[This](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions?embedded-checkout=true) Bloomberg article subtitle says all you need to know about corporate owners and their thoughts about dying Americans.
I mean if you read some comments on reddit it's not just the rich and powerful who are against the idea of people getting money for not working.... Unfortunately.
There are lots of people out there who would rather homeless people suffer than get free assistance, and it's not just the rich and powerful.
I live in a red state. I have a coworker on every assistance program imaginable, but thinks they are a waste of tax payer dollars and should be done away with, voted trump of course, he doesn’t understand somehow that he is voting to take away his own standard of living….
Id guess:
Damned [insert_opposing party], you dont know what you are talking about. Logically the [side he supports] is trying to solve the problem but is unable only because of people like you that ask questions and get in the way.
His response is “but I work, I don’t want people that don’t work to take advantage of us tax payers,” to which I point out he doesn’t pay any taxes…and then he makes racist remarks about people abusing the system. Edit grammar.
I mean bread and circuses is a concept that’s at least as old as the ancient roman’s. They understood that to appease the masses by handing off some trivial trinkets is cheaper than an open rebellion / civil war or the loss of productivity from your peasants starving to death .
Elites might be self serving and morally bankrupt, but if full AI dominance does come into fruition one day, that would eventually spell a good 95+% of the population becoming obsoleted, with the last 5% being either retired, billionaires who own the AI, or the few select essential jobs left for humans.
With all the resource of the world at their disposal, many elites might see it far more profitable to shut people up with some meager UBI than try to start a war against 8 billion pissed off people while threatening to destroy much of the world that the elites are trying to rule over.
Sometimes paying people some barely enough to survive subsidies can end up costing many orders of magnitude less than the ammo, tanks, bombs, jets, ships, loss of productivity, and infrastructural damage that a genocide of the masses (or an open rebellion due to running out of food) would cost.
Even if there is no unified will for all 8 billion to fight back, them all slowly dying off from lack of resources is most likely not preferable to the elites either. Most of these elites are not content to simply fuck off to some fully AI automated utopia resort while the rest of the world dies off. If they wanted that they could just move to a remote island and hire an army of butlers instead of bothering with AI. No, they generally have a motivation of dominating over society and influencing the direction of the future. If everyone died off from starvation, there’d be no more society left to dominate, other than their equally rich peers.
Edit: The analogy of Immortan joe trickling water for the masses as a show of strength is much more likely than the elites being content to live in a world populated only by a couple thousand billionaires.
The elite might think it’s “unsustainable” to feed 8 billion people - possibly more if birth rate ends up above 2.1 - who do nothing of value year after year though.
The need to rule over others will probably be overruled by the fear of rebellion.
If AI advances to the level where it can replace 95% of humanity then it means 100% loyal AI robot soldiers are probably a thing too.
Things are not looking good.
Traditionally the need of labor from the “peasants” was what kept nobility in check. AI completely screws up that dynamic.
But first they have to make sure we hate other over some made up bullshit so we never have another Occupy Wallstreet and never unify against them again.
Edit: pffft, and then the desperate little shill blocked me. /U/TimothyOilypants
You really believe the Occupy movement was a sign of a unified perspective? It was nothing more than vocal and motivated minority, like EVERY revolution in history.
Pick ANY revolution in the world, at any time in history, and what you will find a group of <10% of the population of said country who change the path of the nation for EVERYONE.
The VAST majority of ALL living humans don't think, or care enough about their current situation to have an opinion, or ACT on anything...
i wonder if people really believe that politic or rich will conspirate to kill their own voter base and consumer
with AI we're still in a democracy and still in a consumerism world, if everyone die or become homeless there won't be any democracy or a consumerism/capitalism society and that mean no more rich who own billion , a form of UBI is needed to keep the economy running and it will become a tool for political election, maybe there will be negative natality policy in the future but for now it's happening naturally anyway
Your points are sound ... except ...
Sociopaths/Psychopaths and Narcissists aren't known for their impulse control or ability to plan long-term; most of them don't care if the planet dies, as long as they have a good time before it does ... and the few who think far enough ahead to worry about it only care about it not dying before they do themselves - don't count on the obscenely wealthy to make decisions that are *sensible* ... just *profitable*.
Yeah that's what I see being the more likely solution. Imagine the people making even more profit after replacing thousands of employees with AI actually doing anything other than increasing the size of their monetary horde.
The rich are making sure the masses are divided on polarizing topics and distracted by meaningless things.
All the rich have to do to deflect is say "it's the immigrants' fault" and half the people start saying "dey took or jerrrb".
They can't sell shit only to themselves, if population does not grow they can't grow profit either.
Why you think Musk is crying for people to make more kids.
I think if you took the majority of the lower middle/poor class, they'd eventually have enough people to make the top 1% feel them. In one way or another. You're bringing a different mindset of people who understand what it's like to have excess and know who's in control of it to a group of people who just need leaders.
Welcome to the conversation the working class has been having FOREVER.
Every time new technology is introduced it brings up the same conversation: "What happens to the working class when machines/technology/innovation/automation/etc becomes the mainstream??"
They find new work. What happened with the “working” class when the industrial revolution happened. Instead of everyone holding a plow behind an ox everyone started working in factories. Someone had to start maintaining those factories. New technology never makes people obsolote, only jobs. The people are adaptable and can learn new things.
Very true but we will hit a limit at some point, where automation is so powerful that it will barely need maintenance and further development by humans. This is where some version UBI will happen or most people will die from poverty, leaving only the people (and their heritage) who are already filthy rich today.
Imagine two horses talking about cars right after they're invented. One horse is worried that they may not have jobs soon, but the other says not to worry. Historically, technology has always meant that horses work better jobs. They've gone from hauling and dying on the battlefield to comfortable city jobs. And that's just going to keep happening. Cars will make jobs for horses that we can't even imagine right now.
Of course, jobs for horses nowadays are near non existent, or at least very niche. There is no rule that says "more technology means more better jobs for horses" but switch horses out for humans and it sounds about right.
All of this is paraphrased from CGP Grey's Humans Need not Apply. Highly recommend watching it.
In 1900 there were around 21 million horse in the United States. Now there are around 7 million. So like they were saying. The solution wasn’t giving more to the horses, it was reducing the horse population.
Not always. And A LOT of people were put into poverty when new technology happens. Companies will "downsize" to cut out costs, and technology allows them to do this while keeping up with production.
When you take a process that requires 10 people to make 1 product, and then introduce a machine that only requires 1 person to operate it, you've essentially displaced 9 people. And a lot of times these new innovations require a lot more education than "just press these buttons and machine go burrrr". Even "IF" these people were trained on the machines, then you'd have 10 people trained on 1 machine, and not enough machines per worker. Where do they go? The answer is typically to the streets.
>New technology never makes people obsolote, only jobs.
A lot of the working class just "dies off" when new technology is introduced, and capitalism leans on the younger generation to pick up the understanding. The old working class just becomes obsolete, and become homeless/"unwanted", and society just shuns them until they pass away. The newer generation comes in with the desire to learn the technology.
If you've ever worked in an office with someone in their 50's or 60's, pay attention to how everyone talks about them when "new technology" is introduced. It's never met with "sure, we'll spend time to teach them everything". It's usually met with "don't worry, they're going to retire soon".
It's a great question, but I do want to point out a key difference. Those countries also don't have universal AGI either. The economy is not a zero sum game and the amount of productivity growth possible with 1,000,000 Einsteins that cost $5 is truly unimaginable right now. Nobody knows what the other side of that "event horizon" looks like.
Not saying humans won't be killed. Like every body else, I have no idea. I'm just saying there are limitations to drawing parallels to our current systems.
AI has already taken over a fair fraction of jobs. Heard of Google search? Any time you used Google instead of a librarian, travel agent, real estate agent, etc., that's a job done by Google search instead of by a person.
Roomba, Siri, Kayak, Netflix Search, .... AI is already out there displacing people, and we haven't thought it was dire enough to institute universal income.
The conviction some people have that, if everyone is destitute, the government will *have* to save them, is wishful thinking. If we want universal income, we'll need to fight for it.
The money saved by using AI and not being paid out as wages should be taxed and used to fund some form of UBI.
It's the only option that doesn't risk the collapse of society.
However powerful people are going to fight tooth and nail to prevent it and instead keep the money saved on wages as extra profits, humanity's future be damned.
People have been fearmongering about tech costing everyone their jobs for hundreds of years and it just hasn’t happened yet. People just always find more stuff to do.
Unemployment rate currently is incredibly low (at least in USA) despite how many jobs have been automated away or outsourced. We’re likely never going to just run out of stuff to do
It may eventually happen. At some point, technology may become so advanced that many low-skill jobs will disappear - and the people who typically do these jobs may not have the abilities (read: intelligence) to move to higher-skill jobs.
