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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Dr Strangelove
Hey geniuses! What are we going to do about getting enough energy for this brave new world and the resulting pollution?
So eventually we really will have "Flesh Faires"?  Does anyone have a special preferrence of a manner with which to torture and destroy robots? |
Well with an unlimited robotic labor pool I suppose we could get arbitrarily large pollution free energy from massive space based solar collection until fusion power could be perfected by super AI physicists and engineers.
Last edited by Geronimo on 24-10-2004 at 08:48
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by DanS
Consider that in many ways, the manufacture of goods is already "limitless." In the US, we have already entered a post-industrial era where only about 13% of the economy is devoted to manufacturing. Other countries are experiencing similar trends, albeit they are a little later starting the whole game.
People find good jobs nowadays doing service-oriented work. My work will be too complex for a robot to handle for a couple hundred years or so. And I only have a bachelor's degree. |
couple hundred years? how on earth did you calculate that? you can't judge by the past rate of progress because super intelligent ai development can progress with a positive feedback effect. More powerful information processing techs and engineering aids can facilitate ever faster progress towards truly powerful human replacing AI's. It's hard to say how long it might take for the process to take off exponentially. A couple hundred years seems really really conservative.
A human brain is only so big and so fast and only has so many possible interconnections. Beating it's performance with an AI isn't like trying to build wormholes or aiming for other speculative sci fi capabilites. It's doable with the physics and materials we have here and now.
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Drachasor
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Well, we are never going to have infinite production, so the idea that there will be infinite charity is flawed.
However, humans are going to change as technology develops too. People will get body and mind enhancements and generally there will be a merging of man and machine as time goes on. There will probably be some bumps in the road and capitalism might be found to be lacking in the future too. Afterall, if A.I. is cheap then you can afford to have intelligent machines working on the problem of resource distribution from an efficiency standpoint. Certainly there will be a growing backlash against the disparity between the rich and poor, even in America.
If production becomes very, very cheap and automated, then invention will be the primary innovation. This is just like developing software, and as with software open source strategies will end up dominating in the long run (and this is happening today, slowly but surely). Once you have this, capitalism doesn't have a great deal of point. A.I. will end up handling most service jobs better, as making an A.I. that enjoys doing the job and does a much better job 100% of the time than a human will become possible.
However, a dystopia is not likely. The change will be slow and gradual and democracy is not conductive to a dystopia, generally speaking. Some sort of socialism or capitalism is likely, with people working on ideas and projects open-source style because they want to. There will probably be a huge upsurge in all the arts and other mental activities, and the advances in mental enhancement will simply aid this.
-Drachasor
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Sandman
Well, we have machines that do that stuff already.
I doubt that we'll see the level of 'roboticisation' imagined by sci-fi authors in all but the longest term future. And even then it'll probably be the preserve of wealthy eccentrics, like having live-in servants today.
I think a lot of the stuff we believe about the future will be a laughable as Victorian or 1950's 'predictions'. Especially miraculous nano-machines that can make anything. |
Is this just an intuitive assessment based upon past/current progess and past unfulfilled predictions? Almost nothing we have developed so far makes a substantiative contribution to the innovation process itself. Thus we have not yet witnessed any feedback effects in augmented innovation. There is a hell of a difference between the hubris of the victorian age or 1950's and predictions that presume the posibility of innovation feedback loops. I agree that progress will crawl until the feedback process begins and I agree that it's tough to say just how long it will take to initiate it but there's nothing to say it couldn't happen very soon. The tools we currently have are already capable theoretically of matching the brains capabilities and we can either surpass the brains capabilites through innovating ways to use these current tools to maximum effect (very very very hard to accomplish I'm sure) or by eventually getting tools so powerful that even brute force methods can achieve a powerful AI without lots of clever innovation. If moore's law keeps going a few more decades, the latter seems inevitable and every step along the way the former becomes more feasible.
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Geronimo
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st cloud USA
Jan 1970
time: 05:20
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quote:
Originally posted by Kuciwalker
There would be no point to a dystopia. There'd be no use in keeping the masses ignorant and poor. |
The great depression was a dystopia of sorts and I daresay nobody saw much point in keeping it going.
