18 March 2009

Promise of Early Retirement: from J Storrs Hall

When Josh Hall talks about early retirement, he is referring to the retirement of all humans from work. Why should all humans retire? Because cheap human-equivalent machines will do all the work humans once did, for the price of kilowatt hours of electricity -- pennies. Josh is a very bright man, a creative man who is able to dream great dreams, and also crunch the numbers: a rare combination. Here is what he says about the retirement of the race:
If you have a human-level AI based on computer technology, the cost to do what it can do will begin to decline at Moore’s Law rates. Even if an AI costs a million dollars in, say, 2020, it’ll be a thousand in 2030 and one dollar in 2040 (give or take a decade). Why hire a human when you can buy the equivalent for a dollar? To put it as simply as possible, you aren’t going to be able to make a living by working. You’re going to need to have some capital. Everybody’s going to need some capital.

...One way or the other, the human race is going to take an early retirement in the next few decades. I find this a much better way of thinking about what’s coming up than “singularity”. The term “singularity” was specifically created to reflect a notion that there was an event horizon associated with advancing AI. But whether or not this is true of the far future, some distinct profiles of the near future are clearly visible. And from what we can see of it, it is going to make a huge difference what we do now.

So, I think, we need a better term than “singularity” to describe what’s coming up. It should reflect the fact that there are indeed some things we can tell about what will be happening. It should, if possible, reflect the fact that this will be a major liberating event for the human race — no longer need we spend our lives in forced drudgery, since we have built machines to do the necessary work. But it should also reflect the fact that we need to be planning for it. _JSHall
Josh is trying to explain how things will change in the near future. It is an optimistic vision, overall, which fits well with "The Europe Syndrome" described by Charles Murray. Thousands of extropians, transhumanists, and singularitarians have described similar technological "quasi-utopias" for well over 50 years. It is a vision suited for lulling the masses to sleep.

Machines have certainly removed much drudgery from the lives of women and men. Our dozens of energy slaves have given us more leisure, income, and choices than pre-industrial humans possessed. It is only natural to extrapolate this trend into the future, to the expectation of early retirement for the race of men. Natural, but wrong.

Western culture no longer speaks for the entire world -- if it ever did. The economic and demographic problems of the west are show stoppers for the "inevitable march of the singularity." But the greater underlying problem for the western world besides the fact that its people are dying without replacement, and its over-consumptive lifestyle is destroying the wealth of future generations -- is the spiritual vacuity. NOT IN A RELIGIOUS SENSE. Religion does not truly signify, once one probes the depths of the human brain, and understands what human spirituality actually is. The human spirit is what makes humans strive against insurmountable obstacles, and prevail.

While western man may have lost his "soul" in a poker game, or used it as collateral for a loan spent on mere consumption, the rest of the world -- most of the world -- has not done the same. Most of the world is still driven to strive, to reproduce, to survive at all costs. To that end, ancient myths of religion and spirit are called upon to guide and motivate the masses to follow traditional paths.

Affluence has stopped the population growth of western populations. But affluence is not a sure thing. Not for the west, and certainly not for the rest. Differential birth rates of east and west, north and south, favour the ever-burgeoning masses of third world people and the traditional tribal peoples of myth and Islam.

Westerners are certainly dying off -- the victims of their own affluence and lack of depth. At the same time, a few scientists and engineers working within mainly western research institutions and corporate labs are creating incredible new technologies that would certainly change any world into which they were introduced.

Third worlders are not dying off, and are instead procreating at 1.5, 2, 3, 4 times replacement, depending upon the country. Population IQ is inversely proportional to fertility rates, roughly speaking. But even low IQ people can watch satellite TV and covet the powerful toys and energy slaves that the rich westerners possess.

These toys and slaves do not maintain, repair, and manufacture themselves -- not yet. But what happens when the small cadres of scientists and engineers, working within institutions inside the dying lands, create the machines that Josh Hall talks about above? Machines that can create, maintain, repair, and improve upon other machines without the help of moderately intelligent and skilled humans? At that point, even after the west dies off, some parts of the low IQ third world can still have high tech societies. And within the sea of low IQ societies, we find islands of higher IQ sub-populations that can step in to profit from the high tech : low IQ dynamic.

Of course, in the style of a true Idiocracy, such inherited toys, slaves, and intelligent mind surrogates will be largely neglected, frittered, fought over, and intentionally destroyed as "evil." Human nature does not disappear, and history does not end -- regardless of how many Fukuyamas or other well intentioned intellectuals proclaim it. Instead, the Fukuyamas meet the end predicted by JM Keynes, "in the long run ..."

Predicting the future is much harder than most people understand. Everything you think you know . . . . just ain't so.

Labels: , ,

Bookmark and Share

9 Comments:

Blogger Loren said...

