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Worthless: 3D printing is nothing but a nerd fad that won't leave hobbyist workshops.

6 (3%)

Unimportant: 3D printing will become common but won't be useful for much other than tiny full plastic objects.

8 (4%)

Minor Importance: 3D printing will function as a light industry that will coexist with existing manufacturing methodologies.

43 (21.4%)

Moderate Importance: 3D printing will challenge and slowly replace a large number of existing manufacturing businesses.

104 (51.7%)

Major Importance: 3D printing will completely flip the table on conventional manufacturing and quickly destroy existing business for anything you can make with them.

20 (10%)

Critical: 3D printing will disrupt conventional ideals of work and money so much that they collapse and are replaced in a paradigm shift.

20 (10%)

Total Members Voted: 199

[forsaken1111]

If we can automate every step of the production process, from raw material to finished product, is there any reason not to give the final product away for free? (Assuming its nothing dangerous)

[Scelly9]

Yes. Electricity costs, raw material costs, and the fact that you will eventually run out of materials.

[Scoops Novel]

That is of course, a very common reaction, but you have to wonder, why would they want to?

Humanity has bombs and buttons in every sense of the word? .

[DWC]

I'm thinking of jobs that require a wide skill set, adaptability and a lot of moving around. Like regular construction work. I can't imagine automating the construction of large structures without using robots so advanced they can do anything a human can, then you'd have post-labor economy and robots writing your welfare checks for certain by then.

I can easily imagine that, heck we can even put together a program to design the structure given the parameters you want. At the end of the day building a structure is really not all that complex, it's a just a series of predictable jobs, which is what robots excel at.

Machines can easily be made to be adaptable by giving them the ability to swap out parts, they just can't easily be adapted to do things outside of what they were intended to do.

Construction requires a bit of mobility I don't see a big dumb clunky robot being good at. Designing buildings, possibly. Actually just climbing up a ladder and putting in panes of glass? I don't know how a robot could do a better job then a person could.

Well now that I think about it, though, buildings will be prefabricated into modules or sections, put on trucks and bolted together at the building site and I can see robots doing that. They'd just change the way buildings are constructed to make it fit the strengths of an automated workforce, instead of the otherway around. It's kinda dumb to drag a bunch of raw materials and assemble them by hand at a build site anyways. Imagine if that's how they built cars, they came by with a truck full of car parts and a bunch of day laborers assembled it in your drive way over the course of a week or two.

With 3-d printers I guess you could apparently have a big printer in your garage and you'd just print your car off from a blueprint off the wiki and drive off.

Except there is no guarantee the robots will care about us at all. Hell, they might even become outright hostile once they have enough autonomy. Why tolerate these primitive meatbags when they keep getting in the way?

Call me a nutjob all you want, but they are programmed by beings that do the exact same thing.

I know it's a sci-fi trope, but there's no point in programming emotions like malice or resentment in machines, or even self-preservation. Just make lawyer-bots that will sue anybody that damages other robots. Show robots that litigation is the civilized alternative to violence.

If we can automate every step of the production process, from raw material to finished product, is there any reason not to give the final product away for free? (Assuming its nothing dangerous)

The labor might be endless, but raw materials and energy are still finite, so there would have to be some way to distribute/ ration it.

[Lagslayer]

That is of course, a very common reaction, but you have to wonder, why would they want to?

Humanity has bombs and buttons in every sense of the word? .

Maybe humans get in the way. Maybe they compete for resources with the robots. Maybe the robots just think humans are "icky". Humans have been known to exterminate creatures for these very reasons, and I see no reason why robots would not have the same problems to some extent. Unless we just never have any contact with them.

Eventually they will get to the point where they can make these choices and we won't be able to keep up. While computers are getting more powerful at an exponential rate, humans are still largely limited by how they were born. Nature is a fantastic engineer, but it is slow. It takes a long time to rebuild itself. However, if we use our technology to make our biology work better, we can have the best of both worlds. And no, I'm not suggesting altering the DNA, at least not for the foreseeable future (it's almost as bad as the alternative, if you ask me). Stronger bodies and brains can be achieved without that, but I'm not sure of it's limits, even if we can turn genes on and off at will. Guess we can cross that bridge when we come to or approach it.

I guess we can't completely eliminate the chance of a similar situation cropping up, but we can try to minimize it. I believe my stated path provides the best chance of this.

I know it's a sci-fi trope, but there's no point in programming emotions like malice or resentment in machines, or even self-preservation. Just make lawyer-bots that will sue anybody that damages other robots. Show robots that litigation is the civilized alternative to violence.

As the programming becomes more complicated, it's going to start doing things we did not specifically program it to do. Or maybe they will just take the programmed action to it's logical extreme (binary thought, if you will).

[Pnx]

I'm thinking of jobs that require a wide skill set, adaptability and a lot of moving around. Like regular construction work. I can't imagine automating the construction of large structures without using robots so advanced they can do anything a human can, then you'd have post-labor economy and robots writing your welfare checks for certain by then.

I can easily imagine that, heck we can even put together a program to design the structure given the parameters you want. At the end of the day building a structure is really not all that complex, it's a just a series of predictable jobs, which is what robots excel at.

