Among the many promises of the AI Revolution is the idea of limitless wealth and limitless leisure. We don’t have ‘limitless leisure’ just yet, but we have far, far more leisure than at any other time in the history of the world, and the evidence seems to indicate that this is a very, very BAD idea.
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41 replies on “Humans Need Not Apply”
AI is becoming a bugaboo like anthropomorphic global warming (AGW) or if you prefer “climate change”. The negative possibilities are being hyperbolized and exaggerated to a preposterous degree. Mostly by people who get their information from works of fiction. Fiction is fun entertainment, it is not educational information.
Rogue, anti-human AI makes a great story plot because there are so many ways the plot can develop. Story plots are not reality however.
If there is any real threat to humanity from digital entities that threat lies so far in the distant future that it is irrelevant to us and anything we do today.
The genuine threat, as always, comes from our fellow human beings and the tools they employ to make those threats viable. It’s not the machines, it’s never the machines, it’s the people who operate the machines that is the real problem.
In having this discussion people have thrown “Yeah, well Elon Musk thinks AI is a threat and you sure as hell aren’t Elon Musk!” in my face. That’s an ignorant thing to say because Elon Musk is all for the proper development of AI. His biggest concern is that AI will be used irresponsibly by the wrong people for the wrong things. His warnings about “civilization’s destruction” apply to anything sufficiently powerful to change the way we live.
We’ve weathered that storm with atomic weapons and while we may not be out of the clouds and under clear skies on that one yet — All the doomsayers have been predicting global annihilation for 80 years now and it hasn’t happened yet. In fact if there ever was a weapon too terrible and destructive to end all wars that is the one and that’s what it’s done. Global conflict was incrementally escalating up to the Second World War and has not managed to get going again after the atomic bomb was used to subdue our enemy Japan. Which subsequently decided it’s better to be a very good friend to the United States than it is to be our enemy. Go figure.
We’ll weather the storm on AGW, AI and whatever else comes along also. By the time AI can really, truly become an issue we’ll have figured out how to handle it safely too.
Y’all need to relax a bit on this topic. I have a “smart home” filled with “smart devices” and the stupidity of these “smart” things is astounding. I’m not a programmer I’m a systems engineer but I know lots of programmers. None of us are overly concerned that SkyNet is going to come and kill us all. It makes a great story, stories are not reality. The reality is that any real threat from AI itself is so distant as to not be a genuine concern. The threat, if any, comes from people not the machines they use.
I’m curious about “smart homes” and “smart devices” from one perspective that you probably can answer.
I can see the benefits of devices that can regulate themselves according to parameters that you, yourself, define. However, I’m concerned about “smart” devices that are connected to the Internet because they almost certainly spy on their owners.
If I say, “Hey Alexa, get me a corned beef sandwich for lunch.” Alexa has to be always listening in order to wake-up when I say, “Hey Alexa…”. Also, Alexa must be connected to the internet in order to contact Door-Dash and order my sandwich. ‘She’ also has to have access to at least one of my bank accounts to make the purchase. We also know that everything you buy or even look at online is logged and data mined. This seems like a very dangerous situation.
So I’m wondering, what type of smart devices are entirely self-contained and incapable of spying on you and which are the ones that are very likely to be spying?
You asked and I’m going to do my best to answer and provide you with the information you’re curious about. This will not be brief. This is a very complex topic and cannot be reasonably dealt with in brevity.
Anything you use in the digital realm, in one way or another, must be connected to the internet to work. This is not the issue that a lot of people make it out to be. There are things like iPhones and Android phones listening to everything you say too. Like it or not, believe it or not, however you adjust your settings Siri and Google voice CAN listen to anything and everything you say whether you know it or not. Whether you can prove it or not. Unless you’re a programmer that works on that companies’ closed source proprietary software you are trusting them to apply whatever privacy settings you activate.
Apple in particular has been caught with its hands in that particular cookie jar more than once.
You live in the Digital Age. EVERYTHING is “capable” of spying on you. Whether it actually does spy on you or not is a different matter entirely. If you pique the interest of our government it is most certainly capable of spying on you 24/7/365. That is way, way, way more of a threat then some silly Alexa device but I doubt you’re going to be moving to Uganda or someplace as primitive thereby. Whether you are worth the effort or expense is the deciding factor. Spoiler: You’re not.
