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Parable of the Capitalists (technostism.wikia.com)

Yuli-Ban が 投稿

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[–]TotesMessenger 3ポイント4ポイント  (0子コメント)

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[–]urnbabyurn 1ポイント2ポイント  (1子コメント)

The problem I have here is that 1) the robots require no wages, just energy to operate. So what's the barrier preventing entry of competing AI from entering the market? 2) if demand by the automated businesses for labor drops to zero, what's stopping workers from shifting to businesses that do demand labor?

[–]Yuli-Ban[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (0子コメント)

1) Nothing, but there will be little the AI can sell that won't be downloaded via the Internet with fabricators/future 3D printers. We already see this with music and movie piracy today. In the future, we'll be pirating physical objects, so the market itself will be a different thing that what we're used to (I call it a metamarket).

2) Cost. It will always be cheaper for droids to do a task, which they will do far more productively and perfectly, thus making humans a liability. Someone will start a business that outperforms any human-worker business, drawing money away from the human business and eventually causing it to fail. Higher quality, very low prices, and whatnot.

Presently, high quality means high prices, so of course people opt for more expensive things that are hand-made. That market will still exist in the future— as long as there's money to be made. If your consumer base is in the red, who will afford what you create? You could give it away, but I don't know how many will follow that path. But then there's the fact that, eventually, AI will make sure products are atomically fine, finer than anything a human could produce, for absurdly low costs.

[–]Yuli-Ban[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (6子コメント)

Tl;dr: Luddite fallacy held up until now because of elementary economics; artificial intelligence leads to a paradigm shift by being mental rather than physical; insistence that Luddite fallacy remains true despite AI undoes civilization. If we pursue /r/Technostism, we may avoid such a fate.

I hope to inspire some debate so I may explain my position in depth.

[–]stiffy2005 1ポイント2ポイント  (3子コメント)

I find this issue to be really curious. The alarm bells that are going off today are hard to be concerned about, since a century or two ago about half of the population worked as farm labor, and the heavy automation of that sector never seemed to cause a dystopian future to materialize.

Say many more things get automated and the need for human labor gets drastically cut in our lifetime. I still don't see how that leads to a dystopian future with mass unrest. With no consumer base to buy the automated products, how do the companies that do everything on an automated basis sell anything? Doesn't their market disappear without lowering their prices?

[–]Yuli-Ban[S] 1ポイント2ポイント  (2子コメント)

Doesn't their market disappear without lowering their prices?

That's true, but they can't sell things for $0. There'd be no way to make a profit, yet that's almost what they're forced to do if they wish to have a consumer base at all.

I find this issue to be really curious. The alarm bells that are going off today are hard to be concerned about, since a century or two ago about half of the population worked as farm labor, and the heavy automation of that sector never seemed to cause a dystopian future to materialize.

Again, that's because automation has always been physical; industrial robots don't think, they just do as they are programmed. Tractors don't think, they just work as they are used. AI can think, can learn, and can learn new tasks.

[–]joe_navark 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

If perfect AI existed, then the price of everything in this closed economy would drop to $0. You'd have to assume that all five companies were in perfect collusion and never allowed the rest of the populace to use the AI. Otherwise, there would be infinite production available with no scarcity, so basically everything would be free and the citizens would be able to quit work and make shitposts on reddit all day.

[–]Yuli-Ban[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

Which is technostism! I mean, besides total post-scarcity, that's impossible outside of FIVR.

As I said, the parable is just that— a parable. "What if we were so stupid as to follow the Luddite fallacy blindly, to the bitter end?" Obviously, technostism will arise in any real world setting. I'm just mostly concerned with seeing that the transition is smooth.

[–]joe_navark 0ポイント1ポイント  (1子コメント)

That's nice, but it's literally a fact-free fairy tale. You have to assume that (1) the new AI is a perfect substitute for all human labor, (2) the robots and AI are virtually costless, so that in no case does it make economic sense to employ a human, and (3) for some reason, the proletariat is unable to take advantage of this costless AI to make things for themselves or undercut the techno-oligarchs who run this place. None of these things are possible, so this basically turns into just another luddite fantasy. Keep smashing them looms, dude.

[–]Yuli-Ban[S] 0ポイント1ポイント  (0子コメント)

That's nice, but it's literally a fact-free fairy tale.

Hence the term 'parable.' Of course it's not gonna be accurately reflective of real life. (3) is the basis behind /r/Technostism.

(1) the new AI is a perfect substitute for all human labor

If it isn't, then the AI isn't AGI, but narrow AI, which we already have. Technostism posits this being true when there exists artificial general intelligence. That's the event horizon I keep discussing.

(2) the robots and AI are virtually costless, so that in no case does it make economic sense to employ a human

Which makes sense. Automation lends itself towards this, making products cheaper (which is the whole basis behind the Luddite fallacy). If AI can programme itself and others like it, then all that's needed in terms of cost is energy and maintenance.

3) for some reason, the proletariat is unable to take advantage of this costless AI to make things for themselves or undercut the techno-oligarchs who run this place.

That's what the solutions to the parable discuss; most likely, it won't end this way. 99.99999% likely, it won't end this way. We'd hafta be stupid-ass muthafuckas to reach that point.

Keep smashing them looms, dude.

The hell would I smash the artificially intelligent looms for? I wanna use them. Profit from them. If I were living in the early 1800s, I'd be extolling how cheap automation would make things and how much wealth automation would produce, not screaming for the utter destruction of all machinery.