Automation Thread: Imagine johnny 5 squashing your job, forever

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Automation Thread: Imagine johnny 5 squashing your job, forever

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Orange Devil posted:

The biggest question in economics of the next decades is going to be "why must everyone work?". And the answer is, except for outdated morality bullshit, we really, really don't need everyone to work.

The other big question will be to determine what incentive those with money and power will have for not letting the economically unnecessary masses starve and die of preventable diseases and exposure to toxic environmental conditions.

Clearly, appealing to their conscience isn't and won't work. The only solution will be for some of the desperate people to finally stop blaming themselves and fighting each other, and go after the ones actually causing all of the needless misery. Guillotines are an excellent investment for poor people.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 14:23

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 09:16

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Talmonis posted:

Guillotines are bougie French poo poo. Machetes are all you need. Hatians had the right idea.

Maybe, but I find it more fitting to destroy the wealthy using technology that is ruthlessly efficient and dehumanizing.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 15:37

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

bag em and tag em posted:

"That literally can't happen because how will the rich stay rich without people to buy things," doesn't take into account how society has worked like that for plenty of periods of our history. The gilded age, slave economies, hell feudalism, all worked out just great for the powerful rich while the teeming masses all got to die in the streets or under labor conditions that equated to manslaughter.

Some people got mad at Krugman a while back because he calculated a few different possible equilibria for a stable economy, and one of the ways was for there to be a super rich class with practically all the money and resources, and a massive poor class that scrapes by building yachts and other frivolities for the rich people. In fact, that scenario is likely better than where we're headed, because the rich at least use their money for consumption in the economy rather than simply horde it.

# ¿ Dec 2, 2016 19:51

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Higsian posted:

What if we started requiring people to be actually engaged in politics?

What is your enforcement mechanism? And why do you think it would result in more rational debate than a struggle of ideology to control who this new army of "teachers" will be?

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.

# ¿ Dec 4, 2016 11:22

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Paradoxish posted:

Here's a sort of interesting, sort of automation related story: http://arstechnica.com/science/2017/01/algorithm-does-real-time-city-wide-ridesharing/

Good job, Big Data. You've invented the bus.

# ¿ Jan 6, 2017 00:45

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Solkanar512 posted:

I think my biggest concern about autonomous cars (and drones for that matter) isn't the technology but rather the culture of the companies making them.

These companies are accustomed to exponential growth, pushing the boundaries, skirting regulations, issuing patches after release and so on. That's fine for software. Yet it sets up some really lovely attitudes, habits and expectations when it comes to designing things that will contain people and transport them at speed in close proximity with others.

I work in aerospace, and I like to remind my friends in tech that when one of my company's products crash, it's on the front page of every major newspaper in the world. The majority of the regulations we follow designing, building or maintaining our products were made because someone died. There are museums and memorials scattered all over the world dedicated to those who died because someone hosed up. One museum at Haneda Airport contains personal effects from the victims of JAL Flight 123, including handwritten farewell notes from victims to their families. 520 people died, as well as a maintenance manager and an engineer who both committed suicide for signing off on the faulty repair. I'm told that JAL employees visit each year to honor those who were lost and to remember why you don't cut corners.

I know that cars aren't airplanes, but unlike everything else in tech, loving up/going cheap/ignoring regulations will get people killed and the attitudes of tech employees just aren't instilling me with much confidence.

The next time you're on an airplane, and you roll your eyes when they do the demonstration on how to unbuckle your seatbelt, realize that such a warning became mandatory after crash investigators finally figured out why they kept finding charred skeletal remains in plane wreckage with broken thumbs.

# ¿ Jan 7, 2017 23:47

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Ignatius M. Meen posted:

The only thing that will make things different this time from the time Luddites smashed frames is that there won't be anywhere else for labor to go besides jail and street riots

Plenty of land for mass graves.

# ¿ Jan 14, 2017 00:19

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

galagazombie posted:

Speaking of "right to repair" and related things. is there a danger of automation making people unable to perform even basic tasks. Before you start I don't mean in a "Lazy kids these days!" fashion, I mean in the sense mentioned earlier of companies prohibiting people from taking apart/modifying things they own. In the car example with all these proprietary tools and DMCA closed off CPUs it's not that people will be too lazy to learn how to repair cars, It's that companies will make it so they can't even if they want to. If everything gets automated but no one is allowed to look inside the box to see how things work without getting sued into oblivion (unless your part of some corporate approved mechanic caste) you get to the point where its hard to know how things get done on more than the most theoretical level.

It's sometimes not even something they intend. Over time, things are just getting more complicated, and thus more difficult to repair, or to even manufacture in a way that they could be repaired. This is especially true for electronics, which are not only getting more complicated, but much, much smaller over time.

For example, I used to fix iPods in college for some extra pocket money, and while it wasn't trivial to get the case apart, it wasn't too difficult. Once inside, it was pretty easy to get to the battery and the capacitive touch scroll wheel assembly and hard drive, which was connected by an old-fashioned ribbon with pin connectors. 90% of the time, a problem could be traced to one of those three things, and easily replaced, and the iPod was as good as new. With newer generation iPods and iPhones, getting the case apart is now extremely difficult without specialized tools, and it is not so easy to identify, much less access and remove, anything other than the battery. The ribbon and pin connector has been replaced by a kind of flimsy plastic with metallic tracks printed on it sort of like a bendable PCB, and when it is taken out of the hard drive, it can't be put back. I think they did this exclusively to be able to make the iPod/iPhone thinner and smaller, and it wasn't some attempt to make it irreparable, but that's essentially the effect.

# ¿ Jan 16, 2017 16:51

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Lightning Lord posted:

We just don't want to face the fact that droves of unemployed poor people are going to be slaughtered by near-future overlords

Actual slaughtering is reserved for minority groups. The poor will just be left to starve and die from untreated illnesses and exposure to toxic environments (a.k.a. anywhere outside).

# ¿ Jun 26, 2017 10:10

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

Rastor posted:

Ars reporter tries on the car seat costume:

https://arstechnica.com/cars/2017/09/i-sat-in-the-seat-suit-of-fords-fake-self-driving-car/

quote:

Schaudt also said he alerted Arlington County officials of the test. The car was never pulled over, though one police officer shook his head as he drove by on a motorcycle, according to Schaudt.

lol

# ¿ Sep 15, 2017 09:19

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

ryonguy posted:

Clearly the problem is those darn homeless people, let's put them into camps so we can better concentrate on their needs.

Everything is coming together nicely for the Bell Riots to occur on schedule in 2024.

# ¿ Dec 15, 2017 13:22

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# ¿ Apr 29, 2024 09:16

Inferior Third Season: Jan 15, 2005

mobby_6kl posted:

On the other hand, in Korea:

My favorite part of the Olympics is watching companies and groups try to capitalize on the short window of popularity by using tons of Olympic visuals and imagery but not actually be able to use the word "Olympics" itself or show the Olympic rings.

# ¿ Feb 14, 2018 01:10

The Something Awful Forums > Discussion > Debate & Discussion > Automation Thread: Imagine johnny 5 squashing your job, forever