alt Hacker NewsIf all jobs are taken away for the sake of robot driven productivity, who will consume the products and services being offered that result in profit?!
(EDIT: I am not against AI at all, just trying to understand where this all leads)
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Right? Unless we've figured out Star Trek Welfare, who is buying anything when 50% of the population is unemployed and wages have crashed for the other 50% because of biblical levels of unemployment.
I hear this argument being repeated a lot but I think it shows a lack of imagination to stay stuck on the idea that modern capitalism has to continue (at least for the super-rich). Capitalism is just a means to an end, that is to generate wealth. The wealthy's goal is abundance for themselves, and screw the rest.
The only reason they tolerate the proletariat is the need for labor to handle tasks that still require human beings. That’s what the modern capitalist machine does: it harvests labor. If they manage to eliminate the need for intellectual labor via AI and automate enough physical work using tech like Boston Dynamics and John Deeres, whoever's still around become trash. The reliance on this system of money flowing back and forth ends, because the only reason to maintain it is having people generate wealth for them. Once they can eliminate that "cost," they’ll do it without blinking.
We’re already seeing jobs being wiped out by the tens of thousands with the arrival of AI, and billionaires hoarding capital far beyond what they could ever consume, driven simply by the pleasure of having more than the next guy. We’ve also seen how some are depraved enough to treat human beings as mere resources for their own gratification. Why would them keep people around they don't need anymore? People are failable, expensive to keep and unreliable. If all can be automated, it will be. Expecting wealth distribution from them is also a fantasy. If they cared they would do it now, but the talk is always "when we reach certain goal the riches will tricke down, just wait."
The argument that "there won't be anyone left to buy products and keep capitalism running" might hold true during a transition phase, but that would just be like ripping off a Band-Aid. None of them super-rich will care about the money flow once this structure becomes obsolete and can be replaced by another system that’s more efficient and easier to control.
Other bots. The sequel to "don't build the torment nexus" is "don't make dead internet theory a reality"
Those wealthy enough to own (shares in?) the robot factories.
what happens to labor markets in places like India if robots are able to accomplish that would have ordinarily required 5 manual labors at a fraction of the cost say (1/100th)?
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
The whole economy is allowed to exists to “feed” the rich. Money doesn’t matter in this scenario.
So as an owner of 1 million robots, in a world where there are 1000 rich people to serve, I can have 1000 robots per person to serve them and can do everything for them.
Why do I care about the rest of the population? Why I need them to consume my resources? I already have all the power in the world. I have food, health, security, scientist etc. I don’t need the rest of the humans for anything.
Why currently “the rich” need the rest of humans is: you need baristas, servers, builders to help save time and make life enjoyable for most humans. then you need office workers to do the research, manage wealth of a richer category. So all this chain is needed such as top 1000 people have: housing, food, health, security, etc. that’s all they care. They don’t need the money. That’s the real power.
The same people that consume all the goods and services after machines took over agriculture?
Please, don't ask logical questions.
basically, that is the question of wealth distribution. All the wealth created by these AI companies should be distributed to people so that they will have money to buy products from these companies. This can range from more taxes, UBI, or like Marx said: seize the means of productions (basically nationalize all these AI companies and share the profits to everyone)
It can be anything from fully automated luxury communism, to fully automated dystopian communism.
From https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Fully_Automated_Luxury_Communi...
Don't discount that tech billionaires pursuing this are themselves nihilistic. They would enjoy the fruits of our labor and will not care what comes after they die.
We have been automating away jobs pretty frantically since the Industrial Revolution started ~250 years ago.
It has always resulted in no long term effect on unemployment and higher worker wages.
If you don't understand why that counterintuitive thing has consistently happened for centuries, you probably shouldn't speculate on the current automation wave.
Currently, in the US the top 10% of earners are responsible for approximately half of all consumer spending. If AI causes this trend to continue and accelerate, I expect that we'd see similar dollar amounts of consumer spending, but it would be concentrated mainly in the people whose income comes from capital investments rather than from working for wages. Basically you'd see a situation like this: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=snsXD6FwLYc