When Humans Become "Obsolete", What Then?

The ever increasing expansion of technology is taking more jobs from humans on a daily basis, this isn't necessarily a bad thing. We create new jobs for programmers, robot designers and robot mechanics. Having robots to cater to your every whim and perform every job known to man could create a Utopian society.

The big hurdle is how does capitalism survive in such an environment? At some point even the programmers and designers would be replaced by AI. When robots become self sustaining what then for the human race when it becomes obsolete? More importantly how does the US capitalistic society survive if there is no jobs left for humans to perform? At some point we will have massive amounts of unemployed people that have been replaced by robots and companies will no longer have consumers able to buy their products. To put it bluntly I don't see how capitalism could survive.

Seems like we are fast approaching that point now, except I don't see how any form of Gov. will survive. Perhaps it will come down to those societies that have been shunning all these so called improvements will be the ones ahead of the game.
On the other side of the coin what would be the need to produce anything if there is no one to buy, then we would be faced with doing away with the robots or if they have been allowed to develop far enough the robots doing away with humans.

I believe I recently read somewhere that 1 million Taiwanese workers were recently notified by a very large Taiwanese computer circuit board manufacturer that over then next several years they will all be replaced with robots.

Most auto workers could be replaced by robots.

Thats one of the major problems, computers & robots are replacing jobs faster than ever, they even have computers that are writing programs for other computers. My nephew who has a masters in computer science & was laid off is know learning how to repair them.

Richard S. wrote:Having robots to cater to your every whim and perform every job known to man could create a Utopian society.

I read an article at least 30 years ago speculating on the same subject. More and more production by fewer and fewer people, with the profits all going to those who own the machines and robots, etc. Plenty of wealth to make everybody comfortable, assuming there is a mechanism for redistributing the wealth from the owners of capital to the rest of the population. But I don't recall that the writer had any workable suggestions on how to do the redistribution.

The topic is about computers taking over jobs humans do, stick to it.

rberq wrote:More and more production by fewer and fewer people, with the profits all going to those who own the machines and robots, etc.

Who would they profit from though? If the robots are doing all the work there is no capital in the hands of consumers.

There's still plenty of areas where robots just can't do the job. One of them is mine.

I think we're many decades away from a robot being able to diagnose, & repair a car. I can barely get the job done on some of these newer ones. I can't imagine a robot having the dexterity to reach all these tight places to remove a part, then applying sealer, or gaskets, or anti-seize, install the part, then verify that they actually fixed the problem. If a robot could do that, then they will be installing your hip, or heart, too.

http://www.amazon.com/End-Work-Decline- ... 0874778247

I got this book back in 95. "The End of Work" sounded like a good idea. Who wants to work?

Haven't seen it come true yet. There will always be jobs for people to do. There would be a lot more if the damn government wasn't sticking it's nose into things all the time.

SMITTY wrote:There's still plenty of areas where robots just can't do the job. One of them is mine.

You drive a truck Smitty? There is all kinds of examples of them doing similar work. Forklifts to flying and landing planes, in those cases the machine itself is the robot.

I can't imagine a robot having the dexterity to reach all these tight places to remove a part, then applying sealer, or gaskets, or anti-seize, install the part, then verify that they actually fixed the problem

I hate to break the news to you but a robot could do this job and do it much better than any human. The reason you don't see them doing these things is the cost.

We might be many decades away from it but at some point there will be a robot that can perform any job a human can including building, fixing and even programming them.

What was that movie Will Smith was in about robots taking over everything?? But old Will straightened all that out.Sci-fi people have been concerned with this for 60 yrs that I can remember.

Well Fred its becoming a reality, thy have a race out west somewhere that the vehicles are completely autonomous. The cars are given the coordinates of the course but they are on their own from there.

Some years ago I was talking about this very subject with Silas Marner. I wanted to automate his loom and he wanted no part of it. All he would say was "the mills of God grind slowly but they grind exceeding small" whatever the hell that means, so I left the crazy old coot to go work with somebody who appreciates progress.

Progress, huh??? How's that working for everybody? I always stuck with the crazy old coots & walla, one morning I woke up, and I was one.

The argument is basically Luddite, machines have always created more jobs than they have destroyed, creating a higher standard of living in the process. Robotics as you imagine are even beyond imagination as the demands on their capability will reach to infinity. They can store data better than a human but they have no imagination. They don't create, they can only be programed. How do you program solutions to an infinity of problems such as occur when you take a walk in the woods or ride a mountain bike on a rough trail?

I can see something like a Garman Navigator guiding an automated car, but lets see it change a flat tire.

freetown fred wrote:Progress, huh??? How's that working for everybody? I always stuck with the crazy old coots & walla, one morning I woke up, and I was one.

That's what happens when you talk to horses too much.

Progress has happened but it has been stolen. It has been leached off and dissipated in the form of enormous bureaucracies that produce nothing in return, or thrown away in ill considered wars. Governments are elected by and run by emotion without the faintest idea what those emotions are.

I acquired the book you recommended ( Touch the Earth) and read it (twice) and I think I can feel the perplexity that an aboriginal people must have felt when confronted with a horde of foreigners who seemed to lack any spiritual values whatever.

That spirituality also seems to me to explain the lack of technology in a people just as intelligent as any. If you have what you need why be concerned with more? Our religion of materialism has not worked out any better. "A rich man is one who knows when he has enough"