Amazon's Robot Wars

I can't see how this isn't a bigger story. What is frustrating is that nobody seems to want to talk about it, and bigger yet we have a President that hasn't even mentioned it. I understand for many "socialism" as described in the title is a dirty word as it is unfair to expect a minority of the population to sustain a majority of it, but what if the x factor is automation?

How do the big box stores (that drove the mom/pop stores and the small towns they were in out of business) compete? They can't sustain the overhead. We all have computers in our pocket that can order anything to our door in less than 2 minutes. What happens to all the primary, secondary, and tertiary jobs that go along with local stores? What about AI in the delivery of health care, discovery in a law firm, transportation, etc? All professions will be impacted to a great degree sooner than later.

Typically people say, "well it will create other jobs", which is true, but it will not be 1:1 in addition how soon till half those new jobs are automated due to compound interest of advancements of AI?

Or they will say, "I have a specialized job, it won't affect me". To deliver health care, for example, we need the people to be able to afford insurance/cash to pay for it. I could go on for all professions.

How do we position ourselves in a micro or macro sense? Do we just keep consuming and think "they" cant kick us all out of our homes given a massive majority in this country over-extends themselves via financing? Is consumer based capitalism the "horse" of our time? Curious if others think about this as much as I do...

Jobs and professions have been disappearing forever with different advances in technology. Creative people who can think will always find new ways. Entrepreneurship will become more important to one's success. You have to look for ways to create your own path rather than relying on someone else to provide you a job.

The bigger question is how do you pay for it? The US is 18 trillion in debt. How do you service that debt, meet obligations already allocated (social security, medicare, etc) and then subsequently provide UBI? This turns in to Greece or Portugal pretty quick if you aren't careful.

Funky Town Bear said:

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Jobs and professions have been disappearing forever with different advances in technology. Creative people who can think will always find new ways. Entrepreneurship will become more important to one's success. You have to look for ways to create your own path rather than relying on someone else to provide you a job.

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Good point, but you could argue the past advances in technology helped humans produce, not totally replace them. (For the most part)
I'm addition, with half the population dumber than the person with the most average intelligence you know and an increasing population, can we really count on all those people being smart enough to feed themselves through their ideas and implementation?
Off top of my head great depression had 30ish% unemployment. CONSERVATIVE estimates say in near future 50% of jobs will be totally replaced by automation. How many businesses out there can survive with 30, 40, 60% loss in business?

Prairie_Bear said:

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Funky Town Bear said:

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Jobs and professions have been disappearing forever with different advances in technology. Creative people who can think will always find new ways. Entrepreneurship will become more important to one's success. You have to look for ways to create your own path rather than relying on someone else to provide you a job.

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Good point, but you could argue the past advances in technology helped humans produce, not totally replace them. (For the most part)
I'm addition, with half the population dumber than the person with the most average intelligence you know and an increasing population, can we really count on all those people being smart enough to feed themselves through their ideas and implementation?
Off top of my head great depression had 30ish% unemployment. CONSERVATIVE estimates say in near future 50% of jobs will be totally replaced by automation. How many businesses out there can survive with 30, 40, 60% loss in business?

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Helps in production have replaced people all along the way. You do so much more with less people than ever before. People have to think about what they can do differently than anyone else. It's funny. I talk with immigrants who come from other parts of the world to DFW. They all love that they can create a job for themselves, a life for themselves, and a future for themselves. People I talk to who are from here worry that there is no future and no jobs. Perspective is ironic in this situation.

When that day comes is that not when we all join Star Fleet and boldly go where no man has gone before?

PTGHUNTER said:

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When that day comes is that not when we all join Star Fleet and boldly go where no man has gone before?

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I definitely want a phaser.

It's not a certainty as there is no hope the funding for it would get passed right now.

It works (and well) in places like Denmark and Sweden but those countries have incredibly high taxes and relatively small populations.

I can't even imagine how high the tax rate would have to go to fund it in a country our size but it would be an astronomical raise probably close to 50% for all earners (not just the 55% who currently pay taxes - which is another discussion entirely).

Having lived outside the US for many years I can say I saw good and bad in the different variations.

