Disruptive Change - Humans Need Not Apply.

a reply to: daskakik

...... the workers now receive coupons to buy what the robots are processing for free.

Everything you say is premised on the assumption that the system WILL provide for the masses - with UBI, coupons or whatever.

I do not question that it's possible. My point is that it's not probable.

originally posted by: soficrow
Everything you say is premised on the assumption that the system WILL provide for the masses - with UBI, coupons or whatever.

It is premised on the fact that if that doesn't happen then the wealthy may end up with their heads in a basket.

Looking to avoid that is what makes it more than likely since there is really nothing to gain, besides being no easy task, to just eliminate most of humanity. The only argument you have is scarcity but if automation does away with that then you have nothing to back your premise.

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: soficrow
Everything you say is premised on the assumption that the system WILL provide for the masses - with UBI, coupons or whatever.

It is premised on the fact that if that doesn't happen then the wealthy may end up with their heads in a basket.

We don't know the wealthiest controllers' names - we can guess Rothschild, Warburg, Morgan, Astor, DuPont, Guggenheim, Vanderbilts and Rockefeller - but we do not know who else is hiding in anonymity. ...Who owns the central banks and the Bank for International Settlements?

The eight men who hold the same amount of wealth as the world's poorest 50% do NOT hold the reins - or the majority of the world's wealth. Someone fudged the books.

So the real rulers remain anonymous, and protected by their anonymity. As always. Their heads will not roll, and nothing will change.

Looking to avoid that is what makes it more than likely since there is really nothing to gain, besides being no easy task, to just eliminate most of humanity.

Already done. Most of humanity is focused on just staying alive and feeding their families. I'd say that's an effective 'elimination.'

The only argument you have is scarcity but if automation does away with that then you have nothing to back your premise.

I'm not arguing scarcity. If there was a will to 'provide' it would have been done already. The hold-up is greed, fear and power-hunger. Not scarcity.

We don't know

We don't need to know exactly. Heads start rolling and things will change.

Already done. Most of humanity is focused on just staying alive and feeding their families. I'd say that's an effective 'elimination.'

How are they eliminated if they are still here?

I'm not arguing scarcity. If there was a will to 'provide' it would have been done already. The hold-up is greed, fear and power-hunger. Not scarcity.

If there is no scarcity then why the need for a cull? I'm not seeing how you arrive at that being the action taken after automatization.

originally posted by: daskakik

We don't know

We don't need to know [who's pulling the strings] exactly. Heads start rolling and things will change.

The puppet masters don't care if the puppets are killed. They just get new ones.

How are they [the starving poor] eliminated if they are still here?

Not to go all Zen master but you need to think about that.


RE: I'm not arguing scarcity. If there was a will to 'provide' it would have been done already. The hold-up is greed, fear and power-hunger. Not scarcity.

If there is no scarcity then why the need for a cull? I'm not seeing how you arrive at that being the action taken after automatization.

There is no actual need for a cull, but if you look at history you will see that suppression is the standard response. Particularly during painful transitions, which this will be.

And again, the cull will occur through 'benign neglect' as is already happening.

The puppet masters don't care if the puppets are killed. They just get new ones.

The puppets care and they can turn on their masters.

Not to go all Zen master but you need to think about that.

Cop out. You were talking a cull not some abstract take on life.

There is no actual need for a cull, but if you look at history you will see that suppression is the standard response. Particularly during painful transitions, which this will be.

There has never been a situation like this. I don't think you can rely on history to predict this.

And again, the cull will occur through 'benign neglect' as is already happening.

Hyperbole, may as well call dying of old age the puppet masters using a time machine to cull humanity.

Beyond factory assembly lines, truck and taxi drivers...

An AI Law Firm Wants to ‘Automate the Entire Legal World’

* Unchanged for the past hundred years, the legal industry now faces its turn to be automatized.

* The idea of legal tech is not new, however not until today have algorithms been ready to seriously transform the legal industry.

…Today, a majority of LawGeex’s clients are corporate legal departments. According to LawGeex, its users have reported they are saving about 80 percent of the time they normally use on contract review and get deals closed three times faster. Not to mention that they are also saving 90 percent of the typical cost of outside council. The contract review platform is just the start for LawGeex. “Our goal for the next couple of years is to automate the entire legal world,” says Shmuli Goldberg, LawGeex’s VP Marketing.

…One of the primary reasons for the increase in legal tech companies is due to the increased accessibility to neural networking models and other probabilistic algorithms. In 2015 even Google open sourced its A.I. engine. Furthermore, among corporate entities and private citizens the demand for alternative and cheaper legal services is rising.

…A robot lawyer works more accurately, Goldberg claims.

But are robot lawyers a threat to lawyers? “Lawyers can benefit”, Goldberg says. “A.I. is taking the administrative work off their plate, giving them time and energy to focus on more strategic questions.” On the other hand, Oxford professor Richard Susskind, who specialized in legal technology in the 1980s, suggests that by 2020 technological advances will have been widely adopted and fewer lawyers will be required.

