955 replies to this topic

[adamh]

Mind you just confirmed the gloom and doom, you have not presented any positive scenarios. What is inaccurate in placing you in the negative group? 

 

QFL, we haven't heard from you yet

[QuestforLife]

Mind you just confirmed the gloom and doom, you have not presented any positive scenarios. What is inaccurate in placing you in the negative group?

QFL, we haven't heard from you yet

I think I've pretty much covered it all in my previous posts on this thread. Anytime you feel like trying to refute any of them, feel free rather than repeating the same 'it will all be good on UBI' stuff.

Here my more detailed reading of your position:

You think people don't need fulfilling work, just money for food and luxuries and time for hobbies.

You think people don't need a loving family just a sex robot.

[mag1]

How did we get it so wrong? The entire premise of this thread has been that there would be a collapse in employment from AI?

15 years later no employment collapse?

 

The logic seemed quite solid to me:

Massively capable AI technology could displace much of the labor force.

 

For example, a technology such as robobuggies realistically could entirely eliminate the central spoke of modern economies: Retail.

I believe I have previously described the expected outcome of this on thread as akin to turning our urban environments into moonscape.

The terrifying implication would then seem to inevitably suggest that alongside this moonscape would co-exist masses of our population living

in cardboard boxes underneath highway overpasses.

 

There are clearly at least some business leaders who have high enough psychopathic tendencies that they would not see anything overly disturbing 

about directly creating mass homelessness.

 

So, it had seemed that this would all play out in a fairly obvious and unpleasant way.

Yet, it has not evolved to plan. 

The big question is: Why not? 

 

After all of these years, I think I have finally figured this one out.

More honestly, I was reading about a similar technological bind a few centuries ago and the social response was quite interesting.

Basically, when confronted with a similar potentially highly socially disruptive technology the top social leaders simply said: "No".

"No, we do not want that sort of progress."

I had not expected that such a response could even occur.

There are some very powerful people that will do a solid for the people.

However, there is clearly a certain beneficial quality to such technological conservatism.

 

It is not so much that unlimited roll-out of robo-buggies would not completely devastate our modern economy (it likely would), but more so that 

it was recognized that it would truly be that devastating and then the grownups in charge simply did not allow it to occur. What we have had instead is this

ongoing slo-mo roll-out of the technology that has stretched out for more than 10 years now ... and it still might take years to saturate the

market at global scale.

 

After watching quite a few online videos of current robot capability it is all too clear that a similar leash has been placed upon what is

and what is not allowed for robo rollout. For instance in one video they showed a warehouse with thousands of robots that was able to

perform all of the sorting and packaging for a mass scale consumer food distributor. The human input was more as a final check and

to transport the orders. If anything the entire workflow gave the workers more leverage (through the greater capital involved), better

working conditions and probably higher pay. When capitalists can run the show in their own factory, they can introduce near unlimited

number of robots, though when they want to have a few autonomous robots zipping around town they can be completely shut out.  

 

On a first level analysis, this strategy of obstructing a techno-dystopia would seem to benefit workers. Providing home delivery of food orders

offers a higher standard of service, while potentially minimising the employment displacement. Yet, on a second level analysis, one might

imagine that it could be more like Orwell's "If you want a picture of the future, imagine a boot stamping on a human face-- forever." Instead of

actually making an adjustment to the technology, you simply then have the potential to close the loop at any time and completely displace the human

work force. There is the constant subliminal message that the worker's are replaceable by technology. Also of course, you can then let in millions of

low skill migrants to fill these low wage jobs -- you are sending the message that this is a viable economic activity when in fact these jobs are economically

and productively hollow.

 

This thinking also applies to CRISPR technology. CRISPR technology could be applied to those with power and would give their offspring unbeatable life advantage. 

While those who reproduced without such a technological edge could then realize at some point in the future -- perhaps decades later- that their offspring 

could not realistically compete against the genmods.  

 

An emerging insight that is becoming clear to me is that there is now a major shift towards bricks and mortar generative reality from the tech leaders. I have consistently found

the robobuggies to be a compelling technology and yet the more high end cognitive features of AI seemed to me to potentially offer a scary future in which humans were displaced

by computer intelligence. Real world technology applications offers us the exciting possibility that our lives will be made substantially better and not worse. I can imagine a truly fantastic

technology enhanced world of learning, virtual shopping, work, companionship etc. that would be orders of magnitude better than our current lives. It is very encouraging that there has

been such a rapid pivot towards this more human centered roboenhanced view of the GPT generative potential.  

 

There is a wave of parallel bricks and mortar type robots to that of robobuggies that could have a transformative effect on our lives. As noted we now see

robogardeners, roboguards, roboteachers, robocompanions, etc.. The potential for such technology to dramatically

shift labor markets is much closer than I had realized. As noted on thread, if you had a payroll of $5 million and you laid off 90% of the workers and perhaps

kept those with seniority, then you potentially could greatly increase profit while providing better working conditions and wages to the remaining workers.

If this were to happen gradually, and especially for the first movers, then the economic price deflation might not even need to be booked. Basically,

the companies could simply absorb the massive productivity gain without having to pass the 10 cent per hour prices to the consumers. Profound deflation

can cause all sorts of economic problems, so it might be best avoided, though it is not entirely clear how this actually could be avoided considering

the marginal costs of some of the robots.

 

Edited by mag1, 05 March 2024 - 04:08 AM.

[QuestforLife]

Maybe Mag1 you should consider the null hypothesis - that AI and robots haven't displaced the workforce because the technology has not developed as quickly as you expected?

 

Machine Learning is currently being trained to do lots of stuff humans can already do - it is not displacing anyone, it is filling a need where there aren't enough skilled humans to do the job. So far I'm not seeing it doing anything particularly 'spooky' or better than a skilled human. Nowhere near. 

