uk_grenada

Can i introduce the view that seems to be in the ascendant in several countries?

Traditionally, peopke worked and this meant they could buy goodies.
The others were supported minimally by the state, and couldnt afford all but basic goodies.

Places like the scandanavian countries and a few other places are replacing benefits with a flat personal income, not means tested, paid to all by the state.

This looks to the time not so long off when unemployment is the norm, where the state has to support its population and the few that do work will be very rich, and many new low or even non income jobs will emerge [blogging?]

The pressure will be more focussed on doing more with this money, populations are likely to fall i suspect, food halls will be more common.

Dont assume a specific job is safe. I worked in IT all my life, and was always told my job would be made redundant, as the hours increased :-) and sure, for a small no of people this will happen. EG how many people does apple need to look after the iphone operating system - 200... How many for the entire ecosystem globally - 5000?

Robots are in their infancy building houses bridges and vehicles, they will do all manual labour at some point.

We are between zero and 10 years from the technological singularity, from the first conscious machine, which might be from alphabet or several other organisations. We wont recognise it for a while, depending on who gets there first they may hide it for a while, and we wont believe it for a while. Then all bets are off, we are no longer the supreme thought machine, in the next generation a lot of things will change.

Strangely its a model that pops up in sci fi for the last 100 years...

GarryP

Trust me, you are quite capable of annoying people by being wrong - more practice at that I guess.

Amazulu

More maybe

Why bother? Just build a new super-efficient coal-fired plant - just like the Germans, Japanese and Chinese are

Coal is really cheap - makes sense

What's Australia's contribution to the CO2 'pollution' betrayal? 1.4% isn't it?

We ship f**k tones of coal to Asia and they ain't using it for fertilizer

GarryP

I wouldn't quite claim we are up to 10 years from the singularity - still a way to go before we hit take off on that one.

However I can see some serious change coming over the horizon - mainly because we turned people into machines, and now machines can do those jobs - and we don't teach for innovation, we teach for conformity. We don't have most people who are any more than that - which isn't great for where we are headed.

And we have a huge problem in politics and what I'd call 'polite lying'. They haven't moved forward over the last 100 years and are now a major problem - unfit for purpose, getting worse, and actively getting in the way of what needs to happen. I can see more 'going around them' happening in future (think Uber) whereby people just ignore stupidities and do it anyway.

Hell, I'm even wondering if money is going to continue to work in future - you watch dragons den/shark tank and think "this is missing the point". If automation makes change faster, scale easier, then the right model is even more critical. And they will be the only RoI - so who should be begging whom? Already companies actively try NOT to make a profit, since that just wastes money, time and opportunity.

uk_grenada

I actually said 0-10 years because I'm not sure I believe the expert futurologists, the concensus for them seems to be 0-3 years, but the development of that is some truly weird shxx compared with the OS development I used to know.

It's all about self coding, learning from experience what's useful, one issue is keeping it compact enough, ourbrains housekeep stuff that isn't needed and if you don't, you get massive bloat ware.

Once you get it right, the theory of learning makes it almost impossible for humans to follow what is being done, the machine is in charge of itself, hopefully we have the off switch :-)

ozzieeagle

Makes Wag the Dog and all this distraction crap with ISIS and NK make sense.

GarryP

Take off requires the ability to come up with new theoretical constructs, to innovate. None of that is really there yet, or even the theory of how to.

Now money is pouring in, but I've the feeling we'll hit IA before we hit general AI - I think it's more tractable a problem. Hell, we are getting to the point where your phone is an extension of your mind already.

Thus I'd push the singularity off to at least 2050.

Shard

Many AI researchers don't even accept that there will be a singularity, and it's certainly not envisaged anytime within the next 30 years. Consciousness is a completely separate issue, and may not be possible and/or relevant. Unfortunately, it's inflated claims in the media which undermine the awareness and understanding of the profound gains in AI that are currently being made.

uk_grenada

It's a holy grail, but one with the likes of alphabet seriously trying to crack, never bet against a large building full of IT students on high salaries with a lifetime supply of Twinkies coffee and weed...

scrubbedexpat098

Thing is, as humans, with organic intelligence, we recognize the significant role that human error plays in many a cock up. So how long before an ever learning AI comes to the conclusion that humans are the weakest link and wipes us all out? Where's Sarah Connor when you need her?? Or Neo for that matter

Beoz

Black and white. Please. That's Garry's disease.

