SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
I came across this piece on Scott Adam's blog and found it quite interesting. Thought others here might find it interesting too:
http://blog.dilbert.com/post/133406477506/global-gender-war#_=_
So if you are wondering how men become cold-blooded killers, it isn't religion that is doing it. If you put me in that situation, I can say with confidence I would sign up for suicide bomb duty. And I'm not even a believer. Men like hugging better than they like killing. But if you take away my access to hugging, I will probably start killing, just to feel something. I'm designed that way. I'm a normal boy. And I make no apology for it.
Now consider the controversy over the Syrian immigrants. The photos show mostly men of fighting age. No one cares about adult men, so a 1% chance of a hidden terrorist in the group – who might someday kill women and children – is unacceptable. I have twice blogged on the idea of siphoning out the women and small kids from the Caliphate and leaving millions of innocent adult men to suffer and die. I don't recall anyone complaining about leaving millions of innocent adult males to horrible suffering. In this country, any solution to a problem that involves killing millions of adult men is automatically on the table.
If you kill infidels, you will be rewarded with virgins in heaven. But if you kill your own leaders today – the ones holding the leash on your balls – you can have access to women tomorrow. And tomorrow is sooner.
(Score: 2, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday November 21 2015, @12:44AM
It's just as likely that 1% will be managing all the resources of the society, and the rest will be sitting on basic income - which means minimal allocation of food and water to survive while living in rooms of minimum quality. This is a more logical endgame if you consider that automation will require fewer and fewer workers of higher and higher intelligence and education. Basic income is all fine and good, but who ever said that it will be plentiful? You can preview it today in Social Security offices.
(Score: 2) by Mr Big in the Pants on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:13AM
That is more or less what I was saying although you appear to be implying otherwise. There needs to be the destitute as a means of social control - it is not out of necessity.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:22AM
The only difference is that in my scenario only 1% will be employed - as owners, or as managers, or as engineers at huge automated factories. Everyone else will be unemployed, as the world will not require so many workers anymore.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 21 2015, @04:34AM
This is a more logical endgame if you consider that automation will require fewer and fewer workers of higher and higher intelligence and education.
That claim has never been true. This claim about automation eliminating jobs ignores that the only places which even appear to have this problem are doing their darnest to punish employers and leave potential workers unemployed or underemployed. If you make employing someone more onerous and more expensive, then you get less jobs as a result.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by tftp on Saturday November 21 2015, @05:04AM
That may be so. But how many places do you know in the first world that ever in living memory make employing someone less onerous and less expensive? The trend is actually in the opposite direction. It became very visible in last year when costs of Obamacare forced some businesses to cut hours of their workers, and in this year when some restaurants in Seattle had to close after the city increased their costs. Taxes of all kinds are very rarely going down. Someone has to pay for the basic income, and that creates positive feedback. This affects the picture of employment, I agree. But that's an integral part of the game - human labor will eventually become so expensive, compared to the cost of their product, that it becomes neither profitable nor even possible for a business to afford workers.
For a reference, imagine that you want to open your own trench digging company and hire one (1) worker. How much cash will you need to cover your worker's salary and burdening for one year? How much can you charge for your worker's time? I believe that after very simple calculations you will conclude that you'd rather buy a backhoe and operate it yourself. My vision of the future is similar to that: the threshold of employing humans will be so high that only the most necessary and most valuable will be employed - in essence, just a handful of engineers who maintain the large machinery of an automated factory.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:13PM
But how many places do you know in the first world that ever in living memory make employing someone less onerous and less expensive? The trend is actually in the opposite direction.
That sounds very different from
if you consider that automation will require fewer and fewer workers of higher and higher intelligence and education
or
as the world will not require so many workers anymore
Automation may require fewer and fewer workers, but it has the effect of increasing demand for more efficient human labor as a result - it's a centuries old trend which continues through today (though the demand manifests in countries which are not actively discouraging employment).
I'll take these concerns seriously when we start trying to fix the problem.
(Score: 1) by tftp on Saturday November 21 2015, @11:55PM
Well, those two are completely different processes - one social, another technological. But they often combine to make things worse.
Automation may require fewer and fewer workers, but it has the effect of increasing demand for more efficient human labor as a result
That's my point, just expressed in different words. Only super-efficient workers will remain; only they can compete with a whole factory of robots. An engineer who can repair a robot is necessary, as [so far] he cannot be replaced by a machine. A cleaner of the factory floor can be replaced - and is replaced already. I have seen huge production lines where no human was in sight... nor one would be necessary... and it was back in 1980s. Not every product can yet be manufactured on such machines, technologically, but we are getting there. You can watch videos [youtube.com] of modern automated chicken farms - you will see thousands of birds in those videos, thousands of eggs, but no humans on the floor. Add a conveyor of chicken feed from an automated grain farm, and you are all set. Humans? A single shift manager is enough, plus a standby team of technicians who serve 10, or 100, such farms (depending on reliability of equipment.)