Sometimes undesirable economic outcomes just seem to happen despite the fact that everybody recognizes behaviors which, if taken collectively, would set the market straight. The problem is that what is best for the overall economy isn't always what is best for the individual investor.
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JohnT
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Capitalist
Mar 1999
time: 00:20
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It's odd, but I, too, am one of those who are doing everything they can to use automation for the purpose of reducing employee costs, thereby contributing to the problem.
In our support operations, we have two work-intensive departments: routing and verification. Routing is creating and mapping the various delivery routes, plus a creating a map of the overall delivery area. Verification is calling people on the phone and asking them if they received their product.
In my parents company, born in 1984, they started using very manual and labor-intensive processes for both those operations - in the routing department, they hire people to take pen to paper, making a colored line over every single street in the delivery area, the lines corresponding to which postal route that section of street is in. In the verification department, people picked up phones, manually dialed them, and, while making their surveys, hand wrote the information on paper (which then had to be collated, interpreted, etc. Not to mention the vast paper cost involved in printing out all these lists). At that time, there was no way to really do this stuff by computer (especially the mapping, for who had a computerized road map of the entire US in 1986? The Pentagon?)
However, they decided to automate - and it was their vision of automation that was the straw that eventually drove me to leave their company. I'm not going into detail, but I do know that they have spent well over $250,000 on computers/printers/predictive dialers in the past 3 years on those two departments alone... all of it unwisely.
For they still have the same people doing the same tasks in the same way.
The little old ladies who would take marker to map and hand-trace all the roads in the city of Sacramento CA are still doing the same thing... oh, now they all have shiny Dell's with high-definition monitors on each desk, but they're still putting pen to paper, reading off the same lists of streets that were generated by their custom-made 1992 Foxpro DOS application.
The revolving door of nuts, fools, and other oddballs that tend to be attracted to call-center applications is still, largely, doing the same tasks that they were doing when I left: writing down responses on pieces of paper. This after $150,000 was spent on a predictive dialer and the attending hardware.
Luckily for CRG, we are so small that by automating, we aren't going to get rid of any current jobs - but we will be getting rid of future employment opportunities. Our routing and mapping process is completely automated, with the number of hours needed to put together a job decreased by 85%. Our automated verification system is capable of handling a distribution level of 150,000,000 books a year - currently, we are using just 1.3% of the systems capacity.
All that for the cost of $11,500. $10,000 for the IVR system (including programming, web-interface, and 48 lines), and $1,500 for an automated mapping system. There are, of course, other costs as well, including paper for the maps, phone charges and the like, but we have cut the costs of our support operations to industry lows, that I guarantee.
You still need people to operate it, however, but instead of the 70+ people needed to fill a manual operation, 5 would do just nicely - for both departments!
Employees are expensive, and the government (combined with today's litigious society) makes them a dangerous nuisance - and it's that second issue that takes greater precedence in most small companies.
That's just the cold hard facts, people: we automate so we won't be bothered. By you or by the government.
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Blake
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Brainfallocatione
Oct 2000
time: 17:20
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It is possible that one day a machine will be invented that can construct stuff at the molecular level, from raw materials and power. This would be incredibly valuable technology because it would herald a new era of manafacturing, mass production of fully personalized goods. This technology will get developed.
Such a machine could be made to self-replicate, clanking-replicator style. So lets call the machine a Replicator, it can replicate stuff from blueprints, and replicate itself.
It would only take one person to release one such self replicating machine to the public, open-source it so to speak.
Soon, everyone could have one due to exponential growth.
What sort of scenario could this result in? Suddenly anyone can build nearly anything provided they gather the raw materials (power is provided by solar panels).
If the replicator is not particular sophisticated it may be limited to materials like metal and plastic, this could result in any unclaimed, or even unprotected, resources being pillaged to feed the replicators. But if it can work with silicates a lot then they could just be mostly fed sand, dirt or rock which are pretty plentiful.
This would put unprecedented power in the hands of the invididual, as blueprints proliferate through open networks people will be able to achieve near complete self sufficiency (fex, you could outfit your house with solar panels, water purifer, waste treatment, automated hydroponics, network relay etc). Plans would also include advanced weapons, want a drone gun mounted over your front door? Or maybe a personal laser cannon? Violent Anarchy, or post-money Utopia?
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24-10-2004 05:17
Smiley 
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