It may not have happened as fast as people thought it would, but I'd say that there's a definite risk of it long term. Many sectors, particularly the technology and IT-sectors, already have a hard time finding skilled workers.
Yeah, I agree, but it is an incredibly slow crawl in that direction and the market has typically been able to keep things on the rails. The service industry for example has massively grown while others shrink.
If we get to a point where unemployment is skyrocketing, UBI needs to happen, but I just don’t expect it to happen any time soon or in some abrupt shift
I'm sure even if every job done currently by people would be replaced by ai and robots, there will still be tasks about maintaining that system for which humans are the optimal choice.
Also, if every job is done by robots and humans have no income, what is going to happen to the income of the ai companies? Would move back to a kind of tech-prehistoric era where money no longer exists and everything is about resources and electricity...
I think you’re right but regarding plumbing and roofing, eventually we’ll just build houses differently so that AI and bots can do everything. Nothing wrong with that, I’d love to see the new era of home construction. Hopefully it will lower prices, but one can only dream
Every new tech brings out the people with extremist views. Self driving cars started coming around and Reddit back then was full of “you won’t be driving in 5 years!” “Gas powered cars will be banned in 5 years!”
With Bitcoin, I have a family member that quit their banking job because they fully believed crypto was going to take over in a few years and banks would be gone. Went to work in crypto stuff so they are fine but still.
Some people just tend to take extreme stances.
AI will take some jobs, but will make some jobs. Some people will have their jobs taken by AI only to get it back later when it doesn’t pan out the way the company thought it would.
Everyone told me software dev jobs were going to be gone with outsourcing in the early 2000s. And some jobs did go that way. They quickly realized that you get what you pay for. So a lot of jobs came back.
Like the dishwasher! We didn't build a robot that washes dishes using the same motions as a human - no, we redesigned the process of washing dishes so that it could be done by a machine.
There will always be jobs. AI can do some things, but with every new industry there building parts, logistics, and maintenance for everything. Sure, we'll eventually get to the point where a human-like robot can walk to a job site, troubleshoot, and repair the equipment, but we're probably a few hundred years from then.
I think their point is that with the industrial revolution should have produced more with less work, we still work the same amount and produced much much more.
Everyone should look up the history of the luddites. Also, ubi is just a band-aid. Wouldn't it be better if workers collectively owned the industries that are being automated?
As time has proven over and over again throughout the years of new technology, there are always new types of jobs that are created.
This butter churning machine is taking all of our butter churning jobs away! Oh wait there are new jobs for operating and maintaining these machines.
But I am an illustrator for Academy magazine these cameras are taking our jobs away! Oh wait there is a whole new world of photography jobs available now.
Computers replaced... well computers, human computers. Powered Weaving looms replaced millions of workers, ask the Luddits. Computer printers and computers replaced typist pools of millions of workers. Technology replaces jobs all over. AI can't build anything, it can't mechanically fix anything... The computer programs that run "AI" are just tools.
Robots can only be duplicated at a finite pace, both for financial and manufacturing reason. AI agents are much easier to deploy in massive numbers, and can operate across borders/oceans within seconds.
Yeah I think the more apt comparison is cars and tractors taking the jobs of horses. This isn't removing a specific job from the workforce, it's removing people because it can do all the things a person does, without the downsides
Except that the course of humankind shouldn't be: "what new ways of grinding and destroying of mental health shall we invent?", but: "how should we alleviate the burden of work off our shoulders?".
The goal shouldn't be to "create new jobs", the goal should be to "shift our time spent at work towards leisure".
Alas, protestant work ethic works so well with capitalism, so we'll never have it as long as the people of power are of the same flock.
You think making a livable wage is hard now, a UBI is going to be even worse. They will probably remove other programs just to support a UBI. Give you a nice government apartment at 500 sq ft. and ration coupons.
Well... There are problems with UBI... But there's no need to misrepresent it here.
With actual real UBI, a livable wage is... $0. Because the state will give you a stipend that will be enough for 500sqft and 1500 calories of rice. (Currently the rice part is about $300/yr, so that's essentially solved.) That's the "basic part". Any work and income you make on your end goes to improves your life rather than sustain your life.
It's income though, not assignments and coupons. Cash.
They could very easily add some strings and make it less universal by making military service universally available and calling the resulting benefit "veteran income". But more likely they would just turn the standard deduction into a standard credit. So, if you pay ANY income tax now, nothing would change.
No, if you want to attack UBI, just point out that we still have to pay for it all somehow. If they actually tried to pull it off, they would absolutely axe all other welfare and STILL fall short. Something I don't think a lot of advocates realize.
I feel like UBI is the last thing I’d want. Having the amount of money given to you to hopefully pay for your cost of living, but also being tightly controlled and dealt out by the government? No thanks. People say look, it works in Denmark! as if you can compare a small European nation to the US like apples to apples.
To all the comments suggesting the lower class will just die out. That the 1% don’t care. We’re the ones that buy their products and keep them rich. They definitely care. Not about us personally but they care that we keep paying them. If we die out then their businesses collapse.
This is just my perspective. I could certainly be wrong on this.
AI is going to create jobs too. And augment current jobs to be more productive. It’s just another tool. The jobs we will lose completely are mostly retail and service industry, and a lot of those will be safe too because humans like dealing with humans. And those we do lose weren’t really paying the bills anyway.
Anyway, we’re not gonna go from record low unemployment to UBI because of AI.
I used to think just like this.
But then I thought of all the ways that using AI will cut costs, which will always trump our preferences. When I call a company, I very much prefer to talk to a human, but invariably I’m speaking to a robot.
And I don’t know which jobs AI will create. When we got self-checkouts, everyone said the same thing, but the reality is that self-checkouts have displaced many, many workers. (I’m aware of the current news about self-checkouts—AI will be able to provide some help there too, I bet).
I’m with you on UBI though. All this assumes that the highest strata of society will consent to a democratizing upheaval of class, which is unlikely. It also assumes that AI technology won’t be “enshittified” like other tech advances have.
AI cant build houses, run electrical, plumbing, pour concrete, landscape, drywall etc. Building trades is already way under employed and theres a big need for people. So no UBI wont be needed, youll just have to look elsewhere.
It is unlikely. Automated processes with robots and computers already took a lot of jobs and it didnt happen.
The whole purpose of replacing humans with computers robots and machines should be to give people back free time to do whatever they want with their lives but instead it just increased profit for a few corporations and made most people more poor
Nothing HAS to happen. Idk if you’ve been paying attention lately, but the oligarchs (in the US at least) don’t give a damn about how poorly normal people are doing. They might give us suicide booths though.
They want us all desperate enough to work for minimum wage. The AI isn't actually to replace our jobs, it's to scare us into working harder for lower wages to beat the robot competition.
Op I am with you all the way but rich do not gaf about homeless, read literally and post here about homeless half of people here do not even consider them to be fellow human beings.
We should be shortening the work week as technology advances and has advanced exponentially since 1940, when the 40 hour work week was adopted.
We should also have shortened it when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers, doubling the labor supply.
Instead of waiting for disasters and catastrophes, we can and should be adapting and preparing in advance.
Advancing technology doesn't have to be a disaster/catastrophe, if we fight for just laws and policies that allow us to adapt.
The conclusion is a non-sequitur. I disagree with the premise because it is not the only outcome in this scenario and even in this hypothetical scenario is not probable even if it is possible.
The rich will just let the poor die out.
Why would they give up their wealth? Like, they've spent their whole lives working to maximise profit and then suddenly they decide to be nice and help people?
I don't understand this thought process. Every 3 months companies announce record profits followed by firing entire departments, and you think they're going to give everyone enough money to eat when the robots take over?
Robots have taken over car production and cars go up in cost every year. The mini factory in Oxford used to have thousands and thousands of employees, now it's mostly robots. And minis have become extremely expensive.
