A truly scary prospect, I would say. Humans now have three ways they
could make themselves extinct - atomic weapons, biological weapons,
and smart computers. The list seems to be growing. What happens when
the smart computer is run by cold fusion so that it can never be
turned off?
Ed
On Jan 26, 2013, at 8:37 AM, Jed Rothwell wrote:
See:
http://www.washingtonpost.com/politics/a-world-without-work-as-robots-computers-get-smarter-will-humans-have-anything-left-to-do/2013/01/18/61561b1c-61b7-11e2-81ef-a2249c1e5b3d_story.html
This subject is starting to attract attention in the mass media. I
wish cold fusion would.
Cold fusion will lead to more unemployment than most breakthroughs,
but not as much as improvements to computers. I have a chapter about
that in my book. It is surprising how few people work in energy.
Here is a thought-provoking table showing all major occupations in
the U.S.:
http://www.bls.gov/oes/current/oes_nat.htm
That is the entire universe of work.
Here are some comments I made about this table elsewhere:
The economy has not produced any new "Major Occupational Group"
since roughly 1880 (when precision manufacturing began) because
every kind of labor we want done for us is already done. As I said,
people have moved from one group to another, as the amount of labor
ebbs and flows in different sectors. But there are no new groups,
and robots will move into all groups simultaneously. . . .
Granted, Category 15, "Computer and Mathematical Occupations" did
not exist in 1880. But every task now done by "Computer" occupations
was done back then by people in category 43, "Office and
Administrative Support." All of the other occupations in this list
were already in existence by 1880. Most of them existed in Heian
Japan, for that matter.
There are no new tasks. That is to say, there are no occupations
with novel outcomes or purposes that did not exist back then. The
methods of achieving these purposes have changed. For example, in
category 27 our methods of entertainment have changed, but the
purpose -- entertaining people with fiction, music and so on -- is
the same. There is a limited market for this. We cannot watch TV or
listen to music 20 hours a day.
Nearly all of the occupations on this list, and the sub-category
occupations in the table, could be done better by a Watson-class
computer than by a human being. . . .
Someone else summarized the situation quite well: "Until recently,
technology advances made machines stronger, faster, and more
reliable than average Joes. But, even at the slow end, he was much
better at mopping a floor, understanding speech, packing a box, or
driving a lorry than even the best supercomputer. So, he had some
major competitive advantages for just being human."
- Jed
