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mpouraryan
1/14/2018 5:07:30 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
Happy #MLKDay!!
As I was reflecting upon the discourse here about "proper implementaion" and "targets", I wanted to share this and see whether #CES2018 in the community's opinion has shown the way..or whether we've got a lot of "nice to have's"..and not much else as Telcos have to figure out how to allow for Smart Showers/etc:
https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2018/jan/10/consumer-electonrics-show-ces-2018-lack-of-innovation?CMP=Share_iOSApp_Other
JohnBarnes
1/15/2018 2:48:24 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
JoeS,
And that's another wrinkle on the diffusion of "expertise without experts" that is trainable AI: where formerly it took several experts who actually knew something to support one stuffed shirt who just made announcements, it may someday be possible for the stuffed shirt to just sit at a desk (or hang out on the golf course or in the bar) and do nothing but rubberstamp the AI's recommendations. The end state in which dead labor completely controls living labor.
JohnBarnes
1/15/2018 3:03:33 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
Joe, mhhf1ve,
As we march rightward on the bell curve for how smart/capable/trained people have to be in order to effectively participate in production, the number of people who fall below the cutoff is going to increase.
For example, in, say, 1850, being able to hang onto a plow while a mule went around the field, or shovel coal into a furnace, was all the ability needed to ensure that you could be employed creating more value than you consumed. A modern custodian or truck driver does things that are far more complicated than that (and a modern engineer does things much more complex than Roebling did building the Brooklyn Bridge -- but a lot of what Roebling did (or what the armies of clerks with slide rules, scratch pads, and adding machines did) is now done by a little tin box on his desk). In 2060, say, chances are the descendants of the Roomba, the self-driving car, etc. will have pushed the "minimum abilities to be employable at something that pays a living wage" much further up.
At some point, most people won't be qualified for any then-existing job -- worse yet, I don't mean they won't have the diploma, I mean they simply won't be able to do it. At that point, they're going to have to live somehow (unless you want to live in some kind of dystopia .... there's always the Soylent Green alternative). So maybe not this country, maybe not this decade -- but some kind of basic income is coming, just as in earlier times we kept increasing the school leaving age and created Social Security systems to get marginally effective workers out of the market. (Yes, it was yucky to have 6 year old coal miners and guys starving because at 85 they could no longer work -- but we somehow managed to live with that for centuries, until we reached the point where we didn't need those very small contributions of value they provided).
Re: Open Source..
@JohnBarnes: Every generation of automation creates its own demand for unskilled and semi-skilled work which does not require a whole lot of talent. Robots, for example, will need maintenance. I can see truck drivers switch to roles such as coordinating with customers to ensure that the expected time of arrival is achieved. They will monitor data on weather, accidents, and congestion to optimize the route to the destination point. With connected cars, I foresee home delivery will become viable and you will need more people for drop-offs. As for algorithms, they make plenty of mistakes or have to be tweaked to address new challenges. So you will need people for script writing which will need minimal training.
srufolo1
1/15/2018 5:31:11 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
@JohnBarnes Interesting ideas. And I'm not sure college educations and degrees will be useful anymore for the kinds of jobs that will be available. The educational system will need to be completely overhauled.
JohnBarnes
1/16/2018 2:34:41 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
Kishore,
That would all be very reassuring, except that the bits that are relevant aren't true and the bits that are true aren't relevant. Repair and maintenance are becoming more modularized constantly, and swapping modules is a perfect job for robots. Truck drivers today don't monitor weather, accidents, congestion -- or prices at the destination, which is actually what leads to more re-routing than anything else, because loads are resold multiple times on cross-country routes -- that's done by networks of instruments, sensors, and algorithms, right now, and nobody's going to move back to far less capable human beings to create jobs. As for home delivery, that's a perfect drone job, which is why Amazon is working on them so hard; with proper security systems, the drone can be allowed into your house and you don't have to worry about it looking through your drawers, helping itself to your beer, or forgetting to lock up after itself.
And self-correction of algorithms marches on, getting better all the time. The last human who will ever write code has already been born.
The real question sometime in the next century: do we treat the body of autonomous knowledge and technology, which we will be inheriting and then passing on, as the common heritage of humanity, and provide a decent living for everyone who has the good luck to be born after it comes into existence -- i.e. move to a global basic income -- or do we erect a new hereditary aristocracy out of the people who happened to own the right stocks and IP at just the right moment in history?
Real utopia or a feudalism of billionaire-descendants?
JohnBarnes
1/16/2018 2:53:41 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
srufulo1,
The educational system could use a good overhaul, both for our present economy where there is still plenty of brainwork to be done by people, and for the future generations who will be wards of robots and AIs. But fundamentally, in the long run, you can't educate people into outperforming a machine on any job a machine can do at all. This is obvious in the physical realm -- no matter how hard you train and how advanced your methods, you will never be able to ride a bicycle as far and as fast as a motorcycle can go routinely -- but it's even more true in the intellectual realm; no human book indexer goes carefully through the book line by line and page by page looking for keywords, because no human being has the unflagging attention of software. No grandmaster is ever going to beat advanced software at Go or chess again. Financial and sports news are mostly written by machines now because they produce clearer, more readable copy; theorem-proving programs have the speed, patience, and never-failing memory to tackle problems beyond human ability. Medical diagnostic software is already very good and can't be distracted or overworked.
My guess is that even the arts will fall before the machines; Herbert Goldstone probably called it right in his short story "Virtuoso" way back in the 1950s, except that he imagined that the machines would somehow voluntarily avoid replacing us (that's kind of how Asimov unified his robots and his Foundation series, too). No such luck, I think.
Re: Open Source..
@JohnBarnes: Sounds familiar, theoretically neat except that it does not quite square with the facts. Why is it that Amazon is hiring unskilled staff in droves even though its warehouses are one of the most robotized facilities in the world. Out of the comfortable confirmation zone, robots have created jobs for linguists to train them to speak with the right tone, inflection, accent, and culturally sensitive diction. Four out of five companies surveyed by Capgemini reported that new roles have been created as a result of AI--eighty percent at the managerial level and the rest staff members or coordinators.
afwriter
1/16/2018 4:57:17 PM
User Rank Platinum
Re: Open Source..
@Kishore this is an expertly worded example of what I am always saying. Things like Automation don't mean we won't have jobs it will simply mean that our jobs will change. I think simple automation also gets rid of lesser skilled positions and forces people to learn new skills and work up to their potential.
Re: Open Source..
@afwriter: Fear of automation is as old as the Luddites. Now, they are tied up with "thought leadership" marketing--it is a catchy way to attract attention. Elon Musk is getting a huge amount of attention from it with legions of followers. Recently, a friend posted a press release from McKinsey which played on the emotions about automation while the report concluded the opposite! Simply put, scarce resources are used more productively and release them to be deployed for new activities so you end up with more employment not less.
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