 

As far as the bricks and mortar stuff goes - it would indeed be nice to get one over on all the builders that have swindled me in the past - but that tech is nowhere near ready. It might make sense for big construction projects where you are willing to pay the upfront costs of development, but even then I expect they will still need lots of humans.

 

We should also consider the possibility - anathema to this thread and your enthusiasm Mag1 -  that the recent breakthroughs in ML have come about because of MASSIVE investment from tech companies and that this will not be repeated again anytime soon. The easy financial conditions that accompanied the career of the 'boomer' generation of global pirates is passing as they move into retirement. We will be left in a world that has much less investment capital, so we likely will see less of this sort of  'Manhattan' type projects.  

Edited by QuestforLife, 05 March 2024 - 12:23 PM.

[adamh]

How did we get it so wrong? The entire premise of this thread has been that there would be a collapse in employment from AI?

15 years later no employment collapse?

 

 

If you look over the last couple hundred years, there has been a constant influx of technology which at first seemed disruptive but later seamlessly integrated into society. The result has been a constantly higher standard of living. These innovations included the steam engine, automation, cars and trucks, cell phones and computers. Each time a new tec came out, there were many who spoke against it. They said it would put people out of work but instead it created new jobs. The steam and internal combustion engines made animal and human muscle power redundant, thousands of horse breeders and trainers lost their jobs.

 

There was lots of wailing and gnashing of teeth when the computer gained in popularity. It was going to take away jobs, people would be sleeping in the streets, the same nonsense we hear today about AI. It turned out that computers created more jobs and the grumbling went down. But now its AI and the fear mongering has been turned way up. Not only will people be sleeping in the streets but the ones with ubi will be unhappy in their mansions and will turn to hard drugs and suicide since they don't have to work 9 to 5 anymore. 

 

We keep hearing the killer robots scenario, that machines will become sentient and turn against us. These themes have been presented for over 100 years yet so far no machine, no computer, no robot has come to life and decided to make war on humanity. 

 

The latest most implausible fear mongering has been saying that when people become wealthy and don't have to work, they become depressed and want to die or something. Looking over thousands of years of history that does not seem to be the case. People retire when they are financially able because most people get tired of working. They prefer leisure to pursue other interests rather than what some boss wants them to do. This seems so obvious its hard to imagine anyone thinking the opposite yet we see it here in this thread, silly ideas like that are being pushed.

 

Some jobs can't be done by robots right now but that is more a problem of mechanics than an AI problem. More advances in optics, machine vision and learning must be made before a lot of manual labor jobs can be done. 

 

My question to everyone is what will you do when you start getting those checks and don't have to work any more? Is your old job so interesting you will want to stubbornly keep doing it? Or would you engage in some sort of leisure activities, if so, then what?

[Danail Bulgaria]

...

Machine Learning is currently being trained to do lots of stuff humans can already do - it is not displacing anyone, it is filling a need where there aren't enough skilled humans to do the job. So far I'm not seeing it doing anything particularly 'spooky' or better than a skilled human. Nowhere near. 

....

 

It IS displacing people from their jobs. The very firs already has been fired due to AI. See this topic post #617; fireing didn't stop with them - see this topic post #728; and already there are official jobs positions cancelings - post #729
 

And this is the beginning, and this is the official, how many are the unofficials, fired or canceled due to AI but with a placed another official cause, noone knows.

 

And its potential for further working people displacements is enormous.

[Danail Bulgaria]

....

My question to everyone is what will you do when you start getting those checks and don't have to work any more? Is your old job so interesting you will want to stubbornly keep doing it? Or would you engage in some sort of leisure activities, if so, then what?

 

As a matter of fact, not having a job, and being payed without working can be as harmful as working a bad job. As it may lead to free time and leisure activities, it may also lead to obesity, alcocholism, drug abuses, and yes, strangely but possible - depression, also physical and mental degradadtion based on inactivity of the mind and body, worsening of chronic diseases, due to low activity - these include hypertension and atherosclerosis.

You may prevent all of the above, yes, if you have the knowledge of the existence of such a development, the will to overcome yourself and spending your time in doing nobel things. But anyways, not having a job can be harmfull for many.

[Mind]

One way of calculating an "employment crisis", is the number of people with full or full-time equivalent employment, vs the total population. In the US, the number of people working is near an all time low. Thanks to the US government borrowing and printing a few trillion dollars, it seems like everything is good, but it can't go on that way forever.

 

What is interesting is that there are not enough workers right now. Every business from manufacturers, retail, hospitals, schools, etc... are desperate for workers. We have a very hard time filling spots at my place of work. In some regards, AGI robots can not come soon enough if we want current societal/economic structures to continue.

[QuestforLife]

It IS displacing people from their jobs. The very firs already has been fired due to AI. See this topic post #617; fireing didn't stop with them - see this topic post #728; and already there are official jobs positions cancelings - post #729
 

And this is the beginning, and this is the official, how many are the unofficials, fired or canceled due to AI but with a placed another official cause, noone knows.

 

And its potential for further working people displacements is enormous.

 

You are right that it is taking jobs, but overall, as Mind points out, the environment is still one of not having enough people to do the jobs 'the system' needs.

[QuestforLife]

 

The latest most implausible fear mongering has been saying that when people become wealthy and don't have to work, they become depressed and want to die or something. Looking over thousands of years of history that does not seem to be the case. People retire when they are financially able because most people get tired of working. They prefer leisure to pursue other interests rather than what some boss wants them to do. This seems so obvious its hard to imagine anyone thinking the opposite yet we see it here in this thread, silly ideas like that are being pushed.

 

 

Over thousands of years of history people have become less and less happy until you reach today when a significant percentage of the population are mentally ill. 

 

Why do you think this is?

