The Backlash against Bill Gates' Call for a Robot Tax

[DukenukemX]

One more piece of information if it's still not sinking in yet about the impact.... we haven't touched on the trickle down impacts.

Insurance companies, massive impact to jobs and some going under within 10 years - Auto Insurance is OBSOLETE - In 3 years from now, auto manufactures like Tesla will give you free (or heavily discounted) replacement plan.. the cars are so safe, they don't get in accidents... if they do... they will fix it or give you a new one.

Auto repair services - Electric autonomous vehicles have very few moving parts... and companies like Tesla are turning the dealership model upside-down; they are charging cost for service, and their service consists of tires and brakes... there's nothing else to go wrong... dealers sell cars on premise they can rape their customers in service... all those auto worker jobs vanish.

Drones and autonomous delivery vehicles - negate UPS, Fedex, USPS employees in massive waves

IT departments automation and cloud growth is eliminating tech jobs

AI is going to eliminate in the next 5 years, millions of jobs... and it's not AI robots walking around... it's micro-AI instances... for instance, underwriting in property insurance is basically a human activity and risk calculations, AI will replace that are be far superior in just a few years.... think about all these small AI activities sprouting up around companies wiping out jobs in waves.

there's so much more..... it's not 1 thing that's going to happen... it's hundreds of these things all happening in a 10 year period..

we can't just let it happen, we need to start preparing for it now.

The good news, if we plan and control it now - it's going to be awesome and it's going to be in our life time and in my kids lifetime.

The key thing is that 5 years is really the time limit we need to rethink society and the economy. The big 4 emergent technologies that will reshape the world is solar, AI, anti-aging, and genetic engineering. AI will decimate the majority of the work force, followed by solar power which will decimate the power grid. Genetic engineering with anti-aging may leave us with humans who don't die and live off welfare system and not contributing to society. This is a problem we need to start thinking about now, before bad things happen.

#1 AI is here. We've been using it even when we don't realize it. It's in our phones as Siri or Google Now, and it'll be in our cars. This technology is at a point where it's just a matter of applying it.

#2 Solar is also here, and like AI it's just a matter of applying this technology. This will redefine how we live.

#3 Genetic engineering is mostly here. With CRISPR as the first generation tool, we'll be able to redefine what it means to be human.



#4 Anti-aging technology is... not here. It is being worked on in the labs and showing success in Mice.

 

[DukenukemX]

I give up OP. Both are cute and both look the same age. Which is the mom?

The one on the right.

 

[Armenius]

I see a future without robot taxes similar to the future portrayed in Elysium.

I give up OP. Both are cute and both look the same age. Which is the mom?

The neck and the hands are usually the two obvious giveaways to a person's true age. With that in mind it's obviously the one on the right.

 

[MrCaffeineX]

...humans who don't die and live off welfare system and not contributing to society...

I have to ask this question: since we live in a consumer economy, aren't those people on welfare still contributing to society? It may be a net loss overall (this largely depends on whether or not you believe in the multiplier effect and whether or not you believe it applies to welfare spending), but they still have to 'spend' their benefits at the grocery store, the landlord still collects rent, the doctor's office is still paid something to see them as patients, etc.

This is where UBI can be a huge improvement over the current social safety net system. It would require less bureaucracy to implement and manage (caseworkers won't need to review all of your family's intimate details), it will provide a fixed payout (welfare program estimates and actual costs are rarely in agreement), and it places the responsibility in the hands of the individual to a much greater extent than the current welfare system. Will some people piss their money away on crack? Sure, but some of them already do that now...Will some people sit on their ass and collect a check? Yes, but again, some of them already do that now...Will we have a better system for addressing basic needs without the need for intrusive government bureaucracies evaluating everything that the beneficiary does? I think so.

 

[DukenukemX]

I have to ask this question: since we live in a consumer economy, aren't those people on welfare still contributing to society? It may be a net loss overall (this largely depends on whether or not you believe in the multiplier effect and whether or not you believe it applies to welfare spending), but they still have to 'spend' their benefits at the grocery store, the landlord still collects rent, the doctor's office is still paid something to see them as patients, etc.

This is where UBI can be a huge improvement over the current social safety net system. It would require less bureaucracy to implement and manage (caseworkers won't need to review all of your family's intimate details), it will provide a fixed payout (welfare program estimates and actual costs are rarely in agreement), and it places the responsibility in the hands of the individual to a much greater extent than the current welfare system. Will some people piss their money away on crack? Sure, but some of them already do that now...Will some people sit on their ass and collect a check? Yes, but again, some of them already do that now...Will we have a better system for addressing basic needs without the need for intrusive government bureaucracies evaluating everything that the beneficiary does? I think so.

Removing money is a good long term solution. Many people contribute to society without getting paid anyway. We know a number of people who do so without expecting anything in return. Most people obviously won't, but that doesn't mean we can't put incentives for people to do so. Like a Gamification version for society. For example, everyone would get paid from the government themselves, and not directly from employers. Depending on your job and what you do for society, determines how much you get paid. If you do nothing, then you just receive basic income. Work at the fire department? Now you get more than basic income. Work for a major company as the CEO? You get paid even more. You can call it money or points or credits.

