Elon Musk: Automation Will Force Universal Basic Income

Or it could be less rosy, check out The Expanse books. TV show is OK, books are way better.

 

The problem is that no matter how plentiful the basics become, something will become scarce. For instance, if you have universal basic income, willing labor becomes scarce. No matter how good the automation is, it's done with machines, mostly, and machines break, components wear out. So you need machines that have automatic repair and replacement. And you have to automate all the supply chains. But eventually there's a person in the loop making decisions, if for no other reasons than machines do not belong making life v death decisions. For instance, automated flight. It's great. But you need a pilot on board ready to take manual control, just in case something unforseen happens.

Entertainment will become scarce, or at least the demand will outstrip the supply. We've seen growth here already. Lots more people making their living entertaining others, more bands making music and distributing entirely through the web, and the advent of blogs, vlogs, youtubers, and streamers. VR will cause an explosion here. Speaking of VR, the next generation of porn is probably already spinning up based around Occulus Rift and Samsung VR phones. Not my style, but porn and gaming have driven tech advances in graphics, high speed databases, and input devices since the advent of the PC. Oh, and vast, immersive VR games out of Tad WIlliams' novels are right around the corner. Starfleet Bridge Crew looks ridiculously fun, and it's extremely limited. I can only imagine what Star Citizen or Elite Dangerous are like with Oculus. VR should truly revolutionize movies, though it may finally kill the theater business model.

But back to the basic labor. You may automate from the ground up, but somewhere, on some frontier, and in the poorer parts of the world, the infrastructure will lag, and someone will be doing the dirty, sweaty work.

Then we'll figure out how to live off this planet. But it still won't get rid of scarcity, classes within society and we will see colonialism and we'll see indentured servitude, prison colonies, and slavery again.

No, technology will not improve humanity. That won't happen until society itself evolves. Roddenberry's utopia only occurs if society bootstraps itself up, and sheds the uncivilized parts of our beings. But there's a trap there too. Closely coupled with the lizard brain that holds the uncivilized part of us is the part of us that fights to survive, and drives us to strive for more. So if we did manage to feed everyone, and counsel all the bad behaviors out of society (the nurture part), and found a humane solution for those whose brains are physically deformed in a way that causes psycopathy (the nature part) and sociopathy, we'd be there right? Possibly, if we do it without breeding ambition and grit out of the species. More likely we'd stagnate. If we want for nothing, how long will we strive to improve?

I think the universe depicted in the Expanse series is the more likely outcome. Expansion to the solar system, and maybe the stars. The average standard of living improves. People choose between Basic (their version of universal basic income) and striving for more. The ones who strive will struggle to succeed, much as we do today. The ones on Basic will exist, watch their shows, eat their rations. And the ones who fall through the cracks will live mostly off the grid in a grey, violent world. And how is that so different from wage earners, welfare families, and the criminal world we see in today's cities? Or the wage earners & farmers, welfare families and the off-grid survivalists you find in rural areas.

It's nice to dream about the nice clean, fantastically advanced worlds where you can do whatever you want all day long and there's no reason to do anything else. Food, shelter, entertainment, and everything else are guaranteed. But it's just a dream...

 

Are you talking about that Arnold Schwarzenegger movie? It looked sorta orange the whole time?

 

stupid people will take over the world. decisions made en-masse, an uninformed mob mentality, driven by tribalism & greed (also, tribalism manufactured by the greedy who wish to remain in-power). we'll break ourselves (general societal norms) & the soil trying to sustain too many lives with food as the land-masses shrink. humans will survive nearly anything, but humanity won't. automation will likely only speed up the downward spiral & prolong another dark-age. less Star Trek, more a mix of Idiocracy & 1984 & Elysium.

enjoy what you've got! ;D

 

I used to say.. Windows is SkyNet.. now I say.. Google is SkyNet, Windows is FakeNet..

https://www.hardocp.com/news/2017/05/31/ai_building_to_make_better_aithat_will_likely_skynet