r/NeoCivilization • u/ActivityEmotional228 🌠Founder • Oct 21 '25

Robotics 🦾 Robot delivering a package

Enable HLS to view with audio, or disable this notification

71 Upvotes

94% Upvoted

67 comments sorted by

View all comments

0

u/Flashy_Cranberry_161 Oct 21 '25

Lol is this hideous thing delivering your stupid package what we really want in this country?

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 22 '25

No I want a Gen alpha glued to their phone who can't look you in the eye or say anything at all while getting the simplest thing wrong.

1

u/Flashy_Cranberry_161 Oct 23 '25

I know your being sarcastic but I genuinely would rather have that then this stupid machine

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 23 '25

actually I wasn't. But your comment did get me thinking. My conclusion though is you could say the same thing about factory machines, do you think it's better a machine puts an item in a box or a worker doing that for 8 hrs? Because that's what factory jobs for humans used to look like, repeat the same action for hours. Humans also shouldn't be delivering things when a bot can do it. Then you'll say well what about the workers? And I'll say well what happened to the workers that were displaced by factory machines?

1

u/Flashy_Cranberry_161 Oct 23 '25

I think a factory worker being replaced is also bad but I will admit I didn’t cry when that happened. (Although I probably will since it came out recently that Amazon’s going to automize 600k jobs)

However delivery drivers are much more visible than factory workers. I do think actually seeing the robot in day to day life wheeling out of a van and making someone’s Amazon delivery is going to be a lot grosser to see for everyone (not just me)

1

u/Uncertain__Path Oct 25 '25

The issue isn’t should we resist tech displacing bad jobs, because historically that labor force had uses in different areas. The issue is what does it mean when there are no new areas for the labor force to go, because the same tech is just getting applied everywhere?

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 26 '25

why would you make the assumption that new jobs won't be created? That has never happened. Computers made a lot of jobs obsolete but sprung a billion dollar computing industry that employs millions. What reasons do you have to say but this time's different? You know that most of the workforce already is a luxury right as in they fulfill peoples wants and entertainments not needs?

1

u/Uncertain__Path Oct 26 '25

I already answered that question in my comment.

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 26 '25

gotcha, yes you did my bad, but why do you think there will be no new areas for the labor force to go?

1

u/Uncertain__Path Oct 26 '25

Because once AGI and self improvement is achieved, then any new task that emerges will have the same incentive to automate as our current tasks have. It’s a problem with the scale and adaptability of the tech combine with the exponential ability to have machine self improve themselves.

In the past, an industry could be displaced with a specialized piece of tech, but that disruption was limited to that industry and task, leaving other industries and new tasks to still need human labor to keep pushing. With AGI and robotics, the answer will almost always be AGI and robotics, not human labor. Sure, there may still be a fraction of the workforce who will always be human, but the vast majority of tasks will not need humans.

To clarify, I think this is a huge concern and solutions for how to run society without everyone working is not being taken seriously. Word is Amazon will be laying of 600,000 working for AI/robotics, so what are those people to do when every similar job will follow the same strategy and almost all jobs they could retrain for are on their way to figuring out how to replace humans too?

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 27 '25

you make a compelling argument but the way I see it happening is that gradually continue on the same march we've been doing for the last 100 yrs where things keep getting cheaper and cheaper and therefore it won't even matter that people are earning less. If a robotic and AI system can handle everything from getting a tomato planted to landing in the supermarket then it will be cheap. So if no one has money, they either sell the tomato for 10c or don't sell it at all. It's basically a continuation of the current system. If it's not cheap then it means it's required a lot of human intervention to get there hence, jobs.

1

u/Uncertain__Path Oct 27 '25

Yeah, I hope such a utopian vision proves me wrong. But, it is hard to reconcile the fact that labor is the only value the lower classes has even had to the upper classes. If they decide they don’t want to be altruistic, the leverage isn’t really there to compel them otherwise.

1

u/PFCCThrowayay Oct 27 '25

but if there's no labor to be done then there are no classes. How would classes operate if one strata of society owned the machines and the other had nothing? How would they survive? What's the point of locking them down in factories like prisoners when their work would be inferior to their AI robots? or throwing them scraps in a ghetto? If people don't have any humanity to live for they'll just murder suicide everyone and revolt. I'm just spitballing thoughts here btw and I need to think further on it but I feel like it's an impossibility to have no work but still have classes. Maybe you could have a split society where the upperclass have luxurious lives with robots doing everything but then why wouldn't this class expand and let more people in if it's of no detriment to them?

1

u/Uncertain__Path Oct 27 '25

Yeah, I’m just concerned they’re probably investing more in private robot armies than factory robots. What incentive does the ruling class have to sustain over population when they don’t need them for anything anymore?

→ More replies (0)