It’s the same thing with smart home stuff. It’s all a compromise to one degree or another. For instance, I NEVER give any smart home gear or systems access to any kind of financial instrument. I would not order a corned beef sandwich or anything else by voice command. I.E. I don’t use nor want Door-Dash. There are conveniences that are not worth the risk to me. To me that’s a very minor convenience for a very major risk so I just don’t do it. I also don’t use FaceBook, X (Twitter) or any of that stuff either. Same reasons, different situations.
If you want to go for full privacy then you can’t have a Smart Phone or any other “smart device”. Period. End of discussion. If you do use a Smartphone, don’t put a financial instrument like a credit card on your phone either. The convenience isn’t worth the threat potential. Just pull your card from your RFID shielded wallet when you check out at the grocery store.
If you’re making an issue about Alexa with a working smart phone in your vicinity then you are either ignorant of the realities, you’ve got an axe to grind or you’re just being willfully hypocritical. If you do want to own and use smart devices then you should not be surprised that the potential for abuses exists and you should take reasonable precautions. Smart devices, all of them, put your privacy at risk to one degree or another.
Not just smart devices either. I have a pretty extensive camera system. Camaras come with apps for your phone or other device that make them very convenient. I don’t use those apps past the minimum point where the camera is set up. I set the IP address on the cameras manually and use software called “Blue Iris” to operate them. I set the DNS on all my cameras to a nonsensical, non-DNS server address so that they cannot of themselves navigate the internet. This, unless they’re secretly using a hidden DNS that I’m not aware of, precludes them from phoning home to China where they were manufactured.
If they ARE using a secret DNS I’ll know they’re doing that because I regularly run a packet capture on my internet traffic looking for that sort of thing. I haven’t found anything that does that in years but I still check because things can change without notice.
This packet capture tells me all of what is traversing my commercial, business grade router. Through my Cisco commercial business grade managed Ethernet Switch. Which is attached to multiple cheaper, home user grade switches and a TP-Link Omada business class wifi system. Everything goes through the Cisco Switch and my Ubiquiti ER-8 Edgemax Router before it gets to the internet. Nothing can get in or out without me knowing about it if I want to take the time to look.
This is how I know what’s happening and what is doing what on my LAN and out to the WAN. It’s a bit more complicated than all this but this is enough to get you the general idea.
So if Alexa or Google Home or any of that stuff is sending traffic over the internet I can see and identify the source and the content.
None of that is doing anything unexpected or unwanted. It’s not true that Alexa et. al. listens to everything you say and sends it to a server somewhere. It listens in ten second bites and overwrites that every ten seconds. Because …
Alexa devices and such have very little processing power and a tiny bit of RAM. All they can do with their available hardware is listen on a ten second buffer for their activation word. Called a “wake word”. That buffer is in RAM and is overwritten every ten seconds. This isn’t for privacy sake or any other nonsense, it’s a limit of the physical capacity of the device. If they hear their wake word, THEN they connect to their internet servers so that the internet servers, which have a LOT of processing power, can try to interpret what was said and what the appropriate response would be.
I have yet to see any real evidence that my privacy, among all the millions who now use such devices, is seriously compromised. Even with stories of Amazon employees “listening in” to such devices the odds of them choosing to listen in to me unawares are less than getting hit by lightning.
They might hear what was said after the wake word and the command execution but they are still limited by the 10 second interval/overwrite. If I say something interesting enough to some Amazon employee somewhere in that time period that they would bother to notice I can’t imagine what that would be.
It’s a matter of scale and you have to grasp the scale to understand this stuff. Even if your Android or iPhone is listening to you, it and millions of its sort are also listening to so many other people that picking you out of the considerable background noise is a near impossible feat. Even with tremendous processing power and AI augmentation. The scale works to your advantage here.
Adding to that is the problem of so many disparate smart devices in any given home needing internet connectivity so that they can work. If for some reason the connection cannot be made and the internet is far, far from reliably foolproof, then the device won’t work.
