Kurzweil's reasoning rests on the Law of Accelerating Returns and its siblings, but these are not physical laws. . .There is also a link to Kurzweil's response.
To achieve the singularity. . . requires a prior scientific understanding of the foundations of human cognition, and we are just scraping the surface of this.
[. . .]
[C]reating the software for a real singularity-level computer intelligence will require fundamental scientific progress beyond where we are today. This kind of progress is very different than the Moore's Law-style evolution of computer hardware capabilities that inspired Kurzweil and Vinge. Building the complex software that would allow the singularity to happen requires us to first have a detailed scientific understanding of how the human brain works. . .
Getting this [understanding] is not impossible. If the singularity is going to occur on anything like Kurzweil's timeline, though, then we absolutely require a massive acceleration of our scientific progress in understanding every facet of the human brain.
But history tells us that the process of original scientific discovery just doesn't behave this way.
One of the first points that Dalio touched on was the aspect of the modern economy that causes machines to replace humans in the workplace...and, that in the 'new economy' that many people simply will not find jobs because their jobs are being performed by new machines...The Real Job Threat: "The NYTimes reports on a book by Erik Brynjolfsson and Andrew P. McAfee (MIT director-level staffers), Race Against the Machine, which suggests that the true threat to jobs is not outsourcing — it's the machine! Imagine the Terminator flipping burgers, cleaning your house, approving your loan, handling your IT questions, and doing your job faster, better, and more cheaply. Now that's an apocalypse with a twist — The Job Terminator."
This is a paradox! Capitalism requires competition, competition means whoever gets the best finished product out the door for the least amount of expenditure wins the game! Voila... machines do it for less on the assembly line. Example: An auto assembly plant that once required 5,000 - 10,000 laborers now requires 400 -800 workers. Think about what that means when multiplied across all manufacturing processes and, eventually, across the world. Eventually, China, India, etc, will face the same problem only they will have billions of excess laborers instead of millions, as in the West...
Like it or not, we are entering a new age where much less manufacturing labor will be required. Of course, the service industries will still require labor but, one day, even Mac a Doo will have machines preparing and assembling burgers.
I'm not a Marxist (hell, even Marx claimed he wasn't a Marxist) but Marx did point out that the machine vs human labor problem would arise. It's here and it's going to get worse for laborers.
So, what to do with billions of excess laborers? The world's politicians/bankers can't even decide if some bank bonds need haircuts... How will they ever approach the decision about excess labor? More food stamps, unemployment compensation, etc?
We live at the cusp between the industrial and the knowledge eras. In the U.S., the shift is already very much underway. But there is still much change to come, including in the production economy.(previously 1 2)
To understand what will happen, let’s first look at what happened during the industrial revolution. Yes, mass production and factories drove huge growth. But manufacturing was not the only part of the economy that was created or “industrial-ized.” Education was industrialized to provide large numbers of capable workers. Energy production was industrialized to provide cheap, available power for factories, homes and offices. Agriculture was industrialized to provide reliable, economical food sources. The change affected almost every corner of our society.
This industrialization process occurred under a number of very simple conditions or design constraints. Some of the most important included the availability of relatively cheap energy, the relative lack of importance placed by society on externalities (such as pollution and health risks), the availability of large workforces and continued returns available from mechanization that provides greater and greater returns on the work of employees.
These design constraints began to shift a long time ago in the U.S... If you look at the rise of China in the last 20 years, you will see a replay of the industrialization process, not the end of it. The Chinese also know that the model they are imitating is not sustainable...
Moving into the knowledge era does not mean the rise of services and consumption and the decline of production. Humans will have the same needs to live... But this new production sector will be built under a new set of constraints. Some of the design constraints for the post-industrial production model will be minimizing energy use (or creating alternative sources of energy), minimizing/eliminating waste, and maximizing health and wellness. Just as every corner of society was industrialized in the past, we can expect that every corner of the economy, including the production sector, will be ‘knowledge-ized,’ that is, re-made using information technology and knowledge to drive efficiencies...
The solutions that will emerge in the knowledge economy will turn many industrial models on their head. The industrial economy was based on control of scarce resources and top down flows of knowledge. If I owned the factory, I told you what to do. The knowledge economy is based on leveraging a theoretically infinite resource (knowledge). I can’t own or control knowledge beyond a very limited set of circumstances so in the long run, I can’t tell you what to do. I need you to cooperate and collaborate with me...
There's a reason our innovation has switched from stuff like cars and planes to stuff like computers and phones. On the other hand, the idea that our stagnation is driven by exogenous changes in scientific discovery - we just didn't find enough new stuff this half-century! - does not sit easily with me...cf. rodrik - "In fact, the kind of markets that modern economies need are not self-creating, self-regulating, self-stabilizing, or self-legitimizing. Governments must invest in transport and communication networks; counteract asymmetric information, externalities, and unequal bargaining power; moderate financial panics and recessions; and respond to popular demands for safety nets and social insurance."
Therefore, I have been thinking about alternative theories to explain rich-world income stagnation. And I have come up with something. I call it the "Great Relocation". The idea, in a nutshell, is that economic activity is relocating from rich Europe, America, and Asia to developing Asia faster than technological progress can replenish it...