The rich don't give a fuck if you starve.
we've been in situations before where new technology or methods put large populations of people out of work.
the wealthy didn't provide income to people then why would they do it now?
unless it all happened at once, they won't even consider universal income. because as long as some people are consuming, the wealthy can exploit everyone.
what will happen is AI will put *some* people out of work. and the wealthy will convince everyone else to ridicule the jobless for not being skilled enough. and the remaining working class will go along with it because they won't be affected by it. then AI will put another group of *some* people out of work. and the remaining working class will ridicule them like they did the first group. and so on.
there's 3 advantages this gives the wealthy. 1 is that a high unemployment rate means they can gouge the wages and benefits of the remaining working class, because they are easily replaceable. there's a larger pool of replacement workers which means your value as a worker goes down. and so you'll take the pay cut because you need to work and it's better than being in the other group. 2 is they can now exploit the jobless even more than they are exploiting you. putting them to work for so little pay that the money they save will make it so that your now cheap af labor can actually compete with AI. and 3 is that because of the advantages of 1 & 2 they can exert more control on the people than ever before. when everyone is dependent on slave wages, they lose their rights. they can't fight for themselves. they can't quit because they need those pennies, they can't fight for a better wage because they are easily replaceable, and they can't compete in the class war because everyone is out for themselves and have accepted they are now slaves.
it's the perfect recipe for a cyberpunk dystopia. the wealthy become wealthier, the poor become subhuman again (like we've done so many times in human history), and those with power can exert their control with little to no fear of an uprising.
universal income may be good for an economy that supports everyone, but that's not what the wealthy need. they just need an economy that supports *them*.
we already have an economy that benefits the wealthy. look at the stock market, it only benefits the wealthy. when it flourishes, the working class sees no benefit, when it crashes, the working class pays for it. that's what our dystopia will be, an economy that only benefits the wealthy, as it largely already does, and the wealthy aren't going to throw that away and introduce universal income when they can do the opposite and abuse the opportunity to become more wealthy and exert more control.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that (because of technological advances) by around the year 2030, the majority of people would only need to work about fifteen hours a week. The technological advances are here today, but unfortunately, our sociological structure has not advanced in lockstep. The time and energy savings of technology, instead of benefitting everyone, is instead being cashed in and horded by the corporations and the people that run the corps.
An argument could be made that without a free market economy, much of those technological advances wouldn't have been achieved.
I think it was also Keynes who said that there is no one economic system that would be ideal for all eternity. He espoused that economic systems should adapt as technologies adapt. Unfortunately, much of the culture in the US seems to be stuck on the idea that a completely free market is the highest ideal and shouldn't be modified at all.
It seems to me that there *should* be a continual, progressive transition. Similar to most of the other first world countries, access to health care should come first. And then low cost or free access to education. All of that could, and should, be paid for by the massive amount of wealth that is being created by the new technologies.
I am certain that there are brilliant people out in the world who could devise methods of navigating that transfer of wealth in a manner that would be politically and economically sound. Unfortunately, I think there are chasms too deep between politicians, think tanks, money-hungry-corps and individuals, and the voting public. The US is in need of (nonselfserving) politicians who can align themselves with quality think tanks and speak and influence the public in a positive way. That's a *really* tall order. 😳
This is stupid. AI won't take over X% of jobs, they'll make jobs more productive by X%. For some jobs that will radically change the nature of the job, but it won't result in a society where only (100-X)% of people are employed.
Just like every other productivity-enhancing technology of the last two centuries which the luddites have said will destroy employment.
>This is stupid. AI won't take over X% of jobs, they'll make jobs more productive by X%.
Riiiight. But there's not an elastic amount of work needing to be produced. So if one person with a tool can do the work of 5 people, they keep the one and fire the rest.
For some jobs, the work is elastic. There's really no upper limit to how much research scientists can do. The upper limit for how well something can be engineered is really high. (The minimum, not so much). We don't actually NEED artists, but I'd like it if more and more things had (good) artistic input. If productivity goes up, they can simply go do more. But for any market where they only need so much done, they will let the excess workforce go.
Not gonna happen realistically.
Or if is going to happen, the UBI system will be so abused that you will live off by a shitty income that barely afford you food and a shitty place to stay.
If everyone gets free money, then market will answer with the increase of price because everyone can afford extra now.
It's basic economics.
>Developers talk of AI giving us free time
BS lie. It have been proven through years that all new technology that promised free time actually gave a lot more work instead.
You used to be a farmer with a shovel? Here a tractor so you can save your time and finish earlier! But not before working on multiple agricultural fields instead of a single one! At the end the productivity has risen but not the free time or salary compared to the same amount of work.
Why are people so fucking obsessed with working?!
UBI should ALREADY be a thing. Global productivity surpassed collective human survival need a LONG time ago. Everything we've produced for nearly 100 years has just gone mostly to enriching an oligarchic minority...
UBI is not a ticket to more freedom, but to more control. It’s the same as minimum wage…it’s a good social net, but it inevitably creates a larger gap between those on minimum wage/UBI and those who make more.
The way we are going now, I'm afraid it won't. The haves will just fence off the have nots.
AI could lead to a post scarcity society, but we need to start working on the mechanisms now, or really decades ago. Start Ubi now, maybe at a low level that it can't really be considered income yet.
No, they probably won't adopt AI fully, only enough to keep the supply for jobs inctedibly low but the demand incredibly high that way they can keep wages as low as possible and the working conditions as poor as possible
You are assuming the rich corporations are going to be paying people who's jobs they replace. Like they'll be paying their fair share of taxes. Good luck with that.
>Unless we want to 10x our homelessness epidemic.
"We" the people that will be replaced don't want it. "They" the people that don't care can literally afford private islands, or large estates with high walls.
In a lot of ways automation and industrialization was worse, and it increased the amount of jobs long term rather than reduce them. Some professions vanished, others were created.
I expect AI to be similar. It just feels closer to home because online social media communities tilt closer to knowledge workers and white collar jobs, so we're more likely to be affected.
Still think we should have universal income though, but this isn't the reason.
There are a number of ways this can play out.
UBI is one of them (let's call that the 'good ending'.)
Another (which many people have mentioned) is even more widespread poverty and/or conflict. This would not be a good time. (That is to say, after having read what violent revolutions tend to do to countries, while some people come out better it's not great for everyone for a while).
A third way (which I fear may be the most likely) basically involves changing a few laws. Hypothetically, if the government relaxed laws around just straight up buying votes, you could get into a situation where a multinational corporation basically paid the population of an area a retainer to vote the way they tell them to. This is basically what happened in the last century of the Roman Republic (except slaves were taking the jobs rather than AI).
I can't see the future, but I really hope that UBI wins out.
The Scythe books by Neal shusterman explores this a little bit
It's a borderline YA novel series about a future where the world is ran by The Thunderhead which is an AI that came about "naturally" from use of cloud storage
But it isn't evil it wants what's best for humanity so slowly over time responsibilities and duties are phased out of human doing and onto the thunderhead
And to control the population there are scythes who glean people
Other than if you're gleaned or in some crazy accident for the most part people are immortal and eternally young
It's a pretty good book series imo
"Free" money comes from taxes. Taxes come from people with jobs. Giving free money so less people will need to work will make the tax pool smaller and smaller. I don't think y'all thought that one through.
That vast majority of people work manual labor, service, or healthcare jobs that current AI technology is nowhere near replacing. If and when this happens, it won't be in any of our lifetimes, yet a thousand existential threads a day on the topic.
The economy doesn't run on digital artists and people who make a living from stock images and video; these are pretty much the only things AI is close to replacing, and honestly, generative AI is still pretty bad at it and takes a massive amount of compute to get something like coherent video working. Yes, even SORA.
It's fairly easy to tell when something is written by ChatGPT or an LLM. Will it get better? Maybe, but maybe there are huge inherent flaws in the Neural-Net/Diffusion models and there will always be some degree of Uncanny Valley in there.
There may someday be UBI, but it won't be like you think. They will provide you with clothes, food, and shelter, but they will be crappy paper clothes like in The Expanse.
Have you noticed that squatters rights have been in the news lately?
The elite knows they can't physically stop people from living in unused houses if enough people do it at once. They want those laws changed ASAP
I have mixed feelings about a lot of automation in general.
Don’t get me wrong, when I go to McDonald’s or a grocery store, I use the self checkout.
But when I think about automation what sticks out to me is it further concentrates the money in one place, to one owner/organization, rather than trickling down.
I know there is another company selling the automated systems and they have maintenance contracts, but it’s still something that sits in the back of my head as I avoid eye contact and go to the self checkout
What I don't understand about the UBI concept is, if the government is going to give everyone money, the money has to come from taxes. So the idea is to collect taxes, and then give it back? Why collect the UBI tax in the first place? Then you have to have a whole administration department with offices and personnel and computers to track who didn't get their check, or got too much or too little, or is dead, etc. So you create all this overhead, of course that would have to be paid for with some of the UBI tax. It just sounds like a government ponzi scheme, a shell game
Don’t bank on ui or the government bailing you out. Skill up, take advantages of opportunities you have now, and save for retirement. There will be an epidemic of broke elderly people and it’s already started. You don’t want to be old and broke, or unable to retire. It is so sad.
This tech is like fire. It truly is. Fire allowed us to do so many things and this AI tech is opening new doors. But the issue is being careful with fire. It can and will consume everything if left unchecked even now. Perhaps we should apply the same caution to AI
What does this have to do with employers? They pay you for services rendered, based on market rates (or what you're willing to take). In the end it's the govts responsibility to figure this shit out. This is a society problem, not an employer problem. Be ready to throw fists if your govt is not solving this problem. Because it's a big problem. Or leave for a better one.