Lawyers of the future will do very different work compared to previous generations, and therefore will need to go through a different education.

AI takes hold in the legal profession

….Many legal AI products are based on technologies that are well established in knowledge management, including text analytics and business process automation. What pushes them into the AI category is the degree to which they incorporate intelligence into their functionality, including the ability to learn and to process natural language inquiries. Because they are focused on issues specific to the legal profession, they are working with a finite knowledge domain, which allows them to be more precise in their performance.

This AI is special - and threatens professional poker players. Long story short, "It’s a powerful and rather unsettling proposition: a machine that can out-bluff a human."

Inside Libratus, the Poker AI That Out-Bluffed the Best Humans

...this AI reached such heights because it wasn’t just one AI.

Libratus relied on three different systems that worked together, a reminder that modern AI is driven not by one technology but many.

...Mainly, it relied on a form of AI known as reinforcement learning, a method of extreme trial-and-error.

...It’s a powerful and rather unsettling proposition: a machine that can out-bluff a human.

a reply to: daskakik

...If there is no scarcity then why the need for a cull? I'm not seeing how you arrive at that being the action taken after automatization.

There is no scarcity now - but looks to me like the culling is already happening. The world produces more than enough food to feed everyone - about 2790 kcal per person per day. Yet 2 billion people suffer malnutrition - which affects everything from their cognitive abilities to their physical health - and of course, their ability to live long or fruitful lives.

True, most malnourished people live in developing nations where their land and water was re-directed to industrial 'development' - but there is no reason believe the 'benign neglect policies will change when developed nations are more fully automated, and poverty rates start rising even more dramatically here at home.

Point being: The 'culling' already results from non-action - benign neglect policies. Nothing needs to change and most likely, nothing will change. By the time your Universal Basic Income rolls out "in a few hundred years," the Earth's human population will have been decimated.

Two billion people in the world suffer from various forms of malnutrition.

* Malnutrition is an underlying cause of death of 2.6 million children each year – a third of child deaths globally.2,3
1 in 4 of the world’s children are stunted 4; in developing countries this is as high as one in three.5 This means their bodies fail to develop fully as a result of malnutrition.
* Undernutrition accounts for 11 per cent of the global burden of disease and is considered the number one risk to health worldwide. 5

HUNGER AND POPULATION GROWTH: CORRECTING A COMMON MISUNDERSTANDING

World hunger has no single, easily discernible source, least of all overpopulation

What are the causes of hunger?

* Poverty is the principal cause of hunger.
* Harmful economic systems. ...Essentially control over resources and income is based on military, political, and economic power that typically ends up in the hands of a minority, who live well, while those at the bottom barely survive, if they do.
* Conflict.
* Hunger is also a cause of poverty, and thus of hunger.
* World population
* Food and agricultural policy. [Food and agricultural policy in the world do not benefit to poor farmers.]
* Climate change. Climate change is increasingly viewed as a current and future cause of hunger and poverty. Increasing drought, flooding, and changing climatic patterns requiring a shift in crops and farming practices that may not be easily accomplished...

HARMFUL ECONOMIC SYSTEMS

a reply to: soficrow

Sorry but it is hyperbole. You can't call it a culling while the population is increasing.

The population is currently at 7.5 billion. According to the world population clock there has never been a year since 1951 (and never in human history, going by guesstimates) when the population has decreased. To say that a cull has been or is taking place is illogical.

Pointing out the existence of benign neglect policies and the fact that the world population is still increasing only highlights their ineffectiveness and pretty much shoots down your claim.


ETA: I still don't get what you think is to be gained by culling the human population. What would be the motivation?

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: soficrow

Sorry but it is hyperbole. You can't call it a culling while the population is increasing.

Erm, yes, you can. Culling in the sense of controlling the population (by size, and not incidentally, suffering).

I still don't get what you think is to be gained by culling the human population. What would be the motivation?

Same thing it's always been: control, power, intimidation, etc. etc.

originally posted by: soficrow
Erm, yes, you can. Culling in the sense of controlling the population (by size, and not incidentally, power).

I see you can but reducing the size of the herd by 7 billion is slaughter and not the culling you are trying to invoke here.

Same thing it's always been: control, power, intimidation, etc. etc.

What I said way back there fits perfectly. Universal basic income and a money/credit system that keeps them in control. That is the only thing that makes sense if they want to keep controlling things. That is a real incentive. You still have not given a motive to reduce the population by 7 billion.

They can kill everyone and just be them and their robotic servants and not have to deal with pesky humans but that would mean killing everyone and not just maintaining a balance with nature. It would be hard as hell to do as well.

a reply to: daskakik


I see that your argument is both logical and legitimate. I just do not believe that it is based on a realistic assessment of reality, meaning the resistance to the idea of a Universal Basic Income.

