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Besides, automation will happen with or without AGI. I feel like it would be better in a separate thread. 

Well @ChaosEngine, here we are! A new thread!

The thread on AI had an interesting side thread about the increasing impact of automation on economics and lower wage workers. I believe that @Oberon_Command and @conquestor3 were discussing universal basic income and universal healthcare.

Really though I'd argue we are headed increasingly towards a post-capitalist society where resource allocation won't necessarily be done by free markets but rather by advanced algorithms. In that sense, universal basic income makes the most sense, given how not everyone can do some sort of higher skilled job and we aren't going to need as many higher skilled workers in theory at least.

Tho really, there are many other changes that could happen that may change this assumption. Let's hear some thoughts tho!

I can see three scenarios.

1: Worst case. Labour is essentially worthless and all that matters is capital. The line between the haves and have-nots starts to move dramatically toward the incredibly wealthy as those with the most capital are most able to accumulate more capital. Most people are unemployed and subsist on menial labour that's so cheap it's not worth automating. The economy as we know it disappears.

Probability: ~30%

2: Best case. We move to a post-capitalist society similar to what @deltaKshatriya described. Benevolent AIs run society and we basically live a Culture/Star Trek style utopia. 

Probability: short-term 0.000001% long-term ~5% (or basically 99% if climate change/war/famine/giant space rocks don't annihilate humanity first... I am not confident about that so 5%)

3: Middle ground: Huge swathes of people become unemployed. The rich continue to hoard capital, but the economy ultimately falls apart due to lack of demand for goods and services. After a period of severe global depression, social unrest gradually forces governments to implement UBI, but there is still a massive gulf between the ultra-rich and everyone else.

Probability: ~60+%

Of course, this is based on a scenario where we just have really good automation. An AGI singularity essentially throws all that out the window, because we have literally no idea what happens then.

That would be horrifying if an AGI came up with an economic system that works for us, be we couldn't understand.

There's another possibility that has a good chance of occuring

4. Massive automation hits, nations look to "owning" a company's headquarters as a very important objective. In this case countries will compete to retain companies that are native to them, and acquire companies for taxable income. It's possible nations may simply not allow companies to exfiltrate (Through legal proceedings) to other (cheaper countries).

In the long run, companies will bribe judges to be allowed to leave and operate out of third world tax havens, and in response governments will probably give heavy subsidies to homegrown businesses to complete, or even flat out declare huge (60%+) import tariffs on foreign companies.

Society wise I guess that pushes nationalism/patriotism/isolationism?

17 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

I can see three scenarios.

1: Worst case. Labour is essentially worthless and all that matters is capital. The line between the haves and have-nots starts to move dramatically toward the incredibly wealthy as those with the most capital are most able to accumulate more capital. Most people are unemployed and subsist on menial labour that's so cheap it's not worth automating. The economy as we know it disappears.

Probability: ~30%

2: Best case. We move to a post-capitalist society similar to what @deltaKshatriya described. Benevolent AIs run society and we basically live a Culture/Star Trek style utopia. 

Probability: short-term 0.000001% long-term ~5% (or basically 99% if climate change/war/famine/giant space rocks don't annihilate humanity first... I am not confident about that so 5%)

3: Middle ground: Huge swathes of people become unemployed. The rich continue to hoard capital, but the economy ultimately falls apart due to lack of demand for goods and services. After a period of severe global depression, social unrest gradually forces governments to implement UBI, but there is still a massive gulf between the ultra-rich and everyone else.

Probability: ~60+%

 

Of course, this is based on a scenario where we just have really good automation. An AGI singularity essentially throws all that out the window, because we have literally no idea what happens then.

 

A bit on the pessimistic side here. I can't say I really blame you though, given the recent turn of events these days. Right, so let's break this down:

17 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

1: Worst case. Labour is essentially worthless and all that matters is capital. The line between the haves and have-nots starts to move dramatically toward the incredibly wealthy as those with the most capital are most able to accumulate more capital. Most people are unemployed and subsist on menial labour that's so cheap it's not worth automating. The economy as we know it disappears.

Probability: ~30%

I can see this happening briefly, which is essentially scenario 3, but I can't see this as being sustainable, simply because people would revolt, and the few at the top can't stop literally everyone else.

17 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

2: Best case. We move to a post-capitalist society similar to what @deltaKshatriya described. Benevolent AIs run society and we basically live a Culture/Star Trek style utopia. 

Probability: short-term 0.000001% long-term ~5% (or basically 99% if climate change/war/famine/giant space rocks don't annihilate humanity first... I am not confident about that so 5%)

One thing I should say is that I don't envision this as a utopia. Problems will still exist. Some will be familiar to us (what should I do with my life? Finding a mate, socializing, etc.) but others we won't be able to imagine. I don't generally believe in utopias. I believe that we will solve problems that we can't imagine being solved today only to have more problems to solve. Kind of like how people before had concerns that centered more around basic needs centuries ago. We've solved those problems, but now have other ones.

17 hours ago, ChaosEngine said:

3: Middle ground: Huge swathes of people become unemployed. The rich continue to hoard capital, but the economy ultimately falls apart due to lack of demand for goods and services. After a period of severe global depression, social unrest gradually forces governments to implement UBI, but there is still a massive gulf between the ultra-rich and everyone else.

Probability: ~60+%

This seems to be the first one happens for a bit, then people are like "yea we actually need people to buy, so let's give back a bit". This has a fairly high likelihood, but ultimately won't work cause Imo it's not sustainable.