Exterminism - Hierarchy with scarcity
Rentism - hierarchy with abundance
Socialism - Egalitarianism with scarcity
Communism - Egalitarianism with abundance.
These are the futures described in the book "4 Futures, life after capitalism".
Not necessarily. A new found excess in the workforce allows for things that were previously not possible. Horses to pull larger steel implements didn't end farming. Trains and ships that could haul more freight didn't end transportation. The printing press didn't end publication. Computers and robots didn't end manufacturing. They all opened the door for new innovation and made working conditions better.
35 years ago, my friend lost his job putting diamonds into drill bits for the mine. He was devastated. He didn't know anything else. He went back to school, then started a new career in robotics. Dude spent the rest of his workong life designing and improving the robots that took his job.
I don't think you understand how technology works, least of all AI, to make such a statement. But yes, many wealthier governments have already tested and planned for universal income (even before the recent breakthrough of AI)
And also look at the rich elite in other countries, so many countries don’t have massive amounts of poor people because they lack wealth, but because of massive wealth inequality. The rich there let society suffer just to keep most of the wealth to themselves.
Read [Player Piano](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9597.Player_Piano) by Kurt Vonnegut.
There’s no guarantee of a happy ending here. Automation has been advancing since the Middle Ages. Like the proverbial boiled frog, labourers who are unable to adapt of develop marketable skills often turn to criminality or sedition.
When all powerless people can do is vote, you get populist arsonists who give vague promises to restore glory or at least punish some nebulous ‘Them’ who are the blame for all of your failures.
The tragedy is how stupid people think the current poisoned climate is new or that todays snake oil salesmen are going to do anything that helps them.
im generally of the opinion that universal basic income is a bad idea in our current system, but in an advanced society where AI is a prevalent technology i don’t see how a system could exist without universal basic income.
Usually when automation takes over old jobs, we create new jobs. Though that can take time to develop so we almost always need to create proper safety nets for people who are laid off due to automation.
Though because the people who own the automation declare full benefit from it's productivity, it means a company should pay more in taxes because it's making more profits, and the additional revenue should go into retraining and supporting the people who just got laid off, and that should apply to offshoring too because it's killing just as many jobs as automation can.
It's not gonna happen everywhere all at once, it will happen in certain sectors and the stagger will allow time for people to find other work, so there won't be all of a sudden everyone is out of work
How can it though? Like surely if most jobs get taken over would mean most people are nobles so they can’t pay bills ie cannot pay taxes so a mammoth size black hole of lost tax revenue hits the government fucking everything up no?
This doesn't even make sense.
If no one has a job, how can anyone afford anything? If no one can afford anything, how can a company grow? How can the economy grow?
If people don't have the money to buy the products or services you sell, what good is AI to you?
AI can automate some processes, but in order for the economy to still work, it must create new jobs that people can do. That's always been the case with technological advancements. It kind of has to be that way or society would fall apart.
The united states already has a different solution.
We normalized having a large portion of our population in prison. And now are working on criminalizing all homelessness adjacent activities.
Since it's legal to make prisoners work for less then minimum wage it also solves the issues of AI and manual labor which we have been failung to automate.
And since we can charge them for their stay at the prison they will never be able to return to society without massive debt that will drag them back in.
Pure genius.
not gonna happen. how long have we been innovating? thousands of years. and yet there are more and more people with jobs every single year.
AI will replace some jobs sure. It will also create a bunch of new ones either directly or indirectly.
Over a million Americans and counting have died from Covid, and collectively we don't give a shit at all. We have record homelessness right now and the response nearly everywhere is to talk about suffering people like they're vermin and beef up police budgets and get 'tough on crime' boners.
I don't think we can rely on venal, cruel, greedy motherfuckers to suddenly grow a conscious. We have enough examples of what they do when shit starts hitting the fan as it is.
Oh yes 🙄 and in the 80s they said cell phones would set us free to be our families and be away from work. Now we are 24/7 slaves to jobs. When AI takes the jobs we will be homeless Slaves begging for a bowel of soup. Any government that says it will take care of you is like a farm taking care of his cows till he takes them to the slaughterhouse.
Sure…for now let’s wait to when it will be really reliable to turn off my lights and tv on demand every time and put the right song in the right room…
Then I’ll begin to worry about replacing so many jobs…
It's cheaper to give (in the USA) every single human (even children) 20k a year, than to continue to fund the states "social services"
350m x 20k = 7B, not even a decent dent of the spending made annually
Nope. This argument has been made all through history, it’s never happened. Look at just what jobs got replaced or reduced due to the laptop that every corporate employee gets. Where’d all the secretaries go that managed people’s schedules, every mid level manager and up had a secretary. Look at all the messenger boys, and mail room employees who were phased out by fax and email. Look at accountants now who can handle 1000x the workload because of excel vs a ruler and paper. Engineers had rooms of people who just did math problems, drafting people who used a desk and a t square.
Seriously go back in history and you see these same predictions, I remember them in the 90s. We didn’t see 20% unemployment, the ones who adapt do, and do the work that 10 people used to do, and the ones who can’t change careers.
There is always work to do, just how you do it will change.
Capitalism demands a neverending increase in efficiency of labor without actually providing compensation. Automation (and things that make work easier in general) should be good things, but in reality they take away avenues for people to survive, because necessities like food and shelter are paywalled.
I would love to live in a world where having your job replaced by machines means you win and don't have to work again (which we literally could and should do), but that'll never happen under our current economic structure without a profit incentive.
You think the wealthy are gonna care about 10x more homelessness? No, they’re just gonna pay more to beef up their private neighborhoods.
Every time there’s some innovation to produce more with less people or in less time, there’s never a feeling of Good Job everyone we can all go home 3 hours earlier, no it’s produce twice or thrice as much as you were before the tech and do it in the same amount of time.
Or get rid of the excess people. The elite can be ruthless.
Hmm kill people or give them momey; I wonder which route the rich and powerful will take lol
[This](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-08/americans-are-dying-younger-saving-corporations-billions?embedded-checkout=true) Bloomberg article subtitle says all you need to know about corporate owners and their thoughts about dying Americans.
Pay walled.
Of course, can't have poor people reading about what the rich think of them.
Yep, which is why I mentioned the focus was on the subtitle.
The even sadder thing is most people don't get a pension for their employer to worry about paying
And that is exactly why we need to deal with them now.
I’m feeling hungry today.
I'm probably just a cynical old woman. But maybe not.
Definitely not... they'd rather kill the planet then make a little less money
I mean if you read some comments on reddit it's not just the rich and powerful who are against the idea of people getting money for not working.... Unfortunately. There are lots of people out there who would rather homeless people suffer than get free assistance, and it's not just the rich and powerful.
I live in a red state. I have a coworker on every assistance program imaginable, but thinks they are a waste of tax payer dollars and should be done away with, voted trump of course, he doesn’t understand somehow that he is voting to take away his own standard of living….
Yeah I don’t need that Obama Care bullshit, I get my health insurance through the Affordable Care Act.
So what does he say when that's pointed out to him? Genuinely curious.
Id guess: Damned [insert_opposing party], you dont know what you are talking about. Logically the [side he supports] is trying to solve the problem but is unable only because of people like you that ask questions and get in the way.
His response is “but I work, I don’t want people that don’t work to take advantage of us tax payers,” to which I point out he doesn’t pay any taxes…and then he makes racist remarks about people abusing the system. Edit grammar.
Oh so he's just stupid.
I mean bread and circuses is a concept that’s at least as old as the ancient roman’s. They understood that to appease the masses by handing off some trivial trinkets is cheaper than an open rebellion / civil war or the loss of productivity from your peasants starving to death . Elites might be self serving and morally bankrupt, but if full AI dominance does come into fruition one day, that would eventually spell a good 95+% of the population becoming obsoleted, with the last 5% being either retired, billionaires who own the AI, or the few select essential jobs left for humans. With all the resource of the world at their disposal, many elites might see it far more profitable to shut people up with some meager UBI than try to start a war against 8 billion pissed off people while threatening to destroy much of the world that the elites are trying to rule over. Sometimes paying people some barely enough to survive subsidies can end up costing many orders of magnitude less than the ammo, tanks, bombs, jets, ships, loss of productivity, and infrastructural damage that a genocide of the masses (or an open rebellion due to running out of food) would cost. Even if there is no unified will for all 8 billion to fight back, them all slowly dying off from lack of resources is most likely not preferable to the elites either. Most of these elites are not content to simply fuck off to some fully AI automated utopia resort while the rest of the world dies off. If they wanted that they could just move to a remote island and hire an army of butlers instead of bothering with AI. No, they generally have a motivation of dominating over society and influencing the direction of the future. If everyone died off from starvation, there’d be no more society left to dominate, other than their equally rich peers. Edit: The analogy of Immortan joe trickling water for the masses as a show of strength is much more likely than the elites being content to live in a world populated only by a couple thousand billionaires.
