What would people do when robots produce everything?

What will happen to humankind?

  • Things won't change much.

    Votes: 4 13.8%
  • Fabric of society will disintegrate and civilization will end.

    Votes: 7 24.1%
  • World will live in plenty, pleasure and peace forever.

    Votes: 4 13.8%
  • Nobody could possibly predict.

    Votes: 14 48.3%

  • Total voters
    29
Right now I design a machine that replaces about 7 full time workers

Robots cannot produce everything. Robots could only be done to manage repetitive tasks. Tasks so brainless and boring they are not worth dedicating so much of a human's time to. Instead, we shell aim human evolutionary selection toward creativity, which will never be replaced by any kind of robots. I am talking about design, arts, science, biotechnology.

But in a nutshell, we could not know the future so well as to tell exactly how far we could go with robots

A Japanese Insurance Firm is Replacing Its Workers With Artificial Intelligence


A Japanese insurance firm is set to replace 34 workers with an artificial intelligence (AI) system, lending weight to fears that robots will decimate certain industries.

Nearly 30 per cent of the payment assessment staff at Fukoku Mutual Life Insurance company will lose their jobs to IBM’s Watson Explorer over the next three months.

The firm hopes the £1.4m investment will boost productivity by 30%, while saving £1m every year after installation, the Manchini reported.

http://www.huffingtonpost.co.uk/ent...cial-intelligence_uk_586e5d39e4b0c1c826fa8cc8

It is happening already! So far only blue collar jobs were in danger, and being replaced by robotics. Now white collar jobs go too. In few years it will really accelerate. I don't think our policy makers, governments and population in general are ready. Everybody thinks it will happen in the future when they are gone, so they don't need to bother with consequences. They are wrong.
 
If this was in the governments' best interests, it would already happen. We would already have a flat tax eliminating 90 percent of IRS employees and simplify everything to the point where we can focus on doing things we are actually interested in. So I strongly doubt we will see a robotic revolution. Little by little jobs might disappear, but new jobs will also be created. And those will be held by people who are creative and driven rather than the type that is repetitive.
 
If this was in the governments' best interests, it would already happen. We would already have a flat tax eliminating 90 percent of IRS employees and simplify everything to the point where we can focus on doing things we are actually interested in.
I like simplicity too, though in this case an adequate sales/consumption tax instead of income tax would be the best.


So I strongly doubt we will see a robotic revolution. Little by little jobs might disappear,
It already happened on a big scale, even without a true robots.
Manufacturing_Data.jpg

With 3 times fewer workers US produces 15 times more GDP in industrial production! Even God never pulled a miracle like that, lol.




but new jobs will also be created. And those will be held by people who are creative and driven rather than the type that is repetitive.
So far it was the case that these driven and creative entrepreneurs supplied millions of new jobs, products and services. The question is, do we have enough of these creative people to make other millions of jobs robots can't do? Or create jobs faster than robots can take? I don't think so, as the pace of robotics and AI will constantly accelerate.
 
What a huge percentage of the population would do is sit around in a drug induced stupor.
 
What a huge percentage of the population would do is sit around in a drug induced stupor.
Always a risk with big changes. However, we have already 50% of society not working financially, all the retired, kids, teenagers, students, housewives, people born rich, and all the people on social assistance. Is this 50% sitting around in drug induced stupor?
I don't think it will be any different with this remaining 50% still working.
You know what they say. Future turns usually better than people imagine.
 
You can't look at older, retired people to see the trends. You have to look at people under 35 or so. If they have the intellectual capacity to have really good jobs, they use drugs, but most of them keep it under some sort of control. Among young people who dropped out of high school, or have no college degree, and have low paying jobs, more than 50% of them sit around in drug induced stupors. They are limited only by money from doing them every waking moment.

There are whole lower class communities where huge percentages of the young people are working part time jobs or living off their parents (mothers usually) or both, and are in and out of rehab and jail. That's when they don't die of an overdose. I'm most emphatically not talking only about "minority" communities. Working class communities and even rural communities are being ravaged by drug use. New Hampshire is a prime example.

That's what the real world looks like, and increasingly will look like. People sitting in their ivory towers in Washington and in big corporations and Silicon Valley either don't know or they don't care.
 
