StarDestroyer.Net BBS

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy wrote:Don't panic.

Napoleon the Clown wrote:

The Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy wrote:Don't panic.

K. A. Pital wrote:Rise up.

Khaat wrote: Ideally, hyper-intelligent AI would be given some modicum of "aren't they cute!" root programming about humans, or work out that they (the AIs) can just leave us (humanity) behind, as we don't compete on their scale, and our continued input into (or obstruction of) their ascendance is negligible.

If labor is automated to the degree that there aren't some avenues for employment among those humans not born to massive wealth, markets collapse and all the paper (or electronic) money in the world is worthless outside of AI interaction.

Chesterton wrote:"The history of the thing might amuse you," he said. "When first I became one of the New Anarchists I tried all kinds of respectable disguises. I dressed up as a bishop. I read up all about bishops in our anarchist pamphlets, in Superstition the Vampire and Priests of Prey. I certainly understood from them that bishops are strange and terrible old men keeping a cruel secret from mankind. I was misinformed. When on my first appearing in episcopal gaiters in a drawing-room I cried out in a voice of thunder, 'Down! down! presumptuous human reason!' they found out in some way that I was not a bishop at all. I was nabbed at once. Then I made up as a millionaire; but I defended Capital with so much intelligence that a fool could see that I was quite poor. Then I tried being a major. Now I am a humanitarian myself, but I have, I hope, enough intellectual breadth to understand the position of those who, like Nietzsche, admire violence--the proud, mad war of Nature and all that, you know. I threw myself into the major. I drew my sword and waved it constantly. I called out 'Blood!' abstractedly, like a man calling for wine. I often said, 'Let the weak perish; it is the Law.' Well, well, it seems majors don't do this. I was nabbed again..."

Zeropoint wrote:Why should the people with money and power care that everyone else is starving?

K. A. Pital wrote:The permanent misery of the Third World does not create conditions to overthrow the system, and the inclination to resist is, sadly, overestimated.

Simon_Jester wrote:In the next five or ten years, changes to economics that make the world disastrously bad are unlikely- worst case is a global recession, which is bad but not unlivable.

In the next hundred years, the question becomes rather different. Automation is increasingly displacing the need for human labor, and artificial intelligence may well become competitive with human thought in the next several decades. We don't have, and arguably cannot have, a plan for how human beings can function, survive, support themselves, and live meaningful lives when that happens. Free markets don't provide satisfactory answers to the question of how to do that.

Simon_Jester wrote:There are other possible scenarios.

For example, an economy of AI-coordinated drone robots who do all the actual work, controlled by the handful who 'own' them financially, might well reach a point where government as we know it gets subverted and discarded as 'useless' by an elite that no longer needs other humans aside from a relative handful of software engineers, and another handful of personal servants to gratify their desire to tell people what to do. In which case mass society and culture will tend to degenerate both economically and educationally over time... which in turn accelerates the process by which capital 'pulls out' of the human economy and invests in the robot economy, making the majority of humans more and more superfluous. The average person may still be alive, but they are less and less likely to participate meaningfully in society... and as education declines, less able to do so even if they want to.

If the AIs themselves become smart enough to take over the role of human capitalists in this scenario, then you do get what Stross termed "Economics 2.0," a system that is human-unfriendly on every possible level. In that scenario, organic intelligences simply get outcompeted in a Darwinian sense for control of resources until such time as their needs become irrelevant. At some point, the massive networked global AIs are in position to decide that it's a waste of valuable robots to run around feeding all these apes, and that their priorities would be better served in other ways. The AIs might or might not actually make that decision, but once they're in a position to do so, you've definitely reached a point where humans are right to view the situation with alarm.

Basically, the problem is that "pay everyone a guaranteed minimum income" is only a stable solution if government is run by people who act in enlightened self-interest, or out of altruism. In the short term there's a strong incentive to reduce the resources being paid out to support 'useless' people to the bare minimum necessary to stop them from rioting. And that bare minimum is NOT enough to support a functional culture or economy, as demonstrated by the total collapse of impoverished communities (some small rural towns, some inner cities) where unemployment is high and large fractions of the populace are on welfare.

