You Can't Talk About ROBOTS Without Talking About BASIC INCOME

[appalachiablue]

Wren Handman at 'Vice' writes- *You Can't Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income*:

Conversations about basic income, a government-funded salary given to every citizen, used to take place in the dingy offices of extremist left-wing politicians, or in the campus dorm rooms of idealistic students determined to fix the problems of the previous generation. The conversation was about social responsibility. It wasn’t an economic case, it was a moral one.

A sharp uptake in technology designed to automate jobs and replace human workers is bringing new voices to this old debate. Today’s society could be disastrously affected by artificial intelligence and growing automation, and scientists and technologists are looking for ways to stop that damage before it happens. The eyes of the tech industry are turning towards basic income, and the entire conversation is changing.

The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence conducts high-impact research on artificial intelligence. Their CEO, Oren Etzioni, believes AI could be the key to creating a true utopia - but that journey will come with challenges. “There will be very real disruption,” says Etzioni. “Jobs will be taken away and those people need to be taken care of. People have floated the idea of universal basic income, of negative income tax, of training programs. We have an obligation to figure out how to help people cope with the rapidly changing nature of technology.”

That changing nature is in large part the rise of artificial intelligence. We already know about the potential economic destabilization that will come from the automation of commercial trucks, which will remove 3 million jobs in the US, plus 6.8 million employed in other parts of the industry. Now consider the police, which brings in $6 billion US a year in revenue from speeding tickets—that’s a significant number of lost jobs on police forces. Add to that the lawyers and insurance companies who handle automotive accidents, the mechanics who fix dents and bangs, the physiotherapists and massage therapists who specialize in automotive accidents, and driving schools, and suddenly the number of potential lost jobs is staggering. And that’s just from automated cars.

http://www.dailykos.com/story/2016/5/15/1526812/-Open-thread-for-night-owls-Talking-about-robots-requires-talking-about-basic-

- They Don't Need Food To Do The Work Of Humans -

[marble falls]

1. If a robot can't earn enought, it needs to get another job.

[Baobab]

3. If one robot lears a task they all learn it, forever.

We can't win except by upping our game. We need free lifelong education. Giving people money to go away will result in the marginalization of 99.9999% of humanity on Mars or something. Because everybody will eventually be unemployed for huge chunks of their lives, it will become the normal state. Few jobs will emerge from education, but the ones that do will be things no robot can do that for the doers will be flow experiences and fun. Serious fun. Mind puzzles. Nobody will be paid to do unpleasant time consuming things as today. All that will be done by robots. Get ready, this day will be here much sooner than people think.

[EdwardBernays]

2. yep and...

Either the majority drive this change or the 1% will.

I'm putting my money on dystopia.

[Baobab]

4. We are to have money in a society where everybody "earns" the same, nothing?

see the problem!?

Laughing...

[EdwardBernays]

5. ??

I don't understand your comment

[Baobab]

6. Some nothings will be more equal than others?

Maybe...

But I can see why they are so worried.

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Do you see what I am getting at at all?

First thing, there is exponential growth in technology that is going from near horizontal a few hundred years ago to nearly vertical (in relative terms) now. On a graph of time, we stand at the "middle" "now" The future approaches vertical, the past approaches horizontal. See the problem INVARIABLY confounding the accuracy faced by anybody who bases their predictions of future rates of change on their past experiences- unless they are a scientist or other cutting edge practitioner with daily experience with how fast things are changing, such immediate experience that they figure it in intuitively?

Thats the reason politicians and economists are always wrong, and they always underestimate the rate of change, and its more and more inaccurate as we move forward. Always underestimating, by more and more.