driven by profit motives and sociopaths.
He would be naïve to believe these individuals or corporations would do anything with AI other than enhance their bottom line.
45rghy5 t1_j9u2ovg wrote
I agree with you. But maybe after that pain. If people have an idea of the way we can go. Then maybe we go that way instead. Like Fresco said in 74 on Larry king
ChainmailleAddict t1_j9toyff wrote
Alright, well, businesses are going to fight to lower their costs no matter what so it's not like we can slow down automation by much either. We need to switch to some form of UBI or UBD where companies pay a % of their profits directly into a public trust to be paid towards everyone, to eliminate the adversarial relationship between human and machine. Otherwise everyone starves and has even LESS power.
DunkingDognuts t1_j9tr8c7 wrote
Go ahead and contact Peter Thiel, Larry Ellison, Tim Cook, Goldman Sachs, Robert, Mercer, etc., etc., and propose to them that they take a large portion of their business profits, and just simply give them to people who have no jobs.
Let me know how that works out for you.
They don’t care. They’ve never cared.
altmorty t1_j9urpdm wrote
They're the ones advocating for UBI: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_advocates_of_universal_basic_income
ChainmailleAddict t1_j9tz0m2 wrote
Whoopdeedoo, I'm obviously some naive idiot who thinks billionaires care about us! That's why I'm a leftist, mhm!
Oh man, if only there were some way that we the people could enact changes over these predatory businesses. Thing is, you provide no alternative. You're acting as though things won't be automated if we just ask them nicely. You're falling victim to the very thing you're accusing me of, just coming at it from a personal angle instead of a societal one.
I'm not saying UBI/UBD as a solution is likely, I'm just saying that we basically have two outcomes here, and this is the better one by far. The money and resources are there, we have them. The question is just in distribution.
DunkingDognuts t1_j9udnlu wrote
And again, while I agree, it’s a great idea in theory, getting a group of greedy sociopaths, to agree to give a large portion of what they consider to be “their money” to people they consider to be “lazy, unemployed people” is going to be a challenge that will rock the ages
ChainmailleAddict t1_j9un0se wrote
On that we agree. We need to do away with Citizens United, establish ranked-choice voting, end dark money and stop congresspeople from trading specific stocks at the very least.
iuytrefdgh436yujhe2 t1_j9upqrp wrote
> but I’ll be goddamned if we should be rushing headlong into
We aren't.
Dreams of advanced, time-saving home automation have been on the public's mind for decades while actual progress into this space has been extremely slow, incremental and usually more supplementary than transformative.
Whatever happens with this space won't happen suddenly or unexpectedly. All we should expect for the foreseeable future are consumer appliances that slap "AI-powered" on their marketing and may or may not produce measurable improvements in efficiency or performance.
jadondrew t1_j9vuz53 wrote
It’s coming whether you like it or not. Are you already willing to give up and throw up your hands in submission that it’s going to ruin the world? You’re not willing to fight for a better world at all? As far as I see it AI is inevitable and fighting for it to benefit everyone is our only option. So if you’re giving up on that fight already then you’re fucked.
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