Print

Please login or register.
1 Hour 1 Day 1 Week 1 Month Forever
Login with username, password and session length

[Reelya]

Time estimations are hard, but to me it's harder to imagine a future where poor people wouldn't be subjected to robo-threatment and their relatives made liable for any resistance. I imagine the future much like a luxurious fully automated slaughterhouse (in that all movements are constrained in the right direction)

I think that's actually an antiquated idea of automation. In the 20th century people were treated as interchangeable and put on rote schedules because the technology dictated it.

The whole point of AI is that it can make decisions so that you can customize things per-person without the high cost that would have required in the past. Consider the 20th century education model before automation. You sit in a classroom and learn material at the "average" pace of the class, and if you want to get ahead or if you fall behind, tough shit, the system doesn't support that. Then, contrast that to the "21st century education" model. now, you can learn at your own pace, you're not tied to anyone else's schedule, you can access resources from your own home. The idea that AI will lead to "production-line" based stuff is really an old way of thinking.

Your example of "robo treatment" like being on a conveyor belt going through and getting standardized treatment is a humorous image, but it has not a single thing to do with the new technology: you're just rehashing a vision of "future technology" that was prevalent back in the 1950s or 1960s when they could only extrapolate from production-line technology.

What "robo treatment" will be, extrapolating from current tech and what's cheapest, will be is that you go on the internet, you interact with a bot, then they'll mail out your treatment and you're supposed to self-administer. The idea that there will be a robo-medical treatment plant that's like some factory: it's fanciful and antiquated. That would be more expensive than what we do now. The production line model is well and truly ancient tech, not future tech. Or, instead of going into a hospital, you have a cheap medi-bot system that's used to perform operations on you at home, with a remote access link to the AIs that do the actual treatment. Advantages of this would be that you don't risk cross-contamination and it could be cleaned much more cheaply, meaning the cost would be significantly lower than having to invent a giant do-anything machine housed in a building you have to pay for, that can thoroughly clean itself of all bio contamination.

The holy grail of current medical treatment is to get you in and out of the hospital as quickly as possible. The end-result of this trend isn't some building you go into that contains an elaborate Rube Goldberg machine that can solve any medical problem without human doctors, it is in fact to have you in the hospital for zero seconds: don't come in at all, thanks. That's how I'd envision future medicine, all remote, decentralized, basically avoiding having to have the infrastructure of a large building that concentrates sick people together. Think about it: they hate building infrastructure. Large centralized "robo treatment plants" for sick poor people will just never happen. Too expensive.

[scourge728]

I always assumed the holy grail of medical treatment was keeping someone taking your medicine to fix their problem, but keep it so they have to keep coming back as much as possible, so you can squeeze as much money out of them as you possibly can, and also paying large amounts of money to prevent a treatment that actually cured the problem permanently from being approved or sold

[wierd]

It's a hybrid of the two.

It's a machine, that once daily, provides you with your "health serum", on which the entire human population is completely and totally dependent (The immune systems of everyone are so naive now that exposure to dust mites would cause hyperimmune reactions without the serum).  This serum is a genuine and true panacea; It cures, prevents, and treats EVERYTHING. As long as you use it, you will have absolute, perfect health.

However, it's a bit costly, so off to work with you-- Perfectly healthy (and thus no sick days. what, do you think I'm an idiot or something? Get to work you slacker!) worker drones.

[Reelya]

Except the cost of the space you take up at work is getting to the point that they don't want you there even if you'll work for free. The problem is that once we get to the "100% healthy worker drones" state the tech will be in place that anything they could pay you to do would cost more money for them than they generate.

So, more like you get the health serum if you can afford it, but most people are logging into jobs from home that pay by commission for piecemeal work only, so that they don't have to pay for infrastructure like a desk and airconditioning for you. To be honest I think that's more of a realistic automated dystopia than the idea of "mega-factories" where you are like a numbered drone. They'll move 100% to the gig economy so that you don't have to be treated as an employee. People with those grindy jobs will be envied for having job security.

[Trekkin]

They'll move 100% to the gig economy so that you don't have to be treated as an employee.

And where the short-term gig economy doesn't work, they'll move to the academic model, where you're "in training" for the bulk of your career. When a two-year job has a year-long interview process during which you are essentially working for free for the new (potential) boss on top of the old boss(es), you know the system is working great.