To counter this I use a system called “Home Assistant”, which intercepts those internet signals and handles them locally. Even if the internet is down, most of my stuff will still work over only a LAN connection as long as I have electrical power and my networking infrastructure is operational. Because of Home Assistant these devices “think” they’re connected to the internet even when they’re not and Home Assistant handles most of that traffic whether there’s an internet connection or not.
Like I said, I would never give any of this stuff a credit card to store and use. That’s not what I want all this for. Some examples I use this for are …
I tell my system “(Wake word), set condition one.” It responds “Sir, set condition one, Aye Aye Sir” All the lights turn to a low output red so my eyes to adapt to their night vision. My AVR (audio visual receiver, a Yamaha FWIW) goes to the settings I need to use to watch TV. Source, volume, equalizer settings, speaker configuration etc. are loaded and the TV switches from the computer I’m typing this on to my multimedia device. From there I can watch whatever appeals in 5.2.2 Dolby Atmos or whatever format the media uses.
(I’m not bragging about my audiovisual system. There are far better out there. A real aficionado would scoff at my system compared to his 11.6.2 Dolby Atmos Home Theater. What I have isn’t particularly special, it just gives me a theater-like experience whether I’m watching a TV show or a movie. It’s about the bare minimum for a real home theater setup.)
I tell my system “(Wake Word), Good night” and it responds “Sir, stand up the night watch, Aye Aye Sir” and sets up my home for bedtime including all the lights, setting my alarm system to ‘on’, locking any doors not already locked and a brief weather forecast for the next day, etc. There is a dim red light on in every room at this point. So that my night vision isn’t destroyed in case I need to get out of bed for something. Like a drink of milk, to go to the bathroom or smoke an intruder before he knows he’s in mortal peril.
I’m usually awake by around 06:30 and do a few morning chores from bed then up and moving around by 07:00. I tell my system “(Wake Word), Good morning” and it turns on the appropriate lights, disarms the alarm, reads a brief weather forecast, then speaks the current conditions from my Personal Weather Station (an Ambient Weather WS-2000). When I get to a point where I know I’m going to be out of bed in 10 minutes or less I say “(Wake Word), Make coffee” and my coffee is waiting for me when I get to my desk.
Just in case I’ve overslept, which I almost never do, the system plays “Reveille” over the audio gear (the AVR) at 08:00. Except on Sunday. Even if I’m awake I use Reveille to remind me it’s time to stop dinking around on the computer and actually consider getting something done.
The system automatically and constantly adjusts my HVAC system to changing conditions and compensating for the four seasons. If particulate matter in the air reaches a configured threshold the HEPA air filtration system is automatically engaged. The HEPA system runs all night anyway after I go to bed and shuts down if it’s not needed when I get up in the morning. Just so the place is full of cleaned air to start the day. Does a great job of keeping my dusting chores to a minimum too.
If I go somewhere the system geofencing automatically sets to “On Guard” and activates the alarm, locks the doors, sets the lights and HVAC to my specified conditions, closes the garage door if it’s open, loads a specific camera configuration — Then reverts to “Off Guard” when I come back and everything goes back to “I’m at home” settings, opens the garage door about the time I hit the end of my driveway and closes it once I’m parked.
There’s a lot more but you get the idea. These things are worth the convenience, and the cost of that convenience, to me personally. I don’t forget anything important like locking doors, setting alarms and such because they’re all automated. Vital things like alarms and locks have sensors that let me know if there’s a problem or they’re working right. The rest of the time I just have to deal with malfunctions on non-critical items.
It’s necessary to power cycle an item despite a very good networking set up, adjust something, repeat a command, modify a command, delete and re-add something and the like on an annoyingly regular basis. These devices still screw up often enough that the last thing on my list of worries is AI. They call them “smart” but they’re pretty stupid and make pretty stupid mistakes on a regular basis.