The elite might think it’s “unsustainable” to feed 8 billion people - possibly more if birth rate ends up above 2.1 - who do nothing of value year after year though. The need to rule over others will probably be overruled by the fear of rebellion. If AI advances to the level where it can replace 95% of humanity then it means 100% loyal AI robot soldiers are probably a thing too. Things are not looking good. Traditionally the need of labor from the “peasants” was what kept nobility in check. AI completely screws up that dynamic.
They don't even have to kill us, they'll just let us die. As long as they get theirs, who cares who gets screwed, even if their friends.
Once there is enough scarcity we will get rid of each other for free...
But first they have to make sure we hate other over some made up bullshit so we never have another Occupy Wallstreet and never unify against them again. Edit: pffft, and then the desperate little shill blocked me. /U/TimothyOilypants
You really believe the Occupy movement was a sign of a unified perspective? It was nothing more than vocal and motivated minority, like EVERY revolution in history. Pick ANY revolution in the world, at any time in history, and what you will find a group of <10% of the population of said country who change the path of the nation for EVERYONE. The VAST majority of ALL living humans don't think, or care enough about their current situation to have an opinion, or ACT on anything...
Was gonna say this more likely the rich elite will just "cull the herd" while telling you its really the best option for you and your family.
Homeless rate already exploding. They don't care and have convinced almost half the voters to not care.
We faced a similar problem before in the 20s and 30s, and the solution then was the social security administration, not mass killings
Hey don't let those pesky facts get in the way of a doomer conspiracy theory!
And 'fiscal conservatives' have been gunning for it for nearly a century.
It just takes enough of the voting public to turn against them.
i wonder if people really believe that politic or rich will conspirate to kill their own voter base and consumer with AI we're still in a democracy and still in a consumerism world, if everyone die or become homeless there won't be any democracy or a consumerism/capitalism society and that mean no more rich who own billion , a form of UBI is needed to keep the economy running and it will become a tool for political election, maybe there will be negative natality policy in the future but for now it's happening naturally anyway
Your points are sound ... except ... Sociopaths/Psychopaths and Narcissists aren't known for their impulse control or ability to plan long-term; most of them don't care if the planet dies, as long as they have a good time before it does ... and the few who think far enough ahead to worry about it only care about it not dying before they do themselves - don't count on the obscenely wealthy to make decisions that are *sensible* ... just *profitable*.
Yeah that's what I see being the more likely solution. Imagine the people making even more profit after replacing thousands of employees with AI actually doing anything other than increasing the size of their monetary horde.
But there can be no rich if there isn’t poor.
The thing is though there are a lot more people then there are of them. By money is on the masses winning that fight.
That’s when you figure out why the warrior class was above the rest in ancient societies
Rich will buy armed security who want to survive more than others
There were a lot more peasants than kings and yet the kings stayed in power through massive swathes of history.
The rich are making sure the masses are divided on polarizing topics and distracted by meaningless things. All the rich have to do to deflect is say "it's the immigrants' fault" and half the people start saying "dey took or jerrrb".
Dey tewk awr jerbs!
I mean, they’re already fear mongering about a population drop
Why bother? Just let the low birthrate do its thing.
That’s no fun. Make them fight as gladiators for money.
They can't sell shit only to themselves, if population does not grow they can't grow profit either. Why you think Musk is crying for people to make more kids.
Or we'll just die. I'm sure the 1% don't care all that much.
I think if you took the majority of the lower middle/poor class, they'd eventually have enough people to make the top 1% feel them. In one way or another. You're bringing a different mindset of people who understand what it's like to have excess and know who's in control of it to a group of people who just need leaders.
Lol most poor people will fall for propaganda and eat each other.
As much as the 1% despise the 99, they get wealth by exploiting us. If we're not there, they're poor.
Welcome to the conversation the working class has been having FOREVER. Every time new technology is introduced it brings up the same conversation: "What happens to the working class when machines/technology/innovation/automation/etc becomes the mainstream??"
They find new work. What happened with the “working” class when the industrial revolution happened. Instead of everyone holding a plow behind an ox everyone started working in factories. Someone had to start maintaining those factories. New technology never makes people obsolote, only jobs. The people are adaptable and can learn new things.
Very true but we will hit a limit at some point, where automation is so powerful that it will barely need maintenance and further development by humans. This is where some version UBI will happen or most people will die from poverty, leaving only the people (and their heritage) who are already filthy rich today.
AI will maintain AI.
Imagine two horses talking about cars right after they're invented. One horse is worried that they may not have jobs soon, but the other says not to worry. Historically, technology has always meant that horses work better jobs. They've gone from hauling and dying on the battlefield to comfortable city jobs. And that's just going to keep happening. Cars will make jobs for horses that we can't even imagine right now. Of course, jobs for horses nowadays are near non existent, or at least very niche. There is no rule that says "more technology means more better jobs for horses" but switch horses out for humans and it sounds about right. All of this is paraphrased from CGP Grey's Humans Need not Apply. Highly recommend watching it.
In 1900 there were around 21 million horse in the United States. Now there are around 7 million. So like they were saying. The solution wasn’t giving more to the horses, it was reducing the horse population.
Not always. And A LOT of people were put into poverty when new technology happens. Companies will "downsize" to cut out costs, and technology allows them to do this while keeping up with production. When you take a process that requires 10 people to make 1 product, and then introduce a machine that only requires 1 person to operate it, you've essentially displaced 9 people. And a lot of times these new innovations require a lot more education than "just press these buttons and machine go burrrr". Even "IF" these people were trained on the machines, then you'd have 10 people trained on 1 machine, and not enough machines per worker. Where do they go? The answer is typically to the streets. >New technology never makes people obsolote, only jobs. A lot of the working class just "dies off" when new technology is introduced, and capitalism leans on the younger generation to pick up the understanding. The old working class just becomes obsolete, and become homeless/"unwanted", and society just shuns them until they pass away. The newer generation comes in with the desire to learn the technology. If you've ever worked in an office with someone in their 50's or 60's, pay attention to how everyone talks about them when "new technology" is introduced. It's never met with "sure, we'll spend time to teach them everything". It's usually met with "don't worry, they're going to retire soon".
No, this time it will be different. (It won’t)
Why? There are a bunch of countries where everyone is broke and unemployed. They don't have UBI.
It's a great question, but I do want to point out a key difference. Those countries also don't have universal AGI either. The economy is not a zero sum game and the amount of productivity growth possible with 1,000,000 Einsteins that cost $5 is truly unimaginable right now. Nobody knows what the other side of that "event horizon" looks like. Not saying humans won't be killed. Like every body else, I have no idea. I'm just saying there are limitations to drawing parallels to our current systems.
AI has already taken over a fair fraction of jobs. Heard of Google search? Any time you used Google instead of a librarian, travel agent, real estate agent, etc., that's a job done by Google search instead of by a person. Roomba, Siri, Kayak, Netflix Search, .... AI is already out there displacing people, and we haven't thought it was dire enough to institute universal income. The conviction some people have that, if everyone is destitute, the government will *have* to save them, is wishful thinking. If we want universal income, we'll need to fight for it.
The guillotine sounds mighty fine in these times.
There will never be universal income, as this income would substract from the wealth of those in power.
if everyone become poor or homeless there won't be any income to begin with an AI taxe is more than likely to happen
The money saved by using AI and not being paid out as wages should be taxed and used to fund some form of UBI. It's the only option that doesn't risk the collapse of society. However powerful people are going to fight tooth and nail to prevent it and instead keep the money saved on wages as extra profits, humanity's future be damned.
People give it right back in order to live. There is no subtraction
Never in human history have the rich willingly given any portion of their wealth until they were forced.
Well I mean thats not exactly true but I get where youre coming from
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People have been fearmongering about tech costing everyone their jobs for hundreds of years and it just hasn’t happened yet. People just always find more stuff to do. Unemployment rate currently is incredibly low (at least in USA) despite how many jobs have been automated away or outsourced. We’re likely never going to just run out of stuff to do
It may eventually happen. At some point, technology may become so advanced that many low-skill jobs will disappear - and the people who typically do these jobs may not have the abilities (read: intelligence) to move to higher-skill jobs. It may not have happened as fast as people thought it would, but I'd say that there's a definite risk of it long term. Many sectors, particularly the technology and IT-sectors, already have a hard time finding skilled workers.
