Stephen Hawking More Afraid of Capitalism Than Robots (1 Viewer)

[cstu]

Why Stephen Hawking is more afraid of capitalism than robots


Updated by Brian Resnick on February 27, 2016, 10:10 a.m. ET @B_resnick brian@vox.com



In October, a Reddit user asked Stephen Hawking if he thinks robots are coming to take all of our jobs.

"In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated?" the user asked the renowned physicist on an Ask Me Anything thread.

The question isn't crazy. Computers are getting smarter and more efficient all the time. It's conceivable that we one day will reach a point where machines' output is simply much more valuable than humans'.

Hawking didn't discount the notion that machines may replace us. But he said whether this is good or bad depends on how the wealth produced by machines is distributed. That is, Hawking is more concerned about capitalism than he is about robots. He wrote:


...Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.



We could be headed toward a work-free utopia where machine-produced goods and services are cheap and plentiful for all. Or, as Hawking suggests, the coming robot age will just exaggerate the income inequality that's rampant across the globe. (Hawking is generally ambivalent on the advent of artificial intelligence. "We are facing potentially the best or worst thing to happen to humanity in history," he has said.)

Either scenario may still be a long way off. As Vox's Tim Lee has written, human labor is still in higher demand than robot labor, and it's likely to remain that way for at least a few more decades. North American factories purchased 23,700 industrial robots in 2013, he writes, while the economy still adds about a million new workers every year.

 

[Dan Lambskin]

What a #####

 

[Ditkaless Wonders]

Someone should ask him whether he sees a day where apes will be breed, and even genetically altered for slave labor, even if it is just to maintain the robot workforce.

 

[Bob Magaw]

Easy for him to say

http://www.theonion.com/article/stephen-hawking-builds-robotic-exoskeleton-1629

 

[Leroy Hoard]

Someone should ask him whether he sees a day where apes will be breed, and even genetically altered for slave labor, even if it is just to maintain the robot workforce.

Each of these ape maintained robot factories will require a human to oversee it. That's at least a few human jobs right there. The rest of the human race should have worked harder to get one of those jobs.

 

[GroveDiesel]

That doesn't even make sense. So we put all the robots in charge (leaving aside the question of who is designing and maintaining them while everyone else in the world does nothing), and all humanity splits the wealth evenly. So what are the robots supposed to build exactly? Who determines what they create? Who decides on exactly how to distribute what they make? Because wealth doesn't have anything to do with money really. Money is just a medium to trade goods and services. If everyone has the exact same amount of money at all times, then money is meaningless. So he's really talking about everyone being equal in what goods and services they have. So who decides what goods and services everyone is going to share equally?

 

[GregR]

They aren't talking about robots being in charge. They are talking about most jobs being able to be done by machines. Think more factory worker replaced by mechanical assembly lines, and less Skynet.

Lets say we have enough automated farms producing enough food no one need go hungry, and nearly automated transportation capable of distributing it, and power generation that doesn't require manual labor, etc.  If we reach a point that technology means we have enough to meet everyone's needs, then it comes down to whether we let everyone have them or whether we bleed them dry unnecessarily when there really isn't need for anyone to work.