I suspect we would end up much like England where the NHS is essentially for the poor and lower middle class and anyone with ANY means buys private health insurance.

we have it already, in a weird way. The EIC and child tax credits are functioning somewhat as a universal payment, just not all fit the window to receive those or don't know how to file for them.

nein51 said:

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It's not a certainty as there is no hope the funding for it would get passed right now.

It works (and well) in places like Denmark and Sweden but those countries have incredibly high taxes and relatively small populations.

I can't even imagine how high the tax rate would have to go to fund it in a country our size but it would be an astronomical raise probably close to 50% for all earners (not just the 55% who currently pay taxes - which is another discussion entirely).

Having lived outside the US for many years I can say I saw good and bad in the different variations.

I suspect we would end up much like England where the NHS is essentially for the poor and lower middle class and anyone with ANY means buys private health insurance.

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Thanks for weighing in, good perspective.

Wasn't trying to have a thread about the merits or lack thereof of gov supplied income, more about how we have a job based economic system in a world where jobs will only be decreasing and the population will only be increasing barring government intervention. At some point it is unsustainable, no?

What if we don't need taxes like we have b/c automation is taking over for the human labor the taxes paid for? What if we shift from a theory of the more you work/consume the happier you are (despite objective health measures that say otherwise) to a theory where you live simply off what automation supplies and spend the bulk of your life bettering yourself vs. working for money? Kinda out there given what we are conditioned to believe I know, but I don't see any other way. Would love to be convinced otherwise.

Funky Town Bear said:

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Jobs and professions have been disappearing forever with different advances in technology. Creative people who can think will always find new ways. Entrepreneurship will become more important to one's success. You have to look for ways to create your own path rather than relying on someone else to provide you a job.

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Entrepreneurship has been dropping at a consistent rate in the U.S. for two generations now. "The gig economy" is a marketing term from pundits that need a column angle that has no real basis in Labor Statistics. Entrepreneurship has become less and less central to one's success in the past 2 generations, while the ability to develop a new skill and rapidly transition careers has increased.

To me, the question of the 21st Century is what form of Capitalism emerges as superior. The 20th Century had a lot to say about Capitalism being superior to other forms of societal formation, no matter how you derive your moral code. Socialism / Communism / Facism / lingering feudal states all fell by the wayside to be swept into the bin of history.

The next question though is the type of Capitalism? The American Corporation / Political hybrid? The Hong Kong / Singapore libertarian model with great welfare floors, highly regulated utltilities, and a high emphasis on the individual? Chinese ethno-state Capitalism? Scandinavian style with an exceptional welfare state?

All four have their merits and all four have their major issues.

Prairie_Bear said:

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Amazon's Robot Wars

I can't see how this isn't a bigger story. What is frustrating is that nobody seems to want to talk about it, and bigger yet we have a President that hasn't even mentioned it. I understand for many "socialism" as described in the title is a dirty word as it is unfair to expect a minority of the population to sustain a majority of it, but what if the x factor is automation?

How do the big box stores (that drove the mom/pop stores and the small towns they were in out of business) compete? They can't sustain the overhead. We all have computers in our pocket that can order anything to our door in less than 2 minutes. What happens to all the primary, secondary, and tertiary jobs that go along with local stores? What about AI in the delivery of health care, discovery in a law firm, transportation, etc? All professions will be impacted to a great degree sooner than later.

Typically people say, "well it will create other jobs", which is true, but it will not be 1:1 in addition how soon till half those new jobs are automated due to compound interest of advancements of AI?

Or they will say, "I have a specialized job, it won't affect me". To deliver health care, for example, we need the people to be able to afford insurance/cash to pay for it. I could go on for all professions.

How do we position ourselves in a micro or macro sense? Do we just keep consuming and think "they" cant kick us all out of our homes given a massive majority in this country over-extends themselves via financing? Is consumer based capitalism the "horse" of our time? Curious if others think about this as much as I do...

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I use to spend a lot of time writing Machine Learning and AI code, and I've had a bunch of conversations around this. People really don't know what's coming. I genuinely believe society will have to reorient itself in the next two generations in the same way they did at the start of the Industrial Revolution.

