Topic: Technological unemployment is (almost) here - page 7. (Read 88274 times)

Robots and automated systems have the potential to be near-ubiquitous in 2045, capable of carrying out extremely complex tasks with no human involvement. Potentially, machines could: carry out all manufacturing and agricultural tasks; repair themselves; as well as clean, cook and tidy. Advances in artificial intelligences could make machines so life-like that they are able to answer phones in call-centres, take care of children and even teach. Computers could potentially diagnose and treat almost every medical condition. If progress on this scale is made in the future, it is possible that there would be very few jobs still carried out by human beings, who could, in practice, be almost totally excluded from the workforce.

In richer countries, this large-scale automation of work would be likely to have a mostly positive effect, as governments would probably be able to provide their citizens with all the material comforts they need.  However, many people may initially struggle to achieve a sense of purpose and social status without work, with possible rises in cases of depression. Education systems may need to be totally redesigned to enable people to self-motivate and to gain satisfaction from activities other than work. Over time, when populations had become more used to a life without work, they may fill their time playing sport, painting, reading and composing music.

In poorer countries, however, large-scale automation of work could stall economic development, perhaps even reversing it. For example, foreign companies would be far less likely to employ cheap labour, as machines would be so much more cost-effective and efficient.  Some employment could initially remain, as poorer countries would be less likely to afford to use machines to carry out roles in their internal labour markets. Eventually, though, automated equipment would probably become cheap enough for even these countries to afford. Poorer governments may not be able to provide more than an extremely basic level of subsistence, meaning that people would have no way to improve their living conditions. This could lead them to become deeply frustrated and angry. Nevertheless, citizens would still receive some benefits from large-scale automation, such as charity-funded machines capable of providing very cheap diagnosis and treating disease. Mass protests and civil unrest could still develop, with ‘anti-robot’ movements becoming increasingly powerful.

If the demand falls by half, you have to increase cost/apple accordingly, otherwise you'll starve to death.
If there's competition who can keep the low prices - you're going down. But if your factory is on 100% of its cost/production efficiency and all the competitors are in the same position - then the market has to accept higher prices.

Are you assuming that every average, long-time-unemployed Joe will always have a piece of land/tools/seeds/skills and 1-2 years of spare time (during which he needs no food/shelter etc) required for his first apple trees to grow?

As history proves, during big financial crisises, when people started to starve, there were no massive 'migrations to the woods' to hunt and fish and create alternative economies/societies, but there were revolutions.

Not without changes to the current "capitalism-but-not-quite" system. There will be no benefit for general population without adjusting either ownership or distribution laws.

Therefore if you want everyone to profit from technological progress, you would have to move towards:
- planned economy
- unconditional income
or came up with some other solution.

A decline in demand exert a downward pressure on price, not the reverse.

In any case, if the pressure on price by customer is so that the cost of maintenance is above the price that customer would be willing to buy, then the business of making the factory run on AI will collapse.

How would it be replaced by human ?
Simple : if customers are poor and can't buy an AI produced apple, then they will simply start growing their own apple. (which by definition will have a lower cost, since they will always afford to grow their own apple trees)
This will bring back humans at work.

The equilibrium of AI factories versus Human factories only depends on the cost of AI versus cost of human labor.
However, the lower the cost of AI will become, the higher the chance that everybody will be able to profit from it, and, at an extreme point, working for money would not be required anymore and the unemployment problem is not relevant. (I don't think it will ever happen).

If lots of people were pushed to unemployment, and government don't provide them any kind of income, then they will form a small society and have their own economy, helping each other to produce food, cloth, housing etc...

Once they don't have any fiat money income, they will successfully get rid of the slavery of the existing fiat money system, they would start to use some community currency, bitcoin most likely

AI will always have a cost, if it does not, then we don't care about having a job because everybody will be taken cared by robots.

Fair enough, *if*  LF is proven wrong, we should have some idea of what to do. However, the Op's ideas both come from a far-far-left perspective that would require that almost all individual liberties be given up. I can't support that. If large scale unemployment were to become a huge problem that cannot be addressed, I suspect we could find better solutions, although I admit I can't think of many right now.

But with so high tax, companies will be reluctant to stay in the country and move the operation to other countries. Usually enterprises get the most income, they have many legal ways to avoid the tax. So the welfare condition purely depends on the income of the employees, which is constantly being outsourced to low cost countries

So while unemployment (number of people with zero income) is slowly increasing and demand is falling, the factory could just scale down its operations accordingly, and in theory could exist even with 90% unemployment.

But since the technology is already known and available, the cycle would be much faster and the shift could happen multiple times during 1 generation, making such reality impossible to live in.

If decline in demand will increase maintenance cost

then those costs will be passed onto customers by raising prices of food.

Anyway, the equilibrium at 100% unemployed is purely academic discussion

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Then, imagine that people are out of jobs because of automation, so they can't buy anything.
Well, it means that AI will not be able to be maintained, and factories staying with AI will just have to go bankrupt, liquidating their AI.

However, people always have needs to be satisfied and are willing to work for it. Which means that labor force will be willing to work into factories, while, at the same time, AI is getting destroyed by lack of maintenance.

The equilibrium depends on the price of getting AI maintained versus the price of physical labor.
In other words, the price of intellectual labor versus the price of physical labor.
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I wish I was born 100 years from now. I would be enjoying a welfare paycheck, I Don't even care if it's not a lot. I would be able to focus on leisure time, work on art and other things that I love that don't give me any money, while the machines work for us and the people that are really needed do their job and get paid a lot.

What if "Luddite fallacy" is a fallacy on its own? LF is basically based only on belief that if nothing bad happened 100-200 years ago, it won't happen again in the future.

As someone already wrote somewhere in this thread, there only 3 sectors: Farming (extraction of raw materials), Manufacturing and Services. Over the generations the workforce shifted from Farming to Manufacturing and then to Services, but there's nowhere to go from there.

Looking at possibilities of the technology we already know, it doesn't take much imagination to notice that vast majority (eventually all) of work could be fully automated when such technology is perfected.

I think the problem is people only think of automation as automation of production (robots working on factory line etc), while services seems to become automated at much faster rate lately.

So fallacy or not, it wouldn't hurt to have a scenario (plan B) on what to do when LF theory is proven wrong.

Useful links:
http://www.economicshelp.org/blog/6717/economics/the-luddite-fallacy/ (some interesting comments there)
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Three-sector_theory

Similar to what Bill Gates said, during the same interview when he talked about bitcoin iirc.

But the problem of AI taking over is not necessarily directly related to technological unemployment. Maybe AI will employ every human to do some kind of dirty work for 18 hours a day in exchange for a bowl of rice and glass of water...

As someone already wrote somewhere in this thread, there only 3 sectors: Farming (extraction of raw materials), Manufacturing and Services. Over the generations the workforce shifted from Farming to Manufacturing and then to Services, but there's nowhere to go from there.

It's been almost here for centuries now. This idea is called the Luddite fallacy.
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Similar to what Bill Gates said, during the same interview when he talked about bitcoin iirc.

But the problem of AI taking over is not necessarily directly related to technological unemployment. Maybe AI will employ every human to do some kind of dirty work for 18 hours a day in exchange for a bowl of rice and glass of water...

Similar to what Bill Gates said, during the same interview when he talked about bitcoin iirc.

But the problem of AI taking over is not necessarily directly related to technological unemployment. Maybe AI will employ every human to do some kind of dirty work for 18 hours a day in exchange for a bowl of rice and glass of water...