Daily reminder that Global Capitalism will gradually eat up remaining professions

....due to the profit motive and the inevitable incentive to automate, resulting either in riots from widespread unemployment or an expansion of welfare that'll make FDR look like an anarcho-capitalist.

Other urls found in this thread:

ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration?language=en
youtube.com/watch?v=0XdC1HUp-rU
youtube.com/watch?v=w40e1u0T1yg
jetpress.org/v24/gajewski.htm
oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf
youtube.com/watch?v=b6l-bApCmDU
i66.tinypic.com/11bnn79.jpg
twitter.com/NSFWRedditVideo

>He thinks industrial civilization will survive for another century

G

Not a bad point breh.

I'm saying assuming it does.

I think it will because M.A.D is good incentive to not WW3 all over the place.

The most obvious answer is basic income paid for by the perpetual surplus of near-total automation of labor

There will be enough jobs for everyone as long as two conditions are met:
a)resources remain finite(i.e. scarce)
b)human needs are infinite

Since these conditions are not going to be invalid anytime soon, then we have nothing to worry about.

Prax it to the max, bro!

That's what I meant by expansion of welfare.

A lot of people will object to it because of "wealth = merit" "poverty = lazy leech" memes.

WONT SOMEONE THINK OF THE CHILDREN

Personally I prefer the "Luddite riots" option

This is mainstream economic thought.

I worry about the developing world.

>90% of people go unemployed
>economy collapses because there's no consumption of produced goods
>put everyone on welfare
>economy still collapses

Can we just nuke everything and start from caves again

Daily reminder that capitalism and socialism will never ever succeed.

And mainstream economics have proven themselves to be retarded on numerous occasions. Economics is the 2nd most meme-filled field of "science" out there, beaten only by Nutrition.

There will be jobs, but not enough jobs for everyone. Already, in America, you need enough money to afford years of postsecondary education/trade school just to get a job.

In China, people are on fucking waiting lists to get factory jobs, sleep in the factory, and work until they are suicidal.

The simple matter is that automation will make employment for most people virtually unattainable without years of indentured servitude. Unless welfare is expanded, people will get PISSED.

The threshold for sustainable employment is getting higher, and people, once employed, often have to go back to school, even if they work manual labor.

My girlfriend's dad, a mechanic, had to go back to school to understand the software of fuel injection systems, for instance.

Then what system will?

It won't stop anything though.

Capital has privatized armies on its side. Governments have taxpayer armies on their side.

Any attempt to Unabomber this process to hell will only cripple the people, not the institutions.

Daily reminder that a hybrid of the two is the inevitable future.

Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, open source software, social networks, cryptocurrencies, and online collaboration are all good examples of what I mean. They are the future of labor, and the last gasps of labor, as well.

Everyone should see this vid at least once:
ted.com/talks/luis_von_ahn_massive_scale_online_collaboration?language=en

Daily reminder that you commie shills regularly violate the fucking 25 year rule and gookmoot does nothing about it. I'm almost positive that this place is a commie containment board.

>There will be jobs, but not enough jobs for everyone.
Hmm, that's what they said when they introduced the spinning jenny, And the tractor. And the computer.

The point is, "making jobs" is not the aim. Improving productivity and attaining high economic growth is-which is caused by new and better technology. Jobs is just the byproduct.

There are more "jobs" in the agricultural sector early 19th century America than there are today. Does that mean we should ban all tractors?

If you want to "make jobs" as a singular aim, then you have to literally stagnate technology.

this is all pretty cute but he's forgetting that society will also have to advance whereas in that pic industry advances and society stagnates from this point to the future he's talking about.

if (or when) that happens and most jobs get to be done by AI, mankind will finally improve since we will no longer be bound to 10h/per day jobs doing some meaningless task some fucking machine could be doing and taking the rest of the time to sleep.

mankind will finally release itself from the shackles of tyranny and become truly free - and since there will be a lot of production and little people producing or having the resources/money to buy them, things like a "minimum living wage" will be enforced, meaning people will be paid to afford a basic lifestyle and anything above that will be their own choice.

it gets more complex than this and it's all about reaching humanity hidden's potential and people stoping being automatrons and being fully developed human beings

tfw when engineer and will be one of the last employed.

