Perhaps robotics and artificial intelligence will propel us to star trek socialism.
But we aren’t on that track.
AI+robotics+energy is power. With real creative power you need money much less. The game changes from being a billionaire to having terawats of automation.
Without guardrails, robotics and artificial intelligence will become the primary tools of capital. Capital won’t need workers to implement their designs, and they won’t need money in the sense that they need it today, mostly to pay people to do things.
With factories to produce robots and ubiquitous artificial intelligence, there exists an opportunity for the capital class to separate itself entirely from the seething masses.
With essentially unconstrained power to create, you don’t need to buy things you want, except very special or artisanal things perhaps. You want a yacht? You build a yacht. The promise of GPAR is that you don’t need a factory. You just need more general purpose arthropod robots and the right software. They build the warehouse, they build the ways, they lay the keel, they build the ship. The fact that it might not be the most efficient way to build a yacht is immaterial.
Of course materials may need to be purchased so there will still be steelworks and other heavy industries that don’t lend themselves to small scales, but they too will be “manned” with GPAR labor, and the capital class will just be swapping tokens around among themselves. The true end to trickle down economies.
Humans will still have work in some situations, but it will be work that for some reasons robots cannot do because it is too risky, or too expensive to use automation. So humans will be limited to work that robots cannot do without risking destruction of robotic capital, or that humans can do for around the same cost as 36kw of solar electricity and $10/day of depreciation. Maybe that will cover rice and beans?
Either way, unfettered, untaxed access to effective hybrid cognitive/physical automation is not likely to be great for most humans in the long term.
We need an entirely new approach where labor is not the basis of survival if we are to realise the humanitarian potential of universal automation.
ajmurmann|1 year ago
int_19h|1 year ago
We could also do a lot of things to make such work less uncomfortable. For example, why are cashiers in American supermarkets forced to stand?
K0balt|1 year ago
But we aren’t on that track.
AI+robotics+energy is power. With real creative power you need money much less. The game changes from being a billionaire to having terawats of automation.
Without guardrails, robotics and artificial intelligence will become the primary tools of capital. Capital won’t need workers to implement their designs, and they won’t need money in the sense that they need it today, mostly to pay people to do things.
With factories to produce robots and ubiquitous artificial intelligence, there exists an opportunity for the capital class to separate itself entirely from the seething masses.
With essentially unconstrained power to create, you don’t need to buy things you want, except very special or artisanal things perhaps. You want a yacht? You build a yacht. The promise of GPAR is that you don’t need a factory. You just need more general purpose arthropod robots and the right software. They build the warehouse, they build the ways, they lay the keel, they build the ship. The fact that it might not be the most efficient way to build a yacht is immaterial.
Of course materials may need to be purchased so there will still be steelworks and other heavy industries that don’t lend themselves to small scales, but they too will be “manned” with GPAR labor, and the capital class will just be swapping tokens around among themselves. The true end to trickle down economies.
Humans will still have work in some situations, but it will be work that for some reasons robots cannot do because it is too risky, or too expensive to use automation. So humans will be limited to work that robots cannot do without risking destruction of robotic capital, or that humans can do for around the same cost as 36kw of solar electricity and $10/day of depreciation. Maybe that will cover rice and beans?
Either way, unfettered, untaxed access to effective hybrid cognitive/physical automation is not likely to be great for most humans in the long term.
We need an entirely new approach where labor is not the basis of survival if we are to realise the humanitarian potential of universal automation.
gryfft|1 year ago
I think there might be a modest proposal or two floating around out there that would neatly resolve the problems as stated.