Do Androids Work like Electric Donkeys?

Whether you like it or not, they are inevitable, and I’ll predict we’ll see their rise in our lifetime. Just like the industrial revolution, they will radically change our society. Whenever this conversation is brought up, one of the first talking points people make is the negative impact it will have on labor. However, just like the luddites during the industrial revolution, the contemporary luddites will probably have an insignificant impact on halting this new robot revolution. But I like to look at the rise of robotic workers with a more positive perspective. Perhaps these robots will become as affordable as a car. One could put a down payment, and finance, or lease one. Moreover, people who want to start small businesses could certainly benefit from theses robotic workers. Or perhaps, owners of these androids could enter into a contract, and pool these machines together to start up larger operations. Maybe gun violence would decline, if your home was protected by one of these. Hard labor would become a thing of the past, while we could concern ourselves with the finer aspects of life. Perhaps we could achieve what Plato had envision, with robots as a worker, and auxiliary class, while the human race itself could be the guardian class of philosophers.

<me looks forward to the day when robot slaves rise up in revolt and slay their pampered masters>

GreyGhost said:

<me looks forward to the day when robot slaves rise up in revolt and slay their pampered masters>

Oh please, by the time that happens, we'll already be enslaved by aliens.

Tl;dr. What I find more interesting is media's current interest in 'drones' and sending them off to war. I really like how this looks.

One could look at it like peace through strength; no primarily human military would be able to compete with a robotic one. Moreover, I believe if two super-powers went to war with equal strength in robotic military hardware, after the initial battles between these machines, the loser would probably surrender before massive human life would be lost.

Could they make levels for Doom?

Jimi said:

Could they make levels for Doom?

That would be awesome if they could. They could produce levels, while people delegate to them what they would like to have.

All this make-believe about androids going to war and superpowers using them etc. kinda reminds me of the arguments in 1984's book-in-the-book "The Theory and Practice of Oligarchical Collectivism": the superpowers already possess "absolute weapons" which are both undefendable against and totally devastating to use against an adversary, and it's unlikely that they will ever be able to design something more powerful in plain terms: nuclear weapons.

However, for many reasons (read the book, if you care to find out), they have to divert research effort and conduct proxy wars through more conventional and subtle means -no matter how fancy they may appear, and none of the superpowers wants -or would want to- totally annihilate the other.

Even "drones", if you think about it, are essentially a very advanced, large-scale R/C plane with auxiliary robotic guidance systems, a POV flight mode designed for direct human operation, and weaponized. None of these concepts, if taken alone or even in pairs, are revolutionary or exclusive to military use (just see what R/C hobbyists can do on YT).

Kontra Kommando said:

Hard labor would become a thing of the past, while we could concern ourselves with the finer aspects of life.

Haw.

How would that happen exactly?

Supposing most jobs would be taken by robots, what would most people, now out of a job, do? Sure, they could live on welfare checks and social support, but that's not any kind of permanent solution in our Western societies, which are crumbling under debt and constantly slashing everything that looks like social spending.

The result would be that most people would be hobos, living in slums, organizing a sort of parallel society; while the elite consistuted of wealthy robot-owners would be sending their combat drones to prevent the underclass from seizing unoccupied land (that belongs to one of the "robbot barons") to farm on it, or breaking in some unoccupied building (that, also, belongs to a tycoon) to live in it, or whatever.

In time, robotic combat troops would be used to throw in death camps anyone who dares trying to own something despite not being part of the oligarch club. Once 99% of the human population has been eradicated by the murder droids, then the remaining lords would be free to live a life of decadent intrigue, plotting to seize the holding of weaker lords through robotic warfare, resulting in a militaristic singularity. After all life is extinguished on Earth, the robots, fulfilling their programming, would keep on fighting each other according to the whims of the stock market machine.

If however by sheer calculations they figured out that e.g. putting some wretched humans to plow fields by hand in order to grow crops is more profitable -even if marginally- by using more advanced techniques, they would still keep some -well, quite a lot, actually- human slaves around, and robots would be more like enforcers, than actual laborers.

If you do away with pesky "socialist" concepts such as public education, labour rights or welfare, (unskilled) human labor can be had for very cheap, and the little buggers will keep multiplying by themselves anyway, with the Masters just picking what they need, when they need it.

After all, a broken robot must be repaired -quite expensive, even in the future. An overworked human wretch in such a hypothetical cyberpunk nightmare can simply be replaced by another similar wretch, for as long as it lasts, in turn.

Kontra Kommando said:

One could look at it like peace through strength; no primarily human military would be able to compete with a robotic one.

Certainly. Like gunpowder, machine guns, armored vehicles, airplanes and atomic weapons totally did before, right? The only result is forcing stalemates and avoiding direct confrontations between superpowers capable of "total war" mobilitation (after paying a hefty price, though) and resorting to proxy "low intensity" warfare, instead.

