Or, you know, we could use robots to slowly transform our society into a robotic utopia, where people get universal basic income and can do what the fuck they want, because robots do most of the work to keep our lives running.
But yeah, currently they are only attractive because they save costs. And that is attractive because we live in a capitalistic, profit driven society and not one where the well being of everyone is prioritized. (Although they can also help out in areas where human workforce is not available anyway, e.g., elderly care in several countires. Then again there are insufficient financial incentives to work in that area.) That’s why it’s highly probable that they will – for a long time – continue to be tools which will ease lower level work, so that humans can focus on higher level tasks. However, this level of capability is increasing over time, requiring even higher qualified humans to do very high level tasks until even those are replaced by thinking machines.
We currently have a pyramid of work. Most jobs require low to mid level education or qualification. The higher the qualification level is, the less jobs are available (but usually very well paid though). What we are going to see is that robots wil replace one by one the lower level parts of this pyramid. And that’s bad, because unemployment rates will increase, because of that. A lot of people don’t want to or can’t improve on their education / qualification. And even if they would, I doubt that there will be a sufficient amount of jobs available. (That would be a good question for a research project though, since I don’t really know how many new jobs could be created by requiring less lower level work. I am just pessimistic right now.) ChatGPT caused a lot of concerns in text writing industries. Image generating AIs caused similar distress in the creative industry. Developments like this will continue at a high speed. At some point machines will be able to improve machines completely on themselves. Then we will have an explosion of machine intelligence.
Society is not prepared for this.
That’s why I am advocating that politics have to speed up creating laws and rule frameworks in which robots are allowed to be developed and operated and which also take care of those who are in danger of unemployment and financial starvation.
“it means these robots will be stealing your souls (via the art you create) & also all your money (they need it more).”
The thing is we already live in that world. Labour saving automation is all around us but we work as hard as ever. My generation witnessed the arrival of the two parent income, women entered the workplace in order to afford better housing and foreign holidays. The result? More expensive housing and latchkey kids.
Are you surprised? The more efficient machines become, the harder humans will need to work to compete.
Edit: People are downvoting this as if it was something I wanted. It just seems like reality to me.
That’s the problem with capitalism and competition in capitalism. Everyone competes to maximize cost savings and profit.
I don’t know of a solution but this ain’t it.
That’s the worst part isn’t it. You see all these problems but I have no idea what to do about it. Even theoretical solutions don’t hold up, let alone practical limitations.
Real talk we’re probably all gonna get final-solution’d as soon as the rich perfect robotic automation and AI if we allow them to get that far. Because at that point we’re no longer useful to them and will be gotten rid of like an investment that’s no longer making profit.
AI and automation are not the enemy, they’re just tools. The rich are the enemy and are using those tools to oppress us.
I think we’re just gonna get herded into sanctuary districts until the problem solves itself.
I’ve seen this opinion quite a bit and I’m curious; in a world where robots did all the work, how would humans earn money? Would everything just be distributed equally among people by the government?
I understand, I just don’t feel comfortable with the government deciding how much I earn. I also wouldn’t feel comfortable working as say an engineer or a scientist and earning the same amount as someone who didn’t have to go to college and work extremely hard for their job
I just don’t feel comfortable with the government deciding how much I earn.
Depending on how you view it, it kinda already does.
More literally it’s always your boss deciding that for you. Why is “the government” so different than a boss who wants to screw you over as much as humanly possible?
Ideally it would be like the Star Trek Federation, where “work” is just volunteering and entirely voluntary. Nobody on the Enterprise is there because they have to be and they don’t get anything financially out of it, not even the red shirts. They’re there because they choose to be. That’s how it’s been explained to me, at least. The meme term is “fully automated gay space communism”.