Like … “Alexa, turn on the porch light” being responded to with “Sure, I’ll play Burning the Torchlight by Some Disgusting Bunch of Noisemakers Calling Themselves a Band”. Which results in me screaming at it to stop and calling it a stupid cow. Even though the command I give might be one it hears every day or even several times a day. If this stupid Alexa gear can’t figure that out when it hears it a lot then there’s probably no real danger of anyone eavesdropping on me to hear 10 seconds of things they wouldn’t understand either.
I can see no reason whatsoever to eschew Smart Home devices with the caveat that you are situationally aware enough to not be tempted by risks that outweigh the benefits. I don’t do risky things if I can help it. I have jumped out of airplanes with a parachute strapped to my back and there’s no way I’ll ever do that again. That was related to and required by my occupation at the time or I would not have done it then either. I do not drive through bad parts of town because that’s a silly risk to take too. I don’t download software from the Dark Web. But I don’t refuse to get on an airplane, drive my vehicle or use a computer for online shopping even though those things involve risk too.
Like nearly everything, this is a matter of degree not an all-or-nothing proposition. I’m not silly about risks and I do not ignore them. I evaluate the risk vs. benefit factor and make my decision thereby. I inform and educate myself so that I am minimally exposed to risk but also don’t miss out on the benefits of acceptable risk. I never invent a risk where there is none or no appreciable risk. I’m probably a lot more risk conscious than most people, to the point where I’ve been called paranoid on more than one occasion. A lot more than one occasion. I do not live my life in fear of what might happen, I live my life aware of and compensating for unacceptable risk.
To my thinking, that’s not paranoia it’s realism. If someone wants to call me paranoid that’s their prerogative. I learned a very long time ago that there’s nothing I can do about the willful ignorance of others and trying to fix that is more detrimental to me than it helps them.
If you don’t want to use Smart Home devices then you don’t, nor should you. That’s your choice and I’m fine with that. If you need to talk yourself out of doing something by inventing scenarios which are unwise and imprudent or outright impossible then that’s on you and good luck to you anyway. I just don’t think that way but you’re welcome to if that’s what you think you need to do.
I have a pretty extensive smart home and I would never do what you asked about with ordering a sandwich. There are other ways to order sandwiches that are not significantly less convenient than using a Smart Home system. My smart home stuff helps me a lot, it is a servant not a master.
(I’m not slagging on you personally here. I’m addressing this “to whom it may apply” because I’ve heard a lot of absurdities on this topic and I’m just trying to cover all the bases. No doubt someone out there will take one thing I said out of context or that I didn’t cover and make an issue of it. As if these posts weren’t long enough as it is, if I fail to address one minor point that’s what some genius will lock on to and fire.)
Thanks for the summary. It was very informative and thought provoking.
You’re most welcome. Please bear in mind that “acceptable risk” is arbitrary and up to each individual to determine. I might have more robust countermeasures, tighter security both physical and digital, more relevant experiences and greater or at least different knowledge than the next person. What is acceptable risk for me might not be for someone else. Wisdom and prudence are always virtues.
I confess I used your query to address some of the nonsense I’ve heard on this topic over the years. It’s somewhat irksome to have people who know nothing on the topic — except something negative they heard from someone who probably doesn’t know spit about this stuff — tell me how foolish I am for using it.
I can’t tell you how often I’ve heard someone say something to the effect of “I’d never have that stuff in my house. It SPYS on you!”
No, it doesn’t. I know it doesn’t because I know how to find out if it does or not. I don’t care if someone takes my word for it or not, I’m not trying to sell anyone on using smart home gear. All I’m doing is trying to get ignorant (not stupid, there’s a big difference) people to stop telling me what I know is not true. They’ll continue to think whatever they choose no matter what proof I provide, I just don’t want to hear their BS.
I have a neighbor lady whose house is “next door” but out here that means several hundred yards away. She knows I have a camera system so she has said that she always closes the shades in her bathroom because I might see her. Which is quite vain on her part and demonstrably untrue because I have not been stricken blind since the camera system went live. This is despite the fact that I’ve had her and her husband over many times and shown them that what she’s worried about isn’t even physically possible. At that range with my camera system her bathroom window is a fraction of a single pixel.
It also pisses me off a lot that she is de facto accusing me of being a peeping tom. I’m very conscious of my neighbors privacy and do not aim my cameras where they could even come close to something that would be remotely considered a privacy issue. I would not want that done to me, I do not do it to others.
