Will Robots Replace Humans in the future, how will we define “work”? – geoffmobile podcast
Today’s podcast topic is about automation and jobs in the new world of technology and the robot economy.
Geoffmobile Vancouver Podcast – January 10 2015
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Geoff
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Transcript of the audio from this podcast:
The question is,
“Even if everyone worked hard and went to college, someone would still need to make our pizzas, stock our shelves, drive our cabs. Quit looking down on them and assuming they deserve to live in poverty.”
That is a quote from
facebook.com/ourtimeorg
and the annotation was, “Exactly!”
and it had 8 likes.
My friend AC said,
“Imagine how boring the world would be if EVERYONE became doctors, lawyer, engineers/architects, software developers, etc. Then how do we get to work without bus drivers? What if you want to buy something and no one’s opening any stores?”
1 like
Alejandro said simply,
“robots”
2 likes
Dan replied,
“That is precisely what I was gonna say. Blue collar jobs increasingly get taken over by automation once it becomes affordable. Hell, there is even talk of hand bombers at my work being replaced by hand bombing and picking robots.”
1 like
And Martin replied,
“Glad someone else mentioned automation. There are already self-driven cars, robotic chefs and more. I think it quickly becomes a question of ethics, rather than financial viability – what happens to all those taxi drivers who get replaced?”
1 like
I replied myself and I said,
“I like the idea of a guaranteed minimum income for workers displaced by robots. We should redefine what work means.”
1 like
Chris replied,
“Geoff is right. Everyone. Everyone gets replaced. I guarantee that there is nothing that cannot eventually be done by robots, including designing and building new robots. What happens when 10% of the population is employable? What about 5%? We should redefine what work means in such a way that it is not required to justify one’s existence.”
2 likes
AC replied,
“Many of you are wrong. Robot chefs will NOT replace human chefs, and driverless cars will not displace drivers. Robots and humans can definitely work side-by-side but will NEVER replace humans completely.”
1 like
he also continues,
“Also, please remember that 99% of inventions are just curiosities, only a few will become practical. Take flying cars, for example. The idea has been around since the 1920’s, glamorized in the 1950’s, and became possible to produce in the 1990’s, but we’ll never see flying cars because on a social level, it is not feasible and will never be. Look through old issues of Popular Mechanics and Popular Science from the 50’s and 60’s and you’ll know what I’m talking about.”
1 like
Chris replied back,
“I don’t see why they would never replace humans. We’ve replaced them completely in a number of tasks already, and continue to replace them in more and more jobs.”
2 likes
That is the end of my facebook discussion. I thought it’s a very interesting topic about the quote,
“Even if everyone worked hard and went to college, someone would still need to make our pizzas, stock our shelves, drive our cabs. Quit looking down on them and assuming they deserve to live in poverty.”
The answer to that is that we’re going to have robots coming along that will do that work for us, and we may need to redefine what someone needs to do in their life to be a productive member of society.
Maybe working is no longer part of the requirement in the future for people to live a successful life.
I think one of the solutions to that is the “guaranteed income proposal”, which is being explored by many smart people around the world in leadership positions.
I definitely think that for guaranteed income, once everything becomes automated, people are still going to need to survive somehow, so maybe it’s better to let people live off the spoils of the robots they created.
