Artificial intelligence: ‘Homo sapiens will be split into a handful of gods and the rest of us’

[Jesus Malverde]

wanted relief from stories about tyre factories and steel plants closing, you could try relaxing with a new 300-page report from Bank of America Merrill Lynch which looks at the likely effects of a robot revolution.

But you might not end up reassured. Though it promises robot carers for an ageing population, it also forecasts huge numbers of jobs being wiped out: up to 35% of all workers in the UK and 47% of those in the US, including white-collar jobs, seeing their livelihoods taken away by machines.

Haven’t we heard all this before, though? From the luddites of the 19th century to print unions protesting in the 1980s about computers, there have always been people fearful about the march of mechanisation. And yet we keep on creating new job categories.

However, there are still concerns that the combination of artificial intelligence (AI) – which is able to make logical inferences about its surroundings and experience – married to ever-improving robotics, will wipe away entire swaths of work and radically reshape society.

http://www.theguardian.com/business/2015/nov/07/artificial-intelligence-homo-sapiens-split-handful-gods

http://www.bofaml.com/content/dam/boamlimages/documents/articles/D3_006/11511357.pdf

[Recursion]

1. So tax the robot owners, institute a social dividend, and make jobs optional

Sounds like the ideal solution.

[Jesus Malverde]

2. At some point there may be a discussion about that.

Until then the engineers and venture capitalists. Are the new priest class.

[Recursion]

3. This is a kind of long piece by Neal Stephenson from 20 years ago on this question

http://cristal.inria.fr/~weis/info/commandline.html

Worth reading if you have a minute or ten.

[Jesus Malverde]

4. Thanks!..nt

[Chan790]

5. ...and we must be the new Ned Ludd.

Actually, if they're a priest class...it becomes more interesting that Anonymous, a people's movement and one generally geared as anti-aristocratic and anti-oligarchy, has adopted Guy Fawkes (an enemy of the state religion) as an icon.