At least that's how I envision what we should do in the future with Basic Income. Just implementing basic income without taxing the rich will back fire really badly. But why let the wealthy decide on what to do with power? The government is suppose to look after the people and should handle that, given we fixed corruption. Which honestly is probably more important than dealing with economy right now.

 

[tetris42]

I have to ask this question: since we live in a consumer economy, aren't those people on welfare still contributing to society?

Yes. Something many people forget is that in the US at least, the majority of welfare recipients are already working:

http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2015/04/13/get-a-job-most-welfare-recipients-already-have-one/

McDonalds and Wal-Mart, two of the biggest employers in the nation actively encourage their employees to get on welfare.

 

[UrielDagda]

Where do we start with this taxing of automation and labor saving? It's safe to assume that most of us here are involved in IT, and the WHOLE PURPOSE of IT is to replace people's jobs. I work at a software company, and my company's software allows our partners to not hire people because it automates certain workflows. So, should companies that use our solution be taxed because they use business software that lets one person do the work of 15? If a small business uses Quickbooks, negating the need for an in-house accountant, should they be taxed? Or maybe it's not fair to tax the companies that are using the software, so let's tax the companies that write the software instead. That will do wonders for the American tech industry.

Or maybe we can make a ton of regulations, if you are using a solution that automates an arbitrary amount of work, then you can be taxed, but less than that, less tax. Or a graduated tax. This will be great.

Bulldozers and heavy machinery and their operators. I'm going to point out that when you have an operator running power machinery, that one person is doing the job of many people. Instead of 50 people digging a ditch, there's one person operating a machine. So, that should obviously be taxed!

I am asking in all seriousness, if we take this 'labor saving devices should be taxed' for granted, where should it start, and where should it end?

Well for the huge conglomerates who keep buying up stuff, we know where they want it to end.. In a battle for everything to be completely automated, with no tax, and the few business owners that remain to eventually buy each other out until there is only one person making everything, paying as little as possible to run it, and pretty much the only person left making any income, with the rest of humanity as their slaves.


You can't try to automate everything, then call all the people that are now out of work useless lazy bums that don't want to lift a finger to do anything, and not expect it to eventually all blow up.

If it's not all done properly, to keep the economy actually working for everybody, instead of using automation to make our lives better, we'll just wind up with a huge war where technology winds up being destroyed, putting us back in the Stone Age. You can't just have a world based on the greediest person winning and ruling over the rest of humanity. It just doesn't work that way. Every time it's been attempted it's wound up with a lot of dead rich people with their heads in the town squares on pikes. And I'd like to think that, no matter what things are like now, we're ultimately smart enough to not repeat that mistake.

 

[nightfly]

And you still almost always got it.

I don't know about you and the people YOU know, but the folks that I knew didn't 'always almost got it'. That's the myth that's so prevelant with the millenials.

you can't talk down to me about how "bad" you had it back then.

See, that's it. We didn't see it as 'bad', having to go around looking for work. That was 'normal'. As it is today. It's just that there's this myth that people used to just get good paying jobs with all kinds of benefits just handed to us. Didn't happen. Only happened on TV an the movies, like the show Rt 66, where these two guys supposedly drove across the country, automatically getting work everywhere they went. That wasn't reality. It's fiction.

You can send out hundreds of resumes today and only get a handful of replies back and still not get hired.

Blindly sending out resumes has always been a losing proposition. This isn't something new. You get a job by actively going out and getting contacts. I got my jobs by applying, and kept going back OFTEN to make sure the hiring person KNEW that I was serious about wanting the job. Kids today think all they have to do is hire someone to make their resume, and call the company once in a while to see if there's any interest. THAT DOESN'T WORK. IT NEVER DID.

You never had to deal with that if you're a boomer. <snip> In the past, that was unheard of

You didn't grow up with me? Then you don't know what it was like. All you know is what you heard.

Yeah because community college is now expensive and 4yr colleges are now damn expensive even if you try to transfer into them (often that path is blocked BTW now) after getting some credits out of the way at the community college + college degrees don't get you good paying jobs like they used to. Maybe you'll make some joke about Liberal Arts degrees being for idiots and suckers but guess what? Even STEM degrees don't guarantee a good paying job anymore.

Let's get it straight; there is not now, and never has been, a sure fire way to automatically get a good, high paying job right out of school, unless you're the child of a company owner. The immense egos of kids today who think they're the greatest thing ever to graduate from college, that every company should just come racing to them to give them a job, just staggers the mind. There is no easy way. People have to stop believing all the crap they're told. Life is hard. Getting a good job is hard. Even keeping a good job is hard. It takes work to do it, and a whole lot of people aren't willing to do the work necessary to get and hold that job. I know people who are getting jobs. You know the one, single common thing about them? They all work their asses off. They actively pursue work, and make damn sure that they're prepared to impress a hiring manager when they meet them. I recently went to a job fair for nurses; I couldn't believe the new graduates who just assumed that what they learned in college was all they needed to know in order to get the job they want. I've got almost 40 years experience with certifications in my areas of expertise, and even I didn't automatically get the jobs I was interested in. It simply doesn't work like that. Yes, a FEW people will luck out and get the open position. Most will not. And that's what this generation cannot accept. They were promised that they were special, and that everything would be wonderful for all of them, automatically. Reality bites. Me, I have now met those hiring managers. I will keep in touch with them and the people I know that know them, and when another opening comes up (or I get told that there will be an opening in the near future), I will be damned sure that she knows I'm available for it, and that I'm the appropriate one to hire. Contacts. Networking. Following up. Persistance. It makes all the difference.