 

As I have pointed out in my posts before, technology does not serve people, people serve the technological system. Advances in technology have over time tended to reduce the freedom of the population, forcing them to work harder and harder in whatever niche is required. Your nirvana idea is in complete opposition to the direction of travel for 100s or 1000s of years. It is up to you to explain why this trend will reverse all of a sudden. 

[Danail Bulgaria]

You are right that it is taking jobs, but overall, as Mind points out, the environment is still one of not having enough people to do the jobs 'the system' needs.

 

1. Your claim was that Machine Learning is currently not displacing anyone, it wasn't are there or aren't there enough people do fill the current jobs needed in the USA.

    I responded and prooved that it is currently displacing working people, so there is nothing for you neither to whine nor to squeal about.

 

2. When the AI robots which will fill the needs come, you risk the situation to become the opposite - exactly that is the worst case scenario in which there will be nothing for you to work.

    What will happen then is the question - will you have a basic income or not - who will giv it to you and how - what will it be - will it be the path to everything to everyone or will it be a

    total and a final enslavement
 

[QuestforLife]

1. Your claim was that Machine Learning is currently not displacing anyone, it wasn't are there or aren't there enough people do fill the current jobs needed in the USA.

    I responded and prooved that it is currently displacing working people, so there is nothing for you neither to whine nor to squeal about.

 

 

 

Here and here I talked about how MacDonald's has embraced automation but that the place is still full of staff, and that ML might displace helicopter pilots before it replaced low level jobs. So my position is nuanced and not just about whether human employment will go up or down overall - although of course taken to its logical conclusion human employment is expected to be gone if AGI and robotics advance enough (in theory). 

 

In post #844 I was talking about how ML or 'AI' is not actually doing things humans can't do, it is being used in a supplementary fashion. I should have been more specific that I was discussing technical/analytic work that I am familiar with. 

 

Even though the name of this thread states that most human jobs will be taken, I have always been more interested in other angles, like the interaction between the technological system and individuals, and whether improvements in technology are beneficial for people or not. I think that is a vital question that most people assume the answer to.

[adamh]

We appear to have fractured unity among the anti-technology crowd. One faction says that many jobs are being destroyed putting people out of work. Mind seems to have broken away from the doom crowd and says we don't have enough workers and business is scrambling to find them which does seem to be the case. I use to be able to find people to do work for $10 an hour around the house not too long ago. In recent years they laugh at $15 and will barely work for $20 per hour. As he says, we need more ai robots not less.

 

It has been spelled out many times how robots produce a profit and that profit can be distributed to the non working public. If you pay a human $20 per hour to perform a task and a machine does it for 10 cents an hour, there is a nice profit to be gained from the 'bot. This seems so obvious and clear yet some are mystified by it, like it was black magic. Its simple economics and has been in effect for millennia. When a donkey works for hay and does the work of several men, life becomes easier. Now large machines do the work of many donkeys or many men, and ai does the work of many more so figure it out

 

Some still make the feeble claim that more leisure and money will mean you have less freedom. Doesn't that give you the freedom to do what you wish? They say you will spend the money on drugs and porn and kill yourself. Well, thats the choice we all have right now isn't it? Since we all have that choice and only a few take the bad route, having more money and free time does not seem likely to bring about a society collapse. Looking at the upper 10% of society, we do not see runaway rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, depression or suicide as some have predicted. In fact they seem to be quite happy, many do not have to work and like it that way. Wouldn't you like to join them?

[Danail Bulgaria]

I can't write from the name of everyone in that topic, but in my opinion anti-technology crowd is not a correct term. The opposite - the people discussing the AI doom are technologically informed enough to forsee where the things are going. I will not be surprised if they happen to be much more educated, cappable and certified in technologies than you.

 

[Danail Bulgaria]

We appear to have fractured unity among the anti-technology crowd. One faction says that many jobs are being destroyed putting people out of work. Mind seems to have broken away from the doom crowd and says we don't have enough workers and business is scrambling to find them which does seem to be the case. I use to be able to find people to do work for $10 an hour around the house not too long ago. In recent years they laugh at $15 and will barely work for $20 per hour. As he says, we need more ai robots not less.

 

It has been spelled out many times how robots produce a profit and that profit can be distributed to the non working public. If you pay a human $20 per hour to perform a task and a machine does it for 10 cents an hour, there is a nice profit to be gained from the 'bot. This seems so obvious and clear yet some are mystified by it, like it was black magic. Its simple economics and has been in effect for millennia. When a donkey works for hay and does the work of several men, life becomes easier. Now large machines do the work of many donkeys or many men, and ai does the work of many more so figure it out

 

Some still make the feeble claim that more leisure and money will mean you have less freedom. Doesn't that give you the freedom to do what you wish? They say you will spend the money on drugs and porn and kill yourself. Well, thats the choice we all have right now isn't it? Since we all have that choice and only a few take the bad route, having more money and free time does not seem likely to bring about a society collapse. Looking at the upper 10% of society, we do not see runaway rates of alcoholism, drug addiction, depression or suicide as some have predicted. In fact they seem to be quite happy, many do not have to work and like it that way. Wouldn't you like to join them?

 

More opened positions than the free working hands may be a good argument, but may also be not. Currently it is a factor, yes. Taking of all of the proffessions however is for the future, not for today. It is started already today, yes, but not to all of the proffessions. Things went so, that kicking you out of any kind of job will be a gradual not a sudden process, which is the better way, but the process has not stopped. The AI is getting better and better and people will soon be reached and outrunned in everything.

 

More opened positions, but:

Currently the AI robots are not in enough numbers yet.

AI still may not be developed enough to take some of the human professions ... yet.

Law problems still stop some job takings such as the medical profession.

There is time until 2050 .... lets see what will happen in 2030. 
 

