[Fasces]

Obsolete to who? Humanity serves itself, not some omnipotent lord in the sky.

At least read the premise of the thread and not just the title. This is about technology developing to a point where AI and robotic platforms can outperform and replace human beings in any and every capacity so that humanity as a whole, not just the workers, but the managers, the elites, etc, are designated as a permanent leisure class.

Yes, they could engage in rampant hedonism and pleasure for its own sake, but scholarly pursuit, philosophy, etc - these would all be meaningless. The former could be done better by a machine, and who needs theories of government when a central AI handles it on behalf of human beings?

This is science fiction, perhaps, but humanity has a fetish for technology, and the development of AI seems to be a priority goal among engineers. The general consensus seems to be that the singularity and the technological achievement this represents cannot get here fast enough.

Is this, however, desirable? Should we be working toward such a goal? Should government go so far as to impede it by banning AI outright, in favor of sophisticated simulated intelligence? This question assumes AI is possible.

[Kman]

At least read the premise of the thread and not just the title. This is about technology developing to a point where AI and robotic platforms can outperform and replace human beings in any capacity.

I did read it, not exactly a complicated scenario you created and I still dont see what the problem is with robots reducing the amount of work that people have to do, I would prefer to spend my time on hobbies and activities that I enjoy instead of spending 37 hours per week on work doing stuff I would never do as a hobby.

[Fasces]

Certainly. Do you think our entire species should be devoted to building model trains, however? Is this desirable, spiritually?

Isn't there something to say about what work can do for us? I know I feel like crap when I go long periods of time being unproductive.

[The Clockwork Rat]

I know I feel like crap when I go long periods of time being unproductive.

That may just be a symptom of how we are brought up - to feel bad when we don't do anything which produces "value".

[Tainari88]

No.

I think work is a part of mental health. But, instead of weird and unfair power relationships, oppressive working conditions, exploitation and problems which is what we have in today's work world--the new world of work would be about cooperative groups of equals making decisions for the organization together. Using every unique individuals talents and abilities and recognizing everyone for their contributions.

The very repetitive and boring type of work such as factory packaging plants, and assembly line stuff, and etc. that is all about doing the same task over and over again, should be relegated to machines. Anything creative, or that requires independent thinking and innovation? Human beings should be the ones hired.

Also, getting people to study foreign languages, cultures and other people's ethos would be important. I think getting people to speak a foreign language fluently should be obligatory. Too many people are limited in thinking because they only know one way of thinking in any human sense.

Get people to also be involved in projects that respects their individual interests. Sport, recreational activities, hobbies, etc. should be provided for at minimal costs or no costs to develop human beings' full potential.

Having the older people and the young be taken care of by the entire society. Old people should not be isolated in nursing homes wasting away. They should be read to, taken out to dinner, to movies, and to be an integral part of society. Old people should have their biographies recorded, and their experiences written down. And the old people should be bathed, cared for, and loved until they expire and buried with respect and love.

The youth should have lots of opportunities to learn new things, interaction and access to their parents or principle caretakers that love them on a daily basis. They should be educated and have access to art, sport, science, and a lot more all again free of costs and pursued with dedication.

I don't think zero-hour work week will work in many instances. Right now, I am not working full time. I am working when I can and am able. Taking care of a newborn baby? That is never going to be automated. I tried to get out of the house yesterday and go out and just relax. By myself. I had cleaned the whole house and made dinner early, and wanted to just forget about life for a while. I went and ordered at a nice restaurant a meal. But the baby woke up and was hungry. I usually bring formula or pumped breast milk to give him when I am out in public. But, no.....I spilled it because he got very squirmy. So, he was hungry and crying, and all I had was my breast milk. I had to cover up with a blanket and give him the breast. But he tore off the blanket and there I was.....Lol. No, babies need their mamas. No one can replace that stuff guys. No robot, no machine.