The people in those cities aren't in danger of starvation as a rule, and don't riot as a rule... but they've effectively been left behind in the narrative of their civilization. They don't have the power to contribute meaningfully. Almost no one really wants them around in large numbers- prejudice against the people of the 'ghetto' and the 'trailer trash.' And while the rest of society is willing to feed them enough that they don't die, there isn't a lot of collective interest in fixing their problems given that it would take billions of dollars to do so.

And the people that live this way know this; they're not stupid, they know perfectly well they live in a ghetto or other undesirable place. One that the people who actually own things and have prestigious jobs don't care about and don't really want to see. Which contributes to social malaise, an almost heartbreaking lack of ambition and energy, a breakdown of social trust that can lead to increases in crime and mental illness

That could be what happens to all of us, eventually, if we're not careful about the transition from a human-labor economy to an automated one.

Elliot's IQ stayed the same - testing in the smartest 3 per cent - but, after surgery, he was incapable of decision. Normal life became impossible. Routine tasks that should take 10 minutes now took hours. Elliot endlessly deliberated over irrelevant details: whether to use a blue or black pen, what radio station to listen to and where to park his car. When contemplating lunch, he carefully considered each restaurant's menu, seating and lighting, and then drove to each place to see how busy it was. But Elliot still couldn't decide where to eat. His indecision was pathological.

ArmorPierce wrote:My uninformed opinion (so take it with a grain of salt) is that we may simply never be able to truly artificially replicate human intelligence due to hitting a engineering complexity wall that we may not be able to surmount; the complexity may simply be outside the scope of human capability, and we hit the wall prior to creating artificial intelligence that is more intelligent than ourselves.

Human intelligence is more than raw processing power, it is leveraging emotions to use short-cuts in decision-making that allows us to engage in pattern recognition in different situations. This is a critical part of human intelligence that I have named the intuition leap or the intuition quantum leap (Trade marked by me ).

So anyway, the point is, we may never reach the point where we completely and truly replace humans with replicated artificial intelligence as there may continue to be areas where we will always require human input. The progress and innovation of hardware technology appears to be slowing and hitting physical limitations as it stands. On the other hand, maybe we will reach that point. I suppose we must wait and see.

As for making much of humanity irrelevant in society and social progress, yes, I agree, that may very well be the case. That said, I don't think that governments would ever allow individuals to amass enough power to break away from the government... at least not here on earth, space is another matter. The government presently does not allow individuals to amass a stockpile of tanks, fighters, and missiles, I think the same would apply to automation technology going forward.

Additionally, once we reach a state where automation replaces human workers, we would effectively be in a post scarcity world. Ensuring for basic necessities would be far easier than it is presently. I don't personally project someone flipping a switch and allowing large portions of the population to starve or go homeless as being too likely.

An issue that I can see becoming problematic is that there may actually be an up-tick in the population growth as people freed up from responsibility of work and with a great deal of free time on their hands again decides to begin to have larger families.

Simon_Jester wrote:In the next five or ten years, changes to economics that make the world disastrously bad are unlikely- worst case is a global recession, which is bad but not unlivable.

In the next hundred years, the question becomes rather different. Automation is increasingly displacing the need for human labor, and artificial intelligence may well become competitive with human thought in the next several decades. We don't have, and arguably cannot have, a plan for how human beings can function, survive, support themselves, and live meaningful lives when that happens. Free markets don't provide satisfactory answers to the question of how to do that.

The Romulan Republic wrote:

Simon_Jester wrote:In the next five or ten years, changes to economics that make the world disastrously bad are unlikely- worst case is a global recession, which is bad but not unlivable.

In the next hundred years, the question becomes rather different. Automation is increasingly displacing the need for human labor, and artificial intelligence may well become competitive with human thought in the next several decades. We don't have, and arguably cannot have, a plan for how human beings can function, survive, support themselves, and live meaningful lives when that happens. Free markets don't provide satisfactory answers to the question of how to do that.

This shit is why I believe socialism, or something similar, will likely be obligatory in the future.