Life is different now than it used to be in lots of ways. There are still ways to get ahead. People are doing it. But no one's going to just hand it to you. Never happened in the past, and it's not happening now. If you want success, you have to be persistant. Seems no one wants to bother today. Write up a resume. Send it in. Didn't get the job. Oh, poor me, what will I do. There must be no jobs to be had because I didn't get the ones I want. It's everyone else's fault. I'll just send out more resumes, repeating the same behavior I did that didn't work before. And get the same results, over and over. What a surprise.

Nope. Its your cluelessness at their situation and/or the time involved. Also previous generations didn't have to put up with such crap so why should millenials?

You didn't live it, so how do you know what not just I, but people older than myself had to live with? Really too bad there aren't more folks from the great depression alive to tell you what it was like back then. Interestingly enough, when i spoke to my grandfather about what it was like looking for work, he told me he was never out of work. There was always something he could find. He had a 6th grade education. No special trade. He was just willing to do what it took to get work.

SS and medicare make up such a huge portion of the entitlements (and the entire budget) the others aren't really worth discussing.

Everything is worth discussing. That's part of the problem; we've been so brainwashed by the politicians that almost everyone believes that social security and medicare are the only things that are entitlements, and that they are the cause of all our financial problems. And that's wrong.
Many others are hidden costs. For example, we spend a ton on the military, and military things (such as blackwater) which are things that our armed forces SHOULD be doing but don't. During the gulf war, there were even seminars being given on how to profit from the war. There is a huge amount of waste in this, but it's not going to the soldiers. It's going to investors in war products.

 

[YeuEmMaiMai]

Lmao. This is the same argument people made when businesses started bringing in computers. Society didn't crumble. People were just expected to be that much more productive.

exactly... people will adapt or fall by the wayside.

 

[mesyn191]

You describe Luddism precisely in the first sentence, then say in the second nobody wants a return to it? ....Luddites didn't break people's stuff because they hated technology, they broke it because they were protesting.

Nope. The Luddites were perfectly willing to destroy tech to get what they wanted. No one here is interested in that. The solution being discussed is redistributive taxation. That has nothing to do with destroying tech.

they weren't able to understand that production has primacy and automation would bring greater wealth to all, not lesser.

Except the exact opposite was happening back then. The quality of life got worse with the factories, not better, since the wealth that was created went almost entirely into the hands of the factory owners.

There was no misunderstanding. They were well aware of what was happening and why. Ultimately they got abandoned or sold out by their own govt. who backed the factory owners and helped to put them down.

 

[Retronym]

Technology: This time it's different ™

 

[mesyn191]

That's the myth that's so prevelant with the millenials.

The the stats of employment and unemployment as well as inflation adjusted income are all public dude. As well as for time taken to find a job. All of which are publicly searchable and easily available via google. Your denial is worthless against the facts.

We didn't see it as 'bad', having to go around looking for work.

That isn't what I said, don't try the facetious strawman act.

Blindly sending out resumes has always been a losing proposition.

Except it wasn't. Not at all. And this is indeed something new.

You didn't grow up with me? Then you don't know what it was like. All you know is what you heard.

Actually all I really know is the stats. I don't need to know you at all so long as I know those and your anecdotes are worthless in my opinion.

Contacts. Networking. Following up. Persistance. It makes all the difference.

Far far less in today's economy than it did in yours and it will matter ever so much less once widespread automation is implemented.

Everything is worth discussing.

You could eliminate nearly all the other forms of social welfare that millenials have access to in this country and they'd hardly make a dent in the national debt. SS and Medicare are overwhelmingly gigantic to the point where it really isn't worth talking about anything else.

 

[Retronym]

I drive by a Wendys on my commute that has had a help wanted sign up for about 3 years.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS

 

[Gigus Fire]

#1 AI is here. We've been using it even when we don't realize it. It's in our phones as Siri or Google Now, and it'll be in our cars. This technology is at a point where it's just a matter of applying it.

That's not AI. AI is intelligence. AI is learning. AI is evolving. Siri and google now are advanced versions of dr. Sbaitso (for those of you who are too young to know what that is: .
It's just voice recognition that chops sentences looking for commands or action words. It doesn't even have the intelligence of a 3 year old. Calling it AI because it recognizes voice commands is like saying dragon dictate + a command line parser is AI. All your doing is muddling what real AI.

#2 Solar is also here, and like AI it's just a matter of applying this technology. This will redefine how we live.

