From: Kevin Freels (megaquark@hotmail.com)
Date: Mon Sep 01 2003 - 16:22:56 MDT
I have a (maybe) dumb question.
I keep seeing people debate about the consequences of having a society where
robots do the work and AI's do the computation. Most of this debate seems to
revolve around what kind of jobs will be left and how that will affect the
economy.
My question is: Is an economy necessary?
----- Original Message -----
From: "Robert J. Bradbury" <bradbury@aeiveos.com>
To: "Extropy List" <extropians@extropy.org>
Sent: Sunday, August 31, 2003 7:18 PM
Subject: Robots r Us
>
> Oh boy, you folks are going to have a field day with this.
>
> Marshall Brain has written an article called "Robotic Freedom":
> http://www.marshallbrain.com/robotic-freedom.htm
>
> It outlines the problems that modern economies will have as
> robots start to significantly displace individuals in the
> work force. (Mind you I don't completely agree with his
> predictions/time-frame.) But this goes back to points that
> Moravec has made in his books, e.g. "How does the economy
> function when robots do most of the work?".
>
> The interesting suggestion that Brain makes is that the
> government should literally give money away.
>
> So, question -- does or does not the knowledge of several
> lawyers on the list require "real" artificial intelligence
> or could their arguments be presented by a robot with
> a "simple" logical argument component with a very large
> memory? (E.g. essentially a legal "expert system".)
> As background, I'll simply point out that expert systems
> that diagnose certain diseases have been built (and IMO
> would probably do a much better job than several physicians
> I've encountered over the last year). This relates to the
> question of precisely *when* do many of the service jobs
> go to the robots in addition to the physical labor jobs.
>
> (To the lawyers -- no offense -- I'm just trying to fuel
> the debate of "what are robots" and "what are AIs" and how
> trends may dictate how people should prepare for the future.)
>
> Robert
>
>
>
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