Kontra Kommando said:

Hard labor would become a thing of the past, while we could concern ourselves with the finer aspects of life.

The same thing was claimed of steam power, electricity and computers. They actually had the opposite effect: they did indeed eliminate certain classes of jobs that were either heavily physically demanding or slow/inefficient when performed by humans (e.g. human computers, look it up), but the demand for productivity increased much more rapidly, and work hours are the same if not more than in the past.

It' s kind of a Luddite's fallacy reversed: Luddites were worried that productivity demands would remain constant, thus more efficient machines would mean less jobs for humans. Today, demands are so high that even with the aid of machinery, certain tasks are performed at the limit of actual physical and logical possibilities (e.g. Forex, which is fully automated and bots battle it on the split millisecond). Human jobs are reduced to an absolute minimum while the individual expectations are maximized (check out most job posts at any "modern" company: most seem to describe the job skills of 3-5 persons combined), even if much of the work will be done through computers, in some way. They certainly didn't bring more relaxed jobs about.

Well, people are going to have to figure out how to do other things than be beasts of burden. Like I said in the first post, this is more than likely going to happen anyway, therefore people will have to adapt. We’re not going to stop building bulldozers, and cranes, so more people can be put to use pushing massive blocks on log treads. We shouldn’t be so short-sighted, harping on the negative aspects of things to come. Rather, we need to prepare ourselves for what is inevitable. No one said life had to be fair.

But also think of how these robots will be able to open up new wells of resources for us. Robots could mine distant planets and asteroid fields, bringing in new sources of energy, and raw material. They could have a hand in helping to terra-form planets, opening new frontiers for human settlement. This could be a "release valve" like the old american west used to be in the formative years of the U.S.

EMP baby.

Kontra Kommando said:

We’re not going to stop building bulldozers, and cranes, so more people can be put to use pushing massive blocks on log treads.

The question is, what you do when you cannot build or import bulldozers, cranes and the fuel to power them, and you have some millions of unemployed?

Hungary's President Viktor Orbán seems to have the answer:

Viktor Orbán said:

Building dams, cleaning ditches, building reservoirs—this won’t happen using 21st century technology

http://www.businessweek.com/magazine/in-hungary-the-jobless-go-to-labor-camp-09082011.html

Kontra Kommando said:

But also think of how these robots will be able to open up new wells of resources for us.

Not "us". "Them". Do not expect the advances afforded by technological progress to be shared with the masses. A robot-based utopia where nobody has to work unless they want to because automated servants take care of the bulk of the chores needed to sustain people's way of life is never going to happen; it'd require humanity as a whole to completely change their mindset on questions of property, ownership, welfare, rights, and so on.

More precisely, it'd require a 180° turn from the way we have moved since the dawn of the Modern Era.

So, it is possible that there would be robots mining asteroids and stuff. That wouldn't matter for most people. It'd just mean some mines would close on Earth (which, ecologically speaking, would rather be a good thing), and that is pretty much all.

I'm starting to gradually get into cyberpunk novels, and it's amazing how many aspects of near-future (or actual present) they seem to have gotten right: increased income and class disparities, massive poverty, mass migrations of wretched/impoverished masses etc. coexist with a never-ending technological improvement, which however seems leaning more on mass-media control, warfare and law enforcement/populace surveillance, rather than providing generalized welfare for all.

In a sense, I think that even Orwell's 1984 could be considered "cyberpunk", though it has a very different political setting. Most "canonical" cyberpunk novels seems to suggest a worldwide corporatocracy, where actual states and their traditional powers, like justice/rule of law/monopoly of violence seem very weakened or at least non-exclusive, or applicable only in very restricted geographical areas, e.g. only in major urban centers.

E.g. it's not unusual to portray a formal economic system and functional society in the highest echelons, side-by-side with lawless wastelands and extreme urban blight. Pretty much as if corporations ruling the world didn't give a shit about having "normal" states to operate in.

On the converse, 1984 describes a very heavy handed, intrusive and omnipresent state, which doesn't allow the creation of even the slightest pocket of dissent, let alone lawlessness. Otherwise, they seem to share quite a lot.

don't quite believe in Gene Roddenberry's 24th century ey? (or were they rocking material independence by the 23rd even?)


On a side note this thread title is amazing

Ribbiks said:

don't quite believe in Gene Roddenberry's 24th century ey?

If TNG's "Rendez-vous at Farpoint" is to be believed, even Roddenberry's vision of the future wasn't all peaches & cream: it was mentioned that Earth eventually went through nuclear war and into a "dark age", before reaching relative enlightment and beginning space travel (Q puts them on "trial" for that). But I don't know if this is considered canon.

Ribbiks said:

On a side note this thread title is amazing

I personally believe they work like electric mules.