I sometimes think if humans had spent thousands of years selectively breeding animals to be more efficient at performing labor the same way we selectively bred plants to be better to eat, and coming up with "green" tech from the very beginning, we might have stood a chance.

Note by selectively breeding animals I don't just mean the way we did dogs/horses.

I mean any species we could get our hands on. Insects, birds, etc. etc. etc.

Imagine performing basic intelligence tests on every new generation of dogs, killing the ones not up to snuff, and only allowing the most intelligent to breed. What if we had selectively bred sentience into animals?

That's really interesting. Except for the bit where you kill the simpler dogs. Let them live, you cunt.

>He believes in little boy Fight Club end of the world fantasies

all those machines need an operator per piece and all of those inventions cover little and very specific market places
while advanced AIs with no need for an operator can and will be able to be adapted to all fields - from agriculture to warfare and everything in the middle

it's not a problem with innovation itself which always create a huge shock and turns many professions obsolete but a problem with technology being better than men in all fields thus rendering all men interaction obsolete since a few dozen of people will be able to run a multibillion dollar enterprise all alone

>Hmm, that's what they said when they introduced the spinning jenny, And the tractor. And the computer.
That is what they said, you're right.
And they were right too.

The trend has been this:

Higher educational threshold for sustainable employment, every year.

Higher demand of skills for sustainable employment every year.

Gradual automation of tasks that used to be proof of human merit.

Just because the process has been slow doesn't mean it's invalid. Estimates may have jumped the gun, but the truth is there will be no economic incentive for billionaires to hire lackeys when intutive AI will be able to anything a PhD student can do, but better.

youtube.com/watch?v=0XdC1HUp-rU

>The point is, "making jobs" is not the aim. Improving productivity and attaining high economic growth is-which is caused by new and better technology. Jobs is just the byproduct.

Again, I agree. That's why we need to stop penalizing and stigmatizing unemployment. It will only grow. Human nature won't change, but the market always will, and the trend is towards most people becoming unemployable.

>There are more "jobs" in the agricultural sector early 19th century America than there are today. Does that mean we should ban all tractors?

I'm not advocating ludditism, I'm warning against economic incentives that may cause people to become luddite rioters. I'm arguing that expansion of what we call welfare might be the solution in a post-scarcity world.

>If you want to "make jobs" as a singular aim, then you have to literally stagnate technology.

Again, I don't want to stagnate technology, I want to warn against stigmatizing unemployment. Most people don't understand technology and are technophobes. I know a bright young man who wants to be an attorney. He is well groomed, works hard, and is more ambitious than me on every level. When I talked to him about automation he said "I fucking hate tech and hope I'm dead before that."

His sentiment is widespread.

> mankind will finally release itself from the shackles of tyranny and become truly free - and since there will be a lot of production and little people producing or having the resources/money to buy them, things like a "minimum living wage" will be enforced, meaning people will be paid to afford a basic lifestyle and anything above that will be their own choice.

As long as we don't stigmatize unemployment and recognize that the unemployability of future populations is inevitable.

As long as anti-tech sentiments don't become too widespread.

As long as out-of-touch politicians don't continue to push the "Job creators" and "wealth = merit" memes that were more true in earlier times.

Capitalism.

Capitalism is the future.

I was thinking of what a hunter gatherer would do, but I feel you. They would probably castrate anyway.

talking pets would be the neatest shit
because as far as i can observe, dogs (at least) have all the capabilities to speak except a proper set of vocal chords

meanwhile, the creator gave the capability of speech to fucking stupid birds so they can babble insults and similar shit, showing us the finger and definitely telling us we don't deserve to have good things

If you make pets talk next step will be sentimental people arguing they shouldn't be slaves. Soon pets are outlawed.

How will profit-driven, secretive, feudalistic Capi-Papis handle:

>Crowdfunding, crowdsourcing, open source software, social networks, cryptocurrencies

not to mention

>online piracy, cyber-crime, 3D-printing, increased lifespan, decreased-employability, space mining, the increased efficiency of alternative fuel sources, etc.

you mean one of the last unemployed?
because machine learning and artificial intelligence can make useless most of engineering majors

Software devs and (to a gradually lesser extent) programmers are the ones performing the automation, and they're paid hella money to do it.

