04-21-2019, 12:31 PM
Re how we might handle the impact of automation - A few notions that come to mind:
a) Shift the economy to a 'living on income from capital' model. More specifically - the working people whose jobs are being displaced by automation are assisted in becoming 'shareholders' - making their money not from their direct labor but from the labor of the robots that they have an ownership stake in. This shift might be facilitated by a combination of private and public efforts (private companies providing ownership stakes to their workers facilitated by some combination of government regulation, financing, and loans perhaps).
b) Arrange things such that rather than flat out replacing workers with automation, the automation is instead provided to the workers who use it to earn a living until retirement. As workers retire out of the workforce, they are gradually replaced with automation. An example of this re driverless cars (actually trucks) - As driverless trucks become available, governments arrange to allow truck drivers to get driverless trucks, possibly via low interest loans or some form of grant. The trucks transport goods while the drivers do some combo of living off the income and/or having a second job to earn additional income. Possibly the drivers handle negotiation of new business with customers, rates, troubleshooting etc. They need not actually be with the trucks to do this and might work from home.
c) Depending on the design of the robots, possibly institute a system in which a single robot is provided to each citizen as a right. The robot can presumably do anything the citizen can in terms of labor (and possibly more skill or education based jobs if AI is sufficiently capable). The robot is sent out by the citizen to do a given job and the citizen earns the money from the job. The citizen may or may not work to earn more more beyond what is provided by their robot's labor.
On a different note re whether or not or how soon robots/AI will replace any given job - There was a time when games such as chess and Go were believed to be beyond the ability of AI. There was a time when doing things like picking winning stocks was seen as a purely human endeavor, yet now AI plays a major role in such things. All in all, a lot of what we like to think of as 'uniquely human' or requiring human level intelligence - turns out to not really need it after all.
There may very well be some tasks or problems that absolutely require 'human level intelligence' to handle. But based on our experience so far an ever growing number of tasks and problems have turned out to not actually require this such that it's not entirely clear where that line is.
My 2c worth,
Todd
a) Shift the economy to a 'living on income from capital' model. More specifically - the working people whose jobs are being displaced by automation are assisted in becoming 'shareholders' - making their money not from their direct labor but from the labor of the robots that they have an ownership stake in. This shift might be facilitated by a combination of private and public efforts (private companies providing ownership stakes to their workers facilitated by some combination of government regulation, financing, and loans perhaps).
b) Arrange things such that rather than flat out replacing workers with automation, the automation is instead provided to the workers who use it to earn a living until retirement. As workers retire out of the workforce, they are gradually replaced with automation. An example of this re driverless cars (actually trucks) - As driverless trucks become available, governments arrange to allow truck drivers to get driverless trucks, possibly via low interest loans or some form of grant. The trucks transport goods while the drivers do some combo of living off the income and/or having a second job to earn additional income. Possibly the drivers handle negotiation of new business with customers, rates, troubleshooting etc. They need not actually be with the trucks to do this and might work from home.
c) Depending on the design of the robots, possibly institute a system in which a single robot is provided to each citizen as a right. The robot can presumably do anything the citizen can in terms of labor (and possibly more skill or education based jobs if AI is sufficiently capable). The robot is sent out by the citizen to do a given job and the citizen earns the money from the job. The citizen may or may not work to earn more more beyond what is provided by their robot's labor.
On a different note re whether or not or how soon robots/AI will replace any given job - There was a time when games such as chess and Go were believed to be beyond the ability of AI. There was a time when doing things like picking winning stocks was seen as a purely human endeavor, yet now AI plays a major role in such things. All in all, a lot of what we like to think of as 'uniquely human' or requiring human level intelligence - turns out to not really need it after all.
There may very well be some tasks or problems that absolutely require 'human level intelligence' to handle. But based on our experience so far an ever growing number of tasks and problems have turned out to not actually require this such that it's not entirely clear where that line is.
My 2c worth,
Todd