[pixl97]

What happens when we start replacing men with electronic minds?

There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop.

The last chapter of the essay points out the issue, not that machines take jobs, that machines can and will evolve faster than their human counterparts can causes issues with employment certainty, something that is very dangerous for economies.

[TeMPOraL]

> There is a particular class of problems of a 'machine economy' where machines produce products for machines, the machines can use the economic product more efficiently (at making the capital owners more profit), and humans are cut out of the loop.

Or, as the SSC poetically puts it[0]:

I broke my back lifting Moloch to Heaven, and all I got was this lousy Disneyland with no children.

The post quotes Bostrom considering exactly this scenario, where in the end the economy, having optimized humans out of the loop, keeps running and generating wealth, with no conscious mind to enjoy it.

[0] - http://slatestarcodex.com/2014/07/30/meditations-on-moloch/

[javajosh]

I think that we underestimate our value as physically dextrous beings. Imagine a world where robots do large-scale work in difficult environments, in return for human-produced bodies - which themselves lack the dexterity to reproduce themselves. (And it's not an artificial lack, either: I strongly suspect that general fine-motor control will be THE engineering problem for AIs for a very long time, perhaps forever.)