You're right that we'll need engineers to design the actual machinery, but once they design that machine once, the process of making those machines can be automated, too.

Engineers will eventually spend most of their time maintaining and occasionally repairing automated systems instead of making new ones, though there's a good chance we'll have human-like AI doing that stuff, esp. in hazardous environments.

youtube.com/watch?v=w40e1u0T1yg

>nirvana fallacy
>confusing cynicism with realism
>memes
Humans have been replaced by machines for 200 years, the end result is an increase in the size of the tertiary sector, jobs like salesmen and travel agents, abstractly people who figure out what people want and where to direct limited resources.

This is true to an extent, but a lot of the increase in size of the tertiary sector is owing to an increase in population. Per capita I imagine the increase is less dramatic.

You also must understand that the tertiary sector is the sector contributing to automation the most, and while they'll be the last to go, they will go, too. AI is getting more and more intuitive, the increases in efficiency are getting more and more dramatic.

The biggest obstacle is the glass ceiling on Moore's Law, and that can be overcome with more supercomputers, graphene-based computing, quantum computing, or any number of theoretical advances beyond silicon.

Humanities.

The difference between yesterday and tomorrow is that yesterday you had specific machines created to facilitate certain jobs and tomorrow you will have fully automated advanced AI able to perform any job without the need of a human to command it

1) This process began with the industrial revolution, well over 25 years ago.
2) Veeky Forums won't listen and /g/ already knows what I'm talking about. Give me another board to have this discussion on, and I'll go there.
3) Wanting expanded social welfare to compensate for the innovations of Capitalism (for which I am incredibly thankful on a daily basis) is far from being a commie. Disagreeing with you is not a paid commiekike conspiracy, no matter how much you wish it to be.
4) Your edgy racism is childish. I support your freedom of speech, don't worry, but that doesn't make you any less of a fuckass bitch.
5) This is part of humanity. History and humanities. We are talking about the annihilation of our own usefulness.
6) Do you have alternatives, suggestions, or anything other than vile stupidity? I'd be glad to hear them and discuss them.
7) Your anus is a fascist containment board lelelelel

The automation and the solution in your post is obviously the desirable outcome.

The only problem, however, is how the fuck do we transition society in this direction?

Have a shit load of papers saved from University about this and always found it a really interesting topic.

"Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest" I think was one I recently read.

Can we upload PDF's on Veeky Forums?

Sadly no, but you can link to the PDF or link to filesharing, I'd be super fucking interested if you did that.

I'm a total dork and I sometimes use TTS engines to have academic papers read to me at work, when I get bored of audiobooks and podcasts.

>Technological Unemployment but Still a Lot of Work: Towards Prosumerist Services of General Interest

FOUND IT

jetpress.org/v24/gajewski.htm

Ted Kaczynzki was right

>It won't stop anything though.
the reasons you mentioned are really just icing on teh cake compared to the brute force of history's blind march

Aaaaaaaaand cropped.

Which is the closest you're gonna get to PDFs on Veeky Forums.

Neat. Good to see you found it.

Some other ones I read recently (actually, as part of Economic Globalization I took it as a problem of the future of labor for the High School course I taught) I found these following papers super interesting.

>BIG and Technological Unemployment:
Chicken Little Versus the Economists - Mark Walker

>Could Artificial Intelligence Cause an Unemployment Crisis

>Sex Work, Technological Unemployment
and the Basic Income Guarantee - John Danaher

>Technological Growth and Unemployment:
A Global Scenario Analysis - Riccardo Campa

>The Computer Did It? Technology and Inequality - Colin Gordon

>Technological Unemployment, Leisure Occupation, and the Human Project - Luciana Floridi

>Technology, Unemployment & Policy Options: Navigating the Transition to a Better World - Gary Marchant and a bunch of other people

Then there was a movie titled Will Work For Free that I never got around to reviewing to show myself.

Sorry I am not really contributing and just dropping articles to read. I spent the last year in China and just shut my brain off the past few months just getting some casual reading done.

Since we're uploading .pdfs I'll drop this here

THE FUTURE OF EMPLOYMENT: HOW
SUSCEPTIBLE ARE JOBS TO
COMPUTERISATION?

Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne (Oxford University)


oxfordmartin.ox.ac.uk/downloads/academic/The_Future_of_Employment.pdf

10/10 work user. I am too lazy for that shit right now but hopefully the readings I provided can help ya'll yell at each other or something.

> Sorry I am not really contributing and just dropping articles to read. I spent the last year in China and just shut my brain off the past few months just getting some casual reading done.


Bro, are you kidding me, in a thread full of speculation and mild shitposting you have become BASED MAIN CONTRIBUTOR

See

But how many will choose the path of lazyness and wither away?

>resulting either in riots from widespread unemployment or an expansion of welfare that'll make FDR look like an anarcho-capitalist.

This is a false dichotomy.

You sound exactly like a Luddite anno 1770, and the reality is that everyone who loses a job because of automation, will find something else to do, just like the Luddites did.

There is no job, creative or laborious, that artificial neural networks and robotics cannot theoretically accomplish.

>Per capita I imagine the increase is less dramatic.
pic related, it is around 70% in developed countries

AI can help with administration, but it can't replace executive functions. If it did that wouldn't be called post-scarcity, it would be called a robot takeover.

That doesn't change the fact that he's right. We're doomed and we have no way to steering of our path.

keep in mind that executive functions are always minimal and in most companies they're usually less than 10% of the total labour

>human needs are infinite.
When will people stop parroting this meme. Human needs and wants are very finite. Humans can only eat so much until they die from overfeeding. Humans can only have so big of a house before they'll die trying to go from one end of it to another.
Human needs/wants are finite until immortality is figured out

"Data entry" is not human merit. It should be a transitional job that should be akin to that of a waiter in the US. Anyone who considers it for long-term employment deserves to have himself replaced by HAL or Rajeet.

Many will.

And a shame it will be.

But giving people a basic income and allowing them to be turds is better than squandering the potential of many people who only need a little cash to get off the ground. I know many folks who are too proud to beg using crowdfunding/etc. and instead work 40+ hrs a week in the hopes that they'll save up enough to start a business. It's a sad sight, and in a world with widespread technological unemployment, it would be a sadder sight.

NIce graph, but it doesn't change the fact that most of the salesman will eventually be unemployed too.

>AI can help with administration, but it can't replace executive functions. If it did that wouldn't be called post-scarcity, it would be called a robot takeover.

1) Executive functions are minimal as another user said.
2) Executives are part of the oligarchy and will direct their company in such a way that they themselves are replaced last. Follow the incentive.
3) Investors might fund a company in such a way to replace executives.
4) Executives use software tools to perform their own labor all the time. There was a time when CEOs actually worked in physical spreadsheets and made presentations on construction paper.
4) This is what I'm warning against. CEOs don't have any more merit than any of their workers, and many of them are infact uninformed when it comes to the professions of their lackeys. Just because they jump aboard the lifeboat of financial puppeteers by choosing the """right major""" or being born to the right daddy doesn't mean they deserve to continue earning wages while most other people are unemployed and scrambling for scraps in waiting lists.


I think one thing that hasn't been mentioned is that companies need customers and customers need paying power. If tech. unemployment renders most people unemployable, basic income will be needed JUST to give people the ability to pay for consumer goods, because again, weath =/= merit, employment =/= merit.

They correlate, but do not directly cause each other. Many talented people are squandered by unfortunate circumstances, and many lucky people are too proud and stubborn to count themselves lucky and instead wish to imagine themselves as superior and others as pathetic leeches. The incentive to believe in this myth is psychological.

Salesman is already a dead profession, mostly. The thing keeping the salesman alive is sentimentality and a need for human contact. Online advertisement is not only more effective than salesmen, but more ubiquitous too, and cheaper.

Just like nostalgia is what is keeping horse riding and petting zoos alive.

It's what's keeping community farming alive.

It's what's keeping hand-made crafts and DIY alive.

These things will never be multi-billion dollar international industries, but they will be thriving in a cute sort of sentimental way.

>Veeky Forums insisting they have any understanding scarcity, trade, resource, supply, demand, automation, labor, wages, welfare, price control, any fucking notion of economics whatsoever

Kek, you kids are cute. I too was once a Some-teen year old unemployed neckbeard who thought I understood everything because I read Marx and watched Star Trek.