It is true that now, after people are warned for the possible scenario of loosing all of the possible human jobs, and what may be the result, many efforts may be already under some sort of development - there are attempts the AI progress to be "regulated", the progress of the AI may be eventually slowed down, or holded, people may start to develope their skills and will not share their proddessional secrets, basic income strategies are already in development, lets name the next turning to more social politics, individual self survival plans may be under development from many people. Again there is time until 2050 and lets see what will happen in 2030.

[mag1]

This conversation is starting to hum!

 

Quest for Life, in relation to your comment about considering the null hypothesis, I think that we can safely reject the null in favor of the alternative; namely that technology rolls out

at a tempo that is designed to be less socially disruptive. One does not need to look far for this. Typically new medicines can sit on the shelf for 25 or more years after being discovered;

or as we have seen with the robobuggies [and especially how this technology is currently implemented] in factory environments, technology is not allowed to simply launch in the bricks and

mortar world without a substantial amount of prior notice and deliberation.

 

I actually find it quite troubling how much coercion is involved with bricks and mortar life. For example, at some workplaces upwards of 100% of the workers voted to stay remote after the

pandemic ended, even management supported this position and yet some owners simply overrode the wishes of everyone in their organization. This is for me quite a powerful insight

into what the true motivations of some organizations are - for some it is not about productivity- it is not about profit -- it is not about providing people

with the highest standard of life possible, sometimes the driving motivation is largely about controlling other people in order to force a specific social behavior no matter how profoundly dysfunctional such

behavior might be.

 

With regards to the functional ability of AI I can see some very impressive applications. For example, I have consulted Bing extensively for academic guidance. It was quite stunning. Bing was with me step for step on whatever subject I threw at it. Bing is a personal 1 on 1 tutor. No school can provide that level of personalized instruction. Sitting in a classroom of 20 other students is far inferior to interacting with current generation AI chatbots. In fact the problem that is probably already arising is that today's kids will realize that Bing and this generation of chatbots have higher intelligence and higher overall functioning ability than any of their classmates. We could be on the verge of a complete meltdown in our society. Chatbots with their 155 verbal IQ and expert level knowledge about everything could entirely display the role of human experts and people. The implications for a generation of children that might simply reject human interaction because it is so inferior to artificial intelligence are profound. Essentially population scale autism might now emerge at any time. If I were that kid and I were given such an opportunity to interface with AI, then I would make the choice to live my life with AI.

 

Yes, construction can be quite challenging. I think that the workaround there that could change the balance of power is that robotic technology gives one the ability to proceed with a project more incrementally. If you simply hand over a check for a quarter million dollars,  it is never that clear whether you will receive fair value for the dollar; it is not that clear if you will even receive anything for your money. Robotics might change that. What you might see emerge is more of a stage by stage building process. You might start off with a tiny house, this tiny house might then build out to a multi-unit tiny house and then further additions could be added as you go. This approach would mean that there would never be that much money on the table at any given time and if the work was not done to specs, then you would not rehire that firm. With robots the cost would more likely be strictly scaled to size than perhaps would be true with human labor.  

 

With respect to the argument that there has been a massive amount of investment involved, what is of interest is how much of that appears to be a sunk cost. They have built up these LLMs and the AI companies appear to be quite interested to see what happens when developers actually use them. For the developers there does not actually seem to be that much cost involved. Once the LLM is developed there is not that much marginal cost in letting the computers run. So interestingly OpenAI already has a plausible business strategy of offering subscriptions to paying customers even when they only released GPT 4 in November 2023. All of the second generation LLM developers are aware of the recipe involved so there is not that much risk and a fair amount of payback in just reverse engineering  what we already have. With all of this revenue potential there seems to be quite a bit of investment interest in throwing more money in the direction of |AI development. 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

 

Edited by mag1, 09 March 2024 - 02:13 AM.

[mag1]

As a general gauge of where AI capability now stands it might be helpful to provide the url for OpenAi's Sora text to video LLM model.

https://openai.com/sora

 

What we are seeing is this rapid convergence to immersive generative reality.

I felt this when I first interacted with GPT in a narrative context.

GPT's ability to generate narrative reality was quite powerful.

With a book you can be dragged along a story arc that you really are not that interested in.

GPT allows you to generate a narrative that is compelling to you.

 

Sora is transferring this story making ability to video.

Being able to create your own narrative in video form would be even more compelling.

 

One certainly can begin to wonder when the technology truly arrives, whether people will simply be

drawn away from bricks and mortar and into a generative reality that they find more real than reality.

 

 

 

[mag1]

One of the big breakthrough ideas that has been introduced to the thread is the idea of profit. This has helped to open up new ways of understanding

how technology will impact employment. What appears to have happened is that the technology companies have seen surging profits while they have

been able to reduce their job base. This is along the lines that we suggested where you replace workers with machines and pay the machines 10 cents per

hour while you continue to charge the customer top dollar. The capitalist class are then ecstatic. Profits go up; share prices go up -- everything is great.

However, for the displaced workers there is downward mobility, while not to the extent of living in the cardboard box underneath the overpass. Overall,

this is not a bad outcome.

 

What happens when what is true for the part is applied to the whole? What happens when it is not simply some of the highest end sectors of the economy

that experiences these updates, but the entire labor market all at the same time? How would there be stability in that instance? I think that we are on a

teeter-totter; on one side you can have profits go up on the other side you can have prices go down. At the start, profits can increase with prices mostly

stable. If the technology displacement were to become more widespread, then the compensating effect could be to reduce prices. One could then pass on

the 10 cents per hour marginal cost to the consumer and not extract that all as corporate profit. It is good to know that there is this compensating mechanism

that is available as a way of returning society to balance if this were to devolve into a crisis.