Solar's been here for 30 years. The only thing that's different now is cheaply made solar panels from China make them affordable, but they're still expensive and don't work for many people. The technology behind them hasn't change, they still use rare earth minerals and still cost a lot of oil to produce. Their efficiency has stagnated and realistically, they require a tie into the grid.

#3 Genetic engineering is mostly here. With CRISPR as the first generation tool, we'll be able to redefine what it means to be human.

CRISPR is a nice hack, buit it's not foolproof. You still run the risk of causing cancer if the genetic change is too large.

#4 Anti-aging technology is... not here. It is being worked on in the labs and showing success in Mice.

I don't think this is going to be something we realistically see in our lifetime. If we could double the life expectancy or reverse aging, then we would have a population boom and probably starve millions of people.

 

[c3k]

LOL... I see someone stating "google" and calls it "facts"! That is a good one. Thanks for the chuckle.

 

[Uvaman2]

I drive by a Wendys on my commute that has had a help wanted sign up for about 3 years.

WHERE ARE THE JOBS

It could simply be that turnover is extremely high, no only is the pay low, compensation practices are at best borderline illegal.
Other companies leave jobs opened with not intention of ever filling them, I don't know what they gain from that (departamental budget trickery maybe?), but they do that too.

 

[Uvaman2]

I don't know about you and the people YOU know, but the folks that I knew didn't 'always almost got it'. That's the myth that's so prevelant with the millenials.

See, that's it. We didn't see it as 'bad', having to go around looking for work. That was 'normal'. As it is today. It's just that there's this myth that people used to just get good paying jobs with all kinds of benefits just handed to us. Didn't happen. Only happened on TV an the movies, like the show Rt 66, where these two guys supposedly drove across the country, automatically getting work everywhere they went. That wasn't reality. It's fiction.


Blindly sending out resumes has always been a losing proposition. This isn't something new. You get a job by actively going out and getting contacts. I got my jobs by applying, and kept going back OFTEN to make sure the hiring person KNEW that I was serious about wanting the job. Kids today think all they have to do is hire someone to make their resume, and call the company once in a while to see if there's any interest. THAT DOESN'T WORK. IT NEVER DID.

You didn't grow up with me? Then you don't know what it was like. All you know is what you heard.


Let's get it straight; there is not now, and never has been, a sure fire way to automatically get a good, high paying job right out of school, unless you're the child of a company owner. The immense egos of kids today who think they're the greatest thing ever to graduate from college, that every company should just come racing to them to give them a job, just staggers the mind. There is no easy way. People have to stop believing all the crap they're told. Life is hard. Getting a good job is hard. Even keeping a good job is hard. It takes work to do it, and a whole lot of people aren't willing to do the work necessary to get and hold that job. I know people who are getting jobs. You know the one, single common thing about them? They all work their asses off. They actively pursue work, and make damn sure that they're prepared to impress a hiring manager when they meet them. I recently went to a job fair for nurses; I couldn't believe the new graduates who just assumed that what they learned in college was all they needed to know in order to get the job they want. I've got almost 40 years experience with certifications in my areas of expertise, and even I didn't automatically get the jobs I was interested in. It simply doesn't work like that. Yes, a FEW people will luck out and get the open position. Most will not. And that's what this generation cannot accept. They were promised that they were special, and that everything would be wonderful for all of them, automatically. Reality bites. Me, I have now met those hiring managers. I will keep in touch with them and the people I know that know them, and when another opening comes up (or I get told that there will be an opening in the near future), I will be damned sure that she knows I'm available for it, and that I'm the appropriate one to hire. Contacts. Networking. Following up. Persistance. It makes all the difference.

Life is different now than it used to be in lots of ways. There are still ways to get ahead. People are doing it. But no one's going to just hand it to you. Never happened in the past, and it's not happening now. If you want success, you have to be persistant. Seems no one wants to bother today. Write up a resume. Send it in. Didn't get the job. Oh, poor me, what will I do. There must be no jobs to be had because I didn't get the ones I want. It's everyone else's fault. I'll just send out more resumes, repeating the same behavior I did that didn't work before. And get the same results, over and over. What a surprise.


You didn't live it, so how do you know what not just I, but people older than myself had to live with? Really too bad there aren't more folks from the great depression alive to tell you what it was like back then. Interestingly enough, when i spoke to my grandfather about what it was like looking for work, he told me he was never out of work. There was always something he could find. He had a 6th grade education. No special trade. He was just willing to do what it took to get work.



Everything is worth discussing. That's part of the problem; we've been so brainwashed by the politicians that almost everyone believes that social security and medicare are the only things that are entitlements, and that they are the cause of all our financial problems. And that's wrong.
Many others are hidden costs. For example, we spend a ton on the military, and military things (such as blackwater) which are things that our armed forces SHOULD be doing but don't. During the gulf war, there were even seminars being given on how to profit from the war. There is a huge amount of waste in this, but it's not going to the soldiers. It's going to investors in war products.