I'm at a point where I can laugh at myself for having been so naive and ignorant. You'll get there too, don't you worry

Ted K. was not right (I actually have a soft spot for that guy, btw) in the sense that his methodology and way of """fixing""" what he saw as wrong was completely ineffective.

You most flow with and adapt to the changes in your environment, not expect the environment to adapt to your fringe ideas. The only time fringe ideas take hold is when they're effective and serve someone's self-interest. Like open source software. Microsoft hated the idea and fought it vehemently for years, but it was so effective at getting new products off the ground that they've done a full 180 and act like it was the right way to go all along.

When your idea is so good that the establishment adopts it, is when it's effective.

You should know this better than anyone "Constantine." You adopted Christianity because not only because you found it appealing, but because it pacified the masses better than the old Gods, bread, and circuses ever could.

If Ted K. Had reconciled his ideas with pic related, he might have been more effective.

Manifestos and bombings are a good way to alienate everyone. What Ted K. Needed was a little marketing. Brad Pitt was better at getting Ted K.'s ideas across in Fight Club than Ted K. ever was, because Fight Club reconciled fringe ideas with mainstream appeal, even if you think the film is faggy an edgelord, it has something to show.

Tbh I don't think that that really fixes it. A lot of people are coming up with bullshit products and bullshit jobs in order to get their piece of the cake. Then we also get a sea of marketing to convince us that we need all of this extra stuff, so everyone works harder in order to get all that extra stuff that wasn't even needed in the first place.

And you don't even need to think in terms of megacorporations when it comes to this. Think of the local housewife who makes 'unique jewellery' made of used tin cans and whatever, and then spams friends and family on Facebook, trying to sell them this stuff.

Or think of the bureaucracy in a country like mine (Easter Europe here), where political parties get votes by promising party members jobs (for which they aren't even qualified) inside the bureaucracy, and you end up with a country where 1-2 in 10 workers works for the state. Tbh just give them a minimum wage, you'll save up on office space and bills, lel.

See This post contains many research papers backing up the things I'm talking about in this thread. I read some of them today at work using a Text-to-speech engine.

These papers use economic data to back up what they're saying, and no amount of posting Don Draper sneering will change that. :-)

1) I've said multiple times in this thread (which you didn't read beyond OP) that I'm not a luddite, and I don't hold luddite sentiments.
2) Technological unemployment is happening faster than it did in the 1800s, and way more demands are placed on the avg. person to get a sustainable career.
3) Read some of the research papers in They address your points and then some. Particularly
>Chicken Little Vs. The Economists.

An excerpt to incentivize you, perhaps, to read:
>Pressing the objection, it might be suggested that the analysis here is mere Luddism. The Luddites (1811-1817) reacted against the mechanized machinery of the industrial revolution. Skilled artisans in the textile industry were replaced by machinery and less skilled labor was required to operate the machinery. In response, the Luddites wrecked machinery, killed capitalists and battled with the British army.

>In hindsight, it is easy to sympathize with their plight, if not their prescription. These artisans had much to fear. It is true that the economy as a whole benefited with the reduction of the price of textiles, but most of these workers did not reap a commensurate reward. Their jobs were permanently lost to automation and their particular skill set did not position them well to compete in a new economy. Imagine their plight as all the workers who put the requisite years in to learn their craft found out that their skill was no longer needed and that they would have no way to look after their families. At the micro level of the individual worker, this is very sad. At the macro level, we can see the benefit to the entire economy.

>poster insisting that the various people in this entire thread don't understand anything.
>poster offering no ideas or alternatives
>poster drawing a distinction between himself and Veeky Forums despite being an user posting on Veeky Forums himself
>poster insisting that he knows that we don't have jobs and that we're marxists. I cannot speak for others, but I know this to be quite contrary about myself, and in fact I said that I was thankful for Capitalist innovations many times in this thread.
>poster tears down strawmen less than two sentences after constructing them, acts like this is an accomplishment, and that we didn't notice the rhetorical trick
>poster snidely uses Draperlaughing.jpg in place of an argument
>poster neither acknowledging nor deconstructing any of the decent posts made in this thread, which come from many different backgrounds and perspectives

I have handful of points. You have condescending keks and strawmen. I have not called you names. I do not claim to know what you think or what your status of employment is.

Try again, hombre.

I work with foreign languages, good luck automating that.

