Rise of the Robots

[Benjamin Blundell]

Hello HacDC folks.

Not sure how much of this sort of thing you get over in the USA, but there is a lot of talk, here in the UK about robots and AI replacing jobs.

I wondered if you chaps had any thoughts about this, specifically from a programmer or technical perspective? In some ways, the success of technical elite types, academics in CS, software engineers and various related types has lead to this point where we've basically done ourselves and many others out of a job. Or have we?

I sometimes wonder, despite enjoying programming and building stuff, is it actually beneficial to others, or needed by society? Do we have too many programmers and technical people and are we going to need fewer and fewer as automation takes over?

Jobs (or perhaps it's better to say roles) in the future are likely to be in 'softer' or 'less engineering' type roles such as healthcare, education and similar. In some ways it seems like the future will be very similar to  the past where people stay in smaller, family orientated communities supporting their elderly as the manual and repetitive tasks required to support said community are done by machines.

I don't quite know how true this is, and whether it is good or not? I'm tending on the side of embracing it as I suspect it's coming no matter what but I don't have a crystal ball. I wonder if ya'all have any thoughts on this?

Cheers

Oni

[Enrique Cobas]

Sure. First, optimists will say that during the industrial revolution
many of the same fears were aired - that mechanization would increase
productivity of farmers and lead to massive unemployment. It didn't turn
out so badly, although today a tiny fraction of the population is
directly involved in growing food. Once food was easy to produce, we
found we wanted other things (luxuries before) and needed workers to
make those new things. That's been repeated - now most Americans own a
car, a cell phone that can make long-distance calls or access the global
internet, we're generally healthier, living longer and are better
educated (since kids weren't needed on farms). I'm not an optimist
though, so I worry that this view is a lazy, comfortable way of
pretending everything will turn out fine with no thought or effort on
our part. I'd rather think through it.

In a rational closed system, seems to me if we need less human work to
produce the necessities of life, we should all be working less and
enjoying life more. The 40-hour work week seems outdated. But it's not
that rational of a system so instead we'll have a 40-hour week and high
unemployment, distributing work and pay very unevenly. Also a country is
not a closed system. We have international competitors whose standard
and cost of living is still well below ours and will undercut labor in
developed countries until their standards and costs rise to match, and
that seems wonderful from a global perspective. I think there's a
humanitarian argument to be made that developed countries should stop
growing economically, outsource some labor to developing countries until
all people have the opportunity for a decent comfortable life. Not
exactly a well-received argument in developed countries, or our media.

One more failure I'd mention is looking at economics as macro instead of
spending time analyzing how policies and developments affect various
sectors of society and communities. The industrial revolution turned out
fine for society long-term, but how did it go for farm workers during
their lives?

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[Julia Longtin]

In before discussion of the singularity, and universal income, which as an automator of all things, i fully support. Tax the rich, before (more of) the poor die in the streets, please.

Julia Longtin

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[Benjamin Blundell]

Indeed! I sort of wonder about people who are engineers who build things. I wonder if the joy and skill in being, say, good with electronics or programming will essentially become redundant? I have a feeling it might which could be problematic for people, such as myself, who see it as part of their identity. Getting used to change I suppose but I wonder if this is even really true?

[Kevin Cole]

On Fri, Mar 24, 2017 at 10:27 AM, Benjamin Blundell <onid...@gmail.com> wrote:

>I sort of wonder about people who are engineers who build things. I
> wonder if the joy and skill in being, say, good with electronics or
> programming will essentially become redundant?

Getting paid for it might become obsolete. But the joy and skill?
Well, if you don't have the joy to begin with, then the desire to
acquire the skill is motivated by forces that are probably going away.
But if you love playing chess, or making music, or painting, just
because someone ... or some machine ... is better at it than you are,
there's no reason to stop doing it.

I'm not an optimist either, but I play one on TV. ;-) With that in
mind, my more hopeful fantasy runs something like "In an alternate
universe, where narcissistic megalomaniacs are curable rather than
electable...":

Provided that people are provided for ;-) i.e. universal income,
healthcare, etc. the question to ask (IMVHO) is "What drives the
individual and the species?" While a significant number may be "happy"
to drool away their existence in some Matrix-induced 24/7 VR headset
coma, others will gravitate -- or perhaps levitate -- towards "the
stars" or some such. I think many people I know are happiest when they
create: create music, create art, create "all the things" as Julia
likes to say, or "create / nurture / teach" a child, or create a
policy / law -- as boring as that sounds to me, create a cure or new
knowledge. Advancing the [trans]human condition. The rise of the
citizen scientist / researcher / explorer / hacker / maker -- to a
degree -- replaces some of the ennui. We have lofty goals and
fantasies, and agencies like NASA and others are willing to tap into
that and generate competition amongst makers. Stepping back and
saying "I helped make such-and-such possible, and learned a new trick
or two along the way" goes a long way to keeping the jollies flowing.