[Mind]

Yes, currently there does not seem to be enough employees to fill all of the jobs needed to run the modern US economy efficiently, however this could swing radically in the other direction in a very short time period. This is because unlike other technological advancements, AI/robotics can be implemented near instantaneously. Once AI masters driving a single vehicle, it can drive all vehicles, just by sharing the software. 

[mag1]

Mind, I am not comfortable with the current roll-out of robo-vehicle technology. There are over 40,000 motor vehicle fatalities every year. 

If they simply mandated that all new cars had to have installed AI autodrive tech (which drivers would have the option of disabling), then those fatalities

would rapidly vanish. There are no other interventions where we have so much discretion on that level of human carnage. The problem is that at this

time they are trying to engineer around all the incredibly bad driving behaviors of humans with AI software. "Human error" is the central problem

that causes all of these fatalities; human craziness can defeat even the most brilliant of our AI researchers. The workaround would seem to be

to simply hand over the entire system to AI and then the engineering becomes almost trivially easy. The totality of the transport environment would be

controlled by AI technology that was based upon rational programming logic. It would then be super easy to create all sorts of built-in safety and efficacy

protocols that would maximize traffic flow. There would no longer be any trolley car problems. Trolley car dilemmas only arise when you are trying to run

a complex engineering system with ape brains as the decision makers. As soon as we move it over to AI all of that incompetence ends. I am surprised that

AI vehicle transport has not yet been mandated.  

Edited by mag1, 09 March 2024 - 07:42 PM.

[adamh]

mag1, you have really been thinking about this. I agree self driving cars are not ready to be put on the market yet. They are still not safe enough. What we might see is an expansion of the self braking function in which radar sees the car or obstacle and applies the brakes if you don't do it. We have automatic guidance now, the next step might be checking to see what roads are busy and suggesting a better route.

 

No doubt greedy capitalists will try to keep most of the benefit of cheap robots to themselves and maintain high profits. What happens inevitably is that competitors drop their price to gain market share and then everyone drops their prices or goes under. A large part of the cost of goods is labor, the other part is the cost of materials and parts. It turns out that the costs of materials and parts are largely due to labor so that goes down as well. If miners can be replaced by machines then coal and oil get cheaper. Its a downward spiral for costs and an upward spiral for quality of life

 

Relationships with humanoid robots will come to be normalized and expected. Small children will be paired with small robots which play with and keep an eye on them. The bot will grow with the child and be his/her best friend. A child may have several human friends and one or more robots. If they look, act, talk, feel and walk just like a human, we will accept them. In time all children will be raised by bots and that will cut down on crime since a bad childhood is often behind killers and criminals

[mag1]

Yes, I have been getting some traction on this topic. I did not phrase my previous comment well. What I was trying to say was that self-driving cars could be ready for show time now if only crazy people did not get in the way. The problem that we have is that the road is filled with human drivers that do an unlimited number of super crazy things. The AI software engineers are expected to program around all of the possible human errors that they could encounter. So, often when the self-driving cars are in an accident it is because of human errors of other drivers. For example, rear ending the AI car. What I thought might be helpful is that all new cars could at least be equipped by law with AI driving software (drivers would have the option of disabling it). After a few years, most of the cars would already have this software and then by a certain herd effect AI driving would be so much better than that of humans. It is startling that over 40,000 fatalities are occurring every year and all of this carnage would immediately stop once the switchover to AI happened. Creating some way to potentiate this switchover would be such a win for all of us. Once all the cars were driven by AI it would become super simple to maximize safety using a number of strategies; these strategies have not be implemented with human drivers because it is very unclear how it wold even be possible.

 

I am somewhat more ambivalent about characterizing the motivations of capitalists. My main concern was whether there could be a complete collapse of the labor market. What I am beginning to see now when thinking in terms of profits and prices is that this would not happen. If you keep up the prices then you have these windfall profits. This is what is happening with the tech companies. They introduce robotization in their factories and perhaps many people are not aware of it and then they have a massive increase in profits. As long as this happens in an obscure way people are none the wiser. The problem would be if you tried to do the same thing when you went to cut people's lawns. You bring out your robolawn mower that has a marginal cost of 10 cents per hour and you want to charge the $25 per hour human wage to the customer. At that point the customer might ask to pay the 10 cents per hour price. In this instance there is more of a profit versus price trade off involved. In true free markets you would expect that price would gravitate to a point closer to marginal cost (i.e., 10 cents per hour). The tech companies can claim the full price and large profits because they are not so much in free markets as they are in oligopolies. The 10 cents per hour price then acts as a pressure valve release if there large scale labor disruptions. If all of a sudden you could increase the real value of money by 100 fold by simply charging the marginal cost, then you have created this massive windfall profit for the people. I think it is very reassuring that there is this backdoor escape to what might otherwise be a serious social crisis. If you increased real purchasing power by 100 fold then everyone would be rich.

 

With the relationships with humanoid robots I will be more careful this time around because after my last comment on this topic I have been deluged by ads with scantily clad supermodels on Longecity and in other of my feeds which is somewhat irritating. It would seem that Longecity AI is very aware of the content of comments and then directs ads that seem to conform to the comments of users. I do not want to give too detailed a description of my particular psychology as this will only lead the AI to further refine their ad selection that might be able to reach me at a deeper psychic level. However, clearly for me the scantily clad supermodel strategy is not all that effective.

 

When I thought about my robo life, what I was first most attracted to was all of the activities that I could become involved in. For example, I mentioned robotennis. As I imagined this I thought about the playing with a robot that I could do and how I could become a very good tennis player -- perhaps if I practiced 2-3 hours per day at my zone of proximal development I could become very good.

