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by x5n1
3695 days ago
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Power is still firmly in the hands of those with capital, the difference is now they don't need you any more. This at the end of the day will lead to a war of sorts, and my bet would be on the ones with the capital and the power.
Against the useless masses that have been turned into little more than wild animals by machines. Whether it's the machines that produce or the machines that make war, they are going to be owned by a few and they can then use them to dictate civilization. Would not be surprised if in the near future some corporate CEO declares himself emperor of the world. Imagine if the Android phones right now were actual androids, all billion of them, run by a single corporation's operating system. Over night that corporation could take power over the entire world and no one could stop them. |
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The argument from self reliance: I don't think people will become a "useless mass that has been turned into little more than wild animals", though. We will still be able to work directly for ourselves and to cooperate with other humans. We will work for self reliant subsistence. We will grow our own food, make our own clothes and tools, just like today, even using future technology that is still accessible to regular people.
An economic argument: Even if robots can make the same products cheaper, people won't have money to pay for them. So there will be a fall in economic production by robots for humans. On the other hand, people will need things, and still be able to work just like today. In order to solve the problem, we will need a new currency that is based on human self-reliant work. We will need to have a double economy, one for robots and human elites, one for poor people. But nothing is stopping people from working to earn a living. In the extreme case, a small plot of land could feed many and require almost nothing external, so no dependence on robots owned by the elites.
This kind of self-reliance is a last ditch measure. Before that happens, I think it is more probable that sufficiently advanced robots will be universally available, not just for big corporations, just like cell phones. We need to keep AI, robotics and 3D printing in the open source, so we can all share in the returns.
I think there will be a big boom in self-reliant living solutions. Modern farms, 3d-printing, solar panels - we need to bootstrap ourselves in such a way as to be independent from robots. We don't need to be pessimistic, humans have survived worse situations in our 200,000 years long history.