Major players in the IT industry, including Jeff Bezos and Nvidia Corp., have reportedly invested in Figure AI Inc., a startup creating human-like robots. The company is seeking to raise approximately $675 million in a funding round. The move comes as part of a rush to discover new uses for artificial intelligence.
I wish that even one of them invested into something that would actually help the society instead
Why do you think human like robots can not help humanity? Do you think people always must do the menial work?
Replacing human labor with humanoid machines will enrich the wealthy owners and nothing more.
The solution should be to fix our system which is designed to enrich the wealthy. We should fix this and have the machines/AI and automation to benefit everyone.
I feel like your solution is to not do the cool new innovative thing that has the potential to help everyone, and so let’s just stay in this capitalist hellscape as is? At least if massive robot automation displaces tons of jobs, then the Working class might be forced to come together and fight back, maybe?
Your mindset is just to keep everything the way it currently is, which I think sucks.
No, it isn’t. Don’t put words in my mouth. This is impossible anyway, things can’t ever be kept the way they are.
I agree with this completely. It needs to be done first, not second and not during.
That’s the point, it doesn’t have the potential to help everyone until after the socioeconomic issues are resolved. We, the working class, should not be cheering for any of this until it has the potential to benefit and not harm us.
Ok fair enough.
My only last point would be that what if the socioeconomic changes we want could be resolved because of the technical/automation advancements? What if it’s the only way to get the change we want? I’d see great hardship as a transition most probably.
I’m obviously just speculating here. I’m very very cynical about solving the socioeconomic issues first, I just don’t see it happening, enstead we just stay business as usual. At least with a huge shift in automation causing massive job loss there is the potential for a big revolutionary change. No guarantee obviously, it could also only make things worse. We really don’t know.
I see the mass displacement of the working class as the only thing that would unite us. Bring in the robots. The only thing you have to lose is your chains.
What do you think a situation like this would look like, in practice? I’m curious because I see people suggest that some kind of revolution would be a good thing… but what you’re talking about is a lot of suffering and death leading up to the revolution, followed by violence and more death during, followed by more hardship and death trying to pick up the pieces after… do you expect to not be part of the suffering and death? do you expect it to happen after your life? what about family?
Frankly I think this kind of fatalism is a lazy cop-out. Saying “things are bad and getting worse, and there’s nothing I can do about it, so let’s just wait for it to all fall apart” excuses you from making an effort to improve things now. It becomes a self-fulfilling prophecy, and collectively we make our own hell through inaction and the belief that collapse is inevitable.
We can demand more from our governments. By organizing, we can overwhelm the intentions of the wealthy. We can do better now.
Genuine question how would we “fix” our society by removing those jobs and keep same or more people. What jobs would they do. Having robots do Amazon workhouse jobs would displace thousands of people who work that for a job where would they go. They can’t just become software developers or medical workers etc. The way I see it is we just need more jobs in general so removing some is a total negative unless we have somewhere for them to go.
Not everyone needs to work. Many jobs are useless or detrimental to our existence.
We need to think about fundamental changes in how our societies run.
Think about how much wealth the richest people in our world have. Would it be so bad if they lived in a regular house if it meant living in a world where everyone has accomodation, food, health care and education - and the work that is done is that which is actually useful to our survival and development as a species.
Why be so committed to the idea that “everyone needs to work” for some arbitrary reason to build useless plastic things, or countless variations of the same thing with different packaging. Why are we continuing to live in a world that throws perfectly good food into dumpsters and landfill just to keep prices at a certain level. The world we are living in now is totally nonsensical.
If people had the security of being able to leave their job and not face eviction, starvation, or poor health they would have the freedom to retrain, learn more, and move onto something which is of actual benefit.
We don’t need countless food delivery drivers, bankers, or stock brokers. All of those people would benefit us much more by doing nothing. We don’t need more jobs, we need less jobs.
Imagine a world where we do the work needed to build the housing, education facilities, food and energy production we actually need. Then we are free to build technology which benefits us instead of enslaving us. We could live without poisoning our environment and driving our planet deeper into climate change and extinction.
If we lived in that world we would be able to build humanoid robots to do the work we don’t want to do, and it would benefit us all. We would have more time to pursue our own interests and passions. No people put out of jobs, who then become homeless, who then need to turn to crime for survival, and no need build humanoid killer robots to hunt us all down when we all lose our jobs.
https://crimethinc.com/tce
But therein lies the problem. You yourself are a commodity. You benefit the wealthy when you go to work, so everybody must work. We have created nothing here but a ceaseless wheel that mangles the pennies from our corpses.
