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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If labor was such a teeny tiny part of the economy already right now how is it a big deal for the economy to lose it then? Labor isn't a tiny part of "the economy", it's a tiny part of "the costs of producing items". If you're not going to bother paying attention to details, you have no one but yourself to blame for being confused.
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# ? Dec 2, 2016 23:27 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:02 |
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:To be fair, entire countries seem that they ARE doing that. Manufacturing generics. That's fair, I am mostly thinking from an American perspective on this. Maybe some glorious European socialist states will have a better transition time. At least until the new all-robot U.S. Army finds a reason to come bomb them. And although I have been presenting a pretty grim outlook, I do think that increasing automation will (eventually) be a good thing. I'm betting at some point we'll all get our heads out of our asses and realize that forcing the rules of a society that needs labor to survive onto a society that has no use for human labor is a dumb thing, and we can all just sit back while the robots do all the heavy lifting. The real question is if we think ahead and adapt our social structures as the changes happen, or if we resist and have to start seeing society break down at the edges before we do something about it.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 01:10 |
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BobTheJanitor posted:That's fair, I am mostly thinking from an American perspective on this. Maybe some glorious European socialist states will have a better transition time. At least until the new all-robot U.S. Army finds a reason to come bomb them. The latter. It's the latter. It's not about thinking ahead, it's that the capital required currently doesn't have to support the health and wellbeing of the entire population, and will lobby to ensure that it continues not to. We've known how to resist climate change for decades, the reason why we've seen minimal forward progress on implementing it is because the vested interests who are likely to see their profits slump as a consequence are able to intervene in the governing process significantly, and are also going all-in on screwing every last red cent out of their current business model regardless of the long-term (and irrelevant to them) consequences, see fracking for example.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 01:50 |
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The ultrarich care more about short term money, wealth they could never really meaningfully spend in a human lifetime, than they care about the planet. It's time to sue them as a collective, or failing that a good old peasants revolt.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 03:32 |
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Nevvy Z posted:peasants revolt. I wonder what it would take for something like this to 1. happen and 2. actually work. Also is there a way to do it where tons of people don't die
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 03:51 |
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Ragnar34 posted:Also is there a way to do it where tons of people don't die Nope. It's inevitable.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 05:36 |
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BobTheJanitor posted:That's a nice idea. Which republican senators, congresspeople, or presidential candidates are going to support it? They can continue doing what they do. Instead of giving the money to workers in the form of wellfare, they can give the money to industries in the form of wellfare.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 10:04 |
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Nevvy Z posted:The ultrarich care more about short term money, wealth they could never really meaningfully spend in a human lifetime, than they care about the planet. It's time to sue them as a collective, or failing that a good old peasants revolt.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 10:52 |
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A Buttery Pastry posted:Should probably aim for something with at least a few wins under its belt.
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# ? Dec 3, 2016 13:02 |
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Something I've been wondering is if we could hugely expand education, research, and bureaucracy to employ people. What if we started requiring people to be actually engaged in politics? It's historically been impossible to have anything approaching true democracy because there's not enough time in the day for people to do all the work needing to be done AND properly engage in the democratic process, but with enough automation it might be possible. And if we ensure everyone is well educated then we eliminate the usual complaints of letting the masses actually decide on policy. There's essentially unlimited amounts of research into science, society, economics, politics, policy, etc that can be done and any amount of free time can be sucked up by debate over those things and teaching each other the results that nobody would need to be idle if they didn't want to. And if people don't want to engage directly in research or debate there'd be plenty of assistance needed by the people who do. It would require a complete change in how a lot of people value those things but I've been thinking it might actually be the best way forward.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 11:08 |
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Higsian posted:What if we started requiring people to be actually engaged in politics? You're also assuming people want to spend their free time engaged in politics. Most people would rather spend it on their hobby, with their friends, surfing the net, watching TV, or literally almost anything else.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 11:22 |
