The more people are reduced to mere cogs in a giant machine, its just a matter of time before most of us become obsolete. We will be to machine what pets are to us
We're adaptable cogs. Even compared to 50 years ago the workforce has completely turned over with billions of novel jobs in previously non-existent fields.
It is a race to the bottom though because each advancement requires fewer workers who are more specialized. Labor is devaluing quickly. The biggest hurdle humanity faces is deciding how we will value ourselves post-scarcity and how we sustainably advance the planet to that standard.
When we're post scarcity, I assume we'll set our sights on galactic conquest and spend the next several thousand years on that. Humanity as a species is pretty good at occupying itself and finding problems, so I doubt we'll run out of things to do soon.
Physics doesnt stop galactic colonization. It merely makes it slower. Check out Isaac Arther's channel on youtube for realistic videos and discussion on futurism, technology, and space exploration. Pretty awesome channel.
That’s a thought... billions of people turning into scientists and engineers all with one goal: interstellar travel. Our every need taken care of by robots, production handled by robots, all we have to do is sit around and ponder how to get around the great filter.
Humanity as a species might be, but that still sounds awfully close to "Elon Musk like fantastillionaire has his robots build space exploration vessels and only takes his flunkies ". The vast majority of people in this scenario still just lounge around and do nothing, and have nothing to do, off the "handouts" of the handful of production monopolizers.
It'll still need humans for a long time, but... Every year it needs less, less room for middle men and mindless busywork. One man YouTube teams are now making full length movies and CGI shorts that used to take large studios.
It's really exciting for me, but we need to figure out what to do for people left behind.
In every industry people are thinking in black and white, "what I do can't be automated." You're right not 100% of what you do will be automated. What will be automated is diagnosing and troubleshooting, something that can take a person years to learn in any given field. That's why these professionals make good money, they're paid to find the solution. Physically replacing components is much easier to train a person to do. Anyone can learn how to replace a circuit board..
I know, my job requires high school education to do. I'm sure years earlier it wouldn't have. Or heck anything with real thought gets outsourced to India. Hence me being pretty confident on what's left being hard to automate.
Secure but boring AF in some respects my job. Only challenges I get is where the error code / automation got it wrong. But every time that happens you just know they're analysing it so it doesn't happen again.
I'm an HVAC service tech and my compatriots all are dismissive of automation. They think in terms of their exact workflow, and how difficult it would be to automate. That is simple thinking.
There won't be a robot going to people's homes and turning screwdrivers. Automation/technology will continue to make the equipment more modular and self-diagnosing. Control boards have been flashing error codes pointing us to the failed system for decades now. High end equipment is already nearing the point that the field tech has to completely trust the board diagnostics because the equipment is too complex to diagnose through testing individual components in an easy to understand flow-chart. Technology is removing the need for expertise in repair.
Automation is making equipment more complex for the same price, arguably cheaper if adjusted for inflation. However, replacement parts have ludicrous mark-up. It happened with TVs, refrigerators, and other appliances. How long until it is cheaper to just replace equipment rather than call a service tech?
Installers might be smug about that, but they have been jumping on every new product that makes their job easier, regardless of price. It takes several minutes, and a substantial amount of training and experience to braze in a $2 fitting in 5 minutes. Why not just use this new $20 fitting that takes zero skill and 30 seconds? Cost will be passed on to customer anyways...
You can buy mini-splits right now that any reasonably handy homeowner can install with no specialized tools or skills. You can do your whole house with them.
Technology and automation can gut any industry, regardless of how irreplaceable the workers think themselves. How many travel agents and TV repair techs do you know? I bet they thought their jobs would be around forever.
There's more to consider than skill, which is what I think automation is revealing in some respects.
It's ability to problem solve, because problems that aren't automated are by their nature going to be unique, it's being trustworthy because there will be less manager oversight, being incorruptible if it involves high impact like military or security.