What people don't understand is that AI is going to take upper middle class information based jobs more quickly than lower level service jobs. Already, White Shoe Law Firms in NY and Chicago and SF have started having massive lay offs and hiring freezes because the grunt work done by associates can be done better by a trained program for document search. Within 20 years the profession of being Doctor will be 100% gone. Surgeons will be needed as will nurses, but knowledge based doctors won't be. My profession, computer programming, will mostly be extinct as current ML models can generate better code than large swaths of mediocre computer programmers. Work in HR? Not anymore you don't.

In a generation, Upper Middle class people will face what lower middle class people are facing now - a future where the jobs they have relied on to build their lives will simply no longer be available to their children.

Man, depressing

0xdeadbeef said:

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Prairie_Bear said:

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Amazon's Robot Wars

I can't see how this isn't a bigger story. What is frustrating is that nobody seems to want to talk about it, and bigger yet we have a President that hasn't even mentioned it. I understand for many "socialism" as described in the title is a dirty word as it is unfair to expect a minority of the population to sustain a majority of it, but what if the x factor is automation?

How do the big box stores (that drove the mom/pop stores and the small towns they were in out of business) compete? They can't sustain the overhead. We all have computers in our pocket that can order anything to our door in less than 2 minutes. What happens to all the primary, secondary, and tertiary jobs that go along with local stores? What about AI in the delivery of health care, discovery in a law firm, transportation, etc? All professions will be impacted to a great degree sooner than later.

Typically people say, "well it will create other jobs", which is true, but it will not be 1:1 in addition how soon till half those new jobs are automated due to compound interest of advancements of AI?

Or they will say, "I have a specialized job, it won't affect me". To deliver health care, for example, we need the people to be able to afford insurance/cash to pay for it. I could go on for all professions.

How do we position ourselves in a micro or macro sense? Do we just keep consuming and think "they" cant kick us all out of our homes given a massive majority in this country over-extends themselves via financing? Is consumer based capitalism the "horse" of our time? Curious if others think about this as much as I do...

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What people don't understand is that AI is going to take upper middle class information based jobs more quickly than lower level service jobs. Already, White Shoe Law Firms in NY and Chicago and SF have started having massive lay offs and hiring freezes because the grunt work done by associates can be done better by a trained program for document search. Within 20 years the profession of being Doctor will be 100% gone. Surgeons will be needed as will nurses, but knowledge based doctors won't be. My profession, computer programming, will mostly be extinct as current ML models can generate better code than large swaths of mediocre computer programmers. Work in HR? Not anymore you don't.

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I 100% agree with you, thank you for posting. I deliver health care, and I have had this conversation with colleagues across many disciplines and they just don't want to talk about it. We are so far over our heads in debt to do what we do (not to mention the years of our life we never get back) it is uncomfortable to think about for most, frankly. "Discovery", as you mention regarding legal work, is being automated as well. Yet our schools keep churning out Dr, lawyers, etc. The student loan bubble has to be the next thing to burst and it will not be pretty.

Mike, you can initially view it as depressing, but what if it is a good thing? Did a paper at BU in my "death and dying class" and while a small anecdotal study to be fair, I interviewed 78 elderly people in nursing homes about their life and what they wished they would change if they could do it over. 100% of the people who had full-time careers wished they wouldn't have spent as much time as they did at work. I found that incredibly telling. Maybe automation allows us to focus on ourselves (mentally and physically)/our family/our interests instead of using the vast majority of our awake adult life schlepping ourselves to work to earn money to get by?

AI/universal income discussion

Sorry, couldn't figure out how to link video directly but a good discussion imo.

Globalization isn't taking our jobs like some would want you to believe for votes.

Bringing back small % of jobs lost isn't the long-term answer even though it makes for good talking points/votes.

Robots replacing humans is a good thing. It frees people from the drudgery of manual work and allows them to pursue meaningful careers as bloggers, shopping curators, social media influencers, online reviewers, professional protestors, and community organizers, just to name a few.