So China "took our jobs." But this was not due to their exchange rate policy, or their export subsidies, or their willingness to pollute their rivers and abuse their workers, although all these things probably speed the transition. They took our jobs because it made no sense for a farm like the U.S. to be building the world's cars and fridges in the first place.
Peter Thiel has been pushing this meme for a while, Tyler Cowen made a splash in January with his e-book, The Great Stagnation, and Neal Stephenson nearly took the World Policy Institute offline last week with his essay, "Innovation Starvation." Talking about our innovation drought is suddenly all the rage. But is it really true? ... The end of the 19th century and the first half of the 20th century was an astonishingly fertile period: lightbulbs, radios, autos, airplanes, refrigerators, penicillin, TVs, air conditioners, the telephone, and much more. The period since then has seen the digital computer and... that's about it... plus smartphones, the internet, CAT scans, vastly improved supply chain management, fast gene sequencing, GPS, Lasik surgery, e-readers, ATMs and debit cards, video games, and much more.cf. fukuyama
Wait a second. Video games? Am I joking? No indeed. Give some thought to just what innovation and productivity gains are for. Initially, of course, they help provide a better basic standard of living. But what happens after that? Once you have a certain level of food, shelter, sanitation, and so forth, you start adding nonessentials...
If, instead of bigger cars and better vacations, we get video games, Facebook, blogging, Hulu, and iTunes, is this any less of a productivity improvement? I don't see why. Above a basic level, the whole point of productivity improvements is to provide us with more fun. Facebook may show up as a smaller contribution to GDP than a nationwide chain of movie theaters, but so what? If you'd rather spend four hours a week on Facebook than fours a week going to movies, then Facebook has improved your life as much as movie theaters improved your grandparents'. If you prefer Farmville to a week in Hawaii, then Zynga has improved your life as much as the 707 improved your parents'...
Just keep in mind three things when you read about innovation droughts. First: The key to innovation is the exploitation of really big inventions. Computerization is as big as it gets, and it has a much longer tail than electrification. We're not even close to mining its full potential yet. Second: Above a certain level, the goal of productivity gains is to provide us with more fun. It doesn't matter whether that fun comes in physical or virtual form, or how it shows up in national accounts. Third: Don't exaggerate past innovations just because they were exciting or dramatic, and don't discount current innovations just because they've happened behind the scenes or seem sort of prosaic. Hip replacements may not be as big a mobility improvement as the automobile, but they're a bigger deal than you think...
We're going through a tough stretch right now... we still haven't figured out how to effectively manage and regulate the post-union, post-globalization, post-Bretton Woods economy... we're simply working on some really hard problems—much harder than we anticipated when we first dived into them. Artificial intelligence is really hard. Finding a source of energy that's cheaper per BTU than oil is really hard. Gene sequencing—along with a deep understanding of how human biology works—is really hard. But that doesn't mean innovation has been snuffed out. It just means we've set our sights really high. That's no bad thing...
That's because we do not have real AI. Futurists have been wrong about setting a date for this for decades.Real AI is already here. It only has to be both 'artificial' and 'intelligent' not 'conscious' whatever that means (it's something no one ever bothers to define, so how can you test for it?)
Michio Kaku once made an observation that has put my mind at ease about super-intelligent robots on the horizon. He noted that robots capable of sentience, or something approaching it, will have to be programmed to feel. Not solely for our own self-preservationI think we should all just agree not to program robots for self-preservation. Why would we? They're easily replaced or repaired.
but because he pointed out that when humans suffer a type of brain damage that cuts off their emotions from their reasoning faculties, they are literally paralyzed by the simplest decisions - taking so many things into account, it becomes nearly impossible for them to choose between Choice A or Choice B in any given situation.Google's self-driving car doesn't have any trouble making decisions quickly, yet, I don't think it has feelings. How human brains act under certain conditions isn't really relevant. Robot's intelligence doesn't need to have anything to do with how human brains work.
Alright, look...no one builds a car that last forever, because that would be stupid from a business standpoint (planned obsolescence). You think they are going to build robots that last forever? No. Someone is going to have to keep building them. Someone is going to have to repair them. Someone is going to have to design, build, distribute and store parts. Someone is going to have to be in charge of designing, marketing and selling the next great model (R2D4 - now with Doppler5million!!). Someone is going to have to figure out how to sell 'pimp my robot' after-market shit. There is never going to be any way to get so many robots to function perfectly so that they can build new ones, maintain existing ones, repair existing ones, work on upgrading, etc etc. The human body can't even do that perfectly.All those things can be done by other robots.
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There does.
Related: MeFi's own cstross posits that, if a generational starship was built, it would have to be vastly over crewed, because you cannot afford the one guy who can do X dying, so you need to have several of them (for all X) and a way to keep that knowledge alive.
Of course, for the vast majority of the trip, they won't need to do much.
So, how do you deal with the boredom?
Fundamentally, people like to be needed. If everything that seems important is left to computers and robots, what do we do?
Maybe there will be something that computers, etc. simply cannot do. But with ~7 gigahumans about, will there be enough of that?
This has been something that's bothered me for a while. What happens in a post-labor economy?
posted by eriko at 6:56 AM on October 26, 2011 [2 favorites]