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I think the fear is exaggerated, automation has been happening throughout the history of mankind. Should we not have vehicles because it put the horse/buggy dr

I think the fear is exaggerated, automation has been happening throughout the history of mankind. Should we not have vehicles because it put the horse/buggy drivers out of a job? Have cars made by hand and not by more efficient, safer automation because it puts people out of work? I completely understand & respect that viewpoint that this does not all happen in a vacuum so the people working manual labor likely did not get or have access to the same opportunities as those "who learned to code". Who is to say that the automation opens room for better-paying jobs or leads to innovations in health-care that make universal health care more affordable to tax-payers so it can get passed into legislation? There's negative consequences of slowing automation as well.

zorkw4rg 8y ago
we never had a boston dynamic robot doing a backflip though. But I guess that's kind of my point, advances in robotics/AI/AGI can't be compared with the invention of the car, but that's exactly the argument that's going to justify a never seen before degree of poverty of masses of people. Stopping or even slowing automation is though of course completely pointless on multiple levels, if a company isn't going to automate, their competitor will (and drive them out of business), if a country decides to legislate against automation another country will not, in the global economy its a futile effort. Furthermore there really is no reason for people to "work" at all, if machines can do the same why not let people do what they want to do, instead of pointlessly enslaving humanity forever, that sounds pretty evil.
mpjme 8y ago
I used to hold the same viewpoint - automation is nothing new - but this video by Kurtzgesagt (more specifically the statistics cited in it) convinced be is that automation actually IS different this time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk). The big difference is that automation now replaces jobs at a pace that is faster than we can create them. The whole video is good but the particularly interesting stats are at the ~8:00 minute mark.

zorkw4rg 8y ago

we never had a boston dynamic robot doing a backflip though. But I guess that's kind of my point, advances in robotics/AI/AGI can't be compared with the invention of the car, but that's exactly the argument that's going to justify a never seen before degree of poverty of masses of people. Stopping or even slowing automation is though of course completely pointless on multiple levels, if a company isn't going to automate, their competitor will (and drive them out of business), if a country decides to legislate against automation another country will not, in the global economy its a futile effort. Furthermore there really is no reason for people to "work" at all, if machines can do the same why not let people do what they want to do, instead of pointlessly enslaving humanity forever, that sounds pretty evil.

mpjme 8y ago

I used to hold the same viewpoint - automation is nothing new - but this video by Kurtzgesagt (more specifically the statistics cited in it) convinced be is that automation actually IS different this time (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WSKi8HfcxEk). The big difference is that automation now replaces jobs at a pace that is faster than we can create them. The whole video is good but the particularly interesting stats are at the ~8:00 minute mark.