You can't look at older, retired people to see the trends. You have to look at people under 35 or so. If they have the intellectual capacity to have really good jobs, they use drugs, but most of them keep it under some sort of control. Among young people who dropped out of high school, or have no college degree, and have low paying jobs, more than 50% of them sit around in drug induced stupors. They are limited only by money from doing them every waking moment.

There are whole lower class communities where huge percentages of the young people are working part time jobs or living off their parents (mothers usually) or both, and are in and out of rehab and jail. That's when they don't die of an overdose. I'm most emphatically not talking only about "minority" communities. Working class communities and even rural communities are being ravaged by drug use. New Hampshire is a prime example.
Quite a problem with these new drugs like fentanyl spreading like weeds. We really need this pill to break addiction urgently.

That's what the real world looks like, and increasingly will look like. People sitting in their ivory towers in Washington and in big corporations and Silicon Valley either don't know or they don't care.[/QUOTE] I know quite few young intelligent... and depressed people. Nothing wrong with their lives or health, just depressed. I'm not sure what is the cure for this? Kick in the butt? Are we too soft for kids as society? Are we raising a generation of holy cows?
 
What a huge percentage of the population would do is sit around in a drug induced stupor.
And now my question is this:
Should we keep human jobs intact just for the sake of keeping them occupied when there are more efficient solutions?
 
Trust me: I do get your point. But I would prefer some different solution. Not quite sure what that would be. But it might be time to start thinking about it as that could definitely be the future that 90 percent of the adult workforce will simply wind up 'not being needed'.
 
Quite a problem with these new drugs like fentanyl spreading like weeds. We really need this pill to break addiction urgently.

That's what the real world looks like, and increasingly will look like. People sitting in their ivory towers in Washington and in big corporations and Silicon Valley either don't know or they don't care. I know quite few young intelligent... and depressed people. Nothing wrong with their lives or health, just depressed. I'm not sure what is the cure for this? Kick in the butt? Are we too soft for kids as society? Are we raising a generation of holy cows?

Any drug counselor would tell you that there are definitely differences in terms of which drugs people choose, which I think is chemically hard wired in them. There are people who prefer alcohol, others who would just be in a weed fog every waking moment if it were possible, some who gravitate toward coke, although the expense limits the use, and others still who drift into heroin use. Other people want uppers of any type whatsoever. As I said, I think it depends on their own internal chemical make up.

Right now there's an epidemic of heroin use, which is leading to huge spikes in death rates among young men, especially. That's what's going on in places like New Hampshire, and the midwestern rust belt, but also in white communities in the metropolitan New York area. There's also the meth epidemic in more rural areas which don't have access to these more "urban" supply lines, since it can be cooked up very easily by relative amateurs.

You have no idea the lengths to which people will go to get "high". When someone goes to jail or even just gets into trouble for virtually any reason, one of the conditions for probation and parole is not alcohol or drug use. People have to provide urine samples. They routinely try to bring in someone else's urine or dilute it with water. Now, a correction's officer of the same sex has to accompany them into the bathroom. I'll leave aside the insanity that the state won't prosecute someone without a criminal record for taking weed, but if they're on probation and use it they get sent back to prison. So, of course, there's always some enterprising souls who tries to provide an answer for profit. Enter so called "experimental" drugs. They're combinations of God knows what noxious chemicals, often produced in China, and available through the internet. The attraction? You can get high and there's no test for it.

The typical response to all of this? More rehab centers. Well, I'm telling you categorically that they don't work. I remember looking at a study of the results of one highly regarded, hard core three month rehab program (the norm is one month). Within a year 90% of the patients were back on drugs, in jail or dead. So much for that.

I think there are many more people in society than most are willing to credit who have mild, undiagnosed forms of mental illnesses, or weaknesses, if you will, in addition to people who have been diagnosed. I also think some of these "recreational" drugs do a better job at "fixing" people's mental and emotional states than most of the "prescription" drugs out there. Depressed people, bi-polar people, etc. are more prone to becoming addicted to drugs.

Then there are the people who drift into it through what I would call not clinical, genetic states of depression, but "situational" depression, through not having anything to feel proud of, to believe in, to live for, or just out of boredom, to find a group to which to belong. Sometimes people just don't want to be who they are, or where they are...