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Well it's specifically to the problem of people needing jobs. If we're happy having people just muck about with hobbies and whatever then that works too. Enforcement would just be a fine or similar if you don't engage in politics like Australia's mandatory voting. Or maybe better you get paid for engaging in politics and simply don't get that money if you don't. As for rational debate I don't expect that necessarily, just more educated debate. And on teachers it would be the same system as now, aka no guarantee. It's not supposed to have a utopian result, just an opportunity to have more people engaged in the process.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 11:27 |
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JVNO posted:Art is not a viable employment solution because it requires popularity to be economically beneficial. It relies on the fact there's only 1 mega popular celebrity making music/movies/etc. for every million regular schlubs who consume it. There will be no art based economy to replace our current paradigm of work. BobTheJanitor posted:There are already bots that are nearly good enough to do any physical labor job, without complex programming.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 12:30 |
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Cicero posted:I think what you see today with kickstarter, patreon, youtube, etc. shows this doesn't have to be the case. You can be moderately popular in the entertainment/art sector with some niche and still make a living. This kind of thing is only going to expand in the future. A Buttery Pastry fucked around with this message at 13:36 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 13:33 |
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Cicero posted:I think what you see today with kickstarter, patreon, youtube, etc. shows this doesn't have to be the case. You can be moderately popular in the entertainment/art sector with some niche and still make a living. This kind of thing is only going to expand in the future. The problem is that a lot of the people you're talking about here rarely make a decent living off of it. They might technically make enough to get by, but many also have day jobs and treat their creative work as a hobby that generates a little bit of income or as a second job. Some are obviously wildly successful, there's a very long tail of people who aren't making anywhere near minimum wage off of this kind of content creation. quote:Are you from 30 years in the future or something? We can barely make bipedal robots that can open a door and walk through it without falling over. They're right if they're talking about machines built to do a specific job, though. I doubt we're ever going to have or want general purpose, human-like robots for normal labor. Warehousing, for example, comes up a lot as a job that's difficult to automate because warehouses as they exist now are fairly chaotic environments - which is exactly why all of the work in that area is focused on warehouses that are built from the ground up with automation in mind.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 19:48 |
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Main Paineframe posted:The reason fast food jobs haven't been automated isn't because of cost, but rather because of versatility and because of the human element. There have been partially-automated fast food restaurants for years, it's just never caught on in a widespread fashion in the US or major European countries. A human worker can be moved to any job in the McDonalds or sent home, and can respond to arbitrary customer questions, while specialized robots are unitaskers that never go off-duty. You can't tell Burger Flipper 5000 to go clean the toilet after lunch rush ends, and it's helpless if someone wants a different toy in their Kids Meal. In real restaurant work, there's less flexibility but much more human interaction. This is an interesting take.. Manna posted:To solve the problem, Burger-G contracted with a software consultant and commissioned a piece of software. The goal of the software was to replace the managers and tell the employees what to do in a more controllable way. Manna version 1.0 was born. There is more, and I find it fascinating.
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:16 |
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LeJackal posted:There is more, and I find it fascinating. Where?
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:19 |
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I'm assuming here: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm first google hit
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:25 |
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Pollyanna posted:Where? It's a book Manna: Two Visions of Humanity's Future Chapter 1 here: http://marshallbrain.com/manna1.htm This not a real software in development, just how this guy thinks automation will happen, and how it will affect things. Edit: It has a wiki page Plot Summary quote:The fictional story is set in 2050 and takes place in Cary, North Carolina before the narrator flies to Australia. The narrator starts at a minimum wage job at Burger-G before being laid-off, primarily due to the Manna, a computer management system, replacing people in the service industry. He then takes a bus to a small government provided welfare dormitory where he meets a friend. Soon after, he is visited by two girls who tell him that he's invited to live in Australia because his father bought stock in the Australia Project years prior. The narrator then goes on to discover the many aspects of the Australia Project. OhFunny fucked around with this message at 23:35 on Dec 4, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:31 |
