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sl4shd0rk writes:
"Bill Gates says everyone needs to prepare to be out of work in 20 years due to Robots/software taking over most jobs. In preparation for this, Gates recommends people 'should basically get on their knees and beg businesses to keep employing humans' and reduce operating overhead for businesses by 'eliminating payroll and corporate income taxes while also not raising the minimum wage'. Bill Gates, you may recall, is the former CEO of Microsoft whose business acumen has brought the technology sector such things as Metro, Windows Phone and Xbox One.
BusinessInsider took a similar theme earlier this year."
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Bill Gates: Prepare to be Assimilated
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I'm not a robot like you. I don't like having disks crammed into me... unless they're Oreos, and then only in the mouth.
-- Fry
(Score: 4, Insightful) by snick on Monday March 17 2014, @09:46PM
All this focus on limitations of robots/ai/automation. What about the economy.
If everyone will be out of a job in 20 years, companies will have no customers and they are done. There is no equilibrium where machines produce everything but no one can afford anything.
That is unless they also come up with robotic consumers.
(Score: 4, Funny) by unitron on Monday March 17 2014, @10:07PM
"That is unless they also come up with robotic consumers."
Shhh!
Don't give them ideas.
something something Slashcott something something Beta something something
(Score: 1, Insightful) by Bokononist on Monday March 17 2014, @10:16PM
Yup considering the trouble e the invention of the lawnmower caused 200 years ago putting all those sythe workers out of a job, not even mentioning the sythe making industry which barely survived it. And http://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Flying_shuttle [wikipedia.org] the god awful mess the automated manufacturing of fabric caused. We should learn these lessons from the past and turn that clock right back. (/sarcastic rant)
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
(Score: 3, Insightful) by snick on Monday March 17 2014, @10:57PM
If your point is that displaced workers will move on to the next thing, then that's fine.
I was responding to the original post that suggested that in 20 years there won't be a "next thing." The idea that we need to placate our corporate overlords with hookers and blow so that they don't throw the population out of work en masse is stupid.
The worst thing possible for our corporate overlords would be a collapse of the consumer class.
(Score: 1) by Bokononist on Tuesday March 18 2014, @05:12AM
Do you know what, I responded originally to the part of your post that refers to a consumer economy. I made quite a long post and I managed to lose it all while switching between tabs so only retyped a small part of it as I was going to bed. In hindsight it doesn't respond to your post directly at all.
In a nutshell, I think we are heading towards a time of greater automation and thus greater personal freedom. What I don't think is a great future is one where everyone that is not doing a menial job because of automation has to become a consumer, 'consume consume consume baby, what the fuck else is a pleb like you good for?' I think it is a narrow minded idea(not suggesting its yours btw) that could hold back a great new period in the technological age.
Beware of the man who works hard to learn something, learns it, and finds himself no wiser than before.
(Score: 2, Interesting) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @10:17PM
Kurt Vonnegut took a good look at this problem in "Player Piano", from the wikipedia page on the book,
"Player Piano, author Kurt Vonnegut's first novel, was published in 1952. It is a dystopia of automation,[1] describing the dereliction it causes in the quality of life.[1] The story takes place in a near-future society that is almost totally mechanized, eliminating the need for human laborers. This widespread mechanization creates conflict between the wealthy upper class—the engineers and managers who keep society running—and the lower class, whose skills and purpose in society have been replaced by machines. The book uses irony and sentimentality, which were to become a hallmark developed further in Vonnegut's later works.[1]
"In a 1973 interview Vonnegut discussed his inspiration to write the book:[2]
I was working for General Electric at the time, right after World War II , and I saw a milling machine for cutting the rotors on jet engines, gas turbines. This was a very expensive thing for a machinist to do, to cut what is essentially one of those Brâncuși forms. So they had a computer-operated milling machine built to cut the blades, and I was fascinated by that. This was in 1949 and the guys who were working on it were foreseeing all sorts of machines being run by little boxes and punched cards. Player Piano was my response to the implications of having everything run by little boxes. The idea of doing that, you know, made sense, perfect sense. To have a little clicking box make all the decisions wasn't a vicious thing to do. But it was too bad for the human beings who got their dignity from their jobs. "
(Score: -1, Troll) by Ethanol-fueled on Monday March 17 2014, @10:51PM
Kurt Vonnegut's attitude towards his job was probably much alike his attitude with writing novels and life in general -- "Oh, well, kinda just float along and do this, no punctuation in life, no real beginnings or ends, just kinda a stream of pseudorandom but unremarkable daydreamings you forget afterward"
While Vonnegut was daydreaming, he could have instead asked his boss about how the machines worked and how he could do more for his employer, instead of spending all day waiting for his next toke or shot.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday March 17 2014, @11:23PM
Probably made more money as a writer anyway. Why would you have him kiss ass?
(Score: 2) by JeanCroix on Tuesday March 18 2014, @09:40AM
(Score: 1) by NezSez on Tuesday March 18 2014, @03:38PM
I posted late, and hope I didn't kill any comments I modded, but...
I haven't seen any mention of one solution to the scenario you are discussing which is this:
If robots do *all* labor then there wouldn't be a traditional monetary/financial "cost" so to speak. We wouldn't need consumers in the traditional sense if we entered a "post-scarcity" economy (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-scarcity_econom y [wikipedia.org]).
The only costs would be physical in acquiring new base materials for production, recycling and the like which robots would be doing. We wouldn't "need" jobs or "salaries" as everything would be free. Then all of us would be free to psychologically brutalize each other with online comments all the time!
No Sig to see here, move along, move along...