Sorry, I ain't crying a river for boomers either.
'Its not who you know, but who you blow', will always have a place in the job market, however now a days companies of any reasonable size don't actually want any contact with potential hires... so you can't go and make yourself known to anyone.
Not only that I am pretty certain, applicants are screened out aggressively by computers, I know as I have helped my wife apply to jobs for which she is a very well fitting and experienced candidate, only to get a nearly instant denial.. probably due to gaps (yet another price to pay for being a full-time mom on occasion).
I can contrast this with my Dad, father in law and grandpa, all 3 'trained on the job' coming in with zero education, zero related experience.. Jobs of high enough pay (and of relative high skill I mean) to make a living their whole lives.Trained on the job (coming in with nothing I mean, being jobs that now require titles and shit BTW) is unheard of to me. I have skills that are very well suited for certain research (as a research assistant) in fields such as pesticides, molecular engineering, chemical engineering and so on.. I am not a PHD, guess what? if I am not a phd, there are no jobs (that I have seen when I look), they fill these jobs with unpaid interns.

 

[DukenukemX]

That's not AI. AI is intelligence. AI is learning. AI is evolving. Siri and google now are advanced versions of dr. Sbaitso (for those of you who are too young to know what that is: .
It's just voice recognition that chops sentences looking for commands or action words. It doesn't even have the intelligence of a 3 year old. Calling it AI because it recognizes voice commands is like saying dragon dictate + a command line parser is AI. All your doing is muddling what real AI.

What about Google's Deep Mind, or IBM's Watson? Google's self driving cars? Whatever your definition of AI is, all that we're concerned about is can it take ur jobs? The answer is yes, yes it can.

We're approaching a point where a lot of what humans do can will be replaced by AI. Again AI in that it can replace a function humans do, not something from like Terminator.

Solar's been here for 30 years. The only thing that's different now is cheaply made solar panels from China make them affordable, but they're still expensive and don't work for many people. The technology behind them hasn't change, they still use rare earth minerals and still cost a lot of oil to produce. Their efficiency has stagnated and realistically, they require a tie into the grid.

For those that works, solar is damn near free energy. For those that it doesn't, there's wind and hydropower like a good deal of Europe is already doing. Otherwise, solar is a pretty big deal.

CRISPR is a nice hack, buit it's not foolproof. You still run the risk of causing cancer if the genetic change is too large.

This is why many people don't expect CRISPR to be nothing more than a first generation tool. There's already a better tool discovered by someone in China and it's free to use by anyone. It's called NgAgo. There are other tools also being worked on.

I don't think this is going to be something we realistically see in our lifetime. If we could double the life expectancy or reverse aging, then we would have a population boom and probably starve millions of people.

The current big deal in anti-aging is called Senolytic Drugs, and there's a race right now to produce a safe drug that can remove scenecent cells, the primary reason why we age and die, but not the only reason. How effective is it? Take a look at these mice which are the same age. One with removed scenecent cells and one without.

There's many other emergent anti-aging technology but that's why we really need to start thinking about the effects it has on society. Overpopulation is the least of concerns cause 1st world countries aren't growing in population, but the economy is going to be effected.

Bill Nye explained overpopulation issues nicely.

 

[Gigus Fire]

So i see you're switching goalposts a bit. Google's Deep mind and Watson is a far cry from SIRI and google now. Even those which are considered to be on the forefront of ai research still hasn't actually evolved to the point where it's considered AI.
"Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, recently claimed that IBM's Jeopardy! champion AI system Watson is not real artificial intelligence. Watson, he says, is “just a text search algorithm connected to a database, just like Google search.Feb 14, 2014"
Sure, they can play chess and win at Jeopardy. They're also really complex super computers
Deepmind seems to be a startup that google bought that develops neural networks focused on learning. It can learn from it's mistakes. So what i figure is that it's a system based on genetic algorithms in which you grow results and prune choices. Is it AI? I don't think it has the intelligence of a dog.

There are many things that can replace what a human does that isn't AI. Burger flippers don't need to have AI. Kiosks don't need to have AI. Even the advanced deep learning lawyer substitutes aren't AI. They look for mistakes and patterns and apply it to the form they're checking. Same with financial deep learning programs. You look for patterns, model predictability and apply the results.

AI is not discernible from human intelligence. When you can have an intelligent conversation with watson and they can provide a viewpoint, then sure, you'll have AI.

Solar isn't free energy. Solar panels cost money, are made from finite resources, can have an impact in their surroundings, only last for 20-50 years before they need to be replaced because they degrade over time. To be fully used we'll have to expand our storage capacity since they don't work at night and only work partially during cloudy days. Sure tesla has a giga factory for building batteries and is in talks about fixing some australia capacity, but this is a recent development. Battery technology isn't great yet and batteries last much shorter than 50 years.

Nuclear is still a much better option all around. Combined with fast reactors and it could cut the waste by 99%. The rest can be safely rendered inert by bombarding the waste with neutrons speeding up the natural decay process.

If we focused on getting working fusion reactors, energy production would be super cheap and we could use it to go to space.

Bill Nye isn't a scientist. He's just a mechanical engineer turned actor that loves bow ties.
As for his video, the rate of growth in the world was 2% in 1960. Now it's 1.1%. .9% decrease over 50 years. It's really not decreased by that much and since then the world's population has change from 3 billion in 1960 to 7.5 billion in 2017.
There have been some studies that show that the earth can sustain a human population of 1 billion without affecting the environment or running out of resources so yeah, it's still an issue.

