Automate Now? Robots, Jobs and Universal Basic Income A Public Debate

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1. As if we have a say in what will happen. Free will is an illusion. Our DNA is largely responsible for our behavioral patterns and the choices we make during our formative years are predicated upon that blueprint. Humanity as a whole is an organism and we as individuals are like cells in that organism. That organism is growing and mutating in ways we can't control or predict, but one thing is certain, capitalism is doomed and there's no way around it. As long as there are executives sitting around tables, scheming on ways to increase their profit margins, the push towards full automation will continue and since those executive/shareholders are shaping the market, the economy will change based on their decisions. If your manufacturing widgets and you're concerned about providing a living for the members of your community you're going to lose, because all it takes is one person to start making widgets with a fully automated factory and you either follow suit or go out of business and believe me, there will always be that one person, in every sector of the economy. Name one job right here and now that you think will never be automated and I'll tell you how it will happen. One example was child care. On the surface it seems cold and creepy compared to human care givers, but people will chose automated caregivers over humans once they realize that robots have no interest in molesting children and robots will never beat or abuse the child, physically or verbally. They won't and shouldn't be, human shaped child care robots. It should be function over form, but something cuddly like a Pikachu type robot would probably go over well. I can't envision how this transition will happen, but it's inevitable. Long before full automation is achieved, capitalism will collapse. Just the loss of jobs in the transportation sector alone will crater the global economy. The swarm roboticist claims that jobs are created by the implementation of these machines with maintenance and programming, but that's just temporary. Very soon robots will be produced in factories that are fully automated and those robots will be programmed and distributed via drones/automated vehicles. They will plug into their slated job and work without pay, health insurance, benefits, without whining and getting drunk and stoned, they won't sit around chatting and smoking cigarettes. They'll do the work faster, smoother, more accurately than any human could ever hope to achieve and when they break down, a fully automated drone will either come and service the machine in place or replace the unit with a new one and bring the broken unit back to the factory to be reconditioned or recycled. All of this will happen with solar energy with zero waste or pollution. Once capitalism fails, there will be no justification for polluting, because saying that you can't afford to not pollute will be meaningless, because there will be no money. Birth control will be made easily available to everyone globally at puberty and as our population contracts, abandoned cities will be mined for resources by robots. Eventually millions of square miles of wilderness will be returned and the tattered web of life will repair itself. Humans will be free for the first time. We'll have time to be creative and desperation will be no more, which means an end to war, slavery, and brainwashing. We'll have achieved a truly sustainable way of life and that will buy us unlimited time to solve the really big questions, like interstellar travel etc. Or the power elite will circle the wagons and destroy all life on Earth in an effort to maintain the system of which they so love. I'm optimistic about the first scenario, but it's going to be a rough transition, no doubt about it.
2. We really do seem to have Stock Holmes Syndrome with our work and economic system, don't we? We cannot allow ourselves to even imagine living without it! Lol
3. The language of this dialogue needs to change. We should not use words that imply stigmatization of automation "robots taking our jobs", "loosing our jobs" and the like - we need to adopt a positive language that embraces automation as the great thing that it will be. No more "I welcome our robotic overlords"... We need to see it as the tool that it is and use it for the freedom it can provide.
4. If all jobs are automated, money will be absolutely obsolete. Think about it.
5. dudes...11 major psychiatric hospitals are signing onto a learning psychiatric supernet..thats A.I for an anti sucicide protocol...computer A.I is going exponentially...that woman is naieve
6. If people got a basic income an income that grew with automation people would push for automation as a norm
7. The roboticist is drowning in her denial and contradictions and her snobbish follow up is vacuous of any meaningful response
8. Higher skill jobs will also be replaced.
9. Cho nhà nước quản lý và nhà nươc sẽ trư cấp lại cho tất cả
10. Give me my money bitch!
11. The #1 job in 29 US states is truck driver, and yes in the next 20 years that will likely be replaced by autonomous trucks. That will effect the entire country because it is connected. Worldwide in 20 years there will be billions more people and half as many jobs as there are today. Either some bad stuff is going to happen to lots of people or we need a (universal basic income).
12. The liberals who created regulations that have squeezed corporations, are now wondering what to do about automation - Ha!
    Automation machines have been shipping out to corporations since Moby Dick was a minnow.
    Take a look at a box of cereal - Not touched by human hands - shipped to your table. Jobs created by that automation were - Automation design engineers - high tech machine maintenance - low tech fillers - cardboard manufacturer jobs - transportation jobs - advertising jobs - farming jobs - just to mention a few - All those jobs increased the workforce based on the increased shipments of cereal boxes due to the population increase.
13. what jobs will automation create? Will this create a need for more engineers or less? More electronics technicians or less?
14. We can absolutly have a Basic Income, Universal Education, and a National Health Insurance System.
15. Most people are working to live probably 95 percent. you get one life and spend 2 thirds of it working and sleeping, what a waste
16. Interesting panel, glad to see it's receiving attention and people are engaging with the issues. One point of feedback for +UWE Philosophy & Post-Europe Project - in a debate that mentions race and gender more than once, it would be good to push for more diversity in your choice of panel members. These things matter.
17. In the 70's it seemed like Modern Art, Rock Music & inter-galactic space travel would take over, now they're nothing really, in the sixties it seemed protest marches would dominate the world, now they're nothing, everything has a high tide mark shortly after it appears to be expanding exponentially, I would say.
    
    It's a bit of a pity everyone with the ability to make tech innovations is more or less Asperger's, for them interacting with other humans is generally disastrous, so they're trying to replace people with machines/ computers, rather sad. They're probably the only ones who want robots to take over simply because they are socially impaired.
18. This lady just doesn't make sense to me. "in the robotic community", who cares about that. Companies don't want robots that work along side humans they want robots to take the humans jobs and only require repair humans (much less). She's not thinking from a capitalistic viewpoint which is what the world runs on.
19. Steal from those that planned and work and give to those who had other interest in life?
20. Sexism can't possibly be the reason for the traditional role of women in society and their general exclusion from the work force. This is biological in nature, not societal or systematic. I would also argue that a larger proportion than is acknowledged by Marxists of the exclusion of minority groups from the labor force has to do with welfare subsidization of the poor in maintaining their poverty than does racism. Yes, racism is a factor, but labor rates have actually declined in the black community since the civil rights movement and the institution of the welfare state. The welfare state did to the black family what slavery and overt racism never could. It virtually destroyed it.