Also people seem to have the idea that I sit and stare at the camera monitor all day and night. I don’t. The cameras are not for entertainment and I do not find them entertaining at all. They’re security cameras, for security. I’m damned hard to sneak up on and if something happens I can check to see what transpired. For example …
Recently a USPS carrier destroyed a portion of a rather expensive fence by carelessly backing into it. The fence was there to keep people from driving where he carelessly drove. Then he left without saying anything. He was a young driver on probation. He had already had several complaints/issues from other people. I got him on camera from several angles including a very good face capture when he dismounted his little mail truck to put the delivery on the front porch.
I went to the local Post Office and spoke with the local Postmaster. That’s how I know the kid had several other complaints. At first the Postmaster didn’t seem inclined to do anything. I told him that if he didn’t I was going to call the cops for felony hit and run then I showed the Postmaster the video and gave him a copy. I told him that we could resolve the issue or I would let the police handle it. Funny thing, he changed his tune almost immediately.
USPS had to pay for the damage and the kid got fired. Which is what he deserved. Not as “revenge” for my fence. For having a careless, snarky bad attitude resulting in unnecessary hazard to postal equipment and postal patron’s property. That fence could as easily have been someone’s dog. Or child.
My video evidence was the straw they needed to fire him. If he had made it out of the probation stage it would have been nearly impossible to terminate him. That’s why they have a probation stage, so that unsuitable employees do not become permanent un-fireable employees. That stupid boy blew the best job he’s ever likely to get because of his own stubborn intransigence. He did that to himself. I do not feel a bit bad about helping him experience the consequences of his own decisions.
And guess what? Because of the racist policies applied to government jobs now, he is a black kid and would have been impossible to fire anyway without solid proof that he was unsuitable for the job. Because no one else could prove what he had done he claimed that those complaints were all racist anti-black bigotry. It took real proof outside of any doubt or claim to racism about what he’d done.
There is an unbelievable amount of intransigent and irrevocable obstinate ignorance when it comes to things like camera systems and smart homes.
I know people are like that and I know they can’t help it but that knowledge doesn’t make it any less irritating. Most people live in a Plato’s Den (or Plato’s Cave, depending on which translation of Utopia you’re reading) and think they know the entire world from the shadows they can see on a single wall.
IF machines end up making the machines and repairing the machines (but why would they not be nearly perfect and long lasting, if the machines are so smart?); but more importantly, who is going to buy the machine made machines? Not the machines themselves, right? But money is a store of value, so if you (as a human) aren’t contributing something of value to a money marketplace, then there will be no money to “buy” the machine made machines. Or else who gets to decide just how much “no-value” money you are allowed to have or to spend? Or that a machine should “spend” on your behalf.
Probably depends on just how many machine making machines that you “own”. Better hope there is a government that promotes and supports property rights (along with that old liberty and life and justice, thing, too.)
Odd thought: could a machine define what is good? I suppose it might be able to define “better” or “worse” once a definition of good is provided to it. But not “goodness” itself.
Scott asked, “What would we do if we had unlimited time…” Well, it varies, of course but some are so busy, we wonder how we ever had time to work. I now have 5 physics projects going, a car restoration project, writing, video production, art and graphic design, home improvements and too many other things to mention. Retirement is where it’s at, baby.
Same here, different projects (I’m not a physicist) but similar self inflicted work load. I’m never bored and seldom idle for more than a few minutes at a time. I’m sleeping better but less, rising earlier fully rested and looking forward to the day. I’m also dropping some weight as I don’t have to spend so much time at my desk every day and can move around a bit more freely without being anchored to a desk chair and keyboard. Stress level has dropped to near zero.
Retirement is absolutely where it’s at. My time is finally my own to spend as I see fit. It’s too bad the bulk of one’s life has to be spent earning a living by whatever means proves most advantageous. Even if you love what you’re doing or work for yourself, the job dictates the time you have to invest and you sort of have to squeeze everything else in around that.
I’m exceedingly grateful to have this time at the end of my life to spend and enjoy in our beautiful, wealthy nation.