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Cicero posted:I think what you see today with kickstarter, patreon, youtube, etc. shows this doesn't have to be the case. You can be moderately popular in the entertainment/art sector with some niche and still make a living. This kind of thing is only going to expand in the future. why is this extremely marginal business model, only really viable at all in the past decade and only for a relative handful of well-positioned people, going to become the new paradigm when there's vastly more desperate people struggling to get in at the supply side and vastly fewer consumers with discretionary money to blow on the demand side? Not enough else left for Amazon shareholders to spend their cash on? The other side of the namedropping silicon valley #brands as an answer to mass-scale unemployment is bittorrent, tumblr, youtube again. People who aren't sure where their next meal's coming from aren't the primary supporters of the arts, and technology's made it easier than ever for someone with more time than money to rip off most profitable (because reproducible, resellable) forms of artwork for free. It used to be that fine art was the luxury of the idle rich; now paying artists is. Right now we're in a narrow window where micropayment schemes have allowed producers to sell to the entire global middle class at once, whose constituents have small individual amounts of disposable income to blow on small-potatoes bespoke/niche work but who collectively can make up in volume; that middle class goes away, as it will when nearly half of your potential customers are out of a job, Kickstarter and Patreon go away. When all the actually valuable careers that've outcompeted cottage industry as sources of income for so long are getting annihilated you aren't going to switch to an economy founded on the inefficient smalltime pieceworkers who once subsisted on their spare change selling twee knitted moustache-print coffee mug cozies to each other and just carry on. A Wizard of Goatse fucked around with this message at 00:08 on Dec 5, 2016 |
# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:32 |
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LeJackal posted:This is an interesting take.. this is beautiful, I look forward to the day when petty tyrant managers have been rendered obsolete
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# ? Dec 4, 2016 23:44 |
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Marijuana Nihilist posted:this is beautiful, I look forward to the day when petty tyrant managers have been rendered obsolete
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 00:29 |
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Phone posting, so I'll just say that anyone reading this thread should check out Four Futures And also any other book recommendations, share em here or have your robots share
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 01:49 |
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I frankly don't want to work. I don't want to get up early. I don't want to have to be somewhere every day. I don't want to leave my house if I don't want to. I don't want to dread the next day because I know I have to get up early and go to work. I don't want to deal with customers. I don't want to wear a uniform. Automation sounds loving sweet. I hope it happens really fast and I have an excuse to be unemployed. I like having lots and lots of free time. I just want to spend all of my time doing whatever I want. Enjoy every evening without worrying about having to get my rear end up the next morning. Just go wherever I want, whenever I want. Just blow an entire afternoon doing nothing, but that's okay because there's always tomorrow, and the next day, and the day after that... Hurry the gently caress up, technology.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 02:26 |
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Blue Star posted:I frankly don't want to work.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 04:04 |
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Rent-A-Cop posted:Must be nice to have rich parents. Nah I work food service. Minimum wage, part time. I cant wait for a robot to do this poo poo so I don't have to. It's going to be so awesome when people are like "Get a job you lazy bum", and i'm like "LOL I can't because the robots". I am aware that when automation takes over and millions of people are unemployed and unemployable, that we'll just end up as Soylent Green or someshit. "Good", I say. At least then I wont have to have a dumb job.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 04:14 |
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Cicero posted:Are you from 30 years in the future or something? We can barely make bipedal robots that can open a door and walk through it without falling over. Just a nit pick, but we have at least one that can meet those goals. I'm pretty sure there are a couple more but this one is the most impressive imo. We will have functional, generalist manual labor robots much sooner than 30 years. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rVlhMGQgDkY
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 05:23 |
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Freakazoid_ posted:Just a nit pick, but we have at least one that can meet those goals. I'm pretty sure there are a couple more but this one is the most impressive imo. quote:We will have functional, generalist manual labor robots much sooner than 30 years. Cicero fucked around with this message at 12:32 on Dec 5, 2016 |
# ? Dec 5, 2016 12:29 |
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Marijuana Nihilist posted:this is beautiful, I look forward to the day when petty tyrant managers have been rendered obsolete And then a bug in the software wildly appears. "Please cease your current activity and go clean the restroom." *employee does so* "I see you are in the restroom, while here, please clean it." (manager bot docks employee 5 performance points) *restroom is already clean* "I see you are in the restroom, while here, please clean it." (manager bot docks employee 5 performance points) *employee leaves the clean restroom* "There's an issue with the restroom, your next task is to clean it." (manager bot docks employee 5 performance points) *employee enters the clean restroom, has nothing to do, leaves* "There's an issue with the restroom, your next task is to clean it." (manager bot docks employee 5 performance points) Repeat ad infinitum. Yeah, I can't see anything going wrong with this idea.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 12:56 |
