Automation, Robotics, and AI - The New Job Market

[illram]

Robots would only really be good at writing mundane things like transcriptions, medical documents, summary reports, analyzing documents and cataloging them, and so on. For instance in the legal world we could eventually automate the analysis of evidence for relevant documents and information, or the analysis of court opinions to determine whether they cite or overrule prior court opinions, or the summary of legal documents to provide quick snapshots of what they say to lawyers and other professionals, that sort of thing. The reason to automate that is simple really--it's cheaper and ideally, you end up with a better final product.

I think creative writing--fiction, journalism, critical reviews, scripts, all of that--remains in the realm of the meat sacks, unless and until we spawn a true conscious silicon entity. That would be one of the professions you could potentially "re-task" people to do. I bet a lot of folks fancy themselves as wishing they had enough time to just write that novel or short story or whatever, if only they did not have the drudgery of their (soon to be automated) 9-5 job.

 

[Samson]

Why pay someone to write for you? Why not write it yourself?

The same reason that (I guess) you did not build your own car.

 

[jackelgull]

The same reason that (I guess) you did not build your own car.

They're not exactly on the same plane. I cannot build my own car, the technical proficiency is too high. I can and have written. It's not hard, all a writer needs is a pencil and paper (or computer with word) lots of determination and a little creativity.

 

[Samson]

They're not exactly on the same plane. I cannot build my own car, the technical proficiency is too high. I can and have written. It's not hard, all a writer needs is a pencil and paper (or computer with word) lots of determination and a little creativity.

I do not have lots of determination and a little creativity. Perhaps I should have said for the same reason people pay writers now.

 

[Farm Boy]

Illram, you still don't need the superfluous people though. And they'll consume energy production and raw natural resources, they'll produce waste. Their existence itself is a latent threat to those in control. Why bother with keeping them in any empowered state? What's the Machiavellian rationale behind it?

 

[illram]

I don't understand your question. The goal is a more egalitarian true utopia of sorts. Material wealth and comfort as we understand it today is more freely distributed, and resources are no longer scarce. The issue is getting there in a non-painful way. I suppose inherent in that goal is preventing evil people corrupting the process and taking us off track.

 

[Farm Boy]

I guess I'd remove the qualification of "evil" from people. People are going to be people with all their inherent endearing traits and their inherent flaws. I guess it's this. I dig the goal. I don't have faith in the human feasibility of Roddenberry's dream. You'll note, even in that dream a lot of what seemed to make it work was there were always new frontiers to go settle and build on. There were extra-terrestrial threats to militarize against and counterbalance. Sure, there was no currency and everything was a happy little commune, but there was deathly serious work and unlimited space to settler society the hell out of.