Now if we can just overcome those who would make this country hideous and poverty stricken we might be able to preserve the good bits for posterity. Efforts to that end are a focus for me with the time I have left.
A number of comments here refer to I Robot and Hal. I think more people are familiar with the new robo-vacuums. They go running around bumping into everything until the create a map, a path. Throw something in their path, move a chair, and they’re right back to square one – bumping into things. Hell-ov-away to run a country/business/your own home.
Scott. Do you really want an answer to your question “who am I?’.
What happens when AI concludes that the greatest threat to humanity, is humanity.
Unless we’re stupid enough to arm it and provide it with an uninterruptible, unstoppable power supply … That’s suicide for the AI. AI has a serious vulnerability. Physically pull the plug and it’s screwed.
If we are stupid enough to arm it and provide it with unlimited, non-cancellable electricity then we deserve what we get whatever that might be.
the immigrant population is ONLY a talking point because most of them are getting government money but if that money stopped so would most of the illegals.
I was left with three thoughts:
I’m surprised you guys didn’t mention Serenity, specifically Planet Miranda. They released The Pax drug to placate the society, took away crime and violence. It also took away the desire to breed, and eventually the desire to live. But a few reacted violently and became the mindless, psychotic Reavers.
Today we have legalized drugs, abortion on demand, and every kind of government program to provide for anyone who doesn’t want to work. Despite this there is a handful of the population that is irrational and violent – look at BLAMtifa and the “Queers for Palestine” crowd.
As I find myself saying all too often these days:
Other cultures also said “It can’t happen here.” Until it did.
Did nobody read or watch “I Robot” or myriad other stories about what a bad idea this is?
Then there’s:
“Close the pod bay doors, Hal.”
“I’m sorry Phil; I can’t do that.”
Hey! HAL was talikin’ to me!
The Naked Sun (5th of Asimov’s Robot Series) is a better indicator. On the planet Solara the entire planet only has 20,000 people. They all have robots that take care of their individual households freeing them to do whatever they desire with their minds.
They all think they are involved in very important, individual work. But they have almost 0 human contact.
The results are a good case story especially when considered it was written in the 1950s.
That’s true and I loved Asimov almost as much as Heinlein. However …
That’s fictional entertainment. The reality if it ever comes will more likely be something no one had foreseen. Like for instance how no one had ever foreseen the negative consequences of a global information network and the social impact of things like Tik Tok.
But OK, stipulating that scenario — Even then, the day when we can do what humans do in The Naked Sun, with actual functioning humanoid nuclear powered robots capable of doing every speck of our menial labor freeing us for purely intellectual pursuits — Is so far in the distant future as to be inconsequential. It’s not something that’s going to happen in even the next 100 years and probably not for a lot longer.
I get what you’re saying though. If humans have a means to free themselves from doing anything they don’t want to do … The path they choose may well be unwise. Still, that’s a result of human decisions and their consequences and not really a threat from AI. If we can ever create such robots and if they can be somehow forced to adhere to the Three Laws of Robotics, they won’t be of themselves much of a threat to us meat sacks. We’re likely to be far more threat to ourselves.
In the final analysis it’s not the tools we devise but what we do with them. I could be wrong and I’m no Asimov expert but I think that was the point he was making.
YEs, that was my (and his point) we may free ourselves from the “drudgery” and take up activities that we think fulfill us. But do they? We need look no further than the well to do Karens of the world who probably think that they are involved in doing good when in actuality they are making the tempest worse.
As Scott said (was it a couple of episodes ago) AI should be viewed as an employee.
As far a “drudgery” and why I put the word in quotes; just because someone thinks of a daily activity as something to be avoided does not make it a universal truth. My wife does not enjoy cooking. It’s not that she can’t make a tasty dish if necessary, she doesn’t get any pleasure out of doing it, especially for others.
I on the other hand use the process of cooking, especially for her, as a great de-stressing event at the end of a work day. Does that make me engaged in drudgery? Or have I found an activity that I enjoy that others can enjoy as well?