BearN said:

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Robots replacing humans is a good thing. It frees people from the drudgery of manual work and allows them to pursue meaningful careers as bloggers, shopping curators, social media influencers, online reviewers, professional protestors, and community organizers, just to name a few.

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Ha! Well played. To be fair we kind of have that already. Fb is insufferable to me now, and we even have posters on this board that feel compelled to post on every thread.

As a side, isn't the ultimate goal of mankind to do what you WANT to do, not what you HAVE to do? Wont AI finally allow that? Somewhere along the line "work" got glorified to an absurd level where having 1 tv, 2 cars, x sq ft home wasn't good enough and we had to consume more and more to be happy even though our health measures comparatively continue to decline.

Bunch of y'all have way more faith in the human condition than myself. Folks are inherently lazy and crooked. The pursuit of altruistic ventures to benefit mankind will be for a few. UBI will exacerbate that side of people.

Russia develops gun shooting robot with reference to economic impact.

Funky Town Bear said:

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Bunch of y'all have way more faith in the human condition than myself. Folks are inherently lazy and crooked. The pursuit of altruistic ventures to benefit mankind will be for a few. UBI will exacerbate that side of people.

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^ Yes I agree

Also, I've always looked at "give us each day our daily bread" as if we are supposed to work each day(church on Sunday perhaps for some) in order to eat. So I've always done the best of the tasks ahead of me each day that I can do. Never missed a meal or a bill hardly ever either. So I've developed a belief that going out and doing best I can each day is good for me and my spiritual relationship too

How do I justify to myself, and more importantly my God, that sitting around just talking to family and the like, then going to eat when I want or need to, is ok?

Sounds great to have more free time but could we overdo it?

Just wondering ....... ??? I'm just a little confused on this interesting new concept?

it is an interesting discussion. I have spent a fair amount of time reading and thinking about it. Thomas Piketty's Capital was discussed quite a bit in economic circles. He makes the case that the income/wealth disparity widening is brewing a cocktail of bad things. Revolutions usually happen when there is wide income/wealth disparity. Piketty proposes a large inheritance tax to redistribute wealth and makes a strong case that inherited wealth is the worst kind of wealth for society. He says tax inheritance over income and capital every time because the other two create jobs and growth.

The Rise of the Robots by Martin Ford was another study on this subject. Ford is a big proponent of UI. He believes technological changes are mostly good for society but really bad for employment. Ford says we absolutely need to provide a basic living income and will be able to afford it with all the productivity gains from AI.

To nein's comment, I always wonder about the Scandinavian countries. They are extreme socialism but they have had HUGE natural resource windfalls to fund their socialism. If the world moves away from oil, I don't know if the Norways, Denmarks and Swedens of the world will be able to afford their socialistic utopias.

The Rational Optimist by Matt Ridley is an interesting read. He shows throughout history that pessimism towards the future is a losing philosophy. I think a biblical worldview supports that as well. We are moving from a pristine garden to a resurrected city- a true utopia. Biblical progressiveness is true progress. A world of abundance where everyone works according to their God given talents and where sin and decay are absent. Technology is neutral. It can be used for awesome ends or it can destroy.

3ptSpecialist said:

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To nein's comment, I always wonder about the Scandinavian countries. The are extreme socialism but they have had HUGE natural resource windfalls to fund their socialism. If the world moves away from oil, I don't know if the Norways, Denmarks and Swedens of the world will be able to afford their socialistic utopias.

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Good and fair points by nein and you, and I am naive to the amount of $ they pull in from exports of natural resources without looking it up, but we have those too. In addition, you are leaving out the whole point of this thread, which is AI will be able to produce the goods a past socialistic society depended on a minority of humans to do which made it inherently unsustainable in past models.

I think there are bigger issues that support those countries currently, and they are:
1. Largely homogeneous countries which is a whole different thread altogether.
2. Defense Spending.

#1 we can't do much about, and there are pros/cons to that issue which is a different thread topic.

#2 we have to do something about. 54 cents of every governmental $1 goes towards that "tax" of ours. More than the #2-#7 countries combined. We all should be aware of the stats I don't need to go on.

