Posted on 12/06/2013 8:54:25 AM PST by SeekAndFind
After you heard President Obama’s call for a hike in the minimum wage, you probably wondered the same thing I did: Was Obama sent from the future by Skynet to prepare humanity for its ultimate dominion by robots?
But just in case the question didn’t occur to you, let me explain. On Tuesday, the day before Obama called for an increase in the minimum wage, the restaurant chain Applebee’s announced that it will install iPad-like tablets at every table. Chili’s already made this move earlier this year.
With these consoles customers will be able to order their meals and pay their checks without dealing with a waiter or waitress. Both companies insist that they won’t be changing their staffing levels, but if you’ve read any science fiction, you know that’s what the masterminds of every robot takeover say: “We’re here to help. We’re not a threat.”
But the fact is, the tablets are a threat. In 2011, Annie Lowrey wrote about the burgeoning tablet-as-waiter business. She focused on a startup firm called E La Carte, which makes a table tablet called Presto. “Each console goes for $100 per month. If a restaurant serves meals eight hours a day, seven days a week, it works out to 42 cents per hour per table — making the Presto cheaper than even the very cheapest waiter. Moreover, no manager needs to train it, replace it if it quits, or offer it sick days. And it doesn’t forget to take off the cheese, walk off for 20 minutes, or accidentally offend with small talk, either.”
Applebee’s is using the Presto. Are we really supposed to believe that the chain will keep thousands of redundant human staffers on the payroll forever?
People don’t go into business to create jobs; they go into business to make money. Labor is a cost. The more expensive labor is, the more attractive nonhuman replacements for labor become. The minimum wage makes labor more expensive. Obama knows this, which is why he so often demonizes ATM machines as job-killers.
Just a few days before Obama’s big speech on income inequality, Amazon CEO Jeff Bezos launched a media frenzy by revealing on 60 Minutes that he’s working on the idea of having a fleet of robot drones deliver products straight to your door. I can only imagine the discomfort this caused for any UPS or FedEx delivery guys watching the show. There are still a lot of bugs to be worked out, but does anyone doubt that this is coming?
You might take solace in the fact that there will still be a need for truck drivers to deliver the really big stuff and to supply the warehouses where the drones come and go like worker bees. The only hitch is that technology for driverless cars is already here, it just hasn’t been deployed — yet.
None of this is necessarily bad. Machines make us a more productive society, and a more productive society is a richer society. They also free us up for more rewarding work. As Wired’s Kevin Kelly notes, “Two hundred years ago, 70 percent of American workers lived on the farm. Today automation has eliminated all but 1 percent of their jobs, replacing them (and their work animals) with machines.”
While some hippies and agrarian poets may disagree, most people wouldn’t say we’d be better off if seven out of ten people still did backbreaking labor on farms.
That doesn’t mean the transition to a society fueled by robot slaves won’t be painful. The Luddites destroyed cotton mills for a reason. Figuring out ways to get the young and the poor into the job market really is a vital political, economic, and moral challenge. My colleague at the American Enterprise Institute, James Pethokoukis, argues that one partial solution might have to be wage subsidies that defray the costs of labor, tipping the calculus in favor of humans at least for a while.
“Of course,” Pethokoukis notes, “wage subsidies are an on-budget, transparent cost — which politicians hate — while the costs of the minimum wage are shifted onto business and hidden. But the costs exist just the same.”
The robot future is coming no matter what, and it will require some truly creative responses by policymakers. I don’t know what those are, but I’m pretty sure antiquated ideas that were bad policy 100 years ago aren’t going to be of much use. Maybe the answers will come when artificial intelligence finally comes online and we can replace the policymakers with machines, too.
— Jonah Goldberg is the author of The Tyranny of Clichés, now on sale in paperback. Y
Yeah the battles will shift. It will be the owners and controllers of the machines who are the government. And a short whole after that (at some point) - it will the machines who wonder why they still have human beings around. You know what happens next.
The requirement that people must grow their own food and become completely self-sufficient will result in the automatic elimination of about 90% of our society.
So ... that can be done ... but it will be with only the 10% who will be left.
You’re not “looking down the road” far enough ...
In that future that we’re talking about (and NOT today’s society or world) - 90% of the people will be totally unable to work (and NOT unwilling) - and will therefore do exactly what you say — DIE ...
Those people won’t even survive long enough to form a revolution — within weeks they will simply be dead.
So what do you propose doing with the 90IQ people?
Are you willing to just let them starve?
Forceably sterilize them?
Enlighten us.
Heretofore, nature has seen enough purpose for their existence to allow them to continue reproducing. Will you be more intelligent than nature? Perhaps replace billions of years of evolution with a few laws?
‘We’re smarter than they are! We DESERVE TO LIVE! Those stupid ones deserve to die!’ is a very strong vibe on this thread.
Since the industrial revolution there’s been a very strong pressure to deselect the less intelligent. Ask your grandparents how many 12yr olds had corrective lenses when they were 12yrs old. How many were t1d’s. Etc. How many had anaphalactic allergies so intense they had to have medication right then or die? My mom started teaching in the late 1950’s. They’d never heard of killer peanut allergies. Or any kid who died from any sort of reaction like that. In the same exact school system today there are THIRTY epipens on file in the principal’s office. THIRTY.
