LogFAQs > #952469319

LinkPizza posted...

There's no proof that money won't exist.

Yes there is.

I've already covered this - money is a measure of human labour. It was invented when we shifted from a barter economy ("I will trade you one goat for a cubit of lumber") into a monetary one, where we agreed that people would award each other these little magic tokens based on an arbitrary unit of value.

In a fully automated future, no human labour is happening. That means money cannot exist, because there's no way to earn it (because robots are doing all the jobs) and nothing to spend it on (robots make everything with zero human input).

By definition, money only exists in a world where we have human labour that needs to be recognized and valued; in a fully automated future, that prerequisite no longer exists.

LinkPizza posted...

Even now, people have already lost their jobs and have no money to pay for anything.

Yes, because other people are still working because we don't live in a fully automated world.

Some people are working == not fully automated == money exists
No people are working == fully automated == money cannot exist

This is a very simple relationship.

LinkPizza posted...

As long as they can make sure people have a little money when they have a lot, and keep things costing an amount, they can keep that power...

That's a nonsense system, though. After all, if the people "in power" need the people without power to have money, that means they have to give it to them, purely so they can take it from them again.

What's the point? If I charge you 300 DKDollars for my services, then mail you 300 DKDollars as a reward for using my services afterwards, those DKDollars have no value because you're not doing anything to earn them. I'm not paying for your labour, just giving you tokens that you can give back to me in some bizarre trading game.

The reason why people in power covet money today is because money represents human labour, which represents power. By having a token representing human labour, you can exchange those tokens to make people do what you want. In a fully automated future, that's no longer true. Money would have no power because people could live their lives completely satisfactorily without any money and, therefore, buying someone's labour is both impossible and pointless (why spend money on a person when a machine can do the same thing cheaper and better?)

LinkPizza posted...

Nah. I don't think they'll ever surpass us.

It would be almost impossible for them not to.

Technology improves at a rate far faster than biology can match. Computers are less than a century old, yet they are already capable of doing most tasks as good or better than humans. That they haven't yet matched us in specific fields in no way suggests that they won't be able to in the future.

This "oh, humans are just naturally better at this sort of thing" logic has been tested before and it has never, ever held water. People assumed for a long time that games like Ichigo and Chess were too complex for a machine to play at the level of a human grandmaster, who can think 30, 40, 50 moves ahead and who can feint out opponents with false strategies. Then AIs were developed that even the greatest masters of the game could not beat.

This is, in essence, simply the next level as that. AI are currently nowhere close to being as good at humans at creative endeavours, but that will change - and likely change rapidly - in the future.

LinkPizza posted...

It like when people make a good free game on the internet, and eventually, a bunch of people play it. And now they can make a better game that cost money. Some people do it for that specific reason. Make something for free to get noticed, then make more for money...

And some don't. Some do it purely for the joy of creating something. Some do it for fame or recognition, which would still be valid currency in an automated future (hell, that sort of influence would probably be one of the more valuable currencies in a world where money no longer exists).

LinkPizza posted...

The fact that the AI needs something to work off of.

So do humans.

We require input data as well. A baby doesn't just come out of the chute and immediately start churning out amazing works of art. They need data to calibrate their language skills, data to understand how to produce art, data to understand what makes art good. A master artist - whether that's a painter, an author, a dancer, or something else - is a product of *decades* worth of data input, the same way an AI is. Humans don't get to create anything until they have enough baseline data to understand *how* to create something meaningful.

LinkPizza posted...

There has to be a reason for that when putting it everywhere would make more money.

And I've already explained to you why that is - a minimal savings, relative to other expenses, is not going to prompt the sort of swift industry transformation that a much more substantive savings will.

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