Of course, a computer that can understand electrical engineering can certainly understand economics. Do we get Skynet, Johnny Five, HAL, R2-D2, or something we haven't imagined yet?

Wednesday, 18 March, 2009  
Blogger Snake Oil Baron said...

Any company or organization that could afford one or two of those million dollar AI units would probably easilly afford a large fleat of subhuman level AI bots (a team of dog level ones, scores of rat level bots and countless insect level ones which would be analogous to some of todays best industrial machines). A well designed system could significantly amplify the power of those expensive AI's.

But we will still need humans to provide coruption and incompetance. No machine can out do us in that field.

It is hard to predict what effect large amounts of free time will have on fertility rates. When asked in a survey how many children they would like to have or would have wanted the numbers European women give is actually much higher than the actual fertility rateswould indicate and are higher than replacement levels. No matter how much governments shell out they can never provide the amount of insentives needed to make up for the fact that kids cost lots of money and a year or more of manditory paid maternity in not as helpful as being able to leave your careed for several years to raise kids which currently leaves one at a massive disadvantage when the woman heads back to the job market.

Wednesday, 18 March, 2009  
Blogger Acksiom said...

Ah, but can robots also raise human children, or at least substitute well for the icky parts?

They might even do a better job than many parents. James Hogan had some interesting thoughts on what a post-scarcity society in which robots served as mediating caregivers to children might be like in Voyage to Yesteryear.

Thursday, 19 March, 2009  
Blogger CarlBrannen said...

So when all the humans retire because machines can do all their jobs better (drive better, type better, make pizzas better, engineer better, run human resources departments better, manage corporations better, wage war better, run countries better, etc.) just what will the humans be doing? Will they be put out to pasture like horses in the automobile age?

Thursday, 19 March, 2009  
Blogger neil craig said...

In physics the event horizon of a black hole recedes when you get far enough into it that you are being affected by it. I think this singularity is like that too. An observer in 1940 would find a world where instant news form across the entire world & information more extensive than in the largest library of the time is available to all would have already changed beyond recognition& possibility of voluntary return. Perhaps in 2050 when we have refrigerators smarter than an unenhanced human we will be saying the singularity will be reached only when we can transmit thought to the next star system.

Thursday, 19 March, 2009  
Blogger Audacious Epigone said...

Affluence has stopped the population growth of western populations. But affluence is not a sure thing. Not for the west, and certainly not for the rest.

Nor does affluence necessarily lead to precipitous drops in fertility below replacement level, as Mormons in the US demonstrate. This is where Murray's recent speech/essay come into play.

Thursday, 19 March, 2009  
Blogger al fin said...

AE: Do you know of any other religious groups in the US besides the Mormons and perhaps the Amish who are bucking the trend?

Neil: I agree. At least for those who survive the transition, the idea of a singularity will flex with the times.

Carl: Apparently most Europeans would like nothing better than to be put out to pasture. As long as it is a nice pasture.

Acksiom: Child raising is a lot of trouble. Most Europeans, many Canadians, and a growing number of Americans have decided that children are not worth the trouble. Can we blame machines if they agree?

Baron: I have been saying all along that only a working artificial womb will save the coming generations of perpetual adolescents from their own aversion to doing things that are hard.

Loren: Human economics is a lot closer to psychology than to electronic circuits. Thus, much harder for machines to understand.

Of course, absolute dictators don't have to understand economics. They just have to be able to keep themselves above the suffering that they cause.

Thursday, 19 March, 2009  
Blogger Snake Oil Baron said...

An artificial womb is probably not an insurmountable goal but institutions that would function as a boarding school/orphanage without messing the kids up severely is harder to imagine. Some of my relative overseas went to boarding schools at a young age and did very well even though they came from lower middle class backgrounds but they still had homes and families to support them.

Maybe combining child rearing with retirement living so older but still healthy people could combine to provide the emotional and social needs of family while a corporation managed the education, nutritional and laundry needs of the residents. Grants from the sperm and egg donors to the artificial womb project and old people's rent could provide the profit motivation. The grants for the kids could be transferable which would provide some accountability; if standards dropped the kids could transfer to another... institution. (Compound? Commune? Whatever.)

Friday, 20 March, 2009  
Blogger Acksiom said...

But Al, we're already using machines that cannot disagree with their tasks.

Forex, "Gloria" and "Betty", my Roomba and Scooba, are not capable of objecting to being made to clean my floors, let alone being made to do so without their fabric coverings.

Why should nannybots necessarily be made otherwise?

Monday, 23 March, 2009  

Post a Comment

“During times of universal deceit, telling the truth becomes a revolutionary act” _George Orwell

<< Home

Newer Posts Older Posts
``