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Are there any political parties anywhere in the world that are at least semi-coherently trying to address this issue? This could be the big break the Left needs after failing globally with the liberal capitalism + identity politics combo. All I've heard are some unsuccessful attempts to introduce universal income, I think in Switzerland and Netherlands. It's the first step I guess but I don't know how that can work without serious changes in the tax system or some other way to redistribute wealth. As people become unemployed the state will collect less taxes and at the same time will have to increase spending to pay them universal income.
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Dec 6, 2016 13:19
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owl_pellet posted:I am interested in this topic because of the possible implications it has for creating more robust social security systems such as basic income or a social dividend, or to a somewhat lesser extent minimum income. What are the chances that something like this 1) gets implemented at all and 2) is implemented in a fairly reasonable period of time (I'm tempted to say 10 years here but "reasonable" for something that massive is probably more like 20)? Chances are decent if you live in a progressive European country. http://www.theatlantic.com/business/archive/2016/06/netherlands-utrecht-universal-basic-income-experiment/487883/ Shbobdb posted:UBI is a worthless idea since it props up capitalism in the dumbest way possible. Markets would exploit it in the name of fairness and efficiency while politicians would gut it in the name of shared sacrifice and belt-tightening. UBI might have to deal a blow to the current capitalist system since there simply isn't enough money to implement it. I think it's the best chance the socialists have because they are losing ground everywhere. And what specific exploits do you see happening? Markets try to exploit whatever system is in place.
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Dec 8, 2016 10:55
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Tei posted:You guys are critizing UBI, and is not a good idea to critize something that you don't have a alternative too. (If you don't have a alternative to something, you have to accept it even if is really bad). Hey Ben, my unemployed buddy... Hop in the car, I need to buy groceries for the week. You do have your card with you, right?
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Dec 8, 2016 12:13
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Orange Devil posted:And are white. No way current European political sentiment is going to be ok with providing anything as radical as a mincome to non-whites. How's race involved with this? Do you for some reason mean 'refugees' when you say 'non-white'? I find it hard to believe that the 250 residents of Utrecht will be discriminated based on race. If anything, I'd expect that there will be more minorities among them than in the national average.
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Dec 8, 2016 14:52
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I work as a project manager and I can't even begin to imagine how my job could be automated. I have to be a psychologist and a product designer and make decisions from marketing to technology. Either I'm deluding myself or the companies that I've been working for are too small and chaotic for that kind of automation.
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Dec 23, 2016 11:44
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I think that guy is a Markov chain bot operating with keywords 'robots', 'singularity' and 'millennials'.
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Dec 26, 2016 22:58
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Yeah, the technology is here and it's not even cutting edge. Cashiers in McD also serve you food, so a kiosk would replace only a part of the cashier's job. To extract more value from kiosks you need a different process and a different setup of the restaurant. Maybe a kiosk for each table. My guess is they are not ready yet for such drastic changes. Or, maybe their research shows that customers like it when a real person takes their order.
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Dec 27, 2016 00:41
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Paradoxish posted:Hell, I already don't know anyone who prefers ordering fast food in person/at a drive through if there's an app available and that's barely been a thing for two years. These preferences are interesting. For me personally, communication with a person is a positive. I don't know if there are apps available for fast food places in my city and even if they are, I wouldn't use them. I spend enough of my time with computers and I don't need more apps and more interaction with software when I'm outside. It's probably different with millennials and younger who grew up with a smartphone. Maybe the future is alienated people who seek to minimize face time with anyone as it's awkward and inefficient. 
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Dec 27, 2016 11:22
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Tei posted:Just has a joke: This already exists. It's called a web shop. Here's another look at the future of shopping (and everything). https://vimeo.com/166807261 Identity jokes aside, I'd say it's pretty convincing. Doctor Malaver fucked around with this message at 22:14 on Dec 28, 2016 |
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Dec 28, 2016 22:10
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I don't understand what's supposed to be funny about that guy. The most important question is whether your business is profitable or not. Whether it will return the investment in 2 years or 5 years is almost inconsequential compared to the first question. That's why he doesn't need to speak about the upfront cost. Besides, he has no furniture or bathroom facilities or gaudy decoration -- it's not like it cost millions to set it up. As for the crowbar problem, we can imagine he has an alarm system. Are there people who will risk that to steal a sack of .99$ soda and $9.99 perfumes? I guess so, but ordinary businesses get burglarized too.
