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Coachtzu t1_j0jzk6g wrote

Except not... There are tons of robots doing manual labor jobs already. We need to stop reimagining our place in the workforce and start reimagining our relationship with work entirely.

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deadc0deh t1_j0k5rhc wrote

Human labour is extremely and rapidly adaptable. Specialised labour still needs to repair the robots, and there may be a handful of 'easy' tasks where the cost of automating is higher than the cost of employment. This is already the case if you see a mass produced manufacturing line.

The real impending issue is that automation is only possible with access to capital, and whether it lowers average cost.

Those robots are often very specialised and very expensive. The problem is that they are causing capital to have increasing power and productivity, leading towards it being more efficient and profitable to have a smaller number of companies who are able to make that investment, and other just die out (a large barrier to competitiveness). This happened in the 1900s with cars - GM/Ford ect bought a number of their competitors.

The information age is doing the same thing with data - data becomes more valuable when you have a lot of it. One picture is worthless, but a billion allows you to extract relationships and features. Today we are continually seeing large tech companies acquire smaller ones/

Net effect is we have industries conglomerate until you're left with a few powerful entities who point at each other as competition but ultimately collude.

You need strong regulation and oversight to manage that, and a government supportive of labour. Will that happen in a system where you only have to donate to two parties? Or threaten election integrity by donating to the party that doesn't threaten your power? That may be a tough ask.

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Inariameme t1_j0nhu3b wrote

Sure but, paradigms do shift and the polysci one is overdue.

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Frame_Late t1_j0kcge1 wrote

Regulation means nothing without moral fortitude. Everyone is saying that we need to hold businesses accountable, but nobody can agree what that is. The powerful use that to divide us, and use the leeches of society as a wedge to.imoede progress.

Until we reach a real consensus on what the future should hold, the entire human race is in danger of a massive upheaval in the next century.

We need to reach a point where if we're going to regulate business, we might just need to ban AI altogether in some cases, or find a way for people to remain relevant. Otherwise all the socialists who the rich were using to strangle small businesses will be our downfall.

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gachamyte t1_j0l5xkg wrote

This is true and and will become more true with time. My experience within different work fields says that most of human labor will be at the request of humans. More like a gig work app thing that pings you for labor temp or long term based on the terms of your contract. These contracts will dictate your progression. Maybe your life moving forward and your ability to reproduce. Unless something or an event really shakes things up in the future.

The labor market and labor force is pretty much akin to wage slavery and orchestrated to funnel all ability for change to those already in control.

It’s not mining diamonds or oil rigs labor. It’s standing with a flag or directly interacting with humans like customer care. The true disconnect of the “elite” will come to fruition when humans are worth less than a robot. Once the cost scenario says that humans won’t produce they fully become the product. Your life is already forfeit to a market and global power so the next step is clear.

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Coachtzu t1_j0ldxt5 wrote

I largely agree with you, though I think there are a few points I'm not as sure about. The first is that I think we are already seeing humans struggle to retain their ability to interact with live humans in the age of ever-expanding technology. My own experience as a somewhat angst young man in the workforce was that it was actually incredibly beneficial to have to learn how to socialize with people different from myself if I wanted to pay rent. I fear, that if we remove that pressure, there are a solid number of young people who would retreat behind a screen or into a virtual environment and never risk the perils that comes with social interaction. I used to coach basketball, and I was seeing it towards the end of my time in that field (around 2018) where kids had a harder time confronting and dealing with conflict face to face compared to when I started in 2010. I had a lot more breaking up of physical fights in practice, but a lot more cohesion than I did at the end.

The second is that we are barreling towards a point where humans are the product like you said, which I don't necessarily see as entirely bad if handled as getting paid to help other humans, but that likely won't happen. The big issue from a practical sense as well is that as we remove humans from the workforce, they will progressively lose the ability to purchase the product unless we give them purchasing power somehow.

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DropsTheMic t1_j0moxol wrote

Seriously! The amount of knee-jerk fear mongering on this sub and others after ChatGPT launched has gotten ridiculous. There is healthy skepticism that recognizes that maybe it's not wise to start a new career doing repetitive or easily duplicated tasks lacking in creative thinking and then there is this. If you are really surprised by this new chatbot then you really haven't been seeing the writing on the wall in the AI and machine learning world for quite some time now. If you are worried about losing out to AI then double down on your skills that can't be replicated easily by AI and learn how to integrate AI tech into your life in a successful way. Direct competition against AI in some fields is going to be like playing chess vrs the program that beat the world champs, don't try. Play a new game.

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Black_RL t1_j0q314c wrote

This!