 

For me, it seems that the pathway for personal connection goes through such activities. It is only then as an incidental observation that I noticed that I had been practicing with this very attractive supermodel robo tennis player. The idea of a super model as a super model in itself did not have much appeal to me. Indeed as others have mentioned on thread, the idea of having an inflatable love interest is if anything highly disturbing. What if the inflatable doll sprung a leak? Might the doll then just float away? It was both disturbing and amusing at the same time to think of our future romantic lives with pneumatic balloons.

 

It is more about living an active life and doing interesting activities and achieving mastery that is of central importance for me. Some people never seem to be good at anything and this can a very large psychological negative for them. Robo technology could allow everyone to have things that they are very good at and this will be a great plus in helping them create positive energy to attract other people (or possibly robots to them). In this scenario it is not totally clear to me if I would then necessarily be drawn to a robo mate, perhaps by simply being very good at things that it would be more that then this would attract people to me.

 

Yet, robots would have this enormous advantage of being right at my level of proximal development in everything. They would know the exact level of skill that I had in tennis, in learning a foreign language, in everything. You would be spending so much time with the robot that perhaps some sort of personal relationship would then become inevitable. With people such an exact matching of skills typically will not happen. Almost inevitably, there will be a mismatch of skill level and then people will drift apart. With a human robot pairing this perfect matchup wold be true across all activities and all skill levels.That could be a very powerful combination in creating long lasting relationships.

 

This was exactly how this happened when I imagined it -- I was just spending so much time with the robot that a relationship seemed to naturally flow from that. It was not because I put the cart before the horse (i.e., the super model as supermodel, in my thinking this was more the last part of thinking process). Interestingly, in all of the current humanoid robot videos that I have watched they have went far out of their way to avoid depicting the robots as anything but entirely utilitarian in nature. So, there are still a few combinations in the combination lock to hit before this is ready, though after thinking about this it might be closer than some might be comfortable in admitting.

Edited by mag1, 11 March 2024 - 04:49 AM.

[mag1]

Mind, I read your comment from a year ago on another Singularity thread where you spoke of how AI would have impacts on elections and free speech more generally.

The AI technology that is emerging is having such far reaching effects into so many aspects of our lives and as you mentioned this includes the type of speech that is

and is not permitted and how the AI is controlling the entire flow of conversations online: An AI technology of mass mind control has been evolving over the last many years

that is very troubling.

 

For me recently, on various online social platforms, I have been banned for saying things; often for simply speaking truthfully. To date Longecity has not tried to censor me.

I find it quite shocking that some seemingly mundane ideas are thought best left unsaid online. I do realize that sometimes my posts here and elsewhere might be somewhat

against the flow of the discussion and sometimes might push up against the harmony of thought of the thread, though sometimes life does serve you up lemonade and you must

simply accept this.

 

The rapidly emerging AI and genetic technologies probably will radically disrupt our communities in the years ahead -- trying to control these technologies

for personal advantage likely will not work out. There will be many unhappy people whose power will be removed with the new tech, yet it will be an exciting time and

on the whole there will be overwhelming benefits. Over the longer term the legacy of the developments of our time will not be negated by the censorship that we are now

witnessing. 

Edited by mag1, 13 March 2024 - 01:34 AM.

[adamh]

Yes, I have been getting some traction on this topic. I did not phrase my previous comment well. What I was trying to say was that self-driving cars could be ready for show time now if only crazy people did not get in the way. The problem that we have is that the road is filled with human drivers that do an unlimited number of super crazy things. The AI software engineers are expected to program around all of the possible human errors that they could encounter. So, often when the self-driving cars are in an accident it is because of human errors of other drivers. For example, rear ending the AI car. What I thought might be helpful is that all new cars could at least be equipped by law with AI driving software (drivers would have the option of disabling it). After a few years, most of the cars would already have this software and then by a certain herd effect AI driving would be so much better than that of humans. It is startling that over 40,000 fatalities are occurring every year and all of this carnage would immediately stop once the switchover to AI happened. Creating some way to potentiate this switchover would be such a win for all of us. Once all the cars were driven by AI it would become super simple to maximize safety using a number of strategies; these strategies have not be implemented with human drivers because it is very unclear how it wold even be possible.

 

I am somewhat more ambivalent about characterizing the motivations of capitalists. My main concern was whether there could be a complete collapse of the labor market. What I am beginning to see now when thinking in terms of profits and prices is that this would not happen. If you keep up the prices then you have these windfall profits. This is what is happening with the tech companies. They introduce robotization in their factories and perhaps many people are not aware of it and then they have a massive increase in profits. As long as this happens in an obscure way people are none the wiser. The problem would be if you tried to do the same thing when you went to cut people's lawns. You bring out your robolawn mower that has a marginal cost of 10 cents per hour and you want to charge the $25 per hour human wage to the customer. At that point the customer might ask to pay the 10 cents per hour price. In this instance there is more of a profit versus price trade off involved. In true free markets you would expect that price would gravitate to a point closer to marginal cost (i.e., 10 cents per hour). The tech companies can claim the full price and large profits because they are not so much in free markets as they are in oligopolies. The 10 cents per hour price then acts as a pressure valve release if there large scale labor disruptions. If all of a sudden you could increase the real value of money by 100 fold by simply charging the marginal cost, then you have created this massive windfall profit for the people. I think it is very reassuring that there is this backdoor escape to what might otherwise be a serious social crisis. If you increased real purchasing power by 100 fold then everyone would be rich.

 

With the relationships with humanoid robots I will be more careful this time around because after my last comment on this topic I have been deluged by ads with scantily clad supermodels on Longecity and in other of my feeds which is somewhat irritating. It would seem that Longecity AI is very aware of the content of comments and then directs ads that seem to conform to the comments of users. I do not want to give too detailed a description of my particular psychology as this will only lead the AI to further refine their ad selection that might be able to reach me at a deeper psychic level. However, clearly for me the scantily clad supermodel strategy is not all that effective.