We could make less challenging and tasty meals and use that time else wise; but watching TV or surfing FB with that time would not be worthwhile to me. I’d rather cook
Bill’s example of the washing machine is actually a very good one. We still have to wash our clothes, but it takes much less time and the actual time spent (the cycle runs by itself once you press start after all) is much less. what do people do with that time? Are they watching tik tok? Or doing a daily devotion? Reading interesting comments on a website? Watching pron?
Lots of choices on how to spend one’s time. Everybody gets to make their own choices. As many bad ones are made, it is still good that we can make them.
Yeah, poor choices seem to be the human default sometimes. We hope that the people we put above us in leadership roles make the best choices but sadly for all the wisdom of the Founding Fathers that still seems to fall quite a bit short.
But then, in the West that’s the fault of the people who put them in power. Which brings us back around full circle to poor choices seem to be the default.
The closest I can come with a modern day example of what people do with their idle time (meaning time not spent on survival considerations like working to pay for housing, food, power etc.) is modern retirement. I don’t think you can really include the idle rich, trust babies and that kind of thing because they never did need to work.
Even so, there are those in that category that do take up productive avocations. I’ve mentioned Astronomy before. Astronomy is a field where only a rich kid has a good chance of making something of himself. It’s a big field with tiny employment opportunities. It takes a long time of little or no financial remuneration to get to the point where you can actually house, clothe and feed yourself from the proceeds of that particular occupation. There’s a natural winnowing process that culls the people who cannot afford to pursue the job. I’m sure there are other examples but this is one I’ve run into myself so it’s one I know a little about.
There are also people who waste away and die early when they retire. Due to boredom, lack of feeling useful or needed, all kinds of reasons. Some people just cannot imagine a life without getting up and going to work in the morning. Some people enjoy their work so much that it’s a genuine loss when they can’t do it anymore. For some people their occupation IS their identity. In those cases if they’re not a doctor, lawyer, engineer, computer specialist, shoe cobbler or whatever … They’re nothing.
I’m not one of them. Paul Drallos and I discussed this in another thread and he does not appear to be one either. I’m enjoying retirement more than any other point in my life except maybe the early years of my first marriage. Probably more because now I don’t have to worry about keeping a wife happy and raising kids properly.
If I’d have had an entire life of resources and the opportunity to do what I want to, my life would have been much different but I don’t think it would be any less productive and rewarding. I can say that honestly because now that I’m retired I can truly visualize what that sort of life might have been. I get a lot of stuff done every day and it’s very satisfying to go to bed at night thinking about all the stuff I should be able to get done tomorrow. I’m never bored because the list of stuff I want to get done is long enough that it will probably outlive me.
Still, I’m probably an exception when considering the majority. Everyone here fits in that category (except the genuine round-heads, we are not shorted in our share of those) to some degree because we all see the world in a much more pragmatic view than our political enemies.
Even then, we do think like our political adversaries in that we believe that if there were just more of us, if we were in charge, the world would be a better place. The major difference in this aspect is that we can provide proof and logical reasoning for believing that and our adversaries have only magical thinking.
Obviously if we had AI and robots to do our menial labor for us that doesn’t, or shouldn’t, mean that we’re forced to give over everything we like doing to them based on some external definition of “menial” or “drudge work”.
If someone doesn’t like cooking for example, they wouldn’t have to. I don’t care for it a lot because I’m alone and have no one to share the experience with. Basically now I’m just creating fuel and I would rather do other things with that time every day. Sometimes I put some real effort into cooking but when I do that I do so knowing I’ll be eating it as leftovers until it’s gone. If I were not alone it would be different. My first wife hated cooking and I did most anything that was more involved than hot dogs, grilled cheese sandwiches and potato chips. My second wife liked cooking and some of the better times we had was working in the kitchen together.
So I think even with robots to do the work you could still cook meals if you like doing that. I don’t think anyone, including the robots, would put a gun to your head and forbid you to create your own food.
Walter brough up some economical considerations and I’m just not sure how economics would work in an Asimovian scenario. Who is the consumer? People would obviously still be significant consumers but if the labor is cheap or nearly free because of robotics then how is wealth generated, applied and distributed? Would robbers still rob if they had everything they needed and didn’t have to come up with piles of cash, which would likely be worthless anyway? Etc.
