Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
The reason I favor a highly progressive income tax is once a person accumulates enough savings to provide them an adequate income they have the time and, more importantly the capital, to work for ever more money. Obtaining the second million after starting from scratch is far easier them obtaining the first. I would like to see a system when making the second million or billion is much harder than the first. This would make the personalities that strive for wealth strive ever harder and gain the satisfaction of getting the second or twentieth million.
For many of us this would free us of having to work for somebody else just to afford food, housing and education. We could spend out time doing the less productive things like studying global warming, entertaining our friends or just planting a flower garden. That does not mean we are lazy but just means that we are not driven to make any more money than we need and we value the money we do not have to work for other people more than wages. Let the robots do the work. The emotional point is to remove the coercive aspect of economics out of the system.
Someone suggested the new AMC show Humans as having some good context. I watched an episode and am part way into a second.
That was me. We're five episodes in.
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReachTheBeach
It is interesting but it appears to be headed off into the "if robots have feelings" weeds.
I think it at least touches on several issues. The one that I think is germane to this thread is the revelation that the robots / AIs / software can do most of the jobs high school seniors might have aspired to in the past. Where does that leave humans? We are creating a super species, a super lifeform, that will be almost as capable, slightly more capable, ten times more capable, a million times more capable, and eventually a quadrillion times more capable than we are.
You are right that one of the central themes is the development of consciousness by a subset of the synths. This, too, may be inevitable. When a small computer is eventually capable of simulating all the neurons and synapses in the human brain, or a thousand times that amount, in pursuit of creative or compassionate or intuitive thinking, can consciousness and self-selfness be far behind?
True, the time-frame depicted in the show is not very realistic. Unless you view it as pure eclecticism, a thought experiment, it doesn't make very much sense for most of life to resemble England 2015. That's why I tend to view it as an allegory, a thought experiment, a cautionary tale -- what IF in 2015 we had super-lifelike intelligent home robots? What are some of the issues that would bring up? We may not have a thriving humanoid home robot industry for another 20-25 years, and androids that can replicate human life might be 50 or 100 years off, but we don't need those futuristic settings to thoughtfully examine some of the logistics and dynamics of pairing our biological machine apes with said robots.
That was me. We're five episodes in. I think it at least touches on several issues. The one that I think is germane to this thread is the revelation that the robots / AIs / software can do most of the jobs high school seniors might have aspired to in the past. Where does that leave humans? We are creating a super species, a super lifeform, that will be almost as capable, slightly more capable, ten times more capable, a million times more capable, and eventually a quadrillion times more capable than we are.
You are right that one of the central themes is the development of consciousness by a subset of the synths. This, too, may be inevitable. When a small computer is eventually capable of simulating all the neurons and synapses in the human brain, or a thousand times that amount, in pursuit of creative or compassionate or intuitive thinking, can consciousness and self-selfness be far behind?
True, the time-frame depicted in the show is not very realistic. Unless you view it as pure eclecticism, a thought experiment, it doesn't make very much sense for most of life to resemble England 2015. That's why I tend to view it as an allegory, a thought experiment, a cautionary tale -- what IF in 2015 we had super-lifelike intelligent home robots? What are some of the issues that would bring up? We may not have a thriving humanoid home robot industry for another 20-25 years, and androids that can replicate human life might be 50 or 100 years off, but we don't need those futuristic settings to thoughtfully examine some of the logistics and dynamics of pairing our biological machine apes with said robots.
Also, Google "Roko's Basilisk."
I have some background in robotics. I programmed a prototype water rescue "robot" which is basically an electric jet ski with radio transceiver, gps, sonar and tilt compensated compass. It received a command to go to a certain location and it would spin around (as needed) and head off in that direction doing course corrections as needed, going around things detected on sonar and finally slowing and criss crossing the target area until someone grabbed it, pulled themselves on. The smarts it needed (never fully completed; my friend who was going to make us all millionaires could not secure funding to finish) was to figure out what to do if the direct course was blocked. Really good ones (I have seen specs and video of a crazy expensive one the government uses) use cameras and video detection in addition to sonar. Sonar has issue with objects on the surface that don't hang down far and with rough water (the far side of waves reflects back like an object hanging down). So it would run into a piece of plywood and would keep stopping or trying to go around big waves. These are harder problems than you might think when you augment the sonar with digitized video. Lots of crazy math computing edges and distances based on colors detected.
Anyway, where I am going with all that is that making a robot a lot smarter so it can do its job will generally have zero to do with self awareness. if someone makes a self aware or emotional robot it will be an end unto itself; they will have set out to do that. Mining robots will not suddenly gain the desire to form unions; making them smarter will mean adding enhancements so they can do more accurate detection and extraction. Even medical service robots that might be given some protocol to soothe patients nerves will likely just follow a script, perhaps recording how well received different things are and using heuristics to improve, but just honing accuracy according to an algorithm, not thinking and feeling.
I worry more about someone creating a robot that mindlessly destroys things than one doing it out of malice. A drone that can refuel, rearm and attack autonomously would be crazy scary if something goes haywire and it picks the wrong target.
Let's imagine most of work is done by robots. They bake bread and pastry, assemble cars, build houses.
People (except 1-2% engineers and workers) are free! And they have enough food and conveniences. Besides their free time is equal 24 hours seven times a week. What have these free 98-99% of population to do not to be lonely or get criminal?