 

[DukenukemX]

So i see you're switching goalposts a bit. Google's Deep mind and Watson is a far cry from SIRI and google now. Even those which are considered to be on the forefront of ai research still hasn't actually evolved to the point where it's considered AI.
"Douglas Hofstadter, cognitive scientist and Pulitzer Prize-winning author of Gödel, Escher, Bach, recently claimed that IBM's Jeopardy! champion AI system Watson is not real artificial intelligence. Watson, he says, is “just a text search algorithm connected to a database, just like Google search.Feb 14, 2014"
Sure, they can play chess and win at Jeopardy. They're also really complex super computers
Deepmind seems to be a startup that google bought that develops neural networks focused on learning. It can learn from it's mistakes. So what i figure is that it's a system based on genetic algorithms in which you grow results and prune choices. Is it AI? I don't think it has the intelligence of a dog.

There are many things that can replace what a human does that isn't AI. Burger flippers don't need to have AI. Kiosks don't need to have AI. Even the advanced deep learning lawyer substitutes aren't AI. They look for mistakes and patterns and apply it to the form they're checking. Same with financial deep learning programs. You look for patterns, model predictability and apply the results.

AI is not discernible from human intelligence. When you can have an intelligent conversation with watson and they can provide a viewpoint, then sure, you'll have AI.

Depends on your definition on AI, which is commonly two definitions. One being an algorithm that has limited learning abilities for a specialized task, or one that can destroy all humans. Doesn't matter, so long as the machine can take your job then that's all that matters for this discussion.

Solar isn't free energy. Solar panels cost money, are made from finite resources, can have an impact in their surroundings, only last for 20-50 years before they need to be replaced because they degrade over time. To be fully used we'll have to expand our storage capacity since they don't work at night and only work partially during cloudy days. Sure tesla has a giga factory for building batteries and is in talks about fixing some australia capacity, but this is a recent development. Battery technology isn't great yet and batteries last much shorter than 50 years.

Putting up solar panels is obviously expensive, but once you have it then it's nearly free energy from that point forward. Even though most homes will get panels that are 16% efficient while NASA uses 30%, that's enough to power most homes. Battery technology is there, just not inexpensive. Doesn't stop people from finding inexpensive ways to make their own.

Nuclear is still a much better option all around. Combined with fast reactors and it could cut the waste by 99%. The rest can be safely rendered inert by bombarding the waste with neutrons speeding up the natural decay process.

I disagree, plus as Ray Kurwiel put it, we have enough solar energy pouring onto Earth to power humanity 4000x over. Why waste time on something like Nuclear which isn't free energy, and can be dangerous?

If we focused on getting working fusion reactors, energy production would be super cheap and we could use it to go to space.

I'm a firm believer that fusion energy is just not going anywhere. Also, we're back to paying an electric company a kilowatt hour fee.

Bill Nye isn't a scientist. He's just a mechanical engineer turned actor that loves bow ties.
As for his video, the rate of growth in the world was 2% in 1960. Now it's 1.1%. .9% decrease over 50 years. It's really not decreased by that much and since then the world's population has change from 3 billion in 1960 to 7.5 billion in 2017.
There have been some studies that show that the earth can sustain a human population of 1 billion without affecting the environment or running out of resources so yeah, it's still an issue.

Bill Nye isn't wrong though. Also countries like America, Europe, and Japan have almost no growth rate in population. It's the non first world countries that have a rising population. Poverty usually means people have more babies.

 

[Gigus Fire]

Depends on your definition on AI, which is commonly two definitions. One being an algorithm that has limited learning abilities for a specialized task, or one that can destroy all humans. Doesn't matter, so long as the machine can take your job then that's all that matters for this discussion.

AI has been defined since the 60s and that would mean artificial human intelligence.
Because that's a very lofty goal, people have been trying to redefine it as something that's obtainable currently.
By your definition, turbo tax and automatic switches in phone companies replaced both accountants and operators respectively and both have a bare minimum of "learning" built into them. Most people would laugh at the idea that either is considered AI.
As for AI being able to destroy all humans, that's a possibility. But it's also possible for a human to destroy the earth many times over. The idea that an AI can overwrite other systems on the internet to host part of it's intelligence is absurd. Almost as absurd has aliens that come lightyears to earth who want to conquer us for our resources.

Putting up solar panels is obviously expensive, but once you have it then it's nearly free energy from that point forward. Even though most homes will get panels that are 16% efficient while NASA uses 30%, that's enough to power most homes. Battery technology is there, just not inexpensive. Doesn't stop people from finding inexpensive ways to make their own.

NASA uses 30% efficient solar panels in space, which are not suitable to exist outside of micro gravity.
I said that solar panels degrade over time and must be replaced in 50 years. So no, it's not free energy.
Battery technology is not there. Lithium polymer batteries lose efficiency every year. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
They're typically rated in cycles where the best ones are 500-1500 cycles in their lifetime. Over the course of 5-15 years you'll have to replace them.