... but then I woke up and certain people were still running the world.

[pste...@gwi.net]

///  ... but then I woke up and certain people were still running the world.  ///

 

 

If the robots are rising, it's in the service of those people, who in a steady churn of evolution, run the companies who produce returns on investment -- enabled by efficiencies, which translate into fewer people with meaningful work.  Don't worry so much about the robots as in whose service they work, and for what social purposes.  

 

We've already seen the evolution that's in play producing increasingly strange results, as individuals on the winning end of things detach themselves from consequence and from the full run of lessons that are available to be learned in the transformations they are shepherding.  The present ruling group has allied itself all but formally with a hostile foreign power run by people who would like to see the end of liberal democracy (or republics -- pick your favorite word for the context).  Last time around, 60 million people died in World War II as a result of excursions into extremism in concentration of power, and dreams of dominion expressed by various ideologies.  We are presently on a very mistaken path.

 

Part of that system of mistakes is misrecognition of the drivers of the loss of meaningful work for many people.  Mechanization, and thought towards how to domesticate it into human life without a world conflagration built around retrograde ideology and mendacity, has somehow been lost in the mix driving political movements, to date.  We need to recover a rational capacity to address problems within our present governing framework, or we will lose that framework, and those decisions of how to proceed will be made by plays of force.  

 

///  Getting paid for it might become obsolete. But the joy and skill?  ///

 

Thing is, there has to be work of some kind to provide for that.  We've always seen grey and black markets, underground economies (our country was burn with them practically in its DNA), and one development trajectory could be imagined to proceed through such a path.  What alternative does consumerism in an "economy without people" making things provide?  I offer this just projectively, not as some kind of thought-out framework of any way forward.  But being priced out of essentials of living (food, shelter, health care, etc.), as human labor becomes more and more costly relative to mechanization, and as taxes to support human labor become in differential terms more difficult to sustain, doesn't have a great outcome in the mean, either.  

 

Phil

[Zachary Huberty]

I think the fear of automation comes from the fear of losing a part of your identity, and the also the fear of not earning money.  My dad lost the use of his right wrist a few years ago, and he was most saddened by the fact that his identity was based on his ability to be a successful drywaller/taper.  He was also afraid of not earning enough money to support he and his wife's lifestyle.  Though he became happy when he realized that a "smaller" lifestyle could be just as meaningful, and that he would just have to find other aspects of life to identify with.

Some people in the U.S. are organizing themselves in smaller communities - I'm not sure where else this is happening in the world - but I think it's a relevant topic.

It seems that their mission is: "that tiny houses in small towns yield even more freedom and offer a unique opportunity to regain a sense of community and self sufficiency"

Self-sustaining communities might be a good reflection of an individual's ability or a community's ability to make their own choices about how they are affected by things like automation.  These communities might currently not be able to provide some things, like cheap medicine or advanced medical treatment, but I think it could be an improvement for any individual feeling that they are restricted by some other, dependent community.

Benjamin said, "[...] In some ways it seems like the future will be very similar to  the past where people stay in smaller, family orientated communities supporting their elderly as the manual and repetitive tasks required to support said community are done by machines."  Yet I would be more specific and say that machines could help in establishing the community, and then be less involved once it is set up.  Though infrastructure such as fiber optics and internet services could be maintained externally or internally.

Looking forward to seeing future discussion on this topic

--Zach

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[Zachary Huberty]

I forgot to link the website that I was relating to with the idea of smaller communities: http://www.spurfreedom.org/

[et...@757.org]

> In before discussion of the singularity, and universal income, which as an
> automator of all things, i fully support. Tax the rich, before (more of)
> the poor die in the streets, please.
> Julia Longtin

With Universal Income, the cost of basic goods like housing will rise to
take all of that money. Same thing happened when women joined the
workforce, housing prices went up to take their income as well.

The rich make the policies.