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Feb 5, 2017 11:40
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Ignatius M. Meen posted:It's not that someone wouldn't get the idea to do that in literally any other store, it's about the deterrent effect of having people actually present running the store as opposed to a place that looks completely unattended. Not to mention the effect of having the appearance of security cameras also has an effect on how likely people think they are to get caught stealing stuff. Granted, the prices might actually be comparatively low enough that busting in the machines isn't worth it but that doesn't make it not a thing, unless you think Walmart and gas stations just like wasting money on fake security cameras. It's funny because the guy seems the type who will be completely blindsided the first time his foolproof plan to deal with shoplifting fails and have no actual plan in place to deal with it. LOL.. Why, because he's an Indian who dresses flashy? He's been in business for 40 years but a D&D goon expert knows better from looking at two photos. Yeah I'm sure that if someone vandalizes a machine he'll be completely dumbfounded because that possibility never crossed his mind. throw to first drat IT posted:I assume that nobody produces vending machines that are easy to crowbar open. They aren't really meant to be moved so having all vulnerable parts safeguarded by good inch of steel probably is safe enough. Or maybe the guy is an idiot and his machines are made of tin, who knows. He certainly doesn't produce the machines, and in fact he doesn't even have to own them. If they turn out to be poorly protected, he can get a different model. As for keeping the place shut down, you can do that with most businesses. You can stick glue in ATM slots, throw bricks through store windows, make scenes in restaurants, spray paint over anything. Whatever, what's the point? It's a legitimate business idea, much cheaper and much simpler to execute than for instance opening a bar. It's not entirely risk-free but nothing is. He risks someone taking a dump  but he doesn't risk a hundred other things related to staff, storage, toilets, stealing...
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Feb 5, 2017 23:26
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I can see the social value of walking to the local grocery store, greeting your neighbour and chatting with the clerk who knows you by name. Much less so if you drive to a shopping mall where you'll pass a hundred people but none of them mean anything to you.
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Feb 7, 2017 11:39
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Teal posted:And when it's about just meeting local people in sake of meeting them, I don't see how it's better to meet them in a grocery store rather than meet them while watching a sports event or a theatre play or a concert, or just walking a dog in the park, or loving whatever. Unless you go to concerts and plays in a local community center or school, it's not a community bonding experience. Walking the dog is but not everybody has a dog.
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Feb 7, 2017 14:56
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:Technology just needs to be stopped at the level it was where I was growing up when it was good and natural. Not all this future stuff that is scary and bad. Half-wit posted:Stopping technological progress sounds like a great way to lose the war against Eurasia. Sure but it is possible to act between two extremes. One extreme being the strawman that you are attacking and the other "automate whatever you want, fire as many people as you want, the only thing that matters is profit".
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Feb 7, 2017 15:02
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:If you are talking about laws that delay things by a few months or a year or two to make a better and more orderly transition then cool, fine. There are places (New Jersey, Oregon, Brazil) where you can't pump gas on your own -- an attendant has to do it. Is it absurd? I don't know. Is it awful for everyone? Obviously it isn't awful for the attendants because they would otherwise quit. It isn't awful for drivers either because they would pressure for this to be changed. Their feelings probably vary from "don't care" to "very slightly inconvenienced". Jobs can be protected from other kinds of competition too. There are local laws and regulations about who can have a speaking role in a film or how many pharmacies can open in a town. Why wouldn't there be regulations about what proportion of employees you can automate? Note that I'm not proposing this as a great solution, I'm merely asking how that would be fundamentally different from other regulations.
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Feb 7, 2017 16:52
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Dead Reckoning posted:Except the same technologies which are making human labor obsolete are making it ever easier for a small minority and their enforcers to maintain control over large numbers of people. I'm quite serious when I say that someone with access to, say, an AI that uses psychometric data to help its owner influence things like buying preferences and election results, would be able to treat the rest of the population as irrelevant. Plus the fact that it is impossible to live and organize in 21st century society without going online and leaving a digital trail means that the owners of the infrastructure can use the same tools to marginalize any effective resistance and strangle it in the crib. Try to take over Facebook by organizing on a Facebook group. Peasants without swords and armor cannot hope to resist feudals who have them.