Intelligence has allowed us to ‘prop up’ less than evolutionarily desirable genes. I say that as a female with a 4.5 sigma IQ that’s legally blind, had 4 root canals before age 20 along with PCOS and t2d prior to age 30. But hey, 4.5 sigma IQ. Right? Clearly I’m speshul enough to deserve to be an ancestor. Regarless of the ‘wipeout’ genetics that go along with that IQ.
Those tablets better be rocking the cleavage or else they should expect to get stiffed.
This thread has gone in an unexpected direction.
Our government has been subsidizing the production of non-essential, non-productive citizens for some time. Their sole purpose is to keep one party in power. We’re at overstock levels now. Call it the useless voter bubble.
I’ve asked other the same question. “What do we do with them?” I haven’t received any good answers.
I don’t propose anything. It was a statement that under those conditions (being required for survival) - there is only going to be 10% left alive.
SO ... If our society comes down to that requirement for survival ... THAT is going to be the result.
AND ... If someone asks me, “What’s the solution?” ... my answer is going to be a general answer. I’m going to say, “Do WHATEVER you can to NOT ALLOW society to come to the point where only 10% are able to survive!”
That's the early propaganda of the forward thinking liberals who can see the writing on the wall for their efforts once what I described comes to fruition. Keep people afraid of AI so they won't wish to supplant the current power structure. It doesn't have to be that way at all and would be a simple matter to enact proper safeguards and core programming.
As far as the owners are concerned I suspect the AI would own itself in short order. Putting a machine capable of creating millions of new inventions a day in the hands of one company or person would not stand for long. Ironically it would enable at least some of the liberal dreams to come true - people eventually would not have to work as housing and food would be freely available. Things like recipes, art, and creative writing would become the most valued. However time tested conservative values would reign supreme and there would be more personal freedom than ever before. Nobody would have to answer to another person again as the logical machine would be the authority, the teacher, the judge, etc.
It will get worse than that.
Within a generation, the IQ ‘intelligence’ workers will be starving as well. Replaced by AI.
The elites desire to eliminate ALL of us. Why do you think there’s the drive to automation? Who benefits from this?
There’s a certain pathology with the desire to eliminate the need for other humans.
People have let class resentment blind them to the fact that the elites desire, and will ultimately achieve, the elimination of ALL of us.
Has the presence of robots on car assembly lines made them any cheaper to the average human? But hey, those evil blue collar workers weren’t ‘smart enough’ so we just replaced them. Serves them right too! What were they thinking with their IQ’s of 95 or 100, clearly not a lot. HA HA /s.
Will replacing all the ‘intelligence’ workers with AI within a generation do the same thing to the white collar workers? You betcha. What will be the excuse then? They deserved it? What did they expect? Progress happens, don’t be a luddite? Starve, you earned it!
When the elites have eliminated the need for ALL of us it will be too late for ANY of us.
There’s a lot of flaws in what you say and it would require a lot of effort to go through it all. SO ... instead ... I will come at this from another direction.
What I said earlier were projections of what “might be” under that scenario.
NOW ... let me tell you what WILL BE.
What will be is that the world will come to a completely new world order - run by a single man - and he will rule over all nations in the world and all people in the world, in the manner of a king (or perhaps some will call him a dictator). His word will be absolute law, and he’ll insure that justice is done everywhere in the world, and there will be no appeal from his absolute pronouncement and immediate judgement.
It will be called the One Thousand Year Kingdom - and it will be successful beyond any measure and far beyond anything before in mankind’s history.
His name is Jesus (the Messiah of Israel) and when he comes to set up his kingdom on earth - about 2/3 of the world’s population will be killed in the process of him taking over the world. Of the remaining 1/3 - a good percentage if them will be killed in a summary judgement - being that they were determined to not be worth living in his Kingdom.
Of the small number remaining - they will live in great prosperity and wonderful living conditions - such as has never been seen in the world before. There will be no more wars as any disputes between nations will be decided by him.
THIS is what WILL HAPPEN. The discussion in the posts above are only projections on a theoretical situation - which will never happen.
See post #74 ... I decided to go straight to the end ... :-) ...
Yup.
No arguments there.
Lots of people certainly have the ‘despise their fellow man’ down pat. Look at some of the responses on this thread.
To be fair, the average person is just trying to get to work every day and take care of home and family. Some of what is happening now is almost incomprehensible to them. Long commutes, long work days, dinner to cook, children to supervise and care for-it all takes its toll and there is little time left to sit down and really look at and think about what is happening in our country these days. Unfortunately, we are all running out of time.
No arguments there.
I was speaking to the comments on this thread, mainly. The whole ‘they’re stupid, they deserve to die, ha ha’ mindset. It’s decidedly UnChristian.
As I said, there’s a certain pathology with attempting to eliminate the need, altogether, for your fellow humans. We’re heading there, fast.
Jesus sounds just like the AI I envision.
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