I dont have a solution, that’s why I’m cynical. It is perfectly OK to say “I don’t know”.
That being said, you’re way of thinking is very myopic and only fits our current society standard / zeitgeist.
Why do people need to do these menial jobs at all? You’re answer is probably that they won’t have money to pay for food, rent, etc. What if we had a society where people could pursue hobbies, interests, passions, etc, without fear of homelessness and starvation? Why can’t we reach for something much better than what we have now?
Some people would exploit such a system and never contribute to society and just sit around playing video games all day? So what, who gives a shit?
Just because this would be extremely difficult, and we have absolutely no idea how to do it, doesn’t mean we should just give up and not try. The current system sucks ass. People shouldn’t be wasting there time doing menial pointless labor to keep the wealthy rich, just to survive a pointless existence.
30 years later…sir, we tracked the last penny. Robert Robertson from El Cajon California seems to be in possession of it but is telling everyone that he lost it under the couch. What should we do?
…deploy the couch crunching robots!
Ok, stop using computers, any other tools, electricity, any building, and go live in the cave or something, and even there do not even think to use a stick to help yourself. Because all of those are tools and replacing human labor.
Camera replaced my job churning out ad copy? guess I’ll fucking die then.
You seem to think that real-world decisions must be all-or-nothing, and that somehow all technology can be conflated with humanoid robots. This is nonsense, and you shouldn’t be immediately jumping to an extreme position.
Tools, such as computers and electricity, enhance human capabilities but don’t directly replace human work.
The only function of a humanoid robot is to replace a human. A humanoid robot is not a tool, it’s a substitute.
First of all, I do not think in black and white, as you did to the post I have answered.
I will not deny that robots as any other new technology can and will create its challenges, but ,come on!, robots on factories were replacing factory workers for very long time. And if you look more general, 200 years ago, like 70% of population were working in agriculture, until industrial revolution with mechanization and automation replaced like all of them, so that un US now is less than 2%.
We absolutely need AI + robots. We have aging population, our Social Security program is under danger to become insolvent because more older population and less young population (and no, another population boom is not the answer). The US manufacturing productivity (https://usafacts.org/articles/what-is-labor-productivity-and-how-has-it-changed-in-the-us-over-time/) is actually going DOWN for the last 10+ years. The AI + robots is absolutely that multiplier that our economy needs for us to have great future.
Now, I totally understand that one can completely screw up the future, and this is why we should be vigilant and vote for right politicians, advocate right policies and so on, but stopping new technology because of this fear is absolutely not what we should do.
Exactly. Because the only ones benefitting from lower cost labor are those who own or run corporations. Workers will just lose jobs and there is no guarantee enough new jobs will open up once things settle.
The problem with this under capitalism is the working class won’t see any benefit from robots taking mental jobs. The remaining jobs can rely on desperation instead of better pay to attract workers. If we were under a system that supported ubi, then yeah robots can take whatever job idgaf, I could find something that makes me happy. But that isn’t how capitalism works
We do not live just in capitalism. There are different political flavors of it. We live in democratic capitalism, which I believe is the best combination so far discovered (or the least evil). UBI is not contradictive to democratic capitalism and I believe we will come to something like that at the end.
its just regular old capitalism, as its always been
You must be very young to think like this…
Sorry but the world is about domination and profits for the rich. Humans are lost and the planet is losing life support for us soon.
I think I am just more optimistic/realistic than you are (I would not choose such depressing nickname for myself, for example).
First, I will deny you that people are evil and they are only about domination and profits. People are complex and beautiful creatures, but yes, there are ugly sides as well.
Second, if the world is about domination and profits, then we should see worse and worse life as time goes on. This is not the case. Just imagine how average life was 200 years, ago, 1000 years ago. 10000 years ago… Life is much better today, and will become only better in the future. True, there will be challenges, and setbacks, but we will evolve, we are smart and good enough for that. And AI will help :)
And thank you for calling me young. I did not hear this complement for a long time :)
TBH even if the costs of humans are high, their supply is nearly infinite. Spending resources on Robots would just be a waste.
Their society is the shareholders.