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Will robots steal our jobs?

ahhell said:
@Mr Keith,

In theory, UBI would be the fiscally conservative answer to a social safety net but:

Depending on the amount proposed if its universal and not means tested it will be more expensive than a means tested program.

Most libertarians and conservatives don't believe it would actually replace other programs but just be added on top.
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If it is added on top of other programs, then yes it will fail completely.

Means testing makes it no longer a UBI. Means testing costs money. It is far less expensive in overhead to have a UBI. The added cost of giving a UBI to those who don't need it can be easily compensated for in the tax code. I get an extra $10,000 per year in UBI but pay an extra $10,000 per year in income tax. No extra cost to the government. This does require a more transparent tax code, though, so it is really just pie in the sky dreaming at this point.
 
Dr. Keith said:
If it is added on top of other programs, then yes it will fail completely.

Means testing makes it no longer a UBI. Means testing costs money. It is far less expensive in overhead to have a UBI. The added cost of giving a UBI to those who don't need it can be easily compensated for in the tax code. I get an extra $10,000 per year in UBI but pay an extra $10,000 per year in income tax. No extra cost to the government. This does require a more transparent tax code, though, so it is really just pie in the sky dreaming at this point.
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Wouldn't a negative income tax be easier still?
 
theprestige said:
It's amazing that you don't see the hundred year track record. Technology has advanced. Population has increased. But unemployment has not kept up.

This signature is intended to irradiate people.
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Consider also that children no longer work, and retirement is now a thing. We have changed our ideas of who is considered part of the "workforce".
My father finished eighth grade and went to work, my mother 10th. She tells me stories of her brother begging his parents to let him stay in school ( high-school, not college ), but he had to go to work instead.

Consider also that "work" has changed from " those things which a person must do to exist in the best circumstances they can achieve " to " what is done in exchange for money " .
 
ahhell said:
Wouldn't a negative income tax be easier still?
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It might be functionally the same thing. I'm not sure which would be easier to administer. One of the advantages of the UBI is that everyone gets it, so there is no stigma associated with getting it.
 
Keep in mind also - the UBI is designed literally to keep people off the poverty line. It's a minimum income that allows you to get by. If you want more than that, you are free to seek other forms of income - whether that be a regular job, or a gig job, or artistic pursuits or whatever. It frees you up so that you can make a pittance doing the things you love to do, if you want.
 
ahhell said:
Its absolutely reasonable to point out that that claim has been made before about other technology. Historically, those claims were only true in the short term. Sure, steam engines aren't an exact parallel but it and other examples indicate that predictions of the end of work are probably premature.
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The highlighted bit is strawman territory.

Nevertheless, an incorrect view of history will lead to incorrect conclusions. In the past, it was possible to push the masses from primary industry (agriculture and "cottage" industries) into secondary industries (mass production and factories). It was then possible to push people from secondary industries to tertiary industries (services and entertainment). The problem is that there is no 'quaternary' industry to push people into.
 
psionl0 said:
The highlighted bit is strawman territory.

Nevertheless, an incorrect view of history will lead to incorrect conclusions. In the past, it was possible to push the masses from primary industry (agriculture and "cottage" industries) into secondary industries (mass production and factories). It was then possible to push people from secondary industries to tertiary industries (services and entertainment). The problem is that there is no 'quaternary' industry to push people into.
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And that's why we need UBI.
 
psionl0 said:
it has the potential to replace far more jobs than steam engines ever did - without creating new jobs in the process.
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So the technology is good enough to replace jobs, but not quite good enough to create jobs. Engineers need some more work on it, then.
 
psionl0 said:
The highlighted bit is strawman territory.

Nevertheless, an incorrect view of history will lead to incorrect conclusions. In the past, it was possible to push the masses from primary industry (agriculture and "cottage" industries) into secondary industries (mass production and factories). It was then possible to push people from secondary industries to tertiary industries (services and entertainment). The problem is that there is no 'quaternary' industry to push people into.
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Ok, not the end of work but the vast reduction of work?

The point is, that in the past they were saying the very same things, they were not able to predict the occupations that would arise as a result of new technology and as a result of the excess production it created which resulted in mass consumption of luxuries and services that had previously only be afforded by the elites.

We likely don't see the occupations that may arise in future. We likely don't see how much excess production robots will create that will spur demand for new luxury.

Are progamers secondary, tertiary, or quartiary, occupations in relation to coopers?

I'm not saying the robots will not take all our jobs, I'm just saying, historically when those claims have been made, they've proven less than accurate, repeatedly.

In short, yes, this industrial revolution is different but so was the one before this and the one before that and so on. In each there were folks predicting dire consequences to to lack of demand for labor or utopias do to the excess production. Neither has come true yet so we should be skeptical of those claims now.
 
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Here are some of my axioms: There will always be some jobs that only humans can do. Human desire is limitless.

Therefore, as robots take over more and more jobs, the result will be that more and more humans will enroll in the remaining professions, doing the jobs that robots cannot. And there will be no end to the demand for humans doing those jobs.

Beyond that, it's difficult for me to predict what the systems of economic productivity and distribution of wealth will look like, in a society where most of the automatable work has been automated.
 
theprestige said:
Here are some of my axioms: There will always be some jobs that only humans can do. Human desire is limitless.
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That sounds like magical thinking to me. You know that humans are made of the same stuff as robots, right? What sort of job can there be that only humans can do?
 
Darat said:
But for an expert system/AI you only need to do this once and voilà you can turn out millions of MDs with a simple copy command.
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Darat said:
You have missed that I was talking about what AI/expert systems (the nomenclature is an irrelevance) can do today, that is not theory that is reality.
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This doesn't exist today and there is as yet no theoretical basis for it to ever exist. How is that reality?
 
Roboramma said:
That sounds like magical thinking to me. You know that humans are made of the same stuff as robots, right? What sort of job can there be that only humans can do?
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I don't understand your assertion. If you are talking about an unknown but possible future technology then how is that different from magic? As of today, you don't even have to talk about humans. There are abilities that adult rats have and three year old children have that no AI has. This isn't much of a competition yet.
 
psionl0 said:
I don't know what you are complaining about. You are the one who brought up "steam donkeys" and "sails on schooners".

"Steam engines" seems to be the universal response to claims that technology threatens jobs.
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No, that is nothing like I said. All tools reduce human labor, all of them. There is nothing special about a steam donkey. A bronze ax head is better for cutting wood than a stone ax head. The point of the article I referenced is that we are now in a new age where jobs requiring intelligence will be displaced by intelligent robots. My point was that the author doesn't support this claim because his examples were tools that were very little different from previous tools. It may very well be that at some point a machine will be intelligent enough but that is not reality today.
 
Roboramma said:
That sounds like magical thinking to me. You know that humans are made of the same stuff as robots, right? What sort of job can there be that only humans can do?
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When robots take all the jobs and everyone is on UBI, people will be drawn to more creative and intellectual pursuits.

After all, under UBI, nobody needs a job.
 
barehl said:
I don't understand your assertion. If you are talking about an unknown but possible future technology then how is that different from magic?
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The laws of physics are what they are. Humans are just a very complex machine. There's no magic in that realization.

You might suggest that we will never learn enough to build machines with the same capabilities in other ways, but the fact that such machines can be built is proved by the fact that they exist.
 
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