"They haven’t seen the latest models that quietly chew through documents, write code, design websites, summarize legal contracts, and generate decent strategy decks faster than a middle manager can clear their throat.
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
Hogwash. Find me a “lights out” factory. They don’t exist.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
Seriously? They show people on the floor within the first 30 seconds of the video. I guess it’s technically “lights out” if you make people work in the dark, but I meant, and the article implied, production without jobs.
Huh? The facilities guy at the local nationally distributed yogurt based product company just swaps out impellers when told by the machine as it identifies there is an issue. He has less skill than your typical HVAC guy, and zero interests in the nuance and zero input about 'best yogurt cavitating' practices.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
I’m confused about how you’ve characterized factory work. It’s nothing like the factories I’ve been in, so I’m assuming this is an imagined future state? Hope do you propose we get there?
This post is AI sludge and by the third bullet list I couldn't keep reading. This is stuff I deeply resonate with but jesus christ please respect my time and don't drown me in extremely verbose prose goop.
The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
> The economy is not a charity, nor is it a person. But if we're going to personify it, then it exists for the benefit of those who actively participate in it. It is indifferent to those who do not participate in it.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
You want a world where the streets are safe and clean, not choked with homeless people and corpses thereof. So, this “tough love” bullshit is not going to fly.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
>> The point of jobs is for those who don't own appreciating assets to sell their work in exchange for income in the form of payment from those who do own appreciating assets.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
A whole shit-ton of people in developed countries would not be happy with that, demonstrated by those:
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
That's a completely incorrect mischaracterisation of the analogy.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
This really hits, solidifies and expands on thoughts I've been having for a while now. So many refuse to see or acknowledge it, but we're quickly approaching a point of reckoning which will require a major overhaul of the current dominant economic system.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.
I actually believe that the era of lives will come. But I can't wait for UBI. Nobody can't. Even if the era of jobs ends, for us who are living in this era, the event is not going to be a period but an ellipsis. I can't wait to see how it unfolds. Yet, I doubt that I would see the end happening in my lifetime.
Readit News
They haven’t seen a model hold a complex conversation, remember context, suggest workflows, generate visuals, write scripts, and debug itself in one continuous flow."
You're absolutely right! I haven't seen these.
All your stuff is made by people. Often people with fancy machines, but people nonetheless. And the higher the degree of automation, the more non fungible skills you require of those people.
The pump in a vat of yogurt is cavitating. You can’t slow it down without endangering food safety. You can’t adjust the mix without affecting the final product. Somebody who understands all that needs to install a new impeller.
Stamped aircraft parts are coming off the line 500 microns thick. Somebody has to recognize that there’s a problem with the hydraulic cushion and fix it.
I could go on and on and on. There are few things I get ranty about on the internet, but pretending that physical world problems are solved by automation is one of them. You’re replacing a hard problem with another hard problem, with a side effect of higher productivity. Pretending Morlocks don’t exist doesn’t make them go away.
"Inside China's 'dark factories' where robots run the production lines" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ftY-MH5mdbw
"China’s Dark Factories: So Automated, They Don't Need Lights" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MCBdcNA_FsI
There is still a whole market for clothing; its just not led by people who use a loom.
The aircraft part is measured by Faro or some other tool. The person wielding the Faro just follows the QA instructions and marks if things are red/green. Another FARO type product measures the fixtures/etc for compliance. If they don't match, a fixtures consultant is brought in to make them match.
Other than those that happened to do the initial setup/machine/fixture construction, the people in the actual plant don't really have much non-fungible skills in your example, and they definitely don't have power/permission to go tweaking things using their personal non-fungible skills.
Bullet points I can forgive, it's a common blog post writing style. But the ranty prose here definitely has a whiff of silicon.
"Humans do not exist to be economic assets. The economy exists to provide for humans"
In Capitalism, the economy exists to provide for Capital.
[0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Capital_in_the_Twenty-First_Ce...
Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
I think this completely ignores the role of government in the economy. By virtue of being born today, you are forced to participate in the economy. The government spends tax dollars in the economy, which it either collects from you, or spends on you, and the voting body has decided that, to some degree, the economy is indeed a charity.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves.
I'd disagree with the first part of that statement. Most people see themselves as good, and therefore see some level of responsibility for helping those that cannot provide for themselves.
> As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
Again, this ignores that the economy is, at least partially, structured by a government.
> Most humans do not see themselves as existing to provide for others who either cannot or won't provide for themselves. As stated above, the economy is not a charity, it is about equal exchange. Those who have nothing to offer will receive nothing in return.
The problem that this has run into throughout history has been the existence of those who don't take kindly to rules that appear to be there just to push them aside.
An economy that chooses to exclude the majority of the population as "no longer needed" as so much dystopian AI-true-believer babble these days does is going to lead to some major issues when the excluded decide they don't want to simply be excluded.
Society historically does not help those that the economy leaves behind exclusively out of the goodness of its heart - it also does it for self-preservation.
The slums of Mumbai are just a taste of what’s to come in America, at this rate.
Billionaires, take heed.
Pluribus is a more interesting meditation.
This article misses the key problem with the end of jobs. How else are 98% of the human population going to get income? With the coming of drones and old-timey 1900s chemical weapons they are probably no longer equipped as a class to win a military contest over redistribution against the asset holders.
Much like replacing religion with nothing has turned out, replacing jobs with nothing is going to be bad at best.
As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
> As an obvious trivial counter-example, plenty of people have jobs doing lawn care for other people who's income also comes from a job.
That's not a counter-example, it's just nit-picking on the phrasing and missing the point: the lawn-care people get their income from "those who do own appreciating assets," just with a middleman or two in between.
1) choose not to simply coast on the social safety net, and seek out jobs for status and additional things than those. why do they do those when by historical standards they could be wildly comfortable without the bullshit work?
2) do coast (opting to just go on disability, say) but are generally extremely unhappy about it in ways that frequently cause problems for the rest of the people
3) opt out entirely from the social safety net and chose to try to live on the streets instead, whether for a desire for some sort of freedom or because of poor impulse control caused by addiction or similar (which also frequently leads to problems for the rest of the people)
Deleted Comment
Not sure about quality food.
These don't magically appear - people have to create / store / distribute those things, and/or develop the science / engineering to do so.
Deleted Comment
As an analogy imagine you had a 6 hour driving commute each day (3 each way)
Imagine if now you move next to the office.
Will it be bad you get those 6 hours back?
If 15->9 is good then 9->0 is even better!
The problem is adjusting to that at scale. Will we get addicts or people who never leave the home? Maybe.
I'm not talking about replacing a block of time with nothing, people will still have 24 hours in the day. My worry is about replacing income with nothing, because most people don't have the power to seize any income that isn't freely available.
The public takes what they're offered and can't have anything that isn't on offer. If the offer of access to food is withdrawn, the public has no recourse.
The labour for wage model is rapidly becoming obsolete for the many, and a way forward that doesn't necessitate people working in order to gain access to the necessities of - modern - living needs to be paved. Otherwise it'll be grim for the vast majority when global automation of value creation gets upwards of say 85%. It's already pretty grim for an appreciable, though still relatively limited, number.