I can't explain it any better. I'm just relaying what my experience has shown me. I don't totally understand it myself, because I have no frame of reference. I don't like not inhabiting my own body or my own mind. I don't want to alter my consciousness, whether with drugs or alcohol. In my entire life I used weed once and didn't at all like it, got drunk from alcohol once and didn't like it, and never did either thing again, but I don't think I'm the norm, or at least not the majority.

I would love to have robots do everything for me so I could do the things I really love: study history, write, listen to music, travel to different countries, learn other languages, perfect my photography skills, take more dance classes, classes of all sorts, read more. If there's a book around, I'm never bored. The list is endless, actually. There aren't enough hours in the day now. I recognize, however, that most people aren't like me. How many people would study if it weren't required? If a lot of people have leisure time they spend it in front of a tv watching sports, or soap operas, or porn for that matter. They're not reading poetry.

For this to work, you have to change human beings.

Ed. I would say my INFJ personality is on full display. :)
 
And now my question is this:
Should we keep human jobs intact just for the sake of keeping them occupied when there are more efficient solutions?
I can fill my day perfectly fine just with my hobbies. But possibly half of population is content just with eating and watching TV. I believe we have to educate our youngsters better on how to be active, proactive and self restrained in life. Possibly new canceling jobs will be popular like life coach and personal trainers.
 
Any drug counselor would tell you that there are definitely differences in terms of which drugs people choose, which I think is chemically hard wired in them. There are people who prefer alcohol, others who would just be in a weed fog every waking moment if it were possible, some who gravitate toward coke, although the expense limits the use, and others still who drift into heroin use. Other people want uppers of any type whatsoever. As I said, I think it depends on their own internal chemical make up.

Right now there's an epidemic of heroin use, which is leading to huge spikes in death rates among young men, especially. That's what's going on in places like New Hampshire, and the midwestern rust belt, but also in white communities in the metropolitan New York area. There's also the meth epidemic in more rural areas which don't have access to these more "urban" supply lines, since it can be cooked up very easily by relative amateurs.

You have no idea the lengths to which people will go to get "high". When someone goes to jail or even just gets into trouble for virtually any reason, one of the conditions for probation and parole is not alcohol or drug use. People have to provide urine samples. They routinely try to bring in someone else's urine or dilute it with water. Now, a correction's officer of the same sex has to accompany them into the bathroom. I'll leave aside the insanity that the state won't prosecute someone without a criminal record for taking weed, but if they're on probation and use it they get sent back to prison. So, of course, there's always some enterprising souls who tries to provide an answer for profit. Enter so called "experimental" drugs. They're combinations of God knows what noxious chemicals, often produced in China, and available through the internet. The attraction? You can get high and there's no test for it.

The typical response to all of this? More rehab centers. Well, I'm telling you categorically that they don't work. I remember looking at a study of the results of one highly regarded, hard core three month rehab program (the norm is one month). Within a year 90% of the patients were back on drugs, in jail or dead. So much for that.

I think there are many more people in society than most are willing to credit who have mild, undiagnosed forms of mental illnesses, or weaknesses, if you will, in addition to people who have been diagnosed. I also think some of these "recreational" drugs do a better job at "fixing" people's mental and emotional states than most of the "prescription" drugs out there. Depressed people, bi-polar people, etc. are more prone to becoming addicted to drugs.

Then there are the people who drift into it through what I would call not clinical, genetic states of depression, but "situational" depression, through not having anything to feel proud of, to believe in, to live for, or just out of boredom, to find a group to which to belong. Sometimes people just don't want to be who they are, or where they are...
We are completely in agreement here Angela. I guess we are divergent in solutions, or some of them.

I can't explain it any better. I'm just relaying what my experience has shown me. I don't totally understand it myself, because I have no frame of reference. I don't like not inhabiting my own body or my own mind. I don't want to alter my consciousness, whether with drugs or alcohol. In my entire life I used weed once and didn't at all like it, got drunk from alcohol once and didn't like it, and never did either thing again, but I don't think I'm the norm, or at least not the majority.
This week I had a diner with two Jews from Iraq. They hate alcohol for the same reason as you. An awful experience. And they don't drink ever anymore. They don't do other drugs either or have any addictions. I have a feeling that this part of anti-addiction adaptation to alcohol. Near East - First Farmers were the first ones who made and drunk alcohol. Possible 10 thousand years ago or more. A long time to develop advantageous mutations to combat a bad habit.
Very moderate drinking culture of south is in quite contrast with binge drinking "culture" of north.