People ask me why I don't just take him to day care and go back to work. I am losing a lot of money by not working. But, I don't care. I think taking care of my son is the most important thing n the world right now. Besides, he is so adorable. And they are this tiny and beautiful for such a short time. And the top of his little warm head smells like caramel and apples. His skin is like silk and when I bathe him and powder him up and he is all dressed and handsome? No job is worth the satisfaction he is in the present.

I love being a mother. It is the best thing on the planet in my opinion.

[The Immortal Goon]

It depends.

In Marxist terminology, we're discussing the superstructure and not necessarily the base of society.

If the base were socialistic/communistic I would fully support such a system since it would inherently work in the interest of myself and everyone else. If the base remained capitalistic, it would be a totalitarian nightmare society.

A type of society as described that we're all somewhat familiar with might be Star Trek. In the brief thesis of the Anti-Star Trek, it posits:

[The Star Trek universe] appears to be, in essence, a communist society. There is no money, everyone has access to whatever resources they need, and no-one is required to work. Liberated from the need to engage in wage labor for survival, people are free to get in spaceships and go flying around the galaxy for edification and adventure. Aliens who still believe in hoarding money and material acquisitions, like the Ferengi, are viewed as barbaric anachronisms.

The technical condition of possibility for this society is comprised of of two basic components. The first is the replicator, a technology that can make instant copies of any object with no input of human labor. The second is an apparently unlimited supply of free energy, due to anti-matter reactions or dilithium crystals or whatever. It is, in sum, a society that has overcome scarcity.

The Anti-Star Trek is a society in which the technology exists, but a capitalist base remains intact:

Like industrial capitalism, the economy of anti-Star Trek rests on a specific state-enforced regime of property relations. However, the kind of property that is central to anti-Star Trek is not physical but intellectual property, as codified legally in the patent and copyright system. While contemporary defenders of intellectual property like to speak of it as though it is broadly analogous to other kinds of property, it is actually based on a quite different principle. As the (libertarian) economists Michele Boldrin and David K. Levine point out [about intellectual property]...the quality of intellectual property law that provides an economic foundation for anti-Star Trek: the ability to tell others how to use copies of an idea that you “own”. In order to get access to a replicator, you have to buy one from a company that licenses you the right to use a replicator. (Someone can’t give you a replicator or make one with their replicator, because that would violate their license). What’s more, every time you make something with the replicator, you also need to pay a licensing fee to whoever owns the rights to that particular thing. So if the Captain Jean-Luc Picard of anti-Star Trek wanted “tea, Earl Grey, hot”, he would have to pay the company that has copyrighted the replicator pattern for hot Earl Grey tea. (Presumably some other company owns the rights to cold tea.)

This solves the problem of how to maintain for-profit capitalist enterprise, at least on the surface. Anyone who tries to supply their needs from their replicator without paying the copyright cartels would become an outlaw, like today’s online file-sharers. But if everyone is constantly being forced to pay out money in licensing fees, then they need some way of earning money, and this brings up a new problem. With replicators around, there’s no need for human labor in any kind of physical production.

In such a society, the contradictions already apparent become absurdly acute:

Thus it seems that the main problem confronting the society of anti-Star Trek is the problem of effective demand: that is, how to ensure that people are able to earn enough money to be able to pay the licensing fees on which private profit depends. Of course, this isn’t so different from the problem that confronted industrial capitalism, but it becomes more severe as human labor is increasingly squeezed out of the system, and human beings become superfluous as elements of production, even as they remain necessary as consumers.

Ultimately, even capitalist self-interest will require some redistribution of wealth downward in order to support demand. Society reaches a state in which, as the late André Gorz put it, “the distribution of means of payment must correspond to the volume of wealth socially produced and not to the volume of work performed”. This is particularly true–indeed, it is necessarily true–of a world based on intellectual property rents rather than on value based on labor-time.

But here the class of rentier-capitalists will confront a collective action problem. In principle, it would be possible to sustain the system by taxing the profits of profitable firms and redistributing the money back to consumers–possibly as a no-strings attached guaranteed income, and possibly in return for performing some kind of meaningless make-work. But even if redistribution is desirable from the standpoint of the class as a whole, any individual company or rich person will be tempted to free-ride on the payments of others, and will therefore resist efforts to impose a redistributive tax. Of course, the government could also simply print money to give to the working class, but the resulting inflation would just be an indirect form of redistribution and would also be resisted. Finally, there is the option of funding consumption through consumer indebtedness–but this merely delays the demand crisis rather than resolving it, as residents of the present know all too well.

