The future where humans need not apply thanks to robot automation isn’t as rosy as often predicted. The film focuses on the topic of robots’ rapidly increasing usefulness through human society, discussing how automation will lead to a future where “humans need not apply,” in regards to their occupations. Workers who fought technology that would replace them always lose! Economics always win! It won’t occur in a short time (yeah define short time!) or to be more precise it won’t happen abruptly but it will occur gradually, with software and automatons slowly erasing human jobs before we realize what’s really happening. The most original fact of this documentary is it is based on our current technology (Baxter, Google self driving cars..) and not science fiction Tech! I really liked Quill, an Automated Narrative Generation software. Bye bye portfolio managers in investment funds companies! Actually trading was already automatized so it is quite normal to automate the analysis also. And also Emily Howell (Synthetic classical music – A computer program designed by composer, programmer, and author David Cope.) Amazon for example already used 15,000 robots working in delivery centers in the run up to the holiday season. See Forbes article. So end of our current jobs or time to adapt and evolve? If robots can make everything, but humans can afford nothing. Will our capitalism system collapse? What is your opinion? 3 Responses Swano December 30, 2014 Thank you for your reply and thoughts. Now, going a bit off the ‘punk’ side of everything… There have recently been some discussions about an unconditional basis income in Europe, more specific in Switzerland. They’ve planned a referendum about this in 2016 (I think), and if it gets enough votes it will be implemented in the constitution. I think it might be a solution to counter (to a certain extent) the effects of an automated economy, but hey, we’ll see in the future. Here(in Belgium) there has been some debate over this after a documentary(in Dutch though, so I dont think it’ll be interesting for you) about the unconditional basis income of €1500 a month, with the freedom to work or not as you yourself wish. Might be a bit too utopian to discuss on a cyperpunk site, but I’d like to see something like that to happen in a country, even if it’s just for learning about what it does to a society(as a grand scale social experiment). As you might have deducted, I’m also reading a lot of space opera beside cyperpunk :p Happy Holidays 🙂 Swano December 29, 2014 I read an article concerning this a couple of days ago, which deals with the problem mentioned here and tries to give some( too optimistic I think) solutions for it. You might want to check it out, if not realistic, it’s quite interesting. http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brain20141222c Active Wirehead December 30, 2014 Excellent.Thanks Svano! I like the part “Stating the Goals” but I disagree with the proposed solution (Give 25k bucks to every US citizen. To create this money you need a infinite growth and this is not the case. Not in US and Europe anymore then. Look at the FED. They print too much money and these $$ don’t go in the real economy but stay in the financial market. About Ads? Seriously we have already ads everywhere! Please stop the mind pollution! And after they are talking about more taxes for an equal redistribution which is fair (But quite socialist for a US country :p. Don’t get wrong I’m French so I reckon that a socialist country is good for the poor and middle classes) Actually the option “get the money from the exploitation of the natural resources of a country” is not stupid at all. Sweden, Norway are doing it for many years. But consider that the more inhabitants you have the more natural resources exploitations you need. AND you need a government who take care about the general interest of the people and not the corporations leaders (Did you say Cyberpunk?) But anyway, thanks. I like to read these kind of links!
Swano December 30, 2014 Thank you for your reply and thoughts. Now, going a bit off the ‘punk’ side of everything… There have recently been some discussions about an unconditional basis income in Europe, more specific in Switzerland. They’ve planned a referendum about this in 2016 (I think), and if it gets enough votes it will be implemented in the constitution. I think it might be a solution to counter (to a certain extent) the effects of an automated economy, but hey, we’ll see in the future. Here(in Belgium) there has been some debate over this after a documentary(in Dutch though, so I dont think it’ll be interesting for you) about the unconditional basis income of €1500 a month, with the freedom to work or not as you yourself wish. Might be a bit too utopian to discuss on a cyperpunk site, but I’d like to see something like that to happen in a country, even if it’s just for learning about what it does to a society(as a grand scale social experiment). As you might have deducted, I’m also reading a lot of space opera beside cyperpunk :p Happy Holidays 🙂
Swano December 29, 2014 I read an article concerning this a couple of days ago, which deals with the problem mentioned here and tries to give some( too optimistic I think) solutions for it. You might want to check it out, if not realistic, it’s quite interesting. http://ieet.org/index.php/IEET/more/brain20141222c
Active Wirehead December 30, 2014 Excellent.Thanks Svano! I like the part “Stating the Goals” but I disagree with the proposed solution (Give 25k bucks to every US citizen. To create this money you need a infinite growth and this is not the case. Not in US and Europe anymore then. Look at the FED. They print too much money and these $$ don’t go in the real economy but stay in the financial market. About Ads? Seriously we have already ads everywhere! Please stop the mind pollution! And after they are talking about more taxes for an equal redistribution which is fair (But quite socialist for a US country :p. Don’t get wrong I’m French so I reckon that a socialist country is good for the poor and middle classes) Actually the option “get the money from the exploitation of the natural resources of a country” is not stupid at all. Sweden, Norway are doing it for many years. But consider that the more inhabitants you have the more natural resources exploitations you need. AND you need a government who take care about the general interest of the people and not the corporations leaders (Did you say Cyberpunk?) But anyway, thanks. I like to read these kind of links!