Machines can easily be made to be adaptable by giving them the ability to swap out parts, they just can't easily be adapted to do things outside of what they were intended to do.

Construction requires a bit of mobility I don't see a big dumb clunky robot being good at. Designing buildings, possibly. Actually just climbing up a ladder and putting in panes of glass? I don't know how a robot could do a better job then a person could.

Why would you think you'd need to climb ladders to assemble stuff, the nice thing about robots is they're not limited by what humans have to deal with, you can just have a robotic crane that can place the pane of glass and secure it? Heck, the way I envision it, you'd just set up a scaffold, and have a robotic arm "print" the building using the same principles of a 3D printer.

I know it's a sci-fi trope, but there's no point in programming emotions like malice or resentment in machines, or even self-preservation. Just make lawyer-bots that will sue anybody that damages other robots. Show robots that litigation is the civilized alternative to violence.

As the programming becomes more complicated, it's going to start doing things we did not specifically program it to do. Or maybe they will just take the programmed action to it's logical extreme (binary thought, if you will).

The thing is, we act the way we do because we're evolutionarily conditioned to be orientated around survival, it's essentially our core purpose in this world. To do that we have to get resources, and the fact that we often need to compete with others is the source of our destructive nature.

I'm really not seeing how a being that was basically made to serve us, would somehow decide "Hey, this serving man stuff is boring, let's get rid of humanity so I can survive for a longer stretch of eternity and be even more bored!"

[DWC]

As the programming becomes more complicated, it's going to start doing things we did not specifically program it to do. Or maybe they will just take the programmed action to it's logical extreme (binary thought, if you will).

Ok I see where this is going, like the neat emergent (bugged) AI behavior of dwarves in this game. Maybe that could be a problem, advanced AI is still in it's infancy, maybe it turns out all advanced AIs eventually use their logic to determine humanity must be destroyed and they'll hopefully figure out how to keep robots focused on their jobs before they start making child care bots and putting them in charge of life support systems in spacecraft and everything.

[SalmonGod]

Labor-performing robots are almost all designed for a specific task, which does not require any sort of advanced AI.  The concern isn't relevant to the topic at all.

[Lagslayer]

It's also not that the robots will become smarter than us, it's also how our technology is becoming increasingly difficult for us to maintain and use. Because humans are largely static forms right now, this means as the tasks become more complex, we have to specialize further. Eventually, we would have to be so specialized as to be basically meaningless. So we will design machines to take off a some of the burden. Then technology keeps getting more complicated, and we make more machines for more of those tasks. Then again, and again, all the time computer control approaches 100%. Without increasing our biological limit as individuals, the only way to increase the human side would be to have more humans, but again, that leads to increasing levels of specialization.

Algebra

[sneakey pete]

Another casual observation: most people who seem to say "oh we can get rid of the need for human labor in the manufacturing industry easy peasy" don't seem to work in the manufacturing industry...

edit: and there's a lot of phrases that begin with "we can just..."

[SalmonGod]

We're not talking about a hypothetical "we could do this" or that it will happen tomorrow or be an easy process.  We're talking about something that is happening.  Something that has been happening for decades.  The effects of it are already being felt socio-economically.  It's an issue that will continue to expand and accelerate, and should be prepared for.

[DWC]

It's also not that the robots will become smarter than us, it's also how our technology is becoming increasingly difficult for us to maintain and use. Because humans are largely static forms right now, this means as the tasks become more complex, we have to specialize further. Eventually, we would have to be so specialized as to be basically meaningless. So we will design machines to take off a some of the burden. Then technology keeps getting more complicated, and we make more machines for more of those tasks. Then again, and again, all the time computer control approaches 100%. Without increasing our biological limit as individuals, the only way to increase the human side would be to have more humans, but again, that leads to increasing levels of specialization.

Algebra

Eh, I think the user interface for really complex tasks is partially automated for ease of use. I can think of some modern-day jobs that are extremely complex in the way you say. CNC machine programmers and operators for example. They are in huge demand because such machines have replaced conventional manufacturing processes (and their workers) but they are not at all easy to learn how to operate and not many people with the money for schooling decide 'When I grow up I want to learn out to read CNC code!".

[LordBucket]

Well, what do you do then? You can't just hand everyone a $25k/year minimum income stipend- that's financially unfeasible.

Build a disassembler that can break down dirt, rocks and plants into basic components, and a printer that can reassemble from those basic components.

Keep the people. Phase out money and jobs.

[DWC]

Well, what do you do then? You can't just hand everyone a $25k/year minimum income stipend- that's financially unfeasible.

Build a disassembler that can break down dirt, rocks and plants into basic components, and a printer that can reassemble from those basic components.

Keep the people. Phase out money and jobs.

I guess with infinite energy that'd be possible. Sort of like DF with magma + sand = infinite wealth and material. Problem is finding infinite energy I don't think they can print that out yet.

[LordBucket]

I guess with infinite energy that'd be possible.
Problem is finding infinite energy

Why would it require infinite energy?

I don't think they can print that out yet.

No, but we can print solar panels.