 

When I thought about my robo life, what I was first most attracted to was all of the activities that I could become involved in. For example, I mentioned robotennis. As I imagined this I thought about the playing with a robot that I could do and how I could become a very good tennis player -- perhaps if I practiced 2-3 hours per day at my zone of proximal development I could become very good.

 

For me, it seems that the pathway for personal connection goes through such activities. It is only then as an incidental observation that I noticed that I had been practicing with this very attractive supermodel robo tennis player. The idea of a super model as a super model in itself did not have much appeal to me. Indeed as others have mentioned on thread, the idea of having an inflatable love interest is if anything highly disturbing. What if the inflatable doll sprung a leak? Might the doll then just float away? It was both disturbing and amusing at the same time to think of our future romantic lives with pneumatic balloons.

 

It is more about living an active life and doing interesting activities and achieving mastery that is of central importance for me. Some people never seem to be good at anything and this can a very large psychological negative for them. Robo technology could allow everyone to have things that they are very good at and this will be a great plus in helping them create positive energy to attract other people (or possibly robots to them). In this scenario it is not totally clear to me if I would then necessarily be drawn to a robo mate, perhaps by simply being very good at things that it would be more that then this would attract people to me.

 

Yet, robots would have this enormous advantage of being right at my level of proximal development in everything. They would know the exact level of skill that I had in tennis, in learning a foreign language, in everything. You would be spending so much time with the robot that perhaps some sort of personal relationship would then become inevitable. With people such an exact matching of skills typically will not happen. Almost inevitably, there will be a mismatch of skill level and then people will drift apart. With a human robot pairing this perfect matchup wold be true across all activities and all skill levels.That could be a very powerful combination in creating long lasting relationships.

 

This was exactly how this happened when I imagined it -- I was just spending so much time with the robot that a relationship seemed to naturally flow from that. It was not because I put the cart before the horse (i.e., the super model as supermodel, in my thinking this was more the last part of thinking process). Interestingly, in all of the current humanoid robot videos that I have watched they have went far out of their way to avoid depicting the robots as anything but entirely utilitarian in nature. So, there are still a few combinations in the combination lock to hit before this is ready, though after thinking about this it might be closer than some might be comfortable in admitting.

I have noticed the scantily clad ads as well. Its hard to say if there is a connection to our discussions.

 

Sure people will want someone to cut their lawn for 10 cents an hour, tell them to buy their own robot. Someone has to buy it, has to equip it, has to haul it to the customer and pay for any damage it does. The $25 per hour continues but might come down a bit. Actually it costs more than that now since they charge by the cut and it takes 20 or 30 minutes

 

Tutors and trainers will be a popular use, learning new skills or just learning things for fun like a new language. Tennis opponents will require more advances in ai and fine control but are certainly doable, further down the road. 

 

AI will raise the standard of living and people in the future will live a life that rich people live now. In fact poor people now live better than the middle class did in many periods of history. Poor people on welfare have things that ancient kings could only dream of like tv, cell phones.

 

The "aint it awful" crowd seems to have run out of scary scenarios for us to worry about

[Mind]

Not all jobs are drudgery. Some people find value, enjoyment, and meaning in their work. They enjoy the satisfaction of helping their fellow human. When AI takes away their job they will be depressed about it. People can say "don't worry", "learn a new skill" (a skill that AI does 100 times better, cheaper, and faster that you will never be paid to do). The newly unemployed will probably not be satisfied with watching porn and playing video games all day long, every day. Self-actualization is a positive thing for people. That might be taken away if AI does everything.

[mag1]

Adamh, I am actually now super super positive (as an individual) about what the future will bring us in the years ahead.

It is only when we start trying to figure out how society will respond that I become quite uncertain.

 

 

Some of my top positives are:

 

1. Know how to create social utopia: through enhanced executive functioning

2. Know how to create rapid economic development: with lower fertility etc.

3. Genetic uplift: Can genetically design superhumans

4. AI: high ability online computer systems are already available

5. Remote Society: No need to be stuck in mass schools, workplaces etc.. End of envy.

 

 

 

Yes, I am super super optimistic.

 

The first one on the list is an emerging realization about what causes social misery and what we can do to prevent it.

The figure attached shows the US homicide rate by age and year through most of the 20th Century.

No one seemed to have any idea of what was happening with that mountain of youth homicide with a peak in ~1994.

Just no clue. It has taken 20 years for people to realize what happened.

 

Why did American society collapse from ~1970-1998? Blank stares from everyone.

Our society imploded and ... crickets. No one knew.

 

The best anyone could tell was well it most be a problem of IQ.

Somehow there was a rapid decrease in the IQ of American youth and then there was an equally rapid increase. Wrong answer.

 

It was lead poisoning. Dumping hundreds of thousands of tons of a known neurotoxin (i.e., lead) into the ambient

air supply is not a good idea. All of this lead caused a massive decrease in executive functioning and endless social chaos.

.

 

How does that help us now? There's not that much lead anymore. The cause of social collapse is known to be reduced

executive functioning (i.e., impulse control, future planning etc.). If we want less of all the bad things that happened in the late

20th century (crime, teenage fertility, academic setbacks, etc.), then enhancing executive functioning is how to stop all of that.

There are doable approaches that could be applied to further increase executive functioning. Western nations would then 

have Asian like crime and other rates 10 times lower than we have now.

 

I am spectacularly excited about this! While lead has been understood to be a problem for thousands of years, the idea that we could

continue to enhance executive functioning for even more gain has only emerged recently. If we like the return to civilization over the last

few decades as lead neurotoxicity has faded, then why not make an even stronger civilization from our hard earned lesson?