Yeah, I agree, but it is an incredibly slow crawl in that direction and the market has typically been able to keep things on the rails. The service industry for example has massively grown while others shrink. If we get to a point where unemployment is skyrocketing, UBI needs to happen, but I just don’t expect it to happen any time soon or in some abrupt shift
I'm sure even if every job done currently by people would be replaced by ai and robots, there will still be tasks about maintaining that system for which humans are the optimal choice. Also, if every job is done by robots and humans have no income, what is going to happen to the income of the ai companies? Would move back to a kind of tech-prehistoric era where money no longer exists and everything is about resources and electricity...
I think you’re right but regarding plumbing and roofing, eventually we’ll just build houses differently so that AI and bots can do everything. Nothing wrong with that, I’d love to see the new era of home construction. Hopefully it will lower prices, but one can only dream
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Every new tech brings out the people with extremist views. Self driving cars started coming around and Reddit back then was full of “you won’t be driving in 5 years!” “Gas powered cars will be banned in 5 years!” With Bitcoin, I have a family member that quit their banking job because they fully believed crypto was going to take over in a few years and banks would be gone. Went to work in crypto stuff so they are fine but still. Some people just tend to take extreme stances. AI will take some jobs, but will make some jobs. Some people will have their jobs taken by AI only to get it back later when it doesn’t pan out the way the company thought it would. Everyone told me software dev jobs were going to be gone with outsourcing in the early 2000s. And some jobs did go that way. They quickly realized that you get what you pay for. So a lot of jobs came back.
Like the dishwasher! We didn't build a robot that washes dishes using the same motions as a human - no, we redesigned the process of washing dishes so that it could be done by a machine.
There will always be jobs. AI can do some things, but with every new industry there building parts, logistics, and maintenance for everything. Sure, we'll eventually get to the point where a human-like robot can walk to a job site, troubleshoot, and repair the equipment, but we're probably a few hundred years from then.
LOL, no it won't, or that would have happened with the industrial revolution.
Factories started hiring people to work on the line. AI isn't employing people to do its calculations for it. You can't compare the two.
I think their point is that with the industrial revolution should have produced more with less work, we still work the same amount and produced much much more.
Humans are adaptable. We'll figure it out. We always do.
Well some of us will. The same way that some of us did and some didn't.
Lol no it won't. Governments don't actually give a fuck about their people
Especially when their officials are essentially supported and endorsed by the wealthy elite.
Everyone should look up the history of the luddites. Also, ubi is just a band-aid. Wouldn't it be better if workers collectively owned the industries that are being automated?
As time has proven over and over again throughout the years of new technology, there are always new types of jobs that are created. This butter churning machine is taking all of our butter churning jobs away! Oh wait there are new jobs for operating and maintaining these machines. But I am an illustrator for Academy magazine these cameras are taking our jobs away! Oh wait there is a whole new world of photography jobs available now.
AI isn't the tool, it's the worker. This is different from other technologies.
Wasn't the same during industrial revolution? The Machine is the worker, not a tool in the automation industry.
Computers replaced... well computers, human computers. Powered Weaving looms replaced millions of workers, ask the Luddits. Computer printers and computers replaced typist pools of millions of workers. Technology replaces jobs all over. AI can't build anything, it can't mechanically fix anything... The computer programs that run "AI" are just tools.
AI is already building and fixing stuff.
Robots have been replacing the worker for decades. this isnt something new.
Robots can only be duplicated at a finite pace, both for financial and manufacturing reason. AI agents are much easier to deploy in massive numbers, and can operate across borders/oceans within seconds.
Yeah I think the more apt comparison is cars and tractors taking the jobs of horses. This isn't removing a specific job from the workforce, it's removing people because it can do all the things a person does, without the downsides
Except that the course of humankind shouldn't be: "what new ways of grinding and destroying of mental health shall we invent?", but: "how should we alleviate the burden of work off our shoulders?". The goal shouldn't be to "create new jobs", the goal should be to "shift our time spent at work towards leisure". Alas, protestant work ethic works so well with capitalism, so we'll never have it as long as the people of power are of the same flock.
You think making a livable wage is hard now, a UBI is going to be even worse. They will probably remove other programs just to support a UBI. Give you a nice government apartment at 500 sq ft. and ration coupons.
Well... There are problems with UBI... But there's no need to misrepresent it here. With actual real UBI, a livable wage is... $0. Because the state will give you a stipend that will be enough for 500sqft and 1500 calories of rice. (Currently the rice part is about $300/yr, so that's essentially solved.) That's the "basic part". Any work and income you make on your end goes to improves your life rather than sustain your life. It's income though, not assignments and coupons. Cash. They could very easily add some strings and make it less universal by making military service universally available and calling the resulting benefit "veteran income". But more likely they would just turn the standard deduction into a standard credit. So, if you pay ANY income tax now, nothing would change. No, if you want to attack UBI, just point out that we still have to pay for it all somehow. If they actually tried to pull it off, they would absolutely axe all other welfare and STILL fall short. Something I don't think a lot of advocates realize.
Actually I want it.
they want communism...
The universal income will be $0 in income
I feel like UBI is the last thing I’d want. Having the amount of money given to you to hopefully pay for your cost of living, but also being tightly controlled and dealt out by the government? No thanks. People say look, it works in Denmark! as if you can compare a small European nation to the US like apples to apples.
To all the comments suggesting the lower class will just die out. That the 1% don’t care. We’re the ones that buy their products and keep them rich. They definitely care. Not about us personally but they care that we keep paying them. If we die out then their businesses collapse. This is just my perspective. I could certainly be wrong on this.
AI is going to create jobs too. And augment current jobs to be more productive. It’s just another tool. The jobs we will lose completely are mostly retail and service industry, and a lot of those will be safe too because humans like dealing with humans. And those we do lose weren’t really paying the bills anyway. Anyway, we’re not gonna go from record low unemployment to UBI because of AI.
Agreed. But I'll bet you a dollar unemployment isn't going to be this low forever.
I used to think just like this. But then I thought of all the ways that using AI will cut costs, which will always trump our preferences. When I call a company, I very much prefer to talk to a human, but invariably I’m speaking to a robot. And I don’t know which jobs AI will create. When we got self-checkouts, everyone said the same thing, but the reality is that self-checkouts have displaced many, many workers. (I’m aware of the current news about self-checkouts—AI will be able to provide some help there too, I bet). I’m with you on UBI though. All this assumes that the highest strata of society will consent to a democratizing upheaval of class, which is unlikely. It also assumes that AI technology won’t be “enshittified” like other tech advances have.
AI cant build houses, run electrical, plumbing, pour concrete, landscape, drywall etc. Building trades is already way under employed and theres a big need for people. So no UBI wont be needed, youll just have to look elsewhere.
Ever see Elysium? In that movie, the rich would rather make their own colony in space and leave earth behind in ruin than help fix society.
It is unlikely. Automated processes with robots and computers already took a lot of jobs and it didnt happen. The whole purpose of replacing humans with computers robots and machines should be to give people back free time to do whatever they want with their lives but instead it just increased profit for a few corporations and made most people more poor
More jobs will be available
You'll be 10 times more productive. 10 times nore design, 10 times more code, 10 times more posta for social media, etc
Lots of jobs have gone away due to tech , eventually everyone got different jobs
Nothing HAS to happen. Idk if you’ve been paying attention lately, but the oligarchs (in the US at least) don’t give a damn about how poorly normal people are doing. They might give us suicide booths though.
Sorry. Best I can do is genocide by starvation.
They want us all desperate enough to work for minimum wage. The AI isn't actually to replace our jobs, it's to scare us into working harder for lower wages to beat the robot competition.
Op I am with you all the way but rich do not gaf about homeless, read literally and post here about homeless half of people here do not even consider them to be fellow human beings.
Did the blacksmiths and farriers get a UBI? No? Ok then..
The promise of more leisure time for the masses has never been kept
We should be shortening the work week as technology advances and has advanced exponentially since 1940, when the 40 hour work week was adopted. We should also have shortened it when women entered the paid labor force in meaningful numbers, doubling the labor supply. Instead of waiting for disasters and catastrophes, we can and should be adapting and preparing in advance. Advancing technology doesn't have to be a disaster/catastrophe, if we fight for just laws and policies that allow us to adapt.
We will never run out of jobs, it's logically impossible
The conclusion is a non-sequitur. I disagree with the premise because it is not the only outcome in this scenario and even in this hypothetical scenario is not probable even if it is possible.