This all sets the stage for ongoing stagnation and crisis in the world of anti-Star Trek. And then, of course, there are the masses. Would the power of ideology be strong enough to induce people to accept the state of affairs I’ve described? Or would people start to ask why the wealth of knowledge and culture was being enclosed within restrictive laws, when “another world is possible” beyond the regime of artificial scarcity?

This being said, I'd lean toward a zero-sum labor society as it seems inevitable that things would reach a point in which a revolution upon the base seems inevitable. Though really, without knowing more it's very difficult to say for sure.

[Tainari88]

TIG, when are we going to have "The Federation of Planets"?

Capitalism du jour is a nightmare. Of that there is no doubt.

If the society can do the Alvarado Street bakery thing but for the entire society that would be a huge step forward. Advanced communism? That is when humans stop thinking in low life stuff and the society has evolved beyond expansion without borders and exploiting people and the natural world without thinking in the long term ramifications.

The future is hard to predict TIG.

[Donna]

According to the latest Zeitgeist installment, capitalism will be brought down by massive global protests and a single phone call from George Soros.

[TropicalK]

Yes, having the option to not have to work is a good thing. More options is better, 99% of the time.

Whether it is feasible is another question entirely.

[Fasces]

The scope of the question, TropicalK, means that the option to work would disappear. Human beings would find themselves to be unable to engage in productive work regardless of their desire to do so.

[The Clockwork Rat]

Maybe the human race would become a population of artisans.

We can all be hipsters!

[Paradigm]

Maybe the human race would become a population of artisans.

We can all be hipsters!

But the robot-artisans would have 10x the creative capacity, and robot-hipsters would condescendingly sneer at us because organic life is soooo last century.

[The Clockwork Rat]

They might be more creative, but they still aren't human.

[Fasces]

I don't know if you're being facetious, TCR, but there is something to be said about that. One considers the market for folk art from communities that have been largely displaced in the modern world, such as Native Americans.

[Donna]

It's no secret that hipsters are the future.

[Rugoz]

(for example, myself and two other mechs had to spend about 16 hours working on a vehicle, and were about ready to start tearing open the hydraulic lines, until we realized we misdiagnosed the problem. If a computer had done the diagnostics, it would have been done in 30 minutes). A mech would be needed still, but he could do what would now take hours in 45 minutes. That scenario is coming, Fasces is further off, assuming it's even possible.

I had the impression that this is what mechanics do today, plug in the laptop, run diagnosis programs and order spare parts. My uncle is a mechanic and I remember he once described it that way, I guess he was only half-joking.

[Brother of Karl]

I tend to think that humanity will be short lived once technology can start to progress on its own without human intervention. On the other hand, it's really a race against time about whether we can get machines to that point before we exterminate ourselves off the globe in the first place.

[Wolfman]

I had the impression that this is what mechanics do today, plug in the laptop, run diagnosis programs and order spare parts. My uncle is a mechanic and I remember he once described it that way, I guess he was only half-joking.

That may be true for car mechanics, but heavy equipment (ie, bulldozers) doesn't have that fancy equipment. We might have a manual telling us what's wrong though.

[Ambroise]

In a vein expressed others above, it depends entirely on what the spirit of the age is when this complete automation of society occurs. If we remain as do, in our mode of thought, concerned primarily with "gaining wealth, forgetting all but self"(to borrow a quote,the materialist's motto), then it could indeed be problematic. However, if some sort of social engineering is carried out prior to this, re-prioritizing and reconstructing our civil virtues,social and spiritual values, the newly obtained leisure time could be spent rather well, and on creative and worthwhile pursuits.

[Fasces]

It's been thirteen years and AI is, if not an immenent one, at least, a more immenent threat. Any changes?