They could be used to solve the problems of mankind:
- struggle against deserts;
- care of old and ill men;
- cleaning environment.
But of course they can study to become engineers, scientists, designers to move mankind forward.
Anyway, where I am going with all that is that making a robot a lot smarter so it can do its job will generally have zero to do with self awareness. if someone makes a self aware or emotional robot it will be an end unto itself; they will have set out to do that. Mining robots will not suddenly gain the desire to form unions; making them smarter will mean adding enhancements so they can do more accurate detection and extraction. Even medical service robots that might be given some protocol to soothe patients nerves will likely just follow a script, perhaps recording how well received different things are and using heuristics to improve, but just honing accuracy according to an algorithm, not thinking and feeling.
I appreciate your post and experience, and the huge obstacles involved in getting robots to even "understand" VERY simple things. Certainly you raise some good points -- most robots are and will be limited by their programming and hardware. Robots / software have taken over a lot of the mechanical labor. The next frontier is intellectual labor. The final frontier may be emotional labor. Will bots / AIs continue to be 'dumb' and held to their original programming forever on into the far-flung future? Will neural nets / AL become capable of simulating a human brain at some point? Will mechanical things 50, 100, 500 years from now still be slaves or tools that are constituted to never exhibit any free agency or self-awareness? Will we find ourselves merging more and more with technology so that WE in effect become the self-aware robots?
Quote:
Originally Posted by ReachTheBeach
I worry more about someone creating a robot that mindlessly destroys things than one doing it out of malice. A drone that can refuel, rearm and attack autonomously would be crazy scary if something goes haywire and it picks the wrong target.
Will bots / AIs continue to be 'dumb' and held to their original programming forever on into the far-flung future? Will neural nets / AL become capable of simulating a human brain at some point? Will mechanical things 50, 100, 500 years from now still be slaves or tools that are constituted to never exhibit any free agency or self-awareness? Will we find ourselves merging more and more with technology so that WE in effect become the self-aware robots?
I am not sure who was the first to say one of my favorite quotes - "Computers aren't smart; they're just fast idiots." What it means is that everything has to get reduced down to testing simple conditions because they are idiots and can only make simple decisions. But they can make them really fast. One of the hardest things to do is figure out how to break really complex problems down into the fewest number of steps, if the problem can be reduced that way at all. That's why you hear about rock star programmers getting paid crazy money; it isn't that they are some factor faster (like 5 times faster to get 5 times the pay). It is that they can figure out things that the rest of us won't ever figure out. I am not one of those guys. I am better than most, but not rock star material. Anyway, it is purely analytical process. Some of the best programmers have little in the way of personality. My sense of humor may be to blame for me not being one of the rock stars. Where I am headed with this is that I don't think a self programming computer has any use for emotion or free thought. It's all about logic and efficiency.
Obama's bragging he is doing a great job, that the economy is great, he says the job market is great, unemployment rate is down. Obama says so therefor it must be. What is the unemployment rate now? Around 5%? That's low. Saying there are no jobs is a lie, just another excuse. Put your big boy pants on and get a job.
We tried warning you but you refused to hear. So enjoy the consequences of your decision. Believe me, those rich liberals got their way and could care less about you.
Petch, I and at least two other people asked you to read the article from The Atlantic. Since it appears you haven't, I'm going to assume the article is beyond your "level."
The article isn't about the government or socialism. The article admits that the premise is the stuff of science fiction but parts of it are starting to come true.
Petch, can you get outside of your biases and tired political rhetoric to answer the question at hand?
It's a simple scenario. Imagine the following hypothetical situation:
-There are 10 million American citizens
-The American economy can only produce 5 million jobs. The economy will NEVER have anywhere near 10 million jobs. Most of these jobs are related to the new "machine" class.
-That would leave approximately 5 million Americans without jobs...because the jobs don't exit.
-You could say that those without jobs could try to innovate to create a job. This would work only temporarily as even the new innovation would soon be taken over in a few years by a new machine.
-Also, since the new economy is based around machines and technology, only those smart enough to understand engineering, programming languages, etc will get the top jobs. Take into account that the average US citizen can't do a basic algebra problem (this has come up in other CD threads).
So what happens with the 5 million unemployed? What can they do? What would you tell these people? "Go get a job" would be silly, useless, naive "advice." Forget talk of endless leisure. How do these people buy food and shelter?
Do you think the permanent numbers of jobs can shrink to a critically low number? It's happened before.
If thousands of jobs are gone putting on your big boy and girl pants is not gonna matter because no matter what education or skills they get there are not going to be enough jobs for everyone. Of course it is easier to be blame people for not being responsible it is the argument for people who are to lazy and selfish to help others.
There are people whose job it is to help that aren't helping. That's a subject for another day.
It is the job of companies to maximize their profits in any way that is fair to customers, workers and society. It is not the job of private enterprise to provide full employment. And the government is incompetent at doing so.
Please register to post and access all features of our very popular forum. It is free and quick. Over $68,000 in prizes has already been given out to active posters on our forum. Additional giveaways are planned.
Detailed information about all U.S. cities, counties, and zip codes on our site: City-data.com.
Please register to participate in our discussions with 2 million other members - it's free and quick! Some forums can only be seen by registered members. After you create your account, you'll be able to customize options and access all our 15,000 new posts/day with fewer ads.