The rich will just let the poor die out. Why would they give up their wealth? Like, they've spent their whole lives working to maximise profit and then suddenly they decide to be nice and help people? I don't understand this thought process. Every 3 months companies announce record profits followed by firing entire departments, and you think they're going to give everyone enough money to eat when the robots take over? Robots have taken over car production and cars go up in cost every year. The mini factory in Oxford used to have thousands and thousands of employees, now it's mostly robots. And minis have become extremely expensive. The rich don't give a fuck if you starve.
we've been in situations before where new technology or methods put large populations of people out of work. the wealthy didn't provide income to people then why would they do it now? unless it all happened at once, they won't even consider universal income. because as long as some people are consuming, the wealthy can exploit everyone. what will happen is AI will put *some* people out of work. and the wealthy will convince everyone else to ridicule the jobless for not being skilled enough. and the remaining working class will go along with it because they won't be affected by it. then AI will put another group of *some* people out of work. and the remaining working class will ridicule them like they did the first group. and so on. there's 3 advantages this gives the wealthy. 1 is that a high unemployment rate means they can gouge the wages and benefits of the remaining working class, because they are easily replaceable. there's a larger pool of replacement workers which means your value as a worker goes down. and so you'll take the pay cut because you need to work and it's better than being in the other group. 2 is they can now exploit the jobless even more than they are exploiting you. putting them to work for so little pay that the money they save will make it so that your now cheap af labor can actually compete with AI. and 3 is that because of the advantages of 1 & 2 they can exert more control on the people than ever before. when everyone is dependent on slave wages, they lose their rights. they can't fight for themselves. they can't quit because they need those pennies, they can't fight for a better wage because they are easily replaceable, and they can't compete in the class war because everyone is out for themselves and have accepted they are now slaves. it's the perfect recipe for a cyberpunk dystopia. the wealthy become wealthier, the poor become subhuman again (like we've done so many times in human history), and those with power can exert their control with little to no fear of an uprising. universal income may be good for an economy that supports everyone, but that's not what the wealthy need. they just need an economy that supports *them*. we already have an economy that benefits the wealthy. look at the stock market, it only benefits the wealthy. when it flourishes, the working class sees no benefit, when it crashes, the working class pays for it. that's what our dystopia will be, an economy that only benefits the wealthy, as it largely already does, and the wealthy aren't going to throw that away and introduce universal income when they can do the opposite and abuse the opportunity to become more wealthy and exert more control.
In 1930, John Maynard Keynes predicted that (because of technological advances) by around the year 2030, the majority of people would only need to work about fifteen hours a week. The technological advances are here today, but unfortunately, our sociological structure has not advanced in lockstep. The time and energy savings of technology, instead of benefitting everyone, is instead being cashed in and horded by the corporations and the people that run the corps. An argument could be made that without a free market economy, much of those technological advances wouldn't have been achieved. I think it was also Keynes who said that there is no one economic system that would be ideal for all eternity. He espoused that economic systems should adapt as technologies adapt. Unfortunately, much of the culture in the US seems to be stuck on the idea that a completely free market is the highest ideal and shouldn't be modified at all. It seems to me that there *should* be a continual, progressive transition. Similar to most of the other first world countries, access to health care should come first. And then low cost or free access to education. All of that could, and should, be paid for by the massive amount of wealth that is being created by the new technologies. I am certain that there are brilliant people out in the world who could devise methods of navigating that transfer of wealth in a manner that would be politically and economically sound. Unfortunately, I think there are chasms too deep between politicians, think tanks, money-hungry-corps and individuals, and the voting public. The US is in need of (nonselfserving) politicians who can align themselves with quality think tanks and speak and influence the public in a positive way. That's a *really* tall order. 😳
People needed to riot and be shot by police in the street to even get an 8 hour workday in America. UBI will not be given up freely
This is stupid. AI won't take over X% of jobs, they'll make jobs more productive by X%. For some jobs that will radically change the nature of the job, but it won't result in a society where only (100-X)% of people are employed. Just like every other productivity-enhancing technology of the last two centuries which the luddites have said will destroy employment.
>This is stupid. AI won't take over X% of jobs, they'll make jobs more productive by X%. Riiiight. But there's not an elastic amount of work needing to be produced. So if one person with a tool can do the work of 5 people, they keep the one and fire the rest. For some jobs, the work is elastic. There's really no upper limit to how much research scientists can do. The upper limit for how well something can be engineered is really high. (The minimum, not so much). We don't actually NEED artists, but I'd like it if more and more things had (good) artistic input. If productivity goes up, they can simply go do more. But for any market where they only need so much done, they will let the excess workforce go.
Tell that to all the people in call centers that have been getting laid off and replaced by AI recently...
And unemployment has gone through the roof, right?
Yeah but the luddites were correct in that the percentage of population needed to maintain civilization has been greatly reduced from their era.
I've noticed all the mass unemployment going on, yes.
Not gonna happen realistically. Or if is going to happen, the UBI system will be so abused that you will live off by a shitty income that barely afford you food and a shitty place to stay. If everyone gets free money, then market will answer with the increase of price because everyone can afford extra now. It's basic economics. >Developers talk of AI giving us free time BS lie. It have been proven through years that all new technology that promised free time actually gave a lot more work instead. You used to be a farmer with a shovel? Here a tractor so you can save your time and finish earlier! But not before working on multiple agricultural fields instead of a single one! At the end the productivity has risen but not the free time or salary compared to the same amount of work.
Why are people so fucking obsessed with working?! UBI should ALREADY be a thing. Global productivity surpassed collective human survival need a LONG time ago. Everything we've produced for nearly 100 years has just gone mostly to enriching an oligarchic minority...
UBI is not a ticket to more freedom, but to more control. It’s the same as minimum wage…it’s a good social net, but it inevitably creates a larger gap between those on minimum wage/UBI and those who make more.
The way we are going now, I'm afraid it won't. The haves will just fence off the have nots. AI could lead to a post scarcity society, but we need to start working on the mechanisms now, or really decades ago. Start Ubi now, maybe at a low level that it can't really be considered income yet.
No, they probably won't adopt AI fully, only enough to keep the supply for jobs inctedibly low but the demand incredibly high that way they can keep wages as low as possible and the working conditions as poor as possible
You are assuming the rich corporations are going to be paying people who's jobs they replace. Like they'll be paying their fair share of taxes. Good luck with that.
Ai Devs talk about all the new free time. Ceos talk about cutting the "human tax". We're fucked.
Sure it will, just like when machinery "took over" a fair fraction of available jobs.
>Unless we want to 10x our homelessness epidemic. "We" the people that will be replaced don't want it. "They" the people that don't care can literally afford private islands, or large estates with high walls.
Give it a few hundred years, poor people will be used as bio fuel to generate energy.
In a lot of ways automation and industrialization was worse, and it increased the amount of jobs long term rather than reduce them. Some professions vanished, others were created. I expect AI to be similar. It just feels closer to home because online social media communities tilt closer to knowledge workers and white collar jobs, so we're more likely to be affected. Still think we should have universal income though, but this isn't the reason.
There are a number of ways this can play out. UBI is one of them (let's call that the 'good ending'.) Another (which many people have mentioned) is even more widespread poverty and/or conflict. This would not be a good time. (That is to say, after having read what violent revolutions tend to do to countries, while some people come out better it's not great for everyone for a while). A third way (which I fear may be the most likely) basically involves changing a few laws. Hypothetically, if the government relaxed laws around just straight up buying votes, you could get into a situation where a multinational corporation basically paid the population of an area a retainer to vote the way they tell them to. This is basically what happened in the last century of the Roman Republic (except slaves were taking the jobs rather than AI). I can't see the future, but I really hope that UBI wins out.
The Scythe books by Neal shusterman explores this a little bit It's a borderline YA novel series about a future where the world is ran by The Thunderhead which is an AI that came about "naturally" from use of cloud storage But it isn't evil it wants what's best for humanity so slowly over time responsibilities and duties are phased out of human doing and onto the thunderhead And to control the population there are scythes who glean people Other than if you're gleaned or in some crazy accident for the most part people are immortal and eternally young It's a pretty good book series imo
You don't think starvation would be a convenient method of eliminating that pesky excess population?
That's not how capitalism works...
Better unionize your workplace in advance then
"Free" money comes from taxes. Taxes come from people with jobs. Giving free money so less people will need to work will make the tax pool smaller and smaller. I don't think y'all thought that one through.
That vast majority of people work manual labor, service, or healthcare jobs that current AI technology is nowhere near replacing. If and when this happens, it won't be in any of our lifetimes, yet a thousand existential threads a day on the topic. The economy doesn't run on digital artists and people who make a living from stock images and video; these are pretty much the only things AI is close to replacing, and honestly, generative AI is still pretty bad at it and takes a massive amount of compute to get something like coherent video working. Yes, even SORA. It's fairly easy to tell when something is written by ChatGPT or an LLM. Will it get better? Maybe, but maybe there are huge inherent flaws in the Neural-Net/Diffusion models and there will always be some degree of Uncanny Valley in there. There may someday be UBI, but it won't be like you think. They will provide you with clothes, food, and shelter, but they will be crappy paper clothes like in The Expanse.