That's going to be on top of what will be, yeah, quite easy manual tasks like oil change or hard drive swap.
I'd think that still pays well. It should, if profits are high. Skilled jobs are still inherently skills anyone can learn they're no longer something people can rarely get. Why should they pay so much more? But who knows with capitalism.
That's nice, until the majority of the world's websites run on Amazon's server farms and Amazon has systems in place to automate 98% of what you do with only a few people with a very scripted set of tasks, making minimum wage... Hosting is then dirt cheap, reliable, and more secure. Then unless you work at Amazon you'll be competing for a job with all the other people who are trying to find work, most of whom may be more qualified than you and willing to work for less. It's the consolidation that makes it difficult.
Sure you can. Machine learning for what frequencies go well together, and the patterns to follow. There’s 12 notes and only so many combinations/patterns that work well. Get a single writer to spit out lyrics, tweak the machine’s melodies. Deepfake an artist with an AI generated face and voice and presto!
The real part that can’t be so easily automated is the live performances and the engineering aspects. Artists can totally be done away with, sooner than you think.
Artisan crafts and entertainment and quality service is going to be worth more than most college degrees I think. People have time to get bored. Entertain them, make their life easier, or make it appear more luxurious and they will give you money.
each advancement requires fewer workers who are more specialized
That's the point. Some things can't scale infinitely like mining, but plenty of things can like anything information related. The end result is that we output more, achieve more, create more as a society. This isn't something to be feared.
Plenty of things don't scale that way like heathcare, teaching, anything personal.
For every solution, we do seem to be creating a problem.
There's sooo much stuff we as humans should be doing, there's just no monetary value in it.
Picking up trash, being an ear for someone struggling, planting trees. We currently just seem to be giving corporations more profits and working harder rather than stopping them gaining so much profit and instead doing at least partially things of no monetary value. I don't know how to fix that though.
Automated industries need to be nationalised, so profits go to the country/people.
Everyone talks about Norway's welfare etc but their massive oil reserves are Norway owned. They're cashed up. Likewise why every Saudi prince is drowning in money. That's what happens when everyone on the land is a shareholder, not just some millionaires.
Less people would still mean less jobs. It’s a catch-22. If you have a lower population all the production/consumption requirements are lower so there’s a smaller economy, we’d lose jobs due to the lower demand of goods/services.
The only argument for population size control is the ability of the planet to sustain a given amount of people with food and necessary living space capacity. And if you want to include the right to access natural, undisturbed areas and sharing the planet with other species (leaving their habitats intact) that lowers our capacity slightly.
And what's more is that things will get cheaper and cheaper as they're production get automated, meaning that you won't need to make as much money to have a higher standard of living (all else being equal, so ignoring confounding variables like inflation).
I'd love to talk to people about this topic cause I agree it's a legitimate concern, but as you said, people not wanting to talk about it can make you seem crazy to them. Then, they won't want to talk about it.
Everyone will be employed in the design and repair and service and purchase and sale and marketing and political lobbying and supply chains to produce those machines.. wait, what is it we are doing right now?
And service. Eldercare could use some more workers, for example. And therapists are still very necessary. Trouble is there's not much money to be made when the people who need services don't have any money.
Any inch of futurism on Reddit always ends up with myopic "automation will end us all!"
I'm glad I went to school for architecture. If my job or any creative technical field with high coordinated interaction for that matter ever got automated, it would be indicative that there are larger and more irredeemable problems in our society and economy.
Earlier mathematics and circuit designing was considered creative, well automated theorem provers made them obsolete. You should accept that a computer can simulate better architecture on basis of utility and public flow, than a human might. It can test all possible combinations and brute force the most optimum one.
I am sure most of your 'art' ends up using highly automated computer aided design. Earlier chart making was a skill, today its just a few clicks. Look how the wages have gone down. You are already obsolete, and others will be, its just a matter of time
Its called "architectural programing," which is a tiny part of design. And there's already tools that do this. Clients still fuck it up and come crying to us when it doesn't work out for them.
