Will smart machines create a world without work?

[jsr]

http://hosted.ap.org/dynamic/stories/U/US_THE_GREAT_RESET_FUTURE_OF_WORK?SITE=AP&SECTION=HOME&TEMPLATE=DEFAULT&CTIME=2013-01-25-00-54-16

Jan 25, 2013 12:54 AM EST
Will smart machines create a world without work?
By PAUL WISEMAN and BERNARD CONDON

WASHINGTON (AP) -- They seem right out of a Hollywood fantasy, and they are: Cars that drive themselves have appeared in movies like "I, Robot" and the television show "Knight Rider."

Now, three years after Google invented one, automated cars could be on their way to a freeway near you. In the U.S., California and other states are rewriting the rules of the road to make way for driverless cars. Just one problem: What happens to the millions of people who make a living driving cars and trucks - jobs that always have seemed sheltered from the onslaught of technology?

"All those jobs are going to disappear in the next 25 years," predicts Moshe Vardi, a computer scientist at Rice University in Houston. "Driving by people will look quaint; it will look like a horse and buggy."

If automation can unseat bus drivers, urban deliverymen, long-haul truckers, even cabbies, is any job safe?

[PDJane]

1. The problem isn't the machinery, it's the power to move the machinery.

Jeremy Rifkin has already written the book, but the problem is twofold: the machines that make the machines has been tried. It's been found to be too expensive and too slow. That's why apple has moved to China. The people that make the machines are slaves, quite literally, and they are faster to change and cheaper to run. That's one problem. The other problem is that the machines can be made, but the resources to make them are running out. It's been a dream all along, and we are finding ourselves as serfs. And yes, the revolution can come again, but we need to make sure that the 1% don't rise again. They're like bloody vampires.

[LarryNM]

2. Safe? Most Jobs No. Work and Creativity will still be here. n/t

[Moostache]

3. Who is going to volunteer to ride the first pilotless comercial air flight?

Its coming and probably sooner than anyone wants to admit...

Truckers, Cabbies, Pilots all going the way of the telegraph operator and the newspaper salesmen.
What is sad though is not that these jobs are disappearing, but that the "owners" of the robots will fight tooth and nail to prevent the extra "profits" from ever being taxed to generate a more equitable society. This whole thing ends one way and one way alone - a more egalitarian world. The only question is how many rich people will come along voluntarily and how many will ultimately be purged from humanity for their perpetual denial of the human condition...