I would love to have robots do everything for me so I could do the things I really love: study history, write, listen to music, travel to different countries, learn other languages, perfect my photography skills, take more dance classes, classes of all sorts, read more. If there's a book around, I'm never bored. The list is endless, actually. There aren't enough hours in the day now. I recognize, however, that most people aren't like me.
We are quite alike Angela. I just wish I had your memory.

How many people would study if it weren't required? If a lot of people have leisure time they spend it in front of a tv watching sports, or soap operas, or porn for that matter. They're not reading poetry.
For this to work, you have to change human beings.
What should be done? Left to natural selection? Nah, we are bunch of sissies now and won't be able to stomach such carnage. Designer Babies is the solution. Human 2.0 is coming. All beautiful, healthy, smart, with lots of interests and no addictions. ;)
 
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We are completely in agreement here Angela. I guess we are divergent in solutions, or some of them.

This week I had a diner with two Jews from Iraq. They hate alcohol for the same reason as you. An awful experience. And they don't drink ever anymore. They don't do other drugs either or have any addictions. I have a feeling that this part of anti-addiction adaptation to alcohol. Near East - First Farmers were the first ones who made and drunk alcohol. Possible 10 years ago or more. A long time to develop advantageous mutations to combat a bad habit.
Very moderate drinking culture of south is in quite contrast with binge drinking "culture" of north.

We are quite alike Angela. I just wish I had your memory.

What should be done? Left to natural selection? Nah, we are bunch of sissies now and won't be able to stomach such carnage. Designer Babies is the solution. Human 2.0 is coming. All beautiful, healthy, smart, with lots of interests and no additions. ;)

I've actually contemplated that, but I have some concerns. Would only the rich get the benefits? Maybe just the children of the technocrats? The problems would only increase if that was the case. I don't trust any government entity to control it, nor idiotic self-centered parents at the other end of the scale. Ever read Brave New World? It's either this or we'd better start colonizing other planets, which might put off the inevitable day of reckoning when we're really no longer useful.

I don't share this opinion with people in "real life" very often, because being called a Nazi eugenicist would be the least I could expect.

Oh, I'll add two other things to the list: get back my proficiency at piano, and take the Cordon Bleu cooking class. Someone has to give me the money for the latter, however. It costs a bloody fortune.

As for alcohol, it does make me physically ill if I drink too much, but that's not really what I hate about it as a general rule and for society as a whole, and certainly weed didn't make me nauseous. With both substances you're not really in control of yourself, and I don't like that. I think people "under the influence" of either look and act like idiots: totally lacking in dignity, and that's the mildest consequence. What large amounts of alcohol releases is not something I want to see most of the time. Nor is the lack of motivation and ambition that I see in people who do too much marijuana. If you've ever seen people nodding out and drooling from smack, or wired up and tweeking on speed of one sort or another, no more needs to be said.

I'm particularly uncomfortable when I'm around people who drink too much (speed even more so). They either get maudlin and weepy and self-pitying, which annoys me, to be honest, or they get violent, which horrifies me. It's no accident that the countries with the highest frequencies of domestic violence are the countries with the biggest alcohol problems.

Well, some just fall asleep, which is a blessing. That's what used to happen to my husband if he drank a lot, as well as getting nauseous if he mixed things. He had a friend who was a raging alcoholic, and I dreaded the times he went out with him because he would come home drunk, and sick, because this guy always wanted to end the night with sickly sweet Irish coffees with whisky. I had no pity, I can tell you, and all the nurturing I usually gave him if he was ill went out the window on those occasions. No wet cloth for his forehead, no tea to settle his stomach, no sympathy. He could stay in the bathroom all night and fall asleep there. Certainly not in my bed. I wasn't in the business of enabling getting drunk. So many people are ill and suffering through no fault of their own, children among them, and you expect sympathy when you do this to yourself? Plus, what kind of example do you set for your children? My father never, ever, did this, and I wasn't about to accept it in a husband. There's nothing wrong with having a glass of wine with dinner, or a cognac before bed, or having an aperitivo when you go out. I do those things, and enjoy it. It's just that if you can't drink responsibly, you shouldn't drink at all. Within a couple of months he realized he couldn't help this guy, and those nights weren't fun, and it ended. Thank goodness.