This post rang so true with me because my girlfriend's mom is a hairdresser who had to quit because of neurological disorders fucking up her hands.

Now I watch her sit and make pathetic handmade jewelry at a consistent financial loss in the hopes that she'll start a "Business"

>it's a communist magically wish away scarcity episode

>I work with foreign languages, good luck automating that.

So many people are confident about this, and yet Text To Speech engines, translator engines, and language software in general are improving at an incredible pace. You better find a backup career. I'm not saying you'll be gone next year, or even in 15 years, but that your profession not only won't last forever, but people will begin flocking to it as they lose their own jobs, lowering your wages, until, eventually, you are automated by LingoSoft

In fact, language TEACHING software like DuoLingo uses the results of people's training to make language translation software better, more intuitive, and closer to replacing actual translators.

When I translated pages from Spanish five years ago, the translation was pathetic compared to what it is now. Soon they'll even be translating cultural things like idioms.

Never assume you're exempt from automation.

No, asshole, it's a
>"Global Capitalism has a financially viable incentive to gradually do away with scarcity over the next 200 years. We should prepare our society accordingly"
thread.

Please, if you want to play the "everyone I don't like is Stalin" strawman game, go shitpost in one of the many Communism threads.

You and your shitposting ilk have shown up at least five times in this thread, and each time they were duly refuted. Multiple academic research papers backed up by economic data have been posted in this thread supporting ideas similar to that in the Original Post. Many of them also suggest alternatives not in the original post.

Read, fuckhead, read.
If you have something to say worth due consideration, please say it.

Otherwise, go find a hugbox.

Meanwhile ctrl+F words in this thread like
"Research"
"luddites"
"software"
"automation"
"global."
"trend"
"employment"
etc. If you actually want to read interesting thoughts that have been contributed.

>Once this 95%-99% automation happens, most of the human race will be unemployed

What if the entirety of the human race fills in that remaining 1-5% of jobs and industry expands to fit it all?

The point is, language is too variable and different to be effectively learnt by a machine and it requires a degree of intelligence that a machine effectively understanding and using human languages in a translation form would be literally sentient, and as such the fact that she can translate better than GoogleTranslate would be the least of our concerns.
Alas, I don't teach foreign languages but I would say that Duolingo or Memrise or Babbel are just a way to memorise words, shit-tier and nothing else.
They work in the same way of a memo, no more no less.
Just think of metaphors, how can a machine (not being sentient) translate, understand and use them?
How can you make a machine understand effectively the context of a dialogue?
I don't underestimate automation but translation is very difficult to automate: they can translate a string of words or recognise combinations, nothing more.
Their reliability is very low even in that (try to translate even a few sentences from Russian in English, you'll get the meaning but it'll still be a shit translation), now think of bureaucratic/legal/technical language.
Think of accents, think of regional/local expressions and the list goes on.

That would likely be jerry-rigged, superficial, and sentimental, but yes, I guess that could happen.

I think a big thing that could expand employment is space travel, incentivized by drained natural resources, but industry needs to innovate ways to preserve people indefinitely, and people in general need to stop looking upon space travel as "pointless," "impossible," and, my favorite, "playing God."

>Human needs/wants are finite until immortality is figured out

And even then there are practical limitations to how much we can consume in the moment.

Hello, Veeky Forums I am a transient from Veeky Forums and happen to be an expert in this topic.

Feel free to ask me anything.

>The point is, language is too variable and different to be effectively learnt by a machine

As a programmer, I grow weary of hearing these myths about what machines can or can't do. Software can work intuitively, as well as procedurally, and is getting better at doing so all the time. If I had told a linguist a hundred years ago about digital translation, spellcheck, grammar check, Internationalization, and software in general, I would have been told all those things were impossible, and that I was a madman. Same if I had told someone in 1600 about television.

I already pointed this out in this thread. Ctrl+F "captcha"

By filling out captchas we are teaching software to recognize written language (word captchas) and discrete entities in Euclidian space (photo captchas). You are in a way hastening your automation just by posting on Veeky Forums. For free. Millions of hours of man labor are being done for free inside of AI verification systems like Captchas, and captchas are getting more and more sophisticated not just because they want to teach more sophisticated things to software, but because software is continually learning to bypass captchas that previously "only humans" could fill out.