Just remember in an automated world, something like Stuxnet could bring it
all to a halt. Self driving cars can be made to drive themselves into the
ocean at night, all of them -- for the LoLz.


--
Ethan O'Toole

[Nick Skelsey]

Its interesting how much we have to say about this.

I think our capacity for dystopic projections of the future with this automation is quite big. I too fear the robot overlords, but damn is it is to drool over the cool new toy.

As Phil and Zach said creating community and a space for self expression is great too. Originally the 'web pioneers' were talking about this too, but --- not so much today.

These kinds of conversations go in circles where the positive conclusion usually boils down to getting active in community X to push initiative Y forward. There is a great community Mesh growing in Germany at the moment. https://freifunk.net/en/ That is my X and Y for somebody else today.

RE: Ethan: you've got it backwards. Those who make the policies become rich.

Cheers fellas -- NS

[Peter James]

I got  call from mentor who is the cheif scientist of the 2nd largest greenhouse tomato grower in North America (260+ acres of greenhouse) he is coming to town in May for the cannabis industry expo and invited me to dinner to talk about partnering on robotics for cannabis cultivation.

Can yiou ask your members if anyone is interested in working on a robotic bud trimmer, SCROG trainer or tissue culturing robot?

Right now I m building a setero cmera from low cost web cm to identity what to cut. I have made a 3D printed mold fro soft robot fingers to handle the plant.

I need someone who lives in DC were growing cannabs is legal.

Peter James

240 938-8439

On March 24, 2017 at 10:03 AM Julia Longtin <julia....@gmail.com> wrote:
y mentor

[Bobby Baum]

Been there, done that... This is the agriculture story all over again:
just as the establishment of agriculture eliminated the need for
people to produce their own food, technology is eliminating the need
for people to produce their own wealth. We are reaching the point
where it no longer makes sense for people to be financially
independent (how many people are independent in food production?) and
people need to realize this and plan accordingly. In the ideal world
noone needs to work. (There are plenty of other worthwhile things for
people to do - create, help others, discover.) Unfortunately, we may -
if we haven't already - do too much damage to the planet for it to
support human civilization...

[Alberto Gaitan]

   I like to think

       (it has to be!)

   of a cybernetic ecology

   where we are free of our labors

   and joined back to nature,

   returned to our mammal

   brothers and sisters,

   and all watched over

   by machines of loving grace.

Excerpt from All Watched Over by Machines of Loving Grace (1967),  Richard Brautigan

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/All_Watched_Over_by_Machines_of_Loving_Grace_(poetry_collection)

[pste...@gwi.net]

+n!

 

Brautigan ran around distributing that poem on mimeo sheets, as I recall.  

Anyone here remember the scent of mimeograph copies?

[Alberto Gaitan]

> Anyone here remember the scent of mimeograph copies?

Ethanol, wasn't it?

[The Doctor]

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On Fri, 24 Mar 2017 18:28:59 -0400
Alberto Gaitan <alberto...@gmail.com> wrote:

> > Anyone here remember the scent of mimeograph copies?
> Ethanol, wasn't it?

I don't know. The last time I saw a mimeograph copy was second grade. I
vaguely recall the headaches that a classroom full of fresh copies gave,
though.

- --
The Doctor [412/724/301/703/415]

PGP ID/fingerprint: 7960 1CDC 85C9 0B63 8D9F DD89 3BD8 FF2B 807B 17C1
WWW: https://drwho.virtadpt.net/

Paging Dr. Beckett. Dr. Beckett to Accelerator Chamber One.

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[pste...@gwi.net]

I don't know about headaches (they've slipped my memory), but the smell as I recall it was sweetish and pungent.  I liked it.  With the strong limbic weave-in of olfactory memory, it indexes a whole network of recollections from junior high school through early college.  

 

Sliding hard into bases, on the wooden gymnasium floor, in whiffle ball, is among them.  It's really a texture of recollection, almost a thread count or type of weave, but in polysensory associations tied into the cross-sections of narratives.

 

Phil

[Alberto Gaitan]

It's time for a montage!

--

[Alberto Gaitan]

Just looked it up and it appears that what Phil was referring to is technically called a "spirit duplicator"[1] and it differs from a mimeograph in that the latter pushes ink thru a stencil. The solvent in the former was ethanol or methanol. 

Those feelings if headache or euphoria seem to have been because of huffing booze. I'm pretty sure they would've used ethanol over methanol, don't you think?

[1]https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Spirit_duplicator