Slave Laborers Forced Out by Slave Robots

You say it's rarely for its own sake, that doesn't really matter if the end destination is still the same. So say somebody doesn't want more money for its own sake, but instead it's an ego / status thing to have MORE than the other people who he compares himself against. If this person has more influence on our system than thousands if not millions of others, they'll ensure things go down in flames before we have something that works for everyone, because it threatens his current status.
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True, there are some who make it to the top shelf, and then want to be at the top of that. On the other hand, there are others who feed their egos by helping the poor, donating to charity, etc. Some people are both.

But I think a lot of futurism is pointing to a real diminishment of scarcity in a way that we've never seen before. People fight over resources because of scarcity, but what happens when a resource becomes practically unlimited? In a lot of ways, I think we're approaching that for labor.

In a lot of ways, history bears this out (again, the rising tide lifting all boats); as mankind has gotten more prosperous, so too have the poor.

I don't believe at all in that last sentence, btw. It may be true of a few weirdos, but not in sufficient numbers for them to win the day. It's just not in evidence IMO.
 
Then there's the fact that technology has a way of slipping out of the rich's control. E.g., the Wal-Mart thing (guy who wants to get rich puts the robots on Wal-Mart shelves; his greed is serving the common man). E.g., skip ahead to nanotech, and the ability to build robots out of dirt; robots born from software. How much success have the oligarchs had at containing their intellectual property?
 
As for robot overlords, I think at the point where that becomes a real threat, it'll be more apropos to refer to them as our human-robot hybrid overlords. And even then it'll only be a matter of time before the tech is on Wal-Mart shelves for $100.

That said, I do think AI will pose a threat, simply because the profit motive will be placed ahead of the safety motive. If I had my way I'd say no hard AI in anything that can directly affect the physical world; if you make a truly intelligent actor, keep it in a walled, virtual garden, like the Matrix. If you make a robot for the real world, it doesn't get hard AI and free will.

Humans hacking robots to do bad things will probably be the real threat, same as now with computers.
 
tetris42 said:
Yeah, I'm not arguing any of what you said. The poster I was responding to seemed to think if there are enough resources to go around, then it wouldn't make sense for people to continue being greedy. I was trying to point out that's not the case at all. You're absolutely right, money translates to power and that certainly is a motivator for many individuals to keep earning more even when they have more than they could ever need or will use. Others it could be status, others it could just be a competitive drive, I'm sure there's a variety of reasons. My point is none of that goes away with increased automation and I think it's naive to think it would.
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Agreed. "The more things change, the more they stay the same", right?

Humans are what we are.

As a species, we excel at changing our environment to suite our needs or wants, hence the reason we are experiencing some issues these days with our environment.

If one takes a critical look at man kind and considers our ability to change our environment, our life span and our willingness to ignore a future that extends beyond that time, (the world won't die until long after I am dead so why do I care?), and accept the proof that is right before us. One would have to conclude that the extent of our restraint does not exceed the extent of our life times.

Now some really smart person is going to claim that this isn't true, that both he and many others see our future and are wise and intelligent enough to realize that we are on the brink and must do something about it, that we must restrain ourselves.

I would argue that this is because this person and his friends have nothing at stake. Because they don't feel that they will benefit from the excesses that are driving us toward oblivion, that they see the future as more important than the present, whereas the industrialist or politician or whoever, they have an immediate stack in the now and see it as more important than a future they will never live to see.

Industrialists, capitalists, all of the -ists all know that the fastest way to get an activist off your ass, is to get him to accept a job, join the ranks, your future is now so you no longer have time to ponder and worry about what's going to happen long after you are dead.
 
atarione said:
i mean... so what is the end game here... build new technologies to require less humans.. but the population of humans keeps expanding.. ???

what exactly are all the billions of surplus humans supposed to do.. other than offer their "services" to robots that have developed sexual appetites involving humans??
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I hear robot maintenance will be in high demand soon.
 
atarione said:
i mean... so what is the end game here... build new technologies to require less humans.. but the population of humans keeps expanding.. ???

what exactly are all the billions of surplus humans supposed to do.. other than offer their "services" to robots that have developed sexual appetites involving humans??
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Soylent Green ?


images
 
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