And let’s not forget all the emerging humanoids, Boston Dynamics, CyberOne, Agility Robotics, Ameca, Tesla bot, etc…..

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Utahmule t1_j0ne53d wrote

What jobs? Outside of warehouse/ factory jobs. Manual labor such as construction is still all humans.

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Coachtzu t1_j0ng7m9 wrote

There are thousands of robots already in existence that make construction jobs easier and roles that required 2 men to lift something now can be lifted by a robot (just one example: https://www.construction-robotics.com/). Houses can be 3D printed. Prefab home parts are able to be built by robots in factories and then assembled by humans in a fraction of the time.

This also discounts the already existing mechanics that while they don't have AI, have certainly displaced workers from manual labor jobs. Look at massive commercial farms, or logging operations. What used to take teams of men going up into the woods or in the fields to get a harvest has been replaced by trucks with cranes that can lift logs onto the bed and get pulled out of the woods, or tractor cultivators that do 14-20 rows at once.

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Utahmule t1_j0nisyr wrote

That link is just a different version of a forklift or crane so not a good example of robots replacing construction workers at all.

3d printed houses are just machines that lay concrete for all the walls. This is ugly, expensive, slow, limited capabilities, remodel or demo would be a nightmare if not impossible. We build with efficient materials and concrete is not an efficient way to build walls for a building, it's total overkill, slower and more expensive than framing and sheething.

Prefab homes are built by people in a warehouse, not robot assembly lines. It's faster because it's in a controlled environment.

Yeah, farming and resource extraction is for sure getting automated.

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Coachtzu t1_j0nokqb wrote

Seems like you're arguing semantics on the first bit. It was one example, I think it fits the bill of a robot doing a job a human would otherwise have to do, but literally googling construction robots comes up with tons of results.

That is the current iteration of 3D printed homes. You don't think in 10 years there will be any progress? Pretty sure based on the way robots and AI have already shifted so much in the last 10 years, it won't look the same as it does right now.

Some prefab homes are absolutely built by robots, look up the company dfab.

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Utahmule t1_j0nqvo7 wrote

Time will tell. Luckily I'm old enough I won't have to worry. It's an extremely interesting subject though.

Not semantics, with your logic a chain hoist is a machine replacing people.

Have you looked at the dfab website? It's just people using machines for some types of molded walls. Literally in a factory just fabing up small walls with a robot, which still requires a couple people controlling it and it's way slower than a couple of experienced concrete workers just doing it all the selves... Guarantee it's way more expensive too... A few products don't use machines at all and require a team of people to do the entire task. It's extremely far from constructing even a camper trailer, much less an actual house.

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twilight-actual t1_j0k2xyz wrote

Without work and competition providing the basis of value and the distribution of that value throughout our populace, what takes their place?

Egalitarianism?

Every attempt humanity has made at Egalitarianism has resulted in an oppressive police-state autocracy.

If we want to "re-evaluate our relationship with work", this is the first issue to address.

Edit: downvotes? You do realize that every attempt at true socialism and communism have failed, right? And from the ashes of these emerged the Soviet system who's offspring are now attempting to pummel Ukraine into the dark ages, followed by the CCP.

If we all no longer have to work, what do you think is going to happen? The owners of all the automated systems will just hand out money to everyone, and in such a way that everyone will get exactly what they feel they need?

Or, will we attempt to nationalize the means of production so that the government / party / central authority owns all the means of production and thus determines how resources are distributed?

And how do we determine who gets what? Are we all equal? Are some pigs more equal than other farm animals?

Downvotes without a response tell me you just don't like to be challenged with really thinking about the issue.

This is supposed to be a sub about the future, right?

I'm actually extremely disappointed in the quality and caliber here.

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SillyNluv t1_j0k3uh6 wrote

I always imagined we would pivot towards research, artwork(I know, I know) and relationships.

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Coachtzu t1_j0lbusu wrote

I said reimagining our relationship with work, not eliminate it entirely. Though I do think that will inevitably happen for many workers, and we need to prepare for it in some way whether your fears of a communist hellscape are taken to fruition or not.

I think this largely means reallocating dollars towards social value instead of production, the value of teachers and home health workers will be immense, as well workers to support maintenance and repair of our automated lines of production. Still likely need humans as head chefs in upscale restaurants, but you could easily see their prep work done by kitchen robots instead of humans.

But at the end of the day, when you look at the number of jobs in our economy, they're mostly low paying manual labor or driving jobs that will likely be replaced with robots and we will need to reimagine how those people survive without people going into a tailspin over the dangers of communism because the alternative is mass rebellion on a frightening scale.

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