[Reelya]

That reminds me, a friend of mine did an apprenticeship as a map compositor at a mapping place. As soon as him and the other apprentices finished they rolled out the new map-compositing software, which completely replaced the manual map-compositing machines (the type with layers of celluloid in a light box) which he'd trained to work on.

So that's another way they can get you: pay apprentice wages for working on some process that's about to become obsolete.

[dragdeler]

-

[wierd]

The issue is that the robots need to be strong enough to completely hold the weight of such old people, yet be sensitive enough and delicate enough in their motor function to not HURT the old people.  This is difficult even for HUMAN hands and arms! Old people have very delicate skin, because they have a breakdown of collagen fibers, and a loss of the subcutaneous fatty layer. A very slight 'shearing' force (Such as wiping!!) will rip their skin and peel it off. This is called a skin-tear. It can literally be easier to tear than tissue paper.

Until you develop anti-grav beds and tractor beams, this is gonna be a tall order, even for soft-body robots.

IMHO, it would be easier to provide them with a hormone or gene therapy to cause them to replenish their missing collagen.

[McTraveller]

Interestingly, sterilizing a home is not as difficult as it sounds:  in fact, because a person is already used to the biosphere of their house, they are less likely to have a post-surgery infection at their house than in a hospital.  There's a growing movement (to which the health insurers are on-board actually) to increase home care.  It's actually less expensive and more effective (from a public health aspect) to pay for doctors and nurses to make home visits than have people visit an office.  This is especially true for care of the elderly and infirm.

Companies are also (re?)learning all kinds of things about the modern trends in "big business": they are finding that open pan work areas aren't as productive as they thought (basically you can go open up to a size, but if it's too open it's detrimental).  They are finding that "gig" work means that you never really get expert knowledge and that high turnover is more expensive (gasp!) than low turnover.

I just find it amusing that for all modern technology, a good chunk of the "old quaint historical way of doing things" was actually pretty good.

[Reelya]

(pricetags can very well include models like chinas social credit score)

Maybe something like the fictional version of china's social credit scores, however almost all actual articles about china's actual social credit concept are so misreported as to be meaningless


Basically the "media" version is something that would be unwieldy and wouldn't even accomplish anything that the chinese government would remotely be interested in. No government gives a shit how many hours a day you're playing video games, or about your ranking on dating sites, or almost any of the other shit commonly claimed (falsely) to be part of china's social credit system.

https://www.wired.com/story/china-social-credit-score-system/?verso=true

If you start to read about it, the real goal seems to be because there's a lot of fraud and corruption in China, and this is actually becoming an impediment to commerce. And boosting commerce is a believable goal of the chinese government. Trying to micro-manage 1.4 billion people isn't a goal, and the Chinese are pragmatic enough to realize it would cost more than it gains. They care about economic growth, full stop.

See the problems with baby formula, where Chinese people refuse to buy locally made baby formula, so come over to place like Australia, empty out supermarket aisles then fly it back to China to sell. That's the lack of general trust Chinese people have for companies in China. The "social credit" system actually focuses on businesses and government officials and that's almost never even mentioned in any of the articles in the West about the thing:

Pence referenced is a planning document released by China’s chief administrative body five years ago. It calls for the establishment of a nationwide scheme for tracking the trustworthiness of everyday citizens, corporations, and government officials. The Chinese government and state media say the project is designed to boost public confidence and fight problems like corruption and business fraud. Western critics often see social credit instead as an intrusive surveillance apparatus for punishing dissidents and infringing on people’s privacy.

Rather than being about policing people as consumers, it's more about generating a trustworthiness score for corporations, banks, government departments, and individuals but more towards their trustworthiness to trade with. Hence, why in every valid story the focus is on actual monetary debt. The actual system is in fact 100% geared towards such things as you get a bad score if your someone who never pays back your debts, rather than saying you're a bad person if you e.g. chew gum and walk at the same time.

But many articles say such things as e.g. they will stop you going shopping because you play too many MMOs. But, think rationally. The chinese government want people to go shopping, as much as possible. And couldn't give a fuck about MMOs: If you're at home playing MMOs you're not out causing trouble.

[Bumber]

What about preventing them from leaving the country because they're not a model citizen?