But as you say nuclear is needed. Sounds like there's 3 of us willing to petition the Australian govt.

Looks like we agree again.

FWIW. I like solar and wind when its working and viable. But just because its "green" doesn't mean it always viable.

Beoz

If you think I am wrong prove it. You fail to do that every time, instead you go quiet. If the overwhelming evidence suggests I am wrong, happy to conceive.

The problem is, the crap you write about automation wiping out jobs, has no substance, no proof, and its all too easy to shoot your opinion (which is what it is without substance) down.

In fact, every time I demonstrate automation increased jobs your head goes in the sand. It would be half entertaining if you could even argue my point, but you can't.

And when you can't it all turns to name calling. Now you are talking about "annoying".

Really .... grow up and argue the point.

scrubbedexpat098

Erm, does AI stand for Artificial Insemination now?

Beoz

I have a picture for that which would not be allowed on here.

GarryP

I think it just stands for "f**k it".

Beoz the problem is that even when presented with the numbers, data, references, etc. you go off on a strawman, talk some b*ll*cks, then claim to have 'won' the argument. It's pigeon chess, and why I, and others, just give up trying to explain it to you.

Take your claim that more jobs will be created than destroyed, that everything will be OK. Firstly, you don't have any data to back that up, you simply state that "its always happened in the past, it will happen again". Not only does that ignore, as has been pointed out, that this change is different, in that there's nowhere for a large swathe of society to go. It also ignores the very real structural changes that have already taken place, with the underemployment of undereducated men, and the only low paid jobs replacing high paid ones for them - coupled with general wage stagnation for those in jobs. In addition it turns a blind eye to what economists have pointed out, and technologists, and in short everyone likely to be able to see the elephant coming over the horizon.

In short, it's not true. It's wishful thinking.

In the US there are about 3.7m driver jobs and when automation hit many of those will disappear. Even if 1m remained to service the automation, fix problems, load/unload, that's still 2.7m unemployed truck drivers. And it hits fast because any company not automating is losing work.

I'm not sure if you have ever done any business planning, strategy, etc. - but most that have understand that that human resource line is both expensive, and a mountain of hassle. If you can cut it down, outsource it, etc., you do. And the bigger the swathe of people with the same role, the same responsibilities, the bigger the target for automation because you can do it once and then sell it 10,000 times over. Scale helps automation - and means whole LARGE job classes go almost overnight. Not a lot of scope for "User Experience Designer" to take up the slack. Worse, if you are being an entrepreneur, looking to build the next unicorn, you design the business model from the ground up to use automation, because that gives you quick scale. So the new companies don't have people wound into the fabric either.

Automation will be pushing at an open door.

And even if you won't take any of that, the threat of it happening alone should be enough to say that planning and preparing should be the order of the day. Like climate change, the risk of you being wrong is too great to not take action.

But our politicians aren't taking action.

In the main this is because they are law graduates who's understanding of technology is limited at best (they can tweet, woohoo). It's also that those that get to the top, to lead, are generally the oldest, and least connected with technology and how it can be used. Trump can't even manage email FFS.

https://hbr.org/2017/01/why-trump-do...out-automation

Nothing you have said has in any way invalidated or negated these factors. You don't even come close to really seeing the big picture, or presenting an alternative that joins together into a credible scenario. In the real world, Melbourne has continued to grow in population, and continued to add new jobs as a result. However it's unemployment percentage stays roughly the same - new demand isn't translating into new jobs in a sustainable manner - now - and that's before automation hits. What happens when another GFC hits, probably at the same time automation takes a chunk out of existing jobs? In the real world things are already in trouble, and no amount of telephone sanitiser wishful thinking is going to be a fix for that.

https://theconversation.com/what-the...and-work-82051