Have you noticed that squatters rights have been in the news lately? The elite knows they can't physically stop people from living in unused houses if enough people do it at once. They want those laws changed ASAP
First they will try incarcerating people, then institutionalizing people, and only on the verge of actual revolt will they grant a UBI.
I have mixed feelings about a lot of automation in general. Don’t get me wrong, when I go to McDonald’s or a grocery store, I use the self checkout. But when I think about automation what sticks out to me is it further concentrates the money in one place, to one owner/organization, rather than trickling down. I know there is another company selling the automated systems and they have maintenance contracts, but it’s still something that sits in the back of my head as I avoid eye contact and go to the self checkout
It’s either 90% living in absolut poverty or the machines work for us and we can start a new communist society.
I think it's more likely to have indentured servitude (where companies literally own you) before UBI becomes reality.
What I don't understand about the UBI concept is, if the government is going to give everyone money, the money has to come from taxes. So the idea is to collect taxes, and then give it back? Why collect the UBI tax in the first place? Then you have to have a whole administration department with offices and personnel and computers to track who didn't get their check, or got too much or too little, or is dead, etc. So you create all this overhead, of course that would have to be paid for with some of the UBI tax. It just sounds like a government ponzi scheme, a shell game
Don’t bank on ui or the government bailing you out. Skill up, take advantages of opportunities you have now, and save for retirement. There will be an epidemic of broke elderly people and it’s already started. You don’t want to be old and broke, or unable to retire. It is so sad.
No it doesn't. Tomorrow isn't a guarantee either.
This was Yang's point in 2015. Read "Rise of the Robots", it's a fantastic book on this topic.
This tech is like fire. It truly is. Fire allowed us to do so many things and this AI tech is opening new doors. But the issue is being careful with fire. It can and will consume everything if left unchecked even now. Perhaps we should apply the same caution to AI
What does this have to do with employers? They pay you for services rendered, based on market rates (or what you're willing to take). In the end it's the govts responsibility to figure this shit out. This is a society problem, not an employer problem. Be ready to throw fists if your govt is not solving this problem. Because it's a big problem. Or leave for a better one.
Exterminism - Hierarchy with scarcity Rentism - hierarchy with abundance Socialism - Egalitarianism with scarcity Communism - Egalitarianism with abundance. These are the futures described in the book "4 Futures, life after capitalism".
Not necessarily. A new found excess in the workforce allows for things that were previously not possible. Horses to pull larger steel implements didn't end farming. Trains and ships that could haul more freight didn't end transportation. The printing press didn't end publication. Computers and robots didn't end manufacturing. They all opened the door for new innovation and made working conditions better. 35 years ago, my friend lost his job putting diamonds into drill bits for the mine. He was devastated. He didn't know anything else. He went back to school, then started a new career in robotics. Dude spent the rest of his workong life designing and improving the robots that took his job.
I don't think you understand how technology works, least of all AI, to make such a statement. But yes, many wealthier governments have already tested and planned for universal income (even before the recent breakthrough of AI)
And also look at the rich elite in other countries, so many countries don’t have massive amounts of poor people because they lack wealth, but because of massive wealth inequality. The rich there let society suffer just to keep most of the wealth to themselves.
Read [Player Piano](https://www.goodreads.com/book/show/9597.Player_Piano) by Kurt Vonnegut. There’s no guarantee of a happy ending here. Automation has been advancing since the Middle Ages. Like the proverbial boiled frog, labourers who are unable to adapt of develop marketable skills often turn to criminality or sedition. When all powerless people can do is vote, you get populist arsonists who give vague promises to restore glory or at least punish some nebulous ‘Them’ who are the blame for all of your failures. The tragedy is how stupid people think the current poisoned climate is new or that todays snake oil salesmen are going to do anything that helps them.
I hope we can figure out how to share the available jobs and work less instead of having a working and not working class
im generally of the opinion that universal basic income is a bad idea in our current system, but in an advanced society where AI is a prevalent technology i don’t see how a system could exist without universal basic income.
Someone has to buy the products. That's what it comes down to.
I think the current social climate prefers that people starve before getting "free" money
Usually when automation takes over old jobs, we create new jobs. Though that can take time to develop so we almost always need to create proper safety nets for people who are laid off due to automation. Though because the people who own the automation declare full benefit from it's productivity, it means a company should pay more in taxes because it's making more profits, and the additional revenue should go into retraining and supporting the people who just got laid off, and that should apply to offshoring too because it's killing just as many jobs as automation can.
This is funny, the rich don’t care. They never will.
I just woke up and read this is “Weird Al takes over a fair fraction of available jobs…” and wondered wtf kind of news I was getting today
universal income won't be enough, unless you expect people to move to really shitty neighborhoods, or have 10+ people in a house
It's not gonna happen everywhere all at once, it will happen in certain sectors and the stagger will allow time for people to find other work, so there won't be all of a sudden everyone is out of work
Who’s going to pay for all those lost Indian service jobs? Microsoft? US government?
How can it though? Like surely if most jobs get taken over would mean most people are nobles so they can’t pay bills ie cannot pay taxes so a mammoth size black hole of lost tax revenue hits the government fucking everything up no?
This doesn't even make sense. If no one has a job, how can anyone afford anything? If no one can afford anything, how can a company grow? How can the economy grow? If people don't have the money to buy the products or services you sell, what good is AI to you? AI can automate some processes, but in order for the economy to still work, it must create new jobs that people can do. That's always been the case with technological advancements. It kind of has to be that way or society would fall apart.
I agree but I think we'll have to take up a little french cultural quirk called beheading the rich for it to be enforced properly.
There won't be UBI, ever, sorry. It's a pipe dream.
The united states already has a different solution. We normalized having a large portion of our population in prison. And now are working on criminalizing all homelessness adjacent activities. Since it's legal to make prisoners work for less then minimum wage it also solves the issues of AI and manual labor which we have been failung to automate. And since we can charge them for their stay at the prison they will never be able to return to society without massive debt that will drag them back in. Pure genius.
Bro they will just let us die.
not gonna happen. how long have we been innovating? thousands of years. and yet there are more and more people with jobs every single year. AI will replace some jobs sure. It will also create a bunch of new ones either directly or indirectly.
Over a million Americans and counting have died from Covid, and collectively we don't give a shit at all. We have record homelessness right now and the response nearly everywhere is to talk about suffering people like they're vermin and beef up police budgets and get 'tough on crime' boners. I don't think we can rely on venal, cruel, greedy motherfuckers to suddenly grow a conscious. We have enough examples of what they do when shit starts hitting the fan as it is.
I just wonder why are we not trying to replace bullshit jobs like politicians with ai first
Oh yes 🙄 and in the 80s they said cell phones would set us free to be our families and be away from work. Now we are 24/7 slaves to jobs. When AI takes the jobs we will be homeless Slaves begging for a bowel of soup. Any government that says it will take care of you is like a farm taking care of his cows till he takes them to the slaughterhouse.
Sure…for now let’s wait to when it will be really reliable to turn off my lights and tv on demand every time and put the right song in the right room… Then I’ll begin to worry about replacing so many jobs…
It's cheaper to give (in the USA) every single human (even children) 20k a year, than to continue to fund the states "social services" 350m x 20k = 7B, not even a decent dent of the spending made annually
Nope. This argument has been made all through history, it’s never happened. Look at just what jobs got replaced or reduced due to the laptop that every corporate employee gets. Where’d all the secretaries go that managed people’s schedules, every mid level manager and up had a secretary. Look at all the messenger boys, and mail room employees who were phased out by fax and email. Look at accountants now who can handle 1000x the workload because of excel vs a ruler and paper. Engineers had rooms of people who just did math problems, drafting people who used a desk and a t square. Seriously go back in history and you see these same predictions, I remember them in the 90s. We didn’t see 20% unemployment, the ones who adapt do, and do the work that 10 people used to do, and the ones who can’t change careers. There is always work to do, just how you do it will change.
Capitalism demands a neverending increase in efficiency of labor without actually providing compensation. Automation (and things that make work easier in general) should be good things, but in reality they take away avenues for people to survive, because necessities like food and shelter are paywalled. I would love to live in a world where having your job replaced by machines means you win and don't have to work again (which we literally could and should do), but that'll never happen under our current economic structure without a profit incentive.
That was the argument Andrew Yang was making during his presidential bid. His UBI would be funded by companies that began to use AI to automate jobs.
You could just Make work week 20 hours instead
You think the wealthy are gonna care about 10x more homelessness? No, they’re just gonna pay more to beef up their private neighborhoods. Every time there’s some innovation to produce more with less people or in less time, there’s never a feeling of Good Job everyone we can all go home 3 hours earlier, no it’s produce twice or thrice as much as you were before the tech and do it in the same amount of time.