 

Fortunately, there is an incentive structure that we can see to make this happen. In the last few years, El Salvador (until recently the most

dangerous nation on the planet) has implemented a set of policies that increase executive functioning and over the last few years has seen

its homicide rate then fallen by 99% (and now one of the world's safer nations). This overwhelming success has resulted in near universal

public support. Those who can apply the technology correctly can then enjoy substantial political and social power. Lead, follow or get out of

the way.

 

I am very excited to see how Western nations will apply this knowledge to create our own social utopia.

 

Attached Files

•  Contour1.PNG   330.05KB   0 downloads

Edited by mag1, 16 March 2024 - 06:18 PM.

[Mind]

 

 El Salvador (until recently the most

dangerous nation on the planet) has implemented a set of policies that increase executive functioning and over the last few years has seen

its homicide rate then fallen by 99% (and now one of the world's safer nations). 

 

El Salvador didn't do anything new, they just instituted mass incarceration of criminals. Every nation could do this to make their countries safer. No need for AI to achieve this outcome.

 

I agree that material wealth will increase with the advent of AI/AGI/ASI (whatever your favorite terminology), but I am unsure if this will lead to increases in happiness. As is well-documented here and elsewhere, young generations who are most exposed to social media, games, adult entertainment, AI generated/altered content, are the least happy, most depressed, most obese, most drug-addicted generation ever measured. This has been known for a while, that increasing material wealth above a certain level does not lead to more happiness. There is a level of comfort/stability that is achieved by a moderate income which allows people to pursue what makes them happy. More wealth does not help in this regard.

 

 

[mag1]

Mind, the crime reduction in El Salvador is a modern day miracle. A reduction in a national homicide rate from ~103 to 1 over a few years -- a near

100 fold decline -- is, as far as I am aware, unprecedented. My guess is they were highly aware of the lead hypothesis. El Salvador removed lead

from gas in ~1992 and then the homicide rate started to plunge in 2016 (as expected); in 2019 they instituted get tough on crime policies; crime

nearly vanishes. In this instance, the state itself performs the role of executive function for all those lacking in such cognitive ability.

 

For me, though, it is even more powerful to realize that there are a range of available interventions that would also improve brain functioning.

When people thought that crime and social problems were an IQ question -- the hold back was there were no good ways of increasing IQ.

Yet, now when it is clear that social problems are an executive functioning problem, an entire playing field opens up before us.

We can enhance executive functioning.

This has switched from being a problem that cannot be solved to a problem that can easily be solved.

 

For example, low dose lithium. We could enhance executive functioning at population scale and then have Asian level crime rates.

Homicide rates have already declined by 95%+ in some American demographics by simply removing environmental lead.

Why not decrease social dysfunction by another order of magnitude by playing the same game again with executive functioning?

It worked once -- it should work twice. We now know what needs to be done and how it can be done. 

It is important to realize that the only reason that this has not been done before is because it had never been clear to people what the problem was.

 

I am super super excited about this.

What do people really want?

They want better functioning societies.

There is just no way that people could be happier simply with more money when we are coping with the evolving social crisis all around us.

Enhancing executive functioning so that people would make less impulsive more thoughtful life choices will be such an enormous win for us.

 

It simply was never obvious before that the solution to our problems could be so simple and easy.

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Edited by mag1, 16 March 2024 - 07:34 PM.

[mag1]

These recent posts about enhanced executive functioning have monumental significance.

This is a historic breakthrough.

 

Knowing what caused our previous troubles gives us tremendous power to guide future behavior towards prosocial outcomes.

The 20th Century demonstrated all too conclusively what can happen when we do not have such control.

 

Hopefully, this hard won victory will not be ignored.

All too often once the height of a crisis passes, people can forget the urgency that was applied to solve the crisis.

 

In 1994, near the height of the crime catastrophe, all that leaders could demand was that children (i.e., superpredators) be

thrown into prison and never released. We can do much better now that we have had all these years to calmly deliberate on what

actually happened. We never need to return to reflexive policy that are almost always wrong.

All we need to do to create a better society is enhance executive functioning and civilization will get onto a never ending upward staircase.

 

 

This discussion is not as tangential as it might first appear.

The lack of executive functioning that we witnessed in the mid-1990s would have largely blocked the development of AI that

we are now witnessing. The widespread cognitive impairment present at that time would have almost certainly turned

advancing AI into a social disaster. One could easily have predicted that at that time there would be rioting in the streets to avoid

the world of technology that is now approaching. Fortunately, today's youth have very high executive functioning. This will

offer us a much smoother transition into accelerated technological development.

 

Edited by mag1, 21 March 2024 - 12:31 AM.

[adamh]

Mind, don't be such a gloomy gus. You said:

 

"Not all jobs are drudgery. Some people find value, enjoyment, and meaning in their work. They enjoy the satisfaction of helping their fellow human. When AI takes away their job they will be depressed about it."

 

You are once again flogging a strawman. "Taking away a job" does not mean they are fired, they simply can't be paid as much or perhaps not paid at all. No one is going to stop you from helping your fellow man or whatever it is that you like doing so much that you used to be paid for. We will all be getting that nice ubi check or maybe it will be phased in first for those whose jobs no longer pay money and later for everyone

 

El salvador btw, has adopted bitcoin as a national currency. Lowering the crime rate that much is a huge accomplishment. Shame on you mind for poo pooing it

 

"El Salvador didn't do anything new, they just instituted mass incarceration of criminals. Every nation could do this to make their countries safer. No need for AI to achieve this outcome."

 

Then you go on with the usual 'people will not be happy' theme that you have maintained since the beginning. 

 

AI will enable us to do precise gene editing which can not only create super humans without tendencies to disease or premature aging. It will also allow curing of diseases and conditions including genetic diseases. They will simply give a dose of vectors that carry the genetic correction right into the cell.

 

Mag1 what will you do when the ubi checks start coming? Do you have any plans?