There are a lot of questions on the particulars of a human labor-free society that I’m uncertain about. One thing I am certain of is that it will be whatever we has humans make of it. It’s simply a matter of if our better angels will triumph in the end or if we’ll screw that up too.
AI at this point doesn’t worry me even a little bit. What humanity will do with ever increasing capacity and capability is another matter. That might keep me up at night if I wasn’t preoccupied with looking forward to what I intend to get done the next day.
Yeah, I remember watching a Star Trek episode when I was a kid where they beamed down to a planet where all of your needs were just taken care of. Nobody had to struggle… and at the end Kirk had to snap them out of it giving a little speech about how we need struggle.
I didn’t like it or get it at the time, but I do now.
Anyway, what’s that saying about idle hands and playgrounds?
Same here – sounded perfectly fine to me as a kid. Then I got out into the real world
Just thinking…. One of the things that make a huge difference between humans and the “creatures” of AI is our limbic system of the brain, the home of instincts, mood, emotions and drive, sex and dominance, care of offspring, fear, pleasure and anger. Without this I doubt we’ll be asked “What makes a bird so beautiful?” And if we do install such a program in AI, they’ll be the ones turning into indolent sloths addicted to porn. (To address this, we’d have to install Judeo-Christian morality and a “Puritan” work ethic.). “Hey, PS-65, get off your butt and make my bed, or I’ll reprogram the definition of the sexual act as merely friction and a procreative necessity that is without pleasure.” “Right away, Master!”
As a computer programmer with more than 30 years of experience, I can tell you that AI isn’t there yet. It is pretty obvious to anyone who is paying attention. Companies are already putting out warnings to their programmers about not trusting AI produced code, and just checking it into their code base (indicating that it has already happened!). AI Makes mistakes in the code it produces as it is most often copied off of the internet, where a human left a mistake in place. There are times in software development where what needs to be done has no simple solution. This is where innovation must happen, and AI doesn’t handle it. AI is also not capable of writing an entire software system.
Many years ago, when I was taking my course in electrical engineering, a fellow student stopped the conversation, turned to me and asked, “Wait, you are getting your degree in electrical engineering, and you are already a good computer programmer, so you are the perfect person to ask this question! What is it that we haven’t created an AI robot to solve the world’s problems?” Where do you start with such a question? I told him that AI is first written by people. We don’t comprehend our own thought processes enough to replicate them. This means that we can try to approximate them, but we cannot reproduce them. You must first understand all of the minutiae involved in building something before you can attempt to create it. You can experiment towards that end, but you cannot simply “make one”.
As a computer programmer of about the same number of years, I can say you nailed it.
Or to use another favorite saying of programmers, “Garbage in, garbage out.”
I agree with Phil, you nailed it. I’m not a programmer but I have held a systems engineer certificate for decades so I look at things from a different angle yet come to the same or very similar conclusions.
“Only” 22 years of programming experience here, and 3 as Chemical Engineer. AI? We don’t need no steenking AI! (Blazing Saddles reference for those who do not know….in which case go and watch it!
Agreed.
Yeah, we’re not where we’re about to be replaced, yet ……. but we are just barely starting down this path, and technologies do have a tendency to accelerate beyond expectations!
I like Scott’s description of AI as an employee. I would like a Jarvis style machine from the first couple of Robert Downey’s Iron Man movies. It could not create but it could help and implement Tony’s instructions.
Friday sounded more attractive.
“AI: Build a complete, fast, comprehensive web site that can do everything the current BillWhittle.com website does, but does it faster and more efficiently.”
Ha ha ha
Well it *is* and always has been slow to load, but I haven’t said anything. I figure it’s budget issues.
I actually think it is the way they treat the videos and comments that are loading each time.
Good idea, but it would probably be Scott who programs the AI needed to do it. =8^)
Well. given AI is still just a buzz
wordacronym for nonlinear optimization and/or big data search, no pressure Scott.Wall-E is the finest example of what would happen to humanity in the future where robots and AI are given the capabilities that was spoken of here…
EVA!?