16 hours ago, conquestor3 said:

4. Massive automation hits, nations look to "owning" a company's headquarters as a very important objective. In this case countries will compete to retain companies that are native to them, and acquire companies for taxable income. It's possible nations may simply not allow companies to exfiltrate (Through legal proceedings) to other (cheaper countries).

That doesn't solve the employment problem at all. Keeping a company that has automated most jobs that your average person does only retains pretty high level jobs. This is more like what @ChaosEngine described earlier in his mid range and worst case scenarios

16 hours ago, conquestor3 said:

In the long run, companies will bribe judges to be allowed to leave and operate out of third world tax havens, and in response governments will probably give heavy subsidies to homegrown businesses to complete, or even flat out declare huge (60%+) import tariffs on foreign companies.

What's stopping homegrown businesses from automating? Subsidies or otherwise? And if they don't automate, they definitely will be inefficient and inferior to businesses that do automate, tariffs or otherwise. And if we want to look at the economics of it, subsidies typically cause inflation, tariffs simply ratchet up prices, also causing inflation. Consumption of the product(s) simply decline due to higher prices. Then there's no global consumption either, since a): it's expensive and b): there will almost certainly be  reprisal tariffs. In short, everyone's just poorer.

Tariffs have never worked. Protectionism has never worked.

16 hours ago, conquestor3 said:

Society wise I guess that pushes nationalism/patriotism/isolationism?

Which historically has almost always lead to war, which leads this scenario to massive loss of life.

No matter what angle you look at it from, there is nothing worse than robots.  Damn robots!!!

*mikeman drops the S-word and leaves.


:D

50 minutes ago, mikeman said:

*mikeman drops the S-word and leaves.

OH MY GOD HOW COULD YOU!!!????? 

Jokes aside, would you say that an AI based/algorithmic allocation of resources would be a form of socialism? 

There are many forms of socialism - the common factor is basically that the "means of production"(in this case, robots) are collectively and not privately owned, and goods are produced for use and not for profit.

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Production_for_use

(there's a section in there - "Cybernetics" - that deals with the option of utilizing computers to assist in the allocation of resources).

This thread was started, I think, on the premise that private ownership(of the means of production of wealth again, not personal possessions like your Xbox, car and toothbrush) will start to not make much sense in the case most jobs can be automated, so I just naturally presented the alternative.

However, I really don't think the thing will be ever as simple as "okay we have robots now, let's do Star Trek/full luxury automated communism" - for starters, let's not forget that not every country is as technologically as advanced as USA or Western countries in general.

I also got a feeling that, even if it was proven without a doubt that socialism(again - public ownership of the means of production and production for use and not profit) can handle mass automation better than capitalism, there are many many people that will shout "Better Dead than Red" and go down proudly with their Atlas Shrugged copies on hand as everything else collapses.(if we assume the current system collapses, which is the premise of the thread).

If we push society owned automation production, just how long do you think it would take to restructure mines, logistics, and manufacturing to the point that humanity can provide the tools and equipment to all of the world so we're all technologically advanced?

It isn't something we can do over night, but at this point we're talking decades, if that, rather than centuries. 

On 22.1.2018 at 5:45 PM, deltaKshatriya said:

Really though I'd argue we are headed increasingly towards a post-capitalist society where resource allocation won't necessarily be done by free markets but rather by advanced algorithms.

While I will not flat out disagree that this is a possible way our society evolves, given the dystopian consequences an AI / Algorithm driven society can have for... humankind, really, and the way how every other economic system besides capitalism has failed (and that is coming from someone quite critical of free market systems), I think the chance that the algorithm based society will work WITHOUT a huge uprise (and thus either revolution or dictatorship, and consequently a return to an older, less AI driven society, or the oppression of people not onboard with handing over control to algorithms and the elite these will serve) is small.

Algorithms do a bad job at a lot of tasks today as soon as the task is something less trivial. Just follow the way how google algorithms regularly mess up on youtube, and how Google has stated that they no longer know why their algorithm acted in a certain way.

Algorithms cannot take responsibility, yet the creators have lost the ability to control them beyond flat out switching them off. I don't think Algorithm or AI will be trusted enough in the near or mid future to handle something as impactful as resource allocation.

As to moving away from capitalism... that will probably not work. Too many people actually like the system as it works today, no matter if they are profiting or not. Too many are afraid of anything new. Too many times a non-capitalistic system has failed in the past.

Lets not forget its peoples livelihood we are talking about here. People don't want governments to experiment with that.

As to how the current economic system will integrate with a future where human labour is no longer needed, at least in the capacity it is today... probably very badly.

Question is what will win in the end... the drive move technology forward and reshape society if needed... or the drive to keep the current society intact and reshape technological advancement if needed.

I think the universal basic income is a wonderful idea that should be tested on a smaller scale, and slowly rolled out to the masses if the test prove successfull. I just don't see it as really replacing capitalism.

I see it more as a shift of HOW capitalism is looking at why you pay people. You no longer pay people for their work, but for their consumation. As production gets cheaper, and less and less people are still having a job, the scarce resource become consumation, thus governments pay a basic income to make sure everyone in the country contributes to consumation of goods, to keep the economy spinning.

Now, that is MY outlook as a techy in my late 30's working in IT in a well paid position. Good luck getting enough people of the older generation, the less technically apt that still think AI is a Sci-Fi Pipedream, or people from the right of the political spectrum to actually opt in on that plan.

The universal basic income might be quite important to somehow keep this society from collapsing in 10 years, but probably it will take at least as long for the older generation to no longer count, and enough of the younger generation to catch on to technological advancements for it to have an actual chance with the general public.

I have seen people pretty left of the spectrum argue against it because they viewed it with the lens of the 20th century economic theory.