I disagree, plus as Ray Kurwiel put it, we have enough solar energy pouring onto Earth to power humanity 4000x over. Why waste time on something like Nuclear which isn't free energy, and can be dangerous?

That a theoretical limit if you covered the earth with solar panels. Doing anything remotely like that would be an ecological disaster for obvious reasons.
You would need 496,805 square kilometers of solar panels to meet the needs of the planet currently. We have nothing like that.
Looking at this a different way, the US currently consumes 966 GW (in 2013). Currently in 2015 we have 27 GW energy produced by solar panels including industrial and rooftops. We currently aren't even close to making a big dent in how energy is generated.
Nuclear is the most inexpensive, cost effective and pollution free energy production system on the planet.

I'm a firm believer that fusion energy is just not going anywhere. Also, we're back to paying an electric company a kilowatt hour fee.

ITER rolls out in 2020. If successful you'll see this being rolled out in our lifetime.

Bill Nye isn't wrong though. Also countries like America, Europe, and Japan have almost no growth rate in population. It's the non first world countries that have a rising population. Poverty usually means people have more babies.

US population in 1960 was 183.7 million. In 2014 it was 318.9 million. The rate of growth has been consistent throughout the 54 year span. It spans between .7 and 1.7.

 

[DukenukemX]

AI has been defined since the 60s and that would mean artificial human intelligence.
Because that's a very lofty goal, people have been trying to redefine it as something that's obtainable currently.
By your definition, turbo tax and automatic switches in phone companies replaced both accountants and operators respectively and both have a bare minimum of "learning" built into them. Most people would laugh at the idea that either is considered AI.
As for AI being able to destroy all humans, that's a possibility. But it's also possible for a human to destroy the earth many times over. The idea that an AI can overwrite other systems on the internet to host part of it's intelligence is absurd. Almost as absurd has aliens that come lightyears to earth who want to conquer us for our resources.

As much as I'd like to argue something as pointless as what is AI, how does this pertain to joblessness? Also that bit I said about AI going to kill us all was a joke. Kinda of a theme on this forum.

I said that solar panels degrade over time and must be replaced in 50 years. So no, it's not free energy.

Do you really care that solar panels need to be replaced in 50 years? Good chance you'll upgrade the panels before they wear out.

Battery technology is not there. Lithium polymer batteries lose efficiency every year. http://batteryuniversity.com/learn/article/how_to_prolong_lithium_based_batteries
They're typically rated in cycles where the best ones are 500-1500 cycles in their lifetime. Over the course of 5-15 years you'll have to replace them.

Ok so replace them. This hardly seems like an issue, especially in 5-15 years.

That a theoretical limit if you covered the earth with solar panels. Doing anything remotely like that would be an ecological disaster for obvious reasons.
You would need 496,805 square kilometers of solar panels to meet the needs of the planet currently. We have nothing like that.
Looking at this a different way, the US currently consumes 966 GW (in 2013). Currently in 2015 we have 27 GW energy produced by solar panels including industrial and rooftops. We currently aren't even close to making a big dent in how energy is generated.

I think you're making a mole hill into a mountain.

Nuclear is the most inexpensive, cost effective and pollution free energy production system on the planet.

Given that you're right, the worst case scenario with nuclear is Chernobyl 2.0. The worst case scenario with solar is broken glass. And it's not infrequent that workers at nuclear plants are exposed to radiation daily. Some workers will rotate routinely their exposure. Do we really want that over renewable sources of energy?

ITER rolls out in 2020. If successful you'll see this being rolled out in our lifetime.

Lets hope you're right.

US population in 1960 was 183.7 million. In 2014 it was 318.9 million. The rate of growth has been consistent throughout the 54 year span. It spans between .7 and 1.7.

The rate of growth has slowed down, and in many countries like in Japan, it has stopped. It doesn't matter, cause we can put laws that can limit people in having children. It's a far easier problem to deal with than 2/3's of humans dying each year to age related diseases. Not to mention the aging population is growing in size, thus costing society more money to keep healthy. Not only will we develop anti-aging technology, but the government will practically give it away for free, just to reduce medical costs.

http://www.multpl.com/us-population-growth-rate/table/by-year

 

[lolfail9001]

I wanted to write an answer but then...

It doesn't matter, cause we can put laws that can limit people in having children.

I've realized you are the sort of short sighted technocrat my philosophy professor makes jokes about all the damn time.
Want me to tell you what is way easier to do than trying to enforce a law limiting amount of children people can have?

Not to mention the aging population is growing in size, thus costing society more money to keep healthy.

Exactly Right, you got really close to answer: to cut social nets altogether.

 

[DukenukemX]

I've realized you are the sort of short sighted technocrat my philosophy professor makes jokes about all the damn time.

Tell your professor he's bad and should feel bad. Every new technology has had its pluses and minuses. No such thing as a technology that doesn't have some sort of consequence to society. But people adjust, as they've always have.

Want me to tell you what is way easier to do than trying to enforce a law limiting amount of children people can have?

