I spent an appreciable fraction of my career in the early days of robotics with mechanization and robotics applications at RCA. Naïve chatter about human-less culture and artificial intelligence overlooks fundamental things. 1] brains are fundamentally different from computers. Brains learn, can be taught, but dont run on algorithms. Progress in ,say. household robots, is made with electronically simulated neural networks. These can learn tasks like a child or pet, but even the designers do not know exactly **how** the brain does its job. Same with synthetic, computer-simulated evolution by natural selection. It is incredibly efficient, but not something that can be programmed. A computer algorithm can create the illusion of intelligence, but it is a fake. Real electronic brains [where are you, Isaac?] may be built, but they be no more manageable than children or pets.
Jack Williamson [?] wrote a story for Analog With Folded Hands and a sequel novel And Searching Minds. At first, androids run by a central computer-brain programmed To serve and obey, and guard Men from harm provided everything but took all the fun out of Life. In the second story, men developed mental powers. As for economics, beware of ..isms, for none reflect what actually goes on in commerce. ..isms are political and academic constructs and do not reflect reality. The idea of providing everyone with what they runs afoul of the human tendency for unlimited discovered need, which is encouraged by advertising. Actually, *wealth* is well defined not by how much you *have*, but how little you *need*. A saint can have the whole world [sharing it with others] and need only sandals, robe and his begging bowl. Mike Carrell From: Jed Rothwell [mailto:[email protected]] Sent: Tuesday, August 10, 2010 6:47 PM To: [email protected] Subject: Re: [Vo]:what our post industrial society may look like I wrote: We will have to find a way to give everyone what they need and want with a new kind of economy. Not communism, socialism or capitalism. All three are ways of allocating human labor, and they would be equally unworkable in a world where human labor is useless. I did not mean to suggest that communism, socialism and capitalism are equally good, or equally effective, or that these are the only economic systems ever invented. They are the main three still surviving in the modern world. They are mostly in mixed configurations depending on market sector; i.e., Japan is mostly big-corporate capitalist but their healthcare sector is socialist. Someone in the New York Times wrote a letter in response to this column, about unemployment: http://www.nytimes.com/2010/08/10/opinion/10herbert.html The letter says what I had in mind. It is well written. QUOTE: . . . There was a time in the early years of this country in which 90% of employed people worked on farms. An economy that did not have agriculture as the main source of livelihood was beyond imagining. . . . Our world is increasingly becoming one in which more and more jobs do not really require people at all. Productivity per worker is not a function of expertise, which is at an all-time low. Rather, it is the product of the automation of the workplace and of the tools at hand. This process could be much farther along than it is, but people are still somewhat cheaper than new technology. That will not remain the state of the workplace much longer. It is becoming increasingly necessary envision how an economy would work in which every job could be performed without humans at all. Who would own the means of production? How would people acquire purchasing power? Would these concepts even be relevant? Author John Varley described such an economy on the moon in "Steel Beach." Further exploration is definitely in order. We are taking the first baby steps into an economic landscape in which workers are increasingly superfluous. As Artificial Intelligence becomes a viable alternative, that phenomenon will spread into management. How to make such a world habitable for the average citizen is an intellectual challenge of the highest order, and urgency. . . . - Jed ________________________________________________________________________ This Email has been scanned for all viruses by Medford Leas I.T. Department.