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Feb 14, 2017 10:03
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ColoradoCleric posted:How does a currency have any value when you're just giving it away to burn through resources? The value of currency doesn't depend on whether you are giving it in exchange for work or in exchange for nothing. And economy is more complicated than this guy's interpretation. In Nordic countries welfare is strong and cost the state a lot and taxes are high and so are the prices, but that didn't push them into any vicious circle. Also not all prices are high. Services and alcohol yes but food no. He also says stuff like "UBI would cost X$ but since there are cases where people currently receive more than they would with UBI, it means that it would be increased and cost XY$ instead" which he just made up on the spot. Why wouldn't some people receive less? In short, for UBI discussion I would suggest you look for economists and not a historian/men's rights/family advice radio personality.
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Feb 14, 2017 11:09
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Governments might need to partially nationalize companies over certain worth, to make sure enough resources are going to funding UBI and other programs that keep people from rioting. Direct control is better than playing raise/evade taxes.
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Mar 1, 2017 11:47
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ElCondemn posted:So you're saying we should ignore the data and just assume it's going to be bad? Raising the standard of living in the world is the solution to all the problems you seem to think are unsolvable. The data shows that violence, population growth and every other metric that matters becomes better as the standard of living improves(access to healthcare, housing, food etc). The first part of your post is "no to pessimism, yes to data", the second part is "yes to optimism, no to data".
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Mar 20, 2017 01:24
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Rastor posted:Berkeley researchers teach computers to be curious Quoting from a month ago but... What's the difference between this and setting the algorithm to go for the most profitable move only 90% of the time? Ten % of the time pick a sequence of less profitable ones. Then with new knowledge and in a new situation go back to the most profitable move etc.
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Jun 23, 2017 00:23
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Paradoxish posted:Japan has been playing around with automation in care homes, but that doesn't do much to help elderly who are still living on their own and whose survival and quality of life depends on home caregivers. Home health aides do everything from laundry to cooking to shopping to helping with grooming and bathing. We're as far away as ever from having robots that can do all of that independently. There's probably a segment of those living independently who do it because they can't afford a care home. Automation in care homes should make them more affordable.
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Jul 3, 2017 16:27
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Paradoxish posted:I love that the administrators here are complaining that they can't find anyone who wants to work for $10.50/hour. Maybe that's actually pretty high for the part of Wisconsin the factory is located in, but in my area that's less than you'd be offered for decent retail work. I'm sure factory jobs offer drastically more reliable hours than most retail work, but it shouldn't be surprising that nobody wants to do monotonous, physically demanding work for near poverty-level wages. Yeah the article seems to take a very pro-robot stance, going out of its way to describe almost all workers as unreliable drunks. And then it reveals that even the model worker earns so little she can barely cover the bills and can't afford new clothes. If that was reward for hard work I'd start drinking and slacking off too. Solkanar512 posted:Until one of those planes crash because a sensor got hosed up and didn't know how to deal with conflicting or incorrect information. That happens to human pilots too. Software pilots would be immune to pilot suicides, pilots bringing kids into cockpit, pilots passing out, and possibly pilots relenting to dangerous requests and hi-jacking too. In short, I'd fly a software controlled plane even without a lower price.
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Aug 8, 2017 19:41
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Cars are chess and planes are go. It might look to us that flying an airplane is so much more complicated than driving, but for AI it will be just several more years of development. It's just numbers - yaw is X, pitch is Y, height is Z, engine temperature is W, etc. The whole "But Certification!!" line of argument actually works against you since it reminds us how much education of pilots costs and that it isn't universal. And even if pilots don't cost so much relative to the cost of the trip compared to what drivers cost, they can go on strikes. That alone is a good incentive for airlines to want to replace them. But first they'll wait for the public to get accustomed to driverless cars. Note that I'm not welcoming this future, I'm just trying to objectively predict it.
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Aug 13, 2017 00:33
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Owlofcreamcheese posted:They fly space ships to saturn remotely and with computers. Indeed they do but I'm not sure how that addresses my post.
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Aug 13, 2017 00:49
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asdf32 posted:Did you get your analogy wrong (chess is easier for AI than GO)? Planes are indeed easier to automate - the challenge automating a plane is the complexity of a plane but they fly in open and heavily regulated space and only touch down in special locations which are loaded with instruments and infrastructure. A plane flying at 30,000 ft has huge margins of error. Thanks, I didn't consider that. Solkanar512 posted:I have no problem considering changes, I have a problem with folks like you and OOCC who are completely unwilling to address the difficulties and risks of getting from the status quo to your automated future. They have been doing that - addressing difficulties and risks which you bring up. You haven't been very good at it, though, because your posting is mostly irritated demands for respect. What you might be getting wrong is that when IT people say that replacing pilots would be easy, they primarily think about the software aspect of the problem. Can AI do it in the immediate future or not? Apparently Yes - at least I haven't seen any good arguments against. It might not happen soon because of public reactions, union agreements, legislature, adapting planes, changes to flight control, etc... But it's just a matter for the industry to gauge whether it would be worth it in 10 years or 30.