One of my jobs is at a traffic engineering firm. We count videos of traffic, enter them in spreadsheets, send them to local gov. so they can optimize intersections for better traffic flow.

We began outsourcing our work to India and Mexico recently, but we also outsource to an American company with software that counts traffic:

youtube.com/watch?v=b6l-bApCmDU

That video shows software doing my job. I can do it faster, but John Henry the Steel Driving man can only Drive Steel for so long. That software works 24 hrs a day, 7 days a week, practically for free, doesn't demand breaks or health care, and is getting faster every year.

You think phonemes arranged in an aribtrary order won't eventually be decoded by software?

I'd respond to the rest, but CharLimit

How long until AI automates jobs that require visual classification of discrete objects in physical space?

What are your academic credentials (Not that I don't believe people can be self taught, esp. these days.)

>I think a big thing that could expand employment is space travel

This is what I was thinking too.

>and people in general need to stop looking upon space travel as "pointless," "impossible," and, my favorite, "playing God."

Yeah, I hate these people. Especially because they rarely even understand the basics of the science behind space travel.


Anyway, I think basic universal income might be what will actually happen because it doesn't need to function exactly like currency does in the context of our current economic system.

The infertility of the west should proof that an overpopulation of useless people wont be a concern the moment every country is so filthy fucking rich that it can afford automated everything.

This. The closest you could get is "human wants are infinite" but even that's probably wrong. It can be true in the sense that when we get something we usually want more, but I think that can be solved with a change in mindset and a bit more mindfulness. Most enjoyment from things you get exceeding an income of 70k don't contribute much to your happiness after the initial pleasure of acquiring a thing you want.

Still, I think a scenario where all jobs are automated and people are doled a certain amount of welfarebucks will lead to some unhappiness. There's always a significant amount of people who will want more than everyone else, even if everyone else has more than enough.

You don't need to have more babies to create more useless people, you just need to have less uses for the people that are already there.

>unhappyness
The ones who want adventure can be send to space as glorious explorers in the high mortality rate colonies on deadly frozen rocks in space, seek fame in sports, entertainment industries or even bloodsports or leave civilisation to survive in some jungle/join a cult.

Hey Everyone, this has been an epic thread!
Thanks for contributing, those who contributed, esp. research paper guy.

In case this thread dies while I'm gone doing homework, I want you guys to have this:

i66.tinypic.com/11bnn79.jpg
(too big for Veeky Forums)

This way, if this discussion happens again, we can maturely consult points that have already been made, so as to minimize the talking in circles.

Peace. Historia Vitae Magistra.

>i66.tinypic.com/11bnn79.jpg
It was supposed to be a screenshot of the thread as one giant image, but the stupid as upload didn't work. Sorry guys.

I'd suggest getting the Full Page Screen Capture tool for Chrome. It works for most things.

>How long until AI automates jobs that require visual classification of discrete objects in physical space?
Quite a ways away. I generous estimate would be in the 2060's, Assuming AI even takes off

AI is not going to be advancing on a commercial level any time soon for the simple fact that commercially available computers are not going to be making any significant advancements any time soon. We have simply hit the ceiling with our current forms of software/hardware and cannot advance all significantly as they are. Anybody who had a Computer 25 years ago remembers that it was essential to get up to date with the technology that came out every two years, else they would be left behind. We don't need to do that with our present computers because they have not had any improvements in their capabilities since the late 2000's. It's for that reason that AI is right about where we left it 10 years ago

The major breakthroughs are not popping up as often as they used to, they are downright stalled. We're still using 64 bit processors, still using the same amount of ram, graphical capabilities are about the same, it's still using the exact same coding, windows has not changed significantly since windows 7, even by microsoft standards. Usually, you only need to get a new computer because your current one is hitting the end of it's service life. Really the only major advancements we've seen in computers in recent years is in handle held devices, which has only been an advancement of convenience, not of power. Major advancements in the future would be Diamond replacing silicon, Trinary becoming widespread, actual reasons for 128 bit processors or stronger, and heaven forbid, quantum computers but most of that shit is only in it's theoretical stages


>Continued...