[Reelya]

Nothing to do with the social credit scores, because, if you read the article, there isn't in fact anything implemented like that. The relevant bit is here:

https://www.theguardian.com/world/2019/mar/01/china-bans-23m-discredited-citizens-from-buying-travel-tickets-social-credit-system

Last year, China’s National Development and Reform Commission said it would begin banning people on public transport for up to a year. The recent report also said 128 people were prevented from leaving China because of unpaid taxes.

Ok, so the people banned from leaving the country were a small number of people with tax debts. guess who also has that law? USA

https://www.accountingtoday.com/opinion/ten-things-you-need-to-know-about-passport-restrictions-on-delinquent-taxpayers

In late 2015, Congress passed the Fixing America’s Surface Transportation Act, a law that, among other things, helps the IRS collect larger tax debts. Included in the FAST Act is Section 7345 of the Internal Revenue Code, which requires the IRS to provide information to the U.S. State Department about people who owe “seriously delinquent tax debt.” Then, the State Department can deny, revoke or limit the ability of these individuals to use their passports – until they are back in good standing with the IRS.

It's the same fucking law, enough said.

Ok, but there's still the "banned from public transport for a year" people, so surely those ones are being banned because of the "social credit score":

The report said authorities collected more than 14m data points of “untrustworthy conduct” last year, including scams, unpaid loans, false advertising and occupying reserved seats on a train.
...
A video of a train passenger who refused to give up a seat another passenger had reserved went viral last year, sparking a debate over whether the current system of banning such travellers was harsh enough.

Yeah, so rather than a "score" system it's just in fact them banning people from public transport if they got caught doing something wrong on public transport.

And of course, guess what?

https://www.washingtonpost.com/local/trafficandcommuting/should-metro-have-the-ability-to-permanently-ban-riders-from-the-system/2017/09/30/f61d252a-9d52-11e7-9083-fbfddf6804c2_story.html?utm_term=.60e146d990ea

As Metro and lawmakers look for ways to prevent assaults on transit operators and customers — particularly from repeat offenders — they are dealing with issues other transit agencies have struggled with: chiefly, how to balance public safety with the needs of transit-dependent communities.

Prompted by a recent spate of assaults on bus drivers — including an incident in which a woman allegedly threw a cup of urine onto a driver and another in which a driver was spat on — officials are pushing for tougher criminal penalties and the authority to ban offenders from the system.
...
The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority ­(MARTA), which has issued more than 12,000 temporary or permanent bans since September 2013. That is when the agency's board of directors passed a new, stricter code of conduct that outlines a process that for the first time allows police to issue suspension citations.

Atlanta is half a million population, and banned about 3000 people a year from public transport. If you scaled up Atlanta's figures to the size of China, you'd get about 10 million bans a year, then you can double that on the assumption that a much higher proportion of Chinese people take public transport than in an American city, so a much larger pool of people who could get banned, and you'd get an expected number of bans of about 20 million per year. And that's pretty much right on the number of people who reportedly get banned from public transport per year in China.

Seriously. As you can see, debunking this particular fear-mongering about China is very low hanging fruit.

[Egan_BW]

The entirety of China is considerably less densely populated than a single large American city. Directly comparing a city to a country is almost the definition of comparing apples with oranges.

[Parsely]

Assume effectively total automation of manual labor, and pretty much a moderate policy prevails during that time ensuring there are no socialist income programs for all the people who are forced to become students long enough to do the big earning human intelligence tasks. What does capitalism look like for workers in that environment?

The customer service and hospitality industry sounds pretty accessible, as well as more "traditional" businesses that artificially preserve a portion of the manual labor as a marketing tactic but it would no doubt be very competitive, sex work is becoming more socially acceptable and it's not outside the imagination for there to be social networks and advocacy groups to keep sex workers safer and to destigmatize the profession, AI would seem to be encroaching on the territory of artists today but I see it developing as a sub-genre and more as a tool of human artists rather than making human artists obsolete (humans are biased in favor of our own intellectual labor anyway), we already use digital tools and machines to produce crafts and CGI has basically lost its stigma by now, plus sports, journalism, and entertainment isn't really going anywhere anytime soon. What else could people do for work, assuming work doesn't become obsolete (I doubt capitalism will allow that to happen)?

[Max™]

There is a charm to hand crafted objects because each one carries the risk of failure during the crafting process while success results in something which may resemble other things but retains a uniqueness that will be difficult to replicate as automation by definition kills the kitschy sort of appeal it had in the first place.