[Iv]

Would you pay a premium for being served by a human? Do you pay a premium to have a driver, to have a maid, to have a chef, when you can do without?

I know I would not. If a machine gives me accurate medical advice, I wont go to the doctor. If a machine makes good burgers, I won't pay a random student to flip burgers for me.

It would actually feel awkward and quite contemptful to ask a human to do the task of a robot.

[pythia__]

I'll answer your specific questions first. Driver, no. Maid, no. (But keep in mind that robot maids/janitors are considerably farther away than self-driving cars. Cleaning environments not specifically designed for it is really complicated and I expect humans to outperform robots at it for longer than at most other kinds of physical labor.) For a fancier meal than burgers, yes, I'd pay a premium to have a human chef cook it. Doctor, definitely not in most cases.

As for it being "awkward and contemptful," I suspect you are imagining humans perform a task exactly as a robot would. That will be the minority of cases, because the economics are strongly against it in most. Instead, you'll pay humans for their ability to customize their work or the products they produce in a way that isn't economical to automate. (Burger flipping is doomed for this reason -- not much to differentiate humans form robots there.) Hence, chefs, plumbers, tailors, auto mechanics, specialist doctors, interior decorators, etc. will be assisted by "weak" AI but won't be replaced by it.

[Iv]

I have seen this kind of denial for more than 20 years now. I have seen people argue that driving could not be automated, that people would never accept an automated cashier, that webshops would never compete against physical shops.

The level of performance and customization that robots can achieve in every single of the task you quote is far superior to humans'. I expect none of your list items to present any technical problem in 10 years. Maybe plumber, give it 20.

[pythia__]

I think you do my argument a disservice by equating it to the general trend of people denying X can be automated until X is automated. It is more specific: I say that some jobs (roughly, those requiring an agent to rapidly gain an understanding of existing unstandardized systems) need AGI to automate to human satisfaction in a way that doesn't require constant human supervision. It predicts, for instance, wide replacement of cashiers (which is already happening) and construction workers (which isn't yet).

>Maybe plumber, give it 20.

Perhaps we have different standards for "automated." Do you expect remote operators standing by ready to take over for a plumberbot or giving it hints at least once per service operation on average in 2036? If so, I find that technically plausible. I also expect new buildings to be built for automated service.

If we are talking fully automated human-quality repair and improvement of legacy plumbing, do you to expect a long time to get from there to AGI?

[Iv]

> roughly, those requiring an agent to rapidly gain an understanding of existing unstandardized systems

So, basically, machine learning.

Look, the tech is not there yet for an automated plumber, which is why it does not exist yet. 20 years ago we did not have the tech for automated driving but it finally got there.

I see machine learning improve every year, These last few years have seen a huge rise of popularity of deep learning approaches. And since the DeepDream gizmo, we hear less people talking about how creativity can't be automated.

Yes, in 20 years the tech will be here for a piece of software to figure out where the pipes must be in a house, make plans to test different hypothesis, plan a procedure of intervention, wiggle tubes together to make them fit without any other human instructions than "this tap does not work, go fix it". I have some supicions on what the correct way to go is, and am fairly confident that some other ways exist and that we will find one that will work.

I can't comment on AGI from this point. It really depends on your definitions. Some make AGI an unachievable goal. Under common and reasonnable definitions, yes, we will be close by then but we already are not very far.

And in my earlier comments I talk about 95% of unemployement just to cut some of the philosophical debate, but naturally I expect that we will reach 100% pretty quickly.