To be honest, your compliance isn't required. The inevitable is inevitable. The government could put laws banning the technology, and people will get a hold of it somehow. How many people want alzheimer's, cancer, heart disease, diabetes, and etc? You can't cure these diseases without curing aging. They aren't mutually exclusive. One way or another, the technology will emerge to allow people to live longer. How you deal with this is a different matter.

Exactly Right, you got really close to answer: to cut social nets altogether.

I hope you didn't imply we remove things like social security?

 

[tetris42]

Exactly Right, you got really close to answer: to cut social nets altogether.

Especially when many countries with the strongest social nets actually have a negative birth rate and only have population increases from immigration.

 

[Gigus Fire]

I just want to summarize some of your talking points just to see how much sliding you've done.
First you said that SIRI and google now are AI. That suddenly became watson and deepmind. Now you're redefining AI to be anything that takes away human jobs that has a little bit of learning. Your goal posts have moved considerably since the start of the conversation.
Next you said that solar energy is practically free after the intial cost "Putting up solar panels is obviously expensive, but once you have it then it's nearly free energy from that point forward". After pointing out that solar panels have to be replaced in 20-50 years and batteries (which is necessary for solar energy) have to be replaced in 5-15 years you responded with "Do you really care that solar panels need to be replaced in 50 years? Good chance you'll upgrade the panels before they wear out." and "Ok so replace them. This hardly seems like an issue, especially in 5-15 years. "
This is counter to your idea that it's nearly free energy from that point forward.
"I think you're making a mole hill into a mountain. "
I have to admit, this is a fairly decent analogy in regards to deploying enough solar to power the united states.

I don't understand the population issue. First you said it wasn't a problem because rate of population growth has flat lined. I showed you that the US has had a consistent rise in population over the last 50 years. India and china are still increasing in population.
So then you switch from "it's not an issue" to "It doesn't matter, cause we can put laws that can limit people in having children". How did you do a 180?

As for Chernobyl 2.0 (or fukushima as they call it now), you're talking about first gen plants that were operating in unsafe manners (Chernobyl) and in other cases, beyond life expectancy in a hot zone for earthquakes on a coastline known for tsunamis. Bad decisions all around.
4th generation plants are inherently much safer and a lot more powerful. It's the kind of safe that even when the power is shut off (the whole reason fukushima overloaded) that they will be put into a mode that passively cools down the reactor. 5th generation ones use plasma physics which can't reach a critical reaction ever.

 

[lolfail9001]

Tell your professor he's bad and should feel bad

Not really, he is positively smarter than anyone pretending you can put up a law limiting people in amount of children they have. I mean, sure, you can, and you can even try enforcing it, but in practice it will justly do nothing but either make demographic statistics a nightmare, or do nothing because child birth rates were already low enough.

And yes, i mean the social security sort, because if technology can make you productive until you have an actual uncureable dementia, what do you need that social security for? For last 5-whatever years of your life?

 

[tetris42]

First you said it wasn't a problem because rate of population growth has flat lined. I showed you that the US has had a consistent rise in population over the last 50 years.

I'm not arguing with you that population growth isn't a big problem, but the BIRTHRATE of the USA has actually declined below 2.0. Our continued population growth comes from immigration.

 

[Gigus Fire]

I'm not arguing with you that population growth isn't a big problem, but the BIRTHRATE of the USA has actually declined below 2.0. Our continued population growth comes from immigration.

still doesn't add up. The population growth in the US is around 80 million a year. Immigration is around 1 million a year. The continued population growth does not come from immigration, only about 1.3% of it does.

 

[mesyn191]

The population growth in the US is around 80 million a year.

No it isn't. The population in the US grew by 12 million in the last year. If US pop. growth was 80 million year the US would have over population problems almost as bad as China's within a decade.

 

[tetris42]

still doesn't add up. The population growth in the US is around 80 million a year. Immigration is around 1 million a year. The continued population growth does not come from immigration, only about 1.3% of it does.

Here:

http://www.worldometers.info/world-population/us-population/

I'm not sure where you're getting your data from. I just did a quick search for "us population growth" and find similar charts all over. Same for US birth rate. It's about 1.88 now.

 

[Gigus Fire]

my numbers are wrong obviously, dunno where i got that from, was probably looking at a different country. It's 1.6 million a year. Immigration accounts for 62% of the population growth.

 

[tetris42]

my numbers are wrong obviously, dunno where i got that from, was probably looking at a different country. It's 1.6 million a year. Immigration accounts for 62% of the population growth.

In that case, older people are living longer, but in the long term, as long as the birthrate is kept below 2.0, then it's a problem that can work itself out. I do agree though globally our numbers are we past where we should be. We need an entire culture of sustainability to hope to reverse the trend in a non-bloody way.

 

[DukenukemX]

In that case, older people are living longer, but in the long term, as long as the birthrate is kept below 2.0, then it's a problem that can work itself out. I do agree though globally our numbers are we past where we should be. We need an entire culture of sustainability to hope to reverse the trend in a non-bloody way.

Usually people who have lots of children are in countries with high poverty. Raise the standard of living and people reduce their rate of child birth. That's what happened in America and Europe.