>What are your academic credentials (Not that I don't believe people can be self taught, esp. these days.)
I graduated from the University of Colorado. I've studied digital markets, trade, Technology and Economics both in and out of Academia. Currently Employed as a 'Consultant' for a manufacturer. that is all I will share about myself

That's pretty much what I thought too, people got caught up with feeling of technological progress, but it's beginning to stall.

What would you think be happening later on, let's say in 2090's if technologies kick off, would that truly cause massive unemployment and requirements for welfare, or would there be other avenues for jobs?

Yes but that comes down to the heart of the matter being discussed in this ridiculous thread.

That in itself won't cause a collapse of the global economic system or capitalism. For a generation in countries where that happens there will be many people who migrate to countries more in demand of workers, who join professions that always need humans like police/military/aid and social work etc or who will just join rural communities where people farm all the food they need.

Its never something that will become a permanent normal that causes the overthrow of capitalism because as tech causes jobs to be automated it will also open up new jobs and opportunities and there will increasingly be large amounts of back-to-basic Amish-like communities where as long as you can do something useful like farm or cook then you can eke out a living.

Also when this does happen it will be unevenly distributed across the globe so for most of it there will always be countries existing where people can find work and by the time it significantly spreads worldwide people all around the world will be having less children and there will also probably be a demand for colonists on Mars or on other planets.

>What would you think be happening later on, let's say in 2090's if technologies kick off
What sort of Technology? You'll have to be specific

Different technologies will effect different industries in different manners so the answer will change depending on exactly what type of technology we are talking about

>would that truly cause massive unemployment and requirements for welfare, or would there be other avenues for jobs?
I predict that it there will be more and more people going into the service sector or self employment, a trend that has been rising rapidly since the recession, namely the former.

Also, welfare is not something that can be a massive requirement. It's only viable when it is a small percentage of the population living off of it, else it is unsustainable as there is not enough money being put into it. If massive unemployment were to rise in levels not seen since the great depression, they would have to adjust how much they are giving out to compensate

could it happen that a machine can be used to scan an ill person, detect virus/bacterias/cancer/tumor, prescribe recommended medicine/surgery. and many doctors becoming unemployed since they would be needed in significantly smaller numbers?

I can't help but wonder if we aren't partially to blame for the intelligence of dogs and city-faring crows, as a part of our mutualism.

I want to do a study someday that tracks corvids and looks for any difference in intelligence tests based off of proximity to urban centers.

I won't, I lived the neet life. It's no excuse, you rot as a person and do nobody but yourself and your supporters a disservice.

If my needs were perfectly met I'd rather work for nothing, if only to have the assurance that I am contributing to my society.

I think many people feel the same. I think we can promote a culture of "doing it anyways" without much effort because it taps into some basic, human sympathies.

I have some doubts the number need be that high.

Just a simple proposal, for example: Restaurants. Human service would be a novelty in an age where machines do it, so you may be able to enter that niche in the market. Now, with BI perhaps nobody would work a full work week as a waiter, but with BI that wouldn't be necessary. Because everyone has a core cushion of money already provided to them, a lot of labour restrictions can be removed allowing people to essentially walk in and out of jobs with ease.

When someone wants new consumer items without waiting until their next income payment, they could take one of these jobs for a short time to supplement their income, then leave without too much difficulty when it's unnecessary.

Sure, you wouldn't work often, but there would still be an incentive to do so. You could also turn to creative endeavours and release your work free of charge [your payment essentially being social status], although that's something I'm less optimistic about. [DeviantArt exists as a testament to the fact that not everyone should be an artist, and that bad-artists can easily make searching for good art more difficult. A massive influx in MSpaint scribbles would not be fun.]

Thing is more people are switching to a lingua Franca.

Asia is starting to go with English now.
Africa English is the big one there with French being notable but even that is facing some pressure.
Hell even Plains Native American bypassed the issue of multiple languages by having a sign language for meetings and contact with other groups. Not saying we are gonna learn sign languages as a lingua Franca anytime soon but it's just something to note.

memes memes memes.
There are OTHER economic systems that might also suit such a condition but you go on ahead and keep memeing.

Nah, that shit will just let doctors further specialize or take side-roles as technicians if we got some of the diagnostics covered. Our medical treatment is very much imperfect; so anything that frees doctors to continue to go even more above and beyond, for less effort and requires less of the patient, is an inherent good.

Shoot. What's your take in that case?