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Aug 13, 2017 21:49
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Solkanar512 posted:I'm not going to apologize for wanting people to actually learn about poo poo before they believe that they can come in and disrupt it. Our safety record is incredible and I'm not going to let a bunch of amateurs think that it's a good idea to go around screwing that up without a whole lot of testing and data showing actual improvement. You're fighting a strawman, more precisely OOCC in a strawman form coming to the nearest airport to replace pilots with an exe file he put together over the weekend. It should be obvious that these changes will be gradual, will include enormous amounts of testing, will also include all the applicable industry best practices, and will be monitored and led by people who have much more experience in the field than you have.
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Aug 15, 2017 12:36
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GEMorris posted:The fact that these SV true believers can't accept this or acknowledge that the difficulty this poses makes the problem orders of magnitude more difficult to solve is the crazy part. Just gotta say "disrupt" and "innovate" enough and the magic will happen. GEMorris posted:The idea that some SV wunderkids are going to automate passenger flight travel in the next 10 years is loving laughable though. Please quote posts where people a) use the word 'disrupt' with regards to automating pilots b) same for 'innovate' c) claim that passenger flight travel will be automated in 10 years
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Aug 21, 2017 14:25
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GEMorris posted:You certainly imply 10 years is possible, and only held back by "public reactions, union agreements, legislature, adapting planes, changes to flight control, etc..." That is on the lower end of my estimate but yeah, it should be possible. Note that I'm not saying it's possible that all pilots will be replaced by 2027 (or ever)... but it's possible that we will see a commercial pilotless flight by then. Not a 747 on a transatlantic flight packed with passengers, but maybe a cargo flight between two close airports in the off-season... Yep.
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Aug 21, 2017 17:24
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Logistics and home delivery aren't sexy like piloting but I've been thinking about what automation will cause there. As it gets cheaper and simpler to buy stuff online, and as generations that are uncomfortable and unused to it start to slowly die out... What happens with plain old stores? It's not just a matter of lost jobs but potentially a change of what means living in a town. People shop less in stores, stores close, people have even less incentive to go out shopping, more stores close, etc. You'll still have bars, restaurants and other services but are there enough such businesses to fill all the empty storefronts? What will town centers look like?I'm asking that as an European, I guess in the US they often don't look like much. :/ I'm ranting without much data. I read about malls closing in US in 2016 and some retailers reducing the number of stores... But I also read today that "The national unemployment rate now stands at a 4.3%, a 16-year low. But month after month, it is the low-wage sectors – fast food, retail, healthcare – that have added new jobs." which seems to suggest an opposite trend (retail adding jobs). Thoughts welcome!
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Aug 21, 2017 23:23
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ElCondemn posted:Malls and traditional retail outlets are closing all the time, the growth in the retail industry is for online services like amazon, warby parker, and other online retailers. But also keep in mind retail includes everything from groceries to prescription drugs, it's not just t-shirt stores. So while we're seeing Gap's close down we're seeing a lot more online retailers and lots of growth in service jobs like fast food and health care. But a lot of this stuff is pretty closely tied to population growth rates. Is there data for brick-n-mortar retailers specifically? Solkanar512 posted:As far as home delivery is concerned, how do you get past the issue of simple vandalism? I've seen ads for prototypes of robots that are essentially rolling safes but it seems like a trivial exercise to put a garbage bag over it, or hit it with a stun gun, steal it and raid it for the contents or enjoy the sheer vandalism aspect of the exercise. Drones are a little more protected given that it's harder to bring one down (though you'll need a whole different type of system to navigate then through dense areas) but I think still suffer from similar issues. Yeah I don't understand what they need them for. If we are going to have self-driving cars you could have a robot-driven delivery vehicle pull up your driveway and send you a notification through the app. You get out and take your package. The vehicle goes to the next customer. Sounds cheaper than having a small vehicle (driving or flying) that would only take care of one customer at a time.
