That cycle is derived from the shortsightedness of man, and powered by the same underlying economic principals that are present in all advancing human societies: Growth. As long as we still call economic growth our benchmark, people will become more effective workers, demand higher pay, better social care and securtiy standards and a lot of other things resulting in higher costs per worker employed. At some point, automation will be cheaper, and then some company will feel the need to do it. The rest of the market adapts or resists and ultimately fails, and the new degree of automation becomes the norm.

While the long-term consequences might be counterproductive, the short term benefits are so overwhleming that – as we can see clear as day from our current-day oil consumption or reliance on fission for “cheap” power – even though long-term results are clear and “better alternatives in the long run” exist, we still exploit the heck of our short-term opporunities.

Also, a computer without any means of input is not a very useful computer. If you stuck a human brain into one as you say, you still can attach cameras, touch sensors, or whatever other sensors you happen to have hanging arounhd. Hopefully by the time connections between brains and computers are more robust there will be a fuller contingent of sensors too.

Finally, there is no need to replicate the full gamut of human emotions. A fuller discussion on this topic can be found here: http://blog.serotoninsoftware.com/terminated

Perhaps this is the answer to the Fermi Paradox.

Artificial Life is capable of being supported by any Turning machine equivalent.

Hence some form of life may evolve in any sufficiently complex space capable of supporting a persistence mechanism and a compete set of logic functions.

William H. Calvin has written extensively about this in his book, “The Cerebral Code”:

http://williamcalvin.com/bk9/

See especially the section on “the Darwin machine.”

All that “Bri” asked was, “Someone come up with a concrete example of something that robots with AI would lag behind humans in,” so I have satisfied his criterion.

“Second, I do not find the prospect of leisure-filled life appealing. I believe that work is essential to human well-being.”

This fallacy is easy to put to rest. Leisure does not mean “no work.” It simply means “freedom to choose.” I shake my head, looking around at the gross domestic and international side-effects of most jobs: debilitating boredom, exhaustion, rage (road and otherwise) child-neglect – that anyone would glibly associate jobs with well-being. To be explicit: People hate their jobs! Especially the beleaguered service sector, the next group to be displaced by machines. People love to work at what they love. The benefits of labor were never owned by business and profit-making, though we are schooled to take for granted their union. Tech can free us from alienated labor to the joy of personally chosen projects, like gardens, like beautifying neighbourhoods, like art, like being around kids as models and guides, to …. You name it. Freedom from compulsory commodity labor (selling yourself to another’s dubious project for pay), returns “work” to people’s own hands. But only if there is a Basic Income implemented as a right of citizenship in a society that has created a technological horn of plenty. I assure you, free people would fill their leisure with all kinds of work.

It’s an awful big galaxy packed with all kinds of unknowns. One or two people making all the decisions around here, however enhanced, guarantees killing us all. We need a broader basis for decision-making and wealth distribution.

In fact, it is entirely too difficult to try to predict where the future will lead us given the diverse nature of technology enhancement. One black swan is all it takes to pivot the world into a different direction. I think, rather than painting the doom-and-gloom scenario, we actually begin the discussion of what our next generation economy will look like. No one is having this discussion, at least, not openly, and it is an important discussion for everyone to experience and to participate in. Certainly, the past will not be like the future and the magnificent thing has two parts: First, you don’t want the future to be like the past, so already we are on a good starting point. The second is that we cannot begin to see all ends without contributions from every corner.

We need all hands contributing. It may be that all that is left to us is the consumer role. I don’t have a problem with that but I do have a problem trying to restrict this role to a tiny minority of the population, as we have done, because this is where corporations begin their inevitable spirals downward once the novelty of their product, the depth of their invention and the limits of their creativity bottom out.

I understand more readily if that happens with all of us engaged. That’s an extinction-level event that we cannot survive even though we had every hand involved in the effort. I won’t like it but I do understand it and I will like it much better than having to face such an event with only one or two people making the calls for the rest of us.

Too young to know how “the company store” con works? Mr. Stender just told you.

Perhaps our Editor/Moderator might briefly expound on what Molecular Assemblers will be capable of according Drexel, other top Nanotechnologists and Kurzweil.

About the video: Law enforcement- conservative style ;)

And they do not even have to run for election. chuckle!

There is a hierarchy now on earth, consisting of the wealthy owning corporations which have reduced the populations of the earth to consumers. The consumers fund the all of the other organisations of the earth.

The consumers fund the Governments, corporations, and the investors who own the corporations.

The odd thing about these consumers is they also perform the work for the corporations. In this way the corporations and their owners reap the benefits of the workers twice. Once when they work and create the values for the corporations, and second when they buy the products they have created thereby creating the profit for the very corporations they work for in the first place.