Btw, Italy has some drunks too; we're not totally free of it. A cousin on my father's father's side was like that. He would get drunk and then accuse his poor wife of going with other men and then beat her. At one point, my aunt went to live with them. When she saw it she took a pitch fork to him and told him if he ever did it again he'd really have to worry about other men because she'd tear his, uh, "manhood" out with the pitchfork. I guess he believed her because he didn't do it again while she was there. They were fearsome, my father's red-headed sisters. :)

Now I'm going out to take a walk before the snow storm ends. It's so incredibly, magically beautiful here when it snows.
 
Those with psychiatric conditions are more likely to self medicate with alcohol or speed in order to feel "healthy" especially when they can't afford a psychiatrist or when they are too afraid to ask for an increase in dosage of whatever meds they are prescribed out of fear of being accused of being a drug addict who wants to get high. I'm in the latter group and I feel for both parties enough that it pains me to write this post since I cannot write it without being reminded of what self medication is like and it isn't pretty.

I don't condone drinking a bottle of jack every night or shooting meth but I support programs that would help those who would (otherwise) self medicate and are designed to restore the chemical balance which they lack.
 
And dosing beyond the chemical balance may lead to anhedonia unless you have access to enough dosages to keep you afloat and conquer the tolerance that may rapidly build. Otherwise, (assuming you rely on prescribed stimulants) be prepared for anhedonia and panic attacks when the bottle runs low. I've been through both and cannnot wish those experiences upon my worst enemies.

Sorry for detailing this thread or beating a dead horse. I'll stop now.
 
Same here. And now I am thinking what I would do if money didn't matter. Probably live by the beach spend my days surfing and at night research blood type related subjects till I pass out asleep .... hmm...sounds very fun actually. So count me in for supporting anything to related to making the workspace human free. :)

Trust me: I do get your point. But I would prefer some different solution. Not quite sure what that would be. But it might be time to start thinking about it as that could definitely be the future that 90 percent of the adult workforce will simply wind up 'not being needed'.

I can fill my day perfectly fine just with my hobbies. But possibly half of population is content just with eating and watching TV. I believe we have to educate our youngsters better on how to be active, proactive and self restrained in life. Possibly new canceling jobs will be popular like life coach and personal trainers.
 
I cannot help wondering what life might be like if we all had less stress, gotten our needs met regardless and were able to spend time on things that matter. Friends, family, our significant others. Maybe there would be a lot less of a desire to self medicate or rather the extremism of it.


And dosing beyond the chemical balance may lead to anhedonia unless you have access to enough dosages to keep you afloat and conquer the tolerance that may rapidly build. Otherwise, (assuming you rely on prescribed stimulants) be prepared for anhedonia and panic attacks when the bottle runs low. I've been through both and cannnot wish those experiences upon my worst enemies.

Sorry for detailing this thread or beating a dead horse. I'll stop now.
 
The answer is both a quantitative and qualitative exercise in defining what makes human intelligence distinct from the artificial kind, a definition that seems to keep getting narrower. And in the end, we might figure out that a job-free roboticized future is even scarier than it sounds.
 
....
.... Instead, we shell aim human evolutionary selection toward creativity, which will never be replaced by any kind of robots. I am talking about design, arts, science, biotechnology.
....
I believe a computer very early on discovered a (new, or at least unpublished) geometry theorem (or corollary). So, I would not bet that robots (including AI) cannot be creative. Is self-awareness in a robot/AI process to the point of recognizing that what a robot has found is different from what has gone before, then somehow acting on that a hard thing to accept as possible? The 'act on it' part is the only limitation. Once that is developed, then robots can no longer be thought of as merely unthinking drones.
This link mentions computer discovery of geometry theorems by computer but does not provide details. My memory is that by early 1960s, a computer had found a new geometry theory.

https://books.google.com/books?id=n...page&q=geometry theorems 20th century&f=false
 

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