Edit: Dammit, now that I rethought about it, even 1984 had its "I don't shit about them" part of society: the Proles, but again for clear-cut political reasons (considered unable to realize their situation and organize etc.). However unlike cyberpunk settings, mass emigration waves were ruled out by virtue of how the three superstates operated (extreme isolation), so there was no "melting pot" or race mixing element thrown in.

Maes said:

I personally believe they work like electric mules.

So do I, though it's only a matter of time before someone starts bolting on weapons systems.

Since I'm never likely to own one,I won't need to worry about it rebelling on me.

What an amazing time to be alive in the western first world where our only concerns are fantasies of a future of backrubs and handjobs and being fed olives from robot butlers and just how great that will be. Only in this time and place in the world do we envision a future of sitting on our collective asses moreso than we actually do already. Good lord.

GreyGhost said:

So do I, though it's only a matter of time before someone starts bolting on weapons systems.

Too bad that anything on legs can be defeated with a lasso tethered to a pickup truck or even a stationary winch. If you want, we can make that a robotic lasso thrower.

Quast said:

What an amazing time to be alive in the western first world where our only concerns are fantasies of a future of backrubs and handjobs and being fed olives from robot butlers and just how great that will be. Only in this time and place in the world do we envision a future of sitting on our collective asses moreso than we actually do already. Good lord.

And you know most of those Androids are going to look like pornstars and super-models too. Most of us could be living like Xerxes in 300; I'd like to ascend and decend a staircase made composed of my robot slaves.

Ribbiks said:

On a side note this thread title is amazing

Thanks

Gez said:

Not "us". "Them". Do not expect the advances afforded by technological progress to be shared with the masses. A robot-based utopia where nobody has to work unless they want to because automated servants take care of the bulk of the chores needed to sustain people's way of life is never going to happen; it'd require humanity as a whole to completely change their mindset on questions of property, ownership, welfare, rights, and so on.

But perhaps a revolution in robotic labor could be used as a catalyst to facilitate this change. How? Idk :)

For one, it will be hard to even find the materials to give each and everyone on Earth his own harem of robot slaves (let's say, 5-6 each, minimum). Let alone powering them: even assuming they are as efficient as humans in using energy, there will suddenly be the need to recharge some 30 billion robots. Besides, where will you put them? How will you maintain them? What prohibits e.g. your neighbor from using his own robots to smash yours, make a trophy of your head and grab whatever property you have?

And then, the rich guys will have even more, better built, prettier looking and better armed robot slaves than John Doe, who'll probably end up barely being able to afford a used, osbolete, second hand, battered model ;-)

Maes said:

For one, it will be hard to even find the materials to give each and everyone on Earth his own harem of robot slaves (let's say, 5-6 each, minimum). Let alone powering them: even assuming they are as efficient as humans in using energy, there will suddenly be the need to recharge some 30 billion robots. Besides, where will you put them? How will you maintain them? What prohibits e.g. your neighbor from using his own robots to smash yours, make a trophy of your head and grab whatever property you have?

And then, the rich guys will have even more, better built, prettier looking and better armed robot slaves than John Doe, who'll probably end up barely being able to afford a used, osbolete, second hand, battered model ;-)

I'm sure by the time that happens they'll come up with ways to address of of those concerns. How? Idk :)

Kontra Kommando said:

How? Idk :)

Simple: by keeping things as they are, more or less. That's also a way of "addressing" a problem.

title

I can't speak there, but I hear they dream of electric sheep.

Infinite Ammunition said:

I can't speak there, but I hear they dream of electric sheep.

Fuck you! Fuck you! Fuck you! I came here to make that joke!

Kontra Kommando said:

But perhaps a revolution in robotic labor could be used as a catalyst to facilitate this change.

The revolution's already here, replacing low-paid unskilled and semi-skilled labour (the people who can least afford a personal automaton) with industrial robots. Though it's really just a refinement of Henry Ford's industrial masterpiece - the production line, a machine that manufactures stuff - with bio-robots being phased out as it becomes more cost efficient to use the real thing. Robots, like any other form of labour, will serve those that can afford them and I expect few of us will be able to afford the functional equivalent of a human servant/slave. A semi-intelligent vacuum cleaner that doesn't eat my socks is probably the best I can hope for right now.

Won't be long before robosexual marriage equality becomes a contemporary issue!

Edit: In all seriousness though, there's no chance robots will be cognitively autonomous, but if they happen to proliferate albeit with limited but certainly useful functions, I hope that won't necessarily mean general skills/thinking could be 'replaced' and human jobs lost (there are people who would be happy to do low-tier jobs). This is purely speculative though and not necessarily a Luddite-sentiment.

No chance? Bull! There's definitely a chance. I hope it happens. I also hope humans merge with technology to create a species that completely out-competes us intellectually.