Are we getting a good ROI on that $600 billion we spend a year? What services could we be providing the bulk of our population (like these countries mentioned) instead of benefiting a very small handful who make a ton of money every year off of that and still be "safe"?

Ultimately, we need a paradigm shift IMO away from consumption of goods = happy, and to a model where experiences = happy. It will be very hard for older generations b/c they were indoctrinated over decades to believe the former even though recent discovery finds the latter makes you happier.

There is a reason we work the hardest, are the very sick even though we spend the most money on health care, and are not very happy, collectively. The more I look into it and think about it, I think AI could be the tool to allow us to focus on experiences (spending the bulk of your time with the people you love/choose to be around) instead of spending the vast bulk of our awake lives doing something we are forced to do.

Made me think... Well, what if we have automation and robots that build roads and bridges, fight lawsuits, build houses, and fight wars. We no longer need taxes for a lot of current tax burdens? Hmm

WILLIS said:

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Made me think... Well, what if we have automation and robots that build roads and bridges, fight lawsuits, build houses, and fight wars. We no longer need taxes for a lot of current tax burdens? Hmm

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Exactly. While there will be upkeep there is no retirement, paid days off, sick days, decreased productivity due to life situations, workers comp, health insurance, pensions to float, etc. Will be hard for humans to compete when AI production costs continue to decrease to point it is a no brainer for EVERY profession.

AI will be able to beat us at everything by 2060, say experts

If I am reading this right, I believe they are using a linear progression model, and not one that factors in "compound interest". (AI 5 years from now will learn more efficiently than AI today). Elon Musk tweeted the same. I know I am a futurist, but I feel it will happen by 2030-2040 personally.



"Enjoy beating robots while you still can. There is a 50 per cent chance that machines will outperform humans in all tasks within 45 years, according to a survey of more than 350 artificial intelligence researchers.
AI will master many activities a lot sooner, though. Machines are predicted to be better than us at translating languages by 2024, writing high-school essays by 2026, driving a truck by 2027, working in retail by 2031, writing a bestselling book by 2049 and surgery by 2053. In fact, all human jobs will be automated within the next 120 years, say respondents.
The survey, by the University of Oxford and Yale University, was sent to AI researchers who published in 2015 at one of two big conferences in the field the Conference on Neural Information Processing Systems and the International Conference on Machine Learning. In total, 352 people responded.
The results have "far-reaching social consequences," says Katja Grace at the Machine Intelligence Research Institute in Berkeley, California. How will teachers deal with computer-generated essays that are indistinguishable from the real thing, for example?

But at least we will still be around to deal with these issues. Despite media hype about the dangers of AI, the researchers put only a 5 per cent chance on computers bringing about outcomes near the level of human extinction.
One-trick AI
AIs can already outperform humans in many tasks. AlphaGo, Google DeepMind's AI, has just beaten the best human Go player in the world. Other systems can lip-read better than professionals or help detectives sift through police data. Yet each of these is only good at one task and would be useless at most others unless retrained.
"There is accumulating evidence that machines can overpower human intelligence in complex, though specific tasks," says Eleni Vasilaki at the University of Sheffield in the UK. But there is little evidence that AI with human-like versatility will appear any time soon, she says.
The survey results showed no link between the seniority of a researcher and the predictions they made, but where people were from did have an impact. Those in Asia typically gave shorter time frames than those in North America predicting, for example, that AI would outperform humans on all tasks within 30 years, compared with 74 years. "This may well be an interesting demonstration of culture at work when forming opinions about technology," says Leslie Willcocks at the London School of Economics and Political Science.
Yet the responses are not always consistent, such as those concerning which game AI will master next. "They predict that AI will surpass humans at the video game StarCraft in six years, compared to all Atari games in nine years," says Georgios Yannakakis at the University of Malta in Msida. "Some Atari games are hard, but nothing like StarCraft."

Additionally, most of the survey focuses on the cognitive aspects of intelligence that fit well-defined tasks. "But parts of intelligence, such as emotional intelligence, go beyond cognition," says Yannakakis. "It would be interesting to ask when AI will surpass humans at being art or movie critics.""