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Aug 22, 2017 00:03
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Freakazoid_ posted:Borrowing from the USPOL thread: Why Workers Are Losing to Capitalists quote:A perfect storm of robots and free trade -- and some monopoly power to boot -- could be shifting power from the proletariat to the capitalists. That's optimistic, the author believes that the proletariat still has some power.
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Oct 25, 2017 18:49
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On the topic of creepy videos, I don't agree with the author dismissing without hesitation human supervision. I bet a dozen curators working full time would make a difference. You don't need to ban 100% of creepy videos, you just need to ban and keep banning enough of them to make it unprofitable for producers. Or to make them raise the quality / reduce the creepiness of their work. A dozen wouldn't do? Then hire more and don't try telling us that you can't afford them. It seems that we've yielded to algorithms and Big Software without a fight. Imagine if a TV station was producing stuff like that - they'd be shut down in a day. But since it's Youtube and it's a battle of their algorithms against other algorithms then we are made to believe that we are powerless.
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Nov 7, 2017 21:14
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Cicero posted:More of everybody's favorite, self-driving car news! Didn't some people in this thread argue that autonomous cars are still decades away? Because rain and snow, and because proof of concept is far from actual product on the market? And the thread is only a year old! Not sure, maybe it was another SA thread and more than a year ago but in any case this poo poo is coming fast.
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Dec 5, 2017 09:25
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Doctor Malaver posted:On the topic of creepy videos, I don't agree with the author dismissing without hesitation human supervision. I bet a dozen curators working full time would make a difference. You don't need to ban 100% of creepy videos, you just need to ban and keep banning enough of them to make it unprofitable for producers. Or to make them raise the quality / reduce the creepiness of their work. A dozen wouldn't do? Then hire more and don't try telling us that you can't afford them. Google to hire thousands of moderators after outcry over YouTube abuse videos Goon's outcry heard by Google
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Dec 5, 2017 11:32
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Tasmantor posted:could someone automate the self driving car derails? How is discussing automated cars a derail from discussing automation?
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Dec 5, 2017 20:32
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Rastor posted:They don't mean "AI projects", they mean projects to solve some business problem / automate some process with AI. And there are orders of magnitude more of those than 10,000. Yeah. In my company that's in an unrelated field (publishing) and has a small in-house development team, the boss already inquired about solving an issue with AI. Slavvy posted:It's on the OP. Well nobody is, to quote the OP, "mad about automated cars!!". The developments in that area get a mention because they have wide social consequences and also interest a lot of posters in the thread, so... 
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Dec 5, 2017 22:01
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I'm currently evaluating an automation product for work - Amazon Polly. It's a text-to-speech service that might help with producing audio books. It's not quite there yet, but it comes with a Markup Language so you can alter individual words and phonemes that didn't turn out right. We probably won't use it after all but it's close - a year from now we probably will. Good news for blind people who will get easier access to audio books, bad news for professional voice actors. :/
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Dec 5, 2017 23:35
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It's very good for short stuff. In longer paragraphs it lacks a natural rhythm that a human has.
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Dec 6, 2017 01:27
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ElCondemn posted:What is your definition of "dystopia"? Even with all the bad poo poo happening in the world we have less crime, less hunger, less of every conceivable negative metric possible. Everything is improving over time, despite the rapid movement towards development and automation. More people than ever have access to clean water, housing, the internet, information, everything is better now than it was 20 years ago. Africans are drowning in thousands in the Mediterranean trying to reach Europe. They have shoes and shirts and pants and can afford (after selling everything they own) the trip to Libya so they are according to metrics richer than their ancestors and yet they're more desperate. With the population boom there and climate change destroying more and more land, this trend is likely to accelerate. Nigeria and Pakistan together have almost half a billion people. I wonder what work will all those people do while we wait for this just post-capitalist system that hasn't even begun to take even the most vague form. This isn't all the fault of automation but I'm giving you information that opposes your rosy "Everything is improving over time" view. And that's not even getting into pollution.
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Dec 8, 2017 09:57
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ElCondemn posted:The worst thing about these doomsayers is that they just can’t see the flaw in their argument, they think employment is paramount to a functioning society. Well it's been so far, hasn't it? I'll welcome employment-free society with open arms if somebody shows me how's it supposed to work and how we're going to get there. So far nobody came even close. In the mean time, I'll stick to an argument that might be flawed rather than wishful thinking, which is your response.
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Dec 8, 2017 17:51
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