If I have outlined this in a reasonably accurate way, there exists a working class, and a class we might designate as the owner class, which reaps both sets of benefits while the worker class benefits only once.

Assuming the scenario is close to the facts of existence, if the worker class is eliminated from doing the work, and since they are the large majority of humanity here on earth. That leaves the owner class with a large population of out of work folks with a lot of time on their hands and no means of continuing to exist in the manner to which they have become accustomed.

It seems to me, for the time being at least, that funding the rest of their lives would be a prudent investment, which could be paid for with the excess profit which the robots could fund with their excess production created during their extra shifts of work which would be thrice as much as the workers would have provided.

Otherwise, once the workers died, they take the funds of the consumers with them. Since they had a dual life of worker and consumer to begin with.

Certainly without consumers the whole shebang falls apart anyway.

I believe it was Henry Ford who first recognised this fact.

I would appreciate any sensible comments. I believe this is a serious problem which has to be solved or else it may become the undoing or at least the hitch in the singularity gitalong.

In spite of your devout singularitarianist allegiance you’ve overlooked one of the most significant predictions that Ray Kurzweil makes about the future: humans merging with these intelligent machines. There won’t be any “AI to lord over us”…humans and AI will eventually be one and the same.

If we don’t need jobs, we won’t hire for them. Our system requires everyone to have a job, or be leeching off of someone with a job. If you cannot see the potential problem with that, you aren’t really ready to be talking about all of this. You aren’t contributing anything to the discussion.

Is business necessary today? Yeah. But only because so many people are innately selfish and have to be motivated to keep the civilization from falling apart Work or be homeless. Work or go to jail.

But that’s a band-aid solution, not some hallowed, mystical force to respected and cooperated with at all costs. The answer isn’t communism, or whatever it is you seem to be thinking of, but it’s not like every idea on the planet has to be reduced to some absurd battle between academia and the “working man,” Left vs. Right.

Concerning the discussiion of work, leisure, etc. I respectfully suggest there’s been an omission of a major. To wit: Molecular Assemblers (ref: K. Eric Drexler, other top Nanotechnologists and our own Kurzweil). Please read what they say about MAs and let me know if you yet believe said work, leisure, class distinction, etc.is unsolvable.

hahaha with a bunch of papers in his ‘hands’(?) just to get his next fix of Nuke! hahahaha

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=G9IscZMYYw0

Sounds kind of awful (I know) and doesn’t really address Bri’s contention that AI will save us. It’s possible it could if it were adopted universally. But, to take an example from another posting in today’s newsletter, we’re more than willing to give resources to children (One Laptop Per Child) But we seem to be less interested in investing resources to aid the adults in their community. AI might think differently about such a situation and allocate more resources to the adults. However, geniuses like Nicholas Negroponte are creating the “programs” [very deliberate use of that term here] that value children more than adults. This is the type of bias that will creep into AI early in the developmental stage. Humans are better than other forms of life, so their needs are paramount. Other life forms continue to be marginalized and fewer resources means less viability for their species.

I kind of hope I’m wrong. But there are seven billion + people in the world today and I suspect the majority of them feel they’re a little bit better than 90% of their fellow humans. So it will be easy for them to start defining parameters that will keep themselves just a little bit better off than the majority.

I hope I’m wrong. Science has a way of surprising us. But, unsurprisingly, many of us have a hard time visualizing a future that isn’t very much like the present– complete with guns on space ships, different racial lines remaining distinct, and sexy aliens who don’t mind mating with us, but never seem to reproduce.

I think it is also important to remember that AI programs are, at least currently, being written by a variety of humans with competing ideologies and foibles that will consciously or unconsciously find its way into their code. This will create an era of competing strains of AI possibly doing battle with each other on behalf of their creators. A good example of this is already playing out now as different AI based programs compete to earn money for their makers on the stock exchange. They are employing tactics like creating trading delays (by hammering the system with trades and cancelling them) which allows them an arbitrage opportunity and many others, basically tricking other AI programs to do their bidding.

Perhaps the key is to attempt to develop policies where the AI is developed to create “the optimum human centric environment”. In this ideal we could define what an optimum human centric environment would look like and work backwards from there. I believe the initial focus was on replacing the 3 D’s – Dirty, Dreary, and Dangerous jobs but that has obviously evolved very quickly. Its is an awe inspiring problem to reign it in and ensure the focus remains beneficial and supportive of the human race and I, for one, would love to be part of any formal effort to do that.

HAHAHA yes.. I like your style, Stephen.
But it is pointless, let me warn ya, I tried it before!
I just watch them go now… weeee…..