Comments by "Nigel Johnson" (@nigeljohnson9820) on "Watch: Robots try to replace humans" video.

  1. Are they reallygoing to replace a human on a minimum wage with a robot costing hundreds of thousands of pounds? Better to replace the over paid CEO with an AI. The AI is likely to cost less than the CEO's annual salary.
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  2.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  the robot will have a finite life and will require highly skilled servicing. The problem is the cost of the initial capital outlay. One of the biggest problems with the robot revolution is they are not consumers. Early adopters might make money, but without a sizable work force earning money, there is not a market for the products the robots make. One solution is to tax the robots and give the money to consumers to buy the products the robots produce.
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  3.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  not everyone is born to be a physicist or electronics engineer, in fact few are. So how exactly are the workers, who become unemployed, displaced by the robots, going to earn the money to buy the products the robots make? Basically the economic system will break down unless there is a sudden shift in the demographic of IQ towards the top end. If the robots are as efficient and reliable as you expect, even a dramatic shift in IQ is only going to lead to a lot of unemployed surplus engineers.
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  4.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  they did not disappear they became the mass of average workers the robots are intended to replace. The peasants did change in one other respect, they got the vote. Deprive them of an income via work and the government will have a problem. There is still the matter of who will have the income to buy the products that the robots produce. Automation is for a purpuse, to make more money, but that will not happen if there are not any customers. It was once a utopian dream that robots would free humans from repetitive menial tasks so they might be able to concentrate on more interesting occupations such as acquiring learning and indulging in the arts. The dystopian truth is no one is going to pay "layabouts" to indulge in their hobbies. The snag is that the robot revolution will happen because it can, but the outcome has not been fully thought out. What percentage of the population have a sufficient IQ of interest to earn a reasonable wage in this new technological world. I suppose the critical point is when the robots displace the jobs of more than fifty percent of the population, at which point the government is voted out of office unless it bans the robots.
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  5.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  robots maybe the future, but their social impact must be appreciated. The tone of your reply suggest you favour some form of eugenics war to cull the stupid from the population. I suggest you read Aldous huxley's Brave New World and see if you like the future it predicts. A further difficulty with your solution is that most of the problems you accuse the general population of being guilty are actually the result of decisions taken by the tiny fraction of the population who are in control. I do not think these turkeys are going to vote for Christmas any time soon.
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  6.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  I do not have any solutions, only questions and suggestions. I think I support the cull of the stupid and greedy in government. Those who are responsible for many of the problems you have identified. The difficulty with population control is than it has been shown that it does not work. It leads to an aging population, with too few young people to support and look after the old. There are already suggestions that governments will be required to pay everyone a living wage even if they are not working in order to keep the economic system working. Certainly the stigma associated with not having a job will need to be removed if the robots are going to displace humans from gainful employment. There will also a need to change the attitude to life long learning. Currently learning ends between 21 and 27 years of age. With paid learning ending at 18 years old. The adult unemployed simply cannot afford to go back into unpaid education, and even less into education that has a fee attached. So government will be required to pay to we educate and reskill those who through no fault of their own are displaced from employment. This is not a charity but a necessity to maximise the efficiency of the work force. No government can afford to have a substantial number of its working age population unemployed, or in the terms of the vernacular economically inactive. The implication of you post is for some form of eugenics to ensure that the population has a sufficiently high IQ that they can function in a highly technological world. Given that genetics plays a major part in defining the IQ of the next generation, the means to achieve your professed goal look distinctly dystopian, maybe involving aborting the foetus shown to be of low IQ or forbidding these of lower intelligence from breeding. Of course the latter does not take account of spontanous gene mutations that might result in an new Einstein from an unlikely coupling. There is also the possibility that a naive selection for intelligence may result in unintended consequences, such as genetic diseases or loss of resistance against external pathogens. It is a truism that goid science fiction plays a major part in shaping the future. This maybe why so much good science fiction is so prescient. Sime if those who read science fiction in childhood go on to make it a fact in adult life. There is a wealth of what if examples to be found in science fiction literature, so maybe this is the place to start looking for answers.
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  7.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  why? I am not I am a retired research and development electronics designer who lives in Cambridgeshire England. I doubt if a Russian not would bother to answer you.
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  8.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527 not just the West, but the world is run by global elites, as is evident by the huge wealth gap between the super rich global elite and the rest. By definition their wealth, which is greater than most states, makes them a global elite. It is their manipulation of world trade to further increase in their wealth that is destroying the planet, or are you one of the imbeciles who do not understand how this works?
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  9.  @bca-biciclindcuaxel7527  it is speculated that putin is in fact the richist of the global elite and has filled his pockets at the expense of the Russian people through corrupt business deals. I cannot say if this is true or not, but I am willing to believe it. But this is way off the point of discussing the impact of automation and robots on global society and its financial system. One threat does not negate the other. There is a tenuous link, the current globalist model, requires goods to be made in low wage, low environmental protection countries, to be shipped to high wage or historically rich countries, with the profits being taken by the facilitator of the trade. The low wage requirement of the manufacture could be taken out of the equation, if the workers are replaced by robots. This would increase the profits of the facilitator by removing the meagre wages paid in the source country, negating claims that globalisation enriches The poor countries of the world. The only requirement would be to pay the bribes that keep the environmental protection regulations to a minimum.
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