though the demand manifests in countries which are not actively discouraging employment
China and FoxConn come to mind immediately. But even then... over time, the society evolves; it wants to work less and to earn more. Already China is looking at Africa as a fallback location for their sweatshops. Chinese workers are already becoming more demanding - they - imagine that - refuse to work 24/7 for a cup of rice per day! But that demand - which is not entirely without reason - puts them behind the robots in cost and efficiency. Not every operation can be automated yet, so FoxConn is not yet a human-free facility; but it will be one - if not in ten years, then in twenty, or thirty. Eventually the industrialists of the world will run out of "countries which are not actively discouraging employment" - and employment will be discouraged everywhere. The majority of humans cannot compete with robots. Just ask bank tellers about that - they already are losing to ATMs and online banking. Tellers are still manning the windows, but as soon as the banks figure out that they can ask for a surcharge for human touch the lines to them will start disappearing. Automated checkout stands are showing up in Home Depot, Safeway, and many other places - loss to theft is less than the cost of a clerk. Vending machines can remove even that loss. You think Safeway cannot sell *everything* through the vending machines? They surely can, as the only missing piece today is the automated arm that would pick the package and give it to you - after you paid. What stops them? Just the insufficient ROI, so far, as hiring humans is still affordable enough. But fast food restaurants are already experimenting with sandwich [youtube.com] making machines [amequipmentsales.com]. That VisiDiner only costs $3,850 - about the monthly cost of a human clerk.
So who will be still employed at that time? Only the technicians who keep the factories in order, and the engineers who invent new robots, and the scientists (who probably won't be replaced by an AI for a while.) Where the workers remain, say in construction, they will be driving not a shovel or a jackhammer, but a large, complex machine that does everything, more or less like modern re-pavement machines. A quote from Red Rising:
The drillers of my clan chatter some gossip over the comm in my ear as I ride atop the claw drill. I’m alone in this deep tunnel atop a machine built like a titanic metal hand, one that grasps and gnaws at the ground. I control its rockmelting digits from the holster seat atop the drill, just where the elbow joint would be. There, my fingers fit into control gloves that manipulate the many tentacle-like drills some ninety meters below my perch. To be a Helldiver, they say your fingers must flicker fast as tongues of fire. Mine flicker faster.
But even that is only good for a Sci-Fi story. In reality even a modern PC would do a better job than a human in that role. A human is not good when unwavering attention to millions of details is needed 24/7. A human is OK when it is necessary to evaluate a single problem offline and design a way around it.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 22 2015, @03:28AM
That's my point, just expressed in different words.
No. When I said "increasing demand for more efficient labor" I didn't mean that demand was increasing only for labor that was more efficient, but rather that labor was becoming more efficient due to automation and hence demand for that labor increased as a result of that increased efficiency.
China and FoxConn come to mind immediately.
Exactly.
Already China is looking at Africa as a fallback location for their sweatshops.
Doesn't sound like you get it. Labor isn't just about sweatshops. We left the 19th century behind a long time ago.
Not every operation can be automated yet, so FoxConn is not yet a human-free facility
Again doesn't sound like you get it. FoxConn employs over a million people. They are far away from a "human-free" facility. Foxconn's automation not only replaces human jobs, it enables Foxconn to employ more people than ever before.
Automated checkout stands are showing up in Home Depot, Safeway, and many other places - loss to theft is less than the cost of a clerk.
Once again, in countries such as the US where Home Depot, Safeway, and many other places are strongly discouraged from employing clerks.
So who will be still employed at that time?
That depends. Does your system employ people or unemploy people? Answer that question and you'll answer the question of who is employed. It's worth noting that our modern societies have just over the past couple of decades massively increased the demand for relatively unskilled, high school level education. That's most of Foxconn's workforce, for example. The reality runs counter to the myth.
A human is not good when unwavering attention to millions of details is needed 24/7.
That's never been a human job.
You have stated or implied a number of myths, such as the myth that automation reduces total employment, that the world is transitioning to highly skilled labor only, and that companies are only interested in the very cheapest labor that they can find. There's plenty of evidence that none of these claims are true. Global employment is higher and higher quality than it's ever been before. Even the lowest skilled people find better work than they would have before. Companies can't just be interested in cheap labor because otherwise why employ developed world labor at all? And how are you going to set up a high tech industry in a backwater part of the world? Where does the infrastructure they need come from? Automation has been increasing for centuries, when are we going to stop employing unskilled labor? Once again, these issues are not thought through and reality has been ignored.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Saturday November 21 2015, @02:25PM
Well, if AI improves enough, it will hopefully happen on a mass scale.
(Score: 1) by khallow on Sunday November 22 2015, @03:29AM
Well, if AI improves enough, it will hopefully happen on a mass scale.
What will happen? Everyone loses their job and becomes a deadbeat?
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Sunday November 22 2015, @07:46PM
Why shouldn't companies strive to be as effective and efficient as possible? If we hold back technological innovation merely so people can do jobs that they're inefficient at, then that is a travesty.