Point being: you do not need to convince me. You just need to move the planet. In my estimation, it would be FAR more fruitful to discuss exactly how to move things along in the direction you see as most appropriate, instead of just repeating that you are right.

AI and the Military Industrial Complex

What A High-Tech Military Means for Our Future

* From the tanks and fighter jets to the soldiers themselves, technology is transforming the military and the nature of modern warfare
* While the benefits on the battlefield are clear, a high-tech military could lead to an increase in advanced weapons on the black market, more unnecessary wars, and fewer military jobs

…Now, with a wide range of technologies experiencing exponential growth, the world’s militaries are taking advantage of the many new tools at their disposal, updating everything from their weaponry and intel systems to the soldiers themselves — and there are even bigger plans for future militaries.

…….military-backed advances in microchip technology are packing the data processing power of multi-computer neural networks into handheld devices to help make missions on the battlefield run as smoothly as possible.

The Warbot Builders of the Middle East Spill Their Secrets

…Nothing stimulates creativity quite like having someone trying to kill you. In Iraq and Syria, militant groups spanning the ideological (and theological) spectrum are responding to threats in part by adding remote controls to sniper rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades—and attaching them to unmanned ground vehicles.

Sham R3 Machine Gun translated رشاش شام ر3 مترجم

…Aleppo has become an “incubator of experimentation” for remote weaponry.

...But Aleppo isn’t the only place Syrian rebels are making their own warbots. In 2014, a group based in the eastern suburbs of Damascus mounted a PKC machine gun onto a rotating platform operated with a control panel and television monitor.

a reply to: soficrow

I don't need to convince you or move the planet. I'm just questioning the fearmongering and the specific claims that you made.

originally posted by: daskakik
a reply to: soficrow

... I'm just questioning the fearmongering and the specific claims that you made.

Ahhh. As in, Problem? What problem? There is no problem. Nothing to discuss.

Nothing to see here. Move along now.

So I was telling my daughter about military AI. ...Obviously, trillions of dollars are spent on development by the US military. The scary bits there have been well-investigated in sci-fi - and she got it.

Then I told her about the homemade war-bots being built by homegrown geniuses in the Middle East. These guys collect scraps and spare parts, fit them together into little war machines - then control them remotely with retooled iPhones and other re-purposed bits. It's damn cool! Cute and sweet at the same time that it's totally bloody terrifying.

The Warbot Builders of the Middle East Spill Their Secrets

…Nothing stimulates creativity quite like having someone trying to kill you. In Iraq and Syria, militant groups spanning the ideological (and theological) spectrum are responding to threats in part by adding remote controls to sniper rifles, machine guns, and rocket-propelled grenades—and attaching them to unmanned ground vehicles.

originally posted by: soficrow
Ahhh. As in, Problem? What problem? There is no problem. Nothing to discuss.

Of course there is something to discuss. The faulty logic of the claim.

What is a food corporation going to do with a production line making millions of pounds of food a day if there are only a handful of humans left to feed?

Who is the military industrial complex going to sell arms to if there is nobody left to fight?

Who are the puppet masters going to control if there are no puppets?

That is what the claim that all useless eaters will be gotten rid of means and you don't seem to have an answer for why you think that is something that anyone, including the elite, would want.

originally posted by: daskakik

originally posted by: soficrow
Ahhh. As in, Problem? What problem? There is no problem. Nothing to discuss.

What is a food corporation going to do with a production line making millions of pounds of food a day if there are only a handful of humans left to feed?

lol. You think all 7.5 Billion people in the world eat processed food? Including the 2 Billion known to be malnourished? Newsflash: They don't.

Who is the military industrial complex going to sell arms to if there is nobody left to fight?

The military might be one of the industries to go obsolete. I doubt it, but it certainly will cease to be a major employer - the jobs will go to automation. Most likely most of the personnel and tech will be re-directed to asteroid mining (euphemistically packaged as space exploration).

On Earth, at least 500 million people will still need to be kept in line. As evidenced here, your kind of mentality always finds someone and a 'reason' to fight.

Who are the puppet masters going to control if there are no puppets?

Oh, there'll be puppets. And I'm pretty sure the masters will be happy controlling 500,000,000 instead of 7.5 Billion.

a reply to: soficrow

The level of processing that people's food undergoes makes no difference. Advanced AI and automation makes useless eaters of everyone and if the idea is to get rid of useless eaters then it doesn't matter if you are a junk food junkie or on a raw food diet you are on that list.

The "masters" didn't stop the population growth last time it was 500 million or even a couple of billion but you think now they have a reason? Think about it, the "puppet masters" don't need AI and automation to have it all.

You seem to have taken the Georgia Guide Stones at their word. Why stop at 500 million? With advanced AI and Robotics the population can be dropped to the elite and a 1000 techs. Make robots advanced enough to repair themselves and the elite don't need anyone else to survive. No. 1 on the list I posted.