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I read that story like 5 years ago and was all 'oh wow automated management's coming any day now surely check out bigdog'. Still waiting! It's a really convincing narrative but I get the feeling the system described would poo poo itself at the first sign of real-life complexity/unpredictability (like irrational customers or employee brain farts) and you'd spend years with at best reduced management while bugs got ironed out.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 14:19 |
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Half-wit posted:And then a bug in the software wildly appears. Software bugs happens and sometimes cost companies millions. After the third repeat command, you will probably reporting a bug to the company. The bug will be fixed and a new code will be uploaded to the server. Maybe theres a reward campaing, and reporting bugs in the software gives a bonus.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 14:23 |
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Amazon just announced a checkout-less retail store: https://www.amazon.com/b?node=16008589011quote:What is Amazon Go? edit: It seems like the main weakness of checkoutless stores is still loose goods like produce, where they don't come in pre-made discrete quantities. Although I guess you could have a store like this and just treat loose goods as a special case where you have to go to a station to weigh them. Cicero fucked around with this message at 16:36 on Dec 5, 2016 |
# ? Dec 5, 2016 16:32 |
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Tei posted:Software bugs happens and sometimes cost companies millions. That or they replace 1 salaried manager and 4 asst managers for each of the 5 locations in a city, probably over half a million dollars a year, with 1 or 2 high 5 figure IT reps who barely work unless ManageBot has trouble. Still a pretty big win
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:02 |
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Death Bot posted:That or they replace 1 salaried manager and 4 asst managers for each of the 5 locations in a city, probably over half a million dollars a year, with 1 or 2 high 5 figure IT reps who barely work unless ManageBot has trouble. Still a pretty big win IDK. The kinds of things you really need managers for are also the kinds of things software isn't well suited to handling. For example: Software pings an employee and says it's time to clean the bathroom. How does the software verify that the bathroom was really cleaned vs the employee just wiping down the splatter sensor (if that is a thing) and taking a break? Is the software going to hire / fire workers? Will the software be able to open / run the store on no notice if a keyholder quits or calls out? Will the software be able to manage ordering, evaluating maintinence needs, and interacting with franchisees? Like...I can imagine a world in which a computer is doing a version of all those things and hundreds more in a business, but I can't imagine it being anything but awful for the owners, the employees and probably the customers.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:23 |
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wateroverfire posted:Like...I can imagine a world in which a computer is doing a version of all those things and hundreds more in a business, but I can't imagine it being anything but awful for the owners, the employees and probably the customers. Not saying that I expect middle management to be automated away any time soon, but even if it happens nobody is expecting managers to go away entirely. The idea is that you reduce the amount of labor needed to get the job done while keeping someone available to respond to situations as they come up. Like Death Bot was saying, you'd still have someone filling the role of a manager, you just reduce their workload with software to the point where having the same number of management employees physically present in each location is no longer necessary.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:33 |
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Duuuuuude
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:34 |
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LeJackal posted:This is an interesting take.. Sounds like it was written by someone who's never worked fast food. The manager's role isn't to efficiently tell people how to do things, it's to efficiently yell at people who are doing things wrong, and to adapt to unforeseen situations. "Manna", as described, is basically a glorified scheduler which estimates when things should be done based on statistical analysis and rudimentary sensors - except for some reason it has a synthesized voice, and for some reason the writer thinks the employees would be thrilled to be wearing location trackers so that an annoying computer voice could micromanage their every footstep.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:35 |
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Main Paineframe posted:Sounds like it was written by someone who's never worked fast food. The manager's role isn't to efficiently tell people how to do things, it's to efficiently yell at people who are doing things wrong, and to adapt to unforeseen situations. "Manna", as described, is basically a glorified scheduler which estimates when things should be done based on statistical analysis and rudimentary sensors - except for some reason it has a synthesized voice, and for some reason the writer thinks the employees would be thrilled to be wearing location trackers so that an annoying computer voice could micromanage their every footstep.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 17:43 |
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Solved by electric shock collars? Okay. Cool. Sounds good man.
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 18:13 |
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# ? May 15, 2024 04:02 |
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Naw a trained monkey could do what a manager does turn it over to HAL 9000 motherfuckers
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# ? Dec 5, 2016 18:28 |