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Billionaire Jeff Greene: AI could put workers 'out to pasture' -- CNBC

edited November 2015 in Off-Topic
"In the not-too-distant future, humans in the workplace could go the way of the horse-and-buggy because of the "exponential growth of artificial intelligence," billionaire Jeff Greene said Thursday..."We are going to be destroying jobs at a record clip.""

"The way software, computers, robots are taking over … what's going to happen more and more is the American worker is going to be marginalized,..."

""The current model is not working. We have to figure out how to reinvent the economy", urged Greene, who's hosting in Palm Beach an early December conference of major investors and political figures, in hopes of talking about those new solutions."

See: CNBC

Comments

  • For a few minutes there, someone on CNBC was talking sense. Incredible!
  • Just curious - SciFi must have dealt with many solutions to this. So SciFi fans - Any solutions that were well thought out and possible?
  • Anna said:

    Just curious - SciFi must have dealt with many solutions to this. So SciFi fans - Any solutions that were well thought out and possible?

    image
  • Scott, I guess I'm not clever enough to get the joke. Please 'splain.

    Others, If you really know the genre of SciFi, have they tried to envision this new world (aside from stuff like that ho, hum Will Smith movie which didn't focus on it). Or is mankind also losing it's imagination?
  • By adopting technologies that replace workers, companies are only hurting themselves in the end. If AI and robotics/automation replace a significant amount of workers and we have a very high unemployment rate, you have a lot less people who will be able to buy their products. How well will those companies do when too few people can buy their products and services? Companies will adopt these technologies to compete with other companies in order to stay afloat, but this does not take the big picture into account. The things that keeps you alive (robotics/AI to help the company survive) are the things that destroy you in the end (not enough employed to be able to buy their products and services).
  • Anna said:

    Scott, I guess I'm not clever enough to get the joke. Please 'splain.

    Others, If you really know the genre of SciFi, have they tried to envision this new world (aside from stuff like that ho, hum Will Smith movie which didn't focus on it). Or is mankind also losing it's imagination?

    I'm not Scott. All I can say is a joke in this case is in the eye of the beholder:)
    Basically, he is answering your question as "No, because SciFi is fiction".

    In any case, I'm trying to rack my brain for recalling a SciFi flick that specifically addresses joblessness because of technology but not succeeding. I thought I was reasonable SciFi literate. Guess not.
  • When I was in college 50 years ago, I kept hearing, "The only thing you can count on is change - just make sure you're on the right side of it."

    I can still remember how the tractor changed the landscape of farming by increasing the number of acres farmers could tend compared to plowing with a mule. Then calculators, followed by computers, and later robotic manufacturing. With each change, joblessness resulted until the jobless either figured out a way to (a) thrive, (b) survive, or (c) become obsolete.

    Change is still certain. It will change the way work is done but there will always be opportunities for those who can find ways to serve their fellow man by offering goods and services at a profit. One can bemoan the fact that change may lead to disparities incomes or one can figure out a way to win with the change. At least, that's my take.
  • The only offhand example I can think of in Sci-Fi is Star Trek TNG, which was utopian. In some episodes they essentially said that mankind evolved and outgrew its thirst for power, there was even the elimination of currency. From this, it seems technology was not used to make money or dominate industries, but was used for the betterment of all humans (and I'm assuming some aliens as well) , and technology allowed them the time to better themselves as individuals. Here is an example from Star Trek, not specifcally about joblessness, but of poverty. Certainly an idealistic and possibly simplistic view of the future.

  • Here is a little more info on this topic released today by the Bank of England:

    "Bank of England chief economist Andy Haldane, speaking at the Trades Union Congress in London, said 80 million U.S. and 15 million U.K. jobs are in danger of being taken over by robots."

    "Haldane added the jobs that are most at risk from automation tend to have the lowest wage. “In other words, technology could act like a regressive income tax on the unskilled. It could further widen income disparities,” he said."

    image

    "...a fundamental reorientation in the nature of work could be underway. We may already be seeing early signs of that in the move towards more flexible working, with an increased incidence of part-time working, temporary contracts and, in particular, self-employment."

    "In a world in which machines came to dominate tasks involving core cognitive processing, the importance of, and skill premium attached to, non-cognitive skills is likely to rise. The high skill - high pay jobs of the future may involve skills better measured by EQs than IQs, by jobs creating social as much as financial value."

    Here's a brief Summary

    Here is the Speech (Click on the PDF version to get to the tables)
  • If I don't have to work, robots will do all the work, and I can eat and go to hospital, I will forgo everything else - TV, Vacation, you name it. No currency, self sufficiency, and the WORK you do is for betterment of society.

    Wait, I just woke up from my dream. First eliminate all objectivists and only then start dreaming of utopia.
  • edited November 2015
    There is nothing to worry about. Isaac Asimov designed it all in.


    - A robot may not injure a human being or, through inaction, allow a human being to come to harm.
    - A robot must obey the orders given it by human beings except where such orders would conflict with the First Law.
    - A robot must protect its own existence as long as such protection does not conflict with the First or Second Laws.


    on a side note an interesting read (robotic bees).... (first published 1957)

    http://www.goodreads.com/book/show/602948.The_Glass_Bees
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