Funny you posted this video. I was discussing this sort of thing with a friend of mine the other day and we came to a very pivotal crux in this whole thing. It's one thing to have a fully defined task and using a robot to complete it. It's another thing to have a decision tree with desired outcomes and using a robot to complete the sequence. It's an entirely different thing to be creative. Does AI begin to dream up ideas from scratch and then fully develop them? You can't program that the same way you would program a machine to play chess where you have a defined universe, rules and outcome to calculate odds/probability/success from. This vein puts a massive premium on creative/arts/entrepreneurial types in the fairly near future. If at all possible, that aspect of AI is a lot further down the road.

Facebook shuts down it's own AI

In short, FB created AI was speaking to itself in code words that programmers couldn't understand so they shut it down.


Mods, any chance this can be moved to the Bear Cave?

Regarding the Healthcare comment advancement is already here. In India, you have robotic assisted surgery that allows surgeons to works less invasively, with higher precision, less pain, faster recovery, much cheaper, and even remotely. Not new, but not taking over the world. So we have a chance to reduce our cost of living with technological advances.

I think the recent talk from Gates, Zuckerberg, and others on minimum income because of robotics is simply using the fear of automation to push a political agenda. We are losing jobs to automation bit you still have workers building, installing, and maintaining the robots. So better jobs are created. Much of the manufacturing job losses are for drastically lower wages especially in Mexico thanks to NAFTA.

I will believe the Musk will someday have me in a George Jetson spacemobile when he produces amazingly efficiently batteries in high volume yet cheap prices for solar storage.

NOBSU, thanks for replying.

While I agree that some technology is certainly here in Health Care (what I do) and manufacturing/construction you realize AI is only going to get better, and not be static, right? (growth rate of AI roughly improving 2x every 2-4 years). Human intelligence is roughly staying the same, if not regressing as we become more dependent on AI for memory recall, data discovery/entry, and implementation of tasks/duties.

Yes we have made it though "tech" revolutions before, but I think there is a bit of a boy who cried wolf here. In 1913, not everyone could but an assembly line in their pocket. EVERY job of ours in some way is affected if not completely dependent on AI and AI is better and more efficient than humans are at it. If not now, in the very near future with the elephant in the room being there won't be enough jobs for everyone in a jobs based economy based on the data I have seen.

The simple fact are robots will eventually replace the need for people...

The key point that I don't see discussed, is that UBI pays people not to work. Presently, the system is meant to assist people who can't take care of their needs, not simply give money to someone who is not working. A lot of innovation comes from opportunity which comes from that change. Yes, it's stressful to have to change careers, but it's plain truth that as technology advances, new careers and industries come into place to replace what was lost. The "all the jobs are gone" or "no good jobs exist anymore" whines are emotional outbursts which are understandable from people worried about their personal situation, but they are not true, and certainly are not the basis for a major new entitlement.

Reward initiative and ingenuity, not giving up.

Any time you take away incentives for work, you end up with a disaster.

Competition is in our blood.

We are not all equal. We don't all work equally as hard.

This is why communism and socialism fail.

Oldbear83 said:

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Reward initiative and ingenuity, not giving up.

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If your wage is dictated to you then why would anyone want to take that next step to show initiative or ingenuity? It's not worth it. There's zero incentive to excel.

It'll be the lowest common denominator....do as little work, as slow as possible to get the greatest guaranteed government wage. I want to give the least possible effort for the greatest possible guaranteed wage.

The vast majority of well-known people that are proponents of UBI are either in government, are communist/socialist/progressive or own a company or product that would benefit from people having access to money that they did not earn.

For this reason, I am cautious about the motive behind the movement.

Kite23 said:

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The simple fact are robots will eventually replace the need for people...

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How many robots are your best friend? Can Siri help you make a judgment call about whether you can trust a potential contract?

The Luddites claimed that manufacturing would end work for people. Now people want to get those manufacturing jobs back. Things change, and where tech is concerned, overall for the better. Change can be scary. but the real danger is giving too much control to people who use scare tactics to get more power from you.

Look at the trucking industry and see how many peripheral industry come off that occupation. Imagine driverless 18 wheelers. It'll be a huge loss to thousands of people who'd need a sum to live by.