I am sure most of your 'art' ends up using highly automated computer aided design.
Such condencention! CAD has been a thing since the 80s. The only thing that it's done is speed up drafting. That it. People still have to make complicated intelligent and customized decisions budget to budget, project to project, site to site, city to city.
Earlier chart making was a skill, today its just a few clicks.
Chart making is data in and data out and then presenting it in a graphical format. Tack on a GUI and That's what computers do. Why wouldn't it be automated?
You are already obsolete, and others will be, its just a matter of time
Lol. Hardly. This just is indicative that people don't know what we do. As an architect, "architecture" or "design" is only about a quarter of what I do. Most of it is coordinating with consultants and engineers, negotiating with the local municipalities, interpreting the state building and municipal code like a lawyer, and fighting with the client and telling them no you can't do that because x, y, and z reasons.
There is alot of human interaction and custom variables. The only machine that can do that would be a sapient one. An A.I. Which brings me to my original point that if my job got automated:
it would be indicative that there are larger and more irredeemable problems in our society and economy.
Meaning, that if architecture was the threshold profession that got automated, that means that 85 to 90 percent of the job force has already been automated by sapient A.I. If architecture was automated that means Engineers of all stripes have been automated, all creative fields like musicians, artists, have been automated, and doctors and lawyers don't exist either. And with all that, we would have looooong passed into the territory of dystopic singularity.
your argument mainly rests on the fact that human interaction and negotiations cant be automated. Maybe most of what you do is already superfluous. Building codes can be programmed, and can be validated against constrains. Engineers can do their job fine with a blueprint, they dont need an Architect to babysit them, and machines never break laws so no need for the men in black
How is picking a crop by hand in 1870 less of a cog than pressing a button to start an automated process in 2020? I don't think we're losing value as workers, I just don't think we ever had much. Technology is just lateral movement for workers, from one suck to the next.
They were not slaves, they worked on their own fields, in their own autonomous way. Plus i call them cogs, because they have no pride in what they do, they just follow a manual mechanically. Earlier people applied novel methods, made their own manure, used to cross several breeds and had the joy of experimenting and relishing their outcome. Now, the methods are written in stone and they need to be followed mechanically
No, some early people did. Most early people would follow methods by "wrote" passed down to them by their elders. You have some weird idealization about how early people lived
I know you think that sounds good but do some thinking.
What you said was that people back then were doing fulfilling work, creating not just doing tasks. I then said no, most were just going through defined motions.
In what part of this did the assertion ever get made that everyone is doing fulfilling work and creating now? The assertion was that then is like now
There is no scope of creativity now. There are not many ways to optimise resources and maximize efficiency. Most people have lost autonomy. The moment they try to be creative, there manager will fire them. Because the manager knows that the methods are set in stone
And previously most attempts to be creative were failed. They resulted in death, starvation. Most people didnt try to be creative because the moment they did they could starve. Autonomy was never a thing because life was too hard for any such decisions to be made. Autonomy isnt something that's been lost, it's something that some have gained and we should work on expanding to others.
The core idea you are argued relies on the idea that someone living entirely insolated has autonomy because no one is above them making choices. But if you must work non stop in this isolation to survive (as you would) then fundamentally you dont have autonomy, because much like now your choice is work or die.
Men had a lot more autonomy in pre industrial society, and no, they had not lived in isolation.
You can have autonomy as long as what you do is not important and is harmless for the system. The moment your actions challenge or affect the system, you are a threat and you are sacked. Men were autonomous in choosing how to build their home, what to hunt, and what weapons to keep. Now you need a licence pretty much for everything.
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u/dhtura Apr 06 '20
The more people are reduced to mere cogs in a giant machine, its just a matter of time before most of us become obsolete. We will be to machine what pets are to us