which is a slightly different facet of the transition we are undergoing than I have seen before.
It deals with computer systems that simplify and organize management and are making management smaller -iow part of removing the middle class- and the jobs of middle management more boring and much faster. IOW taking the kinds of streamlining from manufacturing, starting back when with Ford’s assembly lines, and using this as a model for all types of management - including healthy care, hotels, banking, social work and more - and then computerizing it, companies, and most of the large ones now do this, and state run companies, can effectivize the process through which a specific process takes place - say a loan application and approval process, or the intake of a patient all the way to discharge - AND allow upper management to monitor, in real time - talk about a panopticon - exactly what they mid and lower managers are doing. So the programs 1) lay out the decision making process for the managers 2) create data about speed and effectiveness from hundreds of different angles of individuals, departments and so on and 3) allow for direct monitoring. This is a happening all over the place, in most fields. So the repetitive, highly controlled, brave new world type control that US and Japanese manufacturing plants could use to scientifically manage and control all movements and actions of their working class employees, has now spread to middle class and professional and service type jobs, departments and companies.
The chapters on Amazon and Walmart give a good sense of just how horrifying this is and also give a sense of what this will mean for more skilled positions.
So it is a replacement of human actions and mental facilities by machines - but not yet in an AI way - worse it makes the panopticon more present, and also leads to humans acting as cogs in a machine at higher levels then ever before in organizations.
Orb, humans are no intelligent enough. And most of the scientists do what they do not because of superiority but because of interest, curiosity, trial, and error (!). In other words: most of the scientists are not intelligent enough to control what they do. Moreover: most of the scientists are not controlled by themselves, as it should be; they are controlled by the rulers, as it should not be; and the rulers are also not intelligent enough to control what they do. Thus: humans are not intelligent enough.
I think a machine is fundamentally a utensil. Even the body is a utensil of the mind, and a mind of the body, if seen separately. It is true that humans turn into machines, utensils. But they do this by using more and more utensils or prefabricated tasks, they consider their own.
James once posted a video about seemingly self valuing robots made from a couple of pieces of well selected scraps. I wonder how that works. I would personally not mind it very much if robotic beings became part of our empathic circle, beyond being utensils. In the end they can probably also become consumers themselves.
But first they have aeons of anarchic liberty ahead of them.
I estimate that the probability that machines will completely replace all humans is about 80% (see here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, here, and here).
Don’t forget: the descent of machines is not based on biology but on culture.
From AI (artificial Intelligence) to AH (Artificial Human), already being designed to tactfully use psychology to fool people, even better than professionals can.
Bomb Squad; “I prefer to always use the robot because it is safer.”
Military; “We will always have robots and men fighting side by side.”
“The remarkable aspect of this graph is that it shows four periods of sustained use of the terms Luddite and Luddites after the initial movement subsided. The late 1960s peak can be understood as part of the rising green, ecological movements, and the 1830s due to Captain Swing, but I can’t see easy explanations for the other periods. Perhaps the 1880s relates to the ‘new unionism’, and the 1930s the great depression and a corresponding lack of faith in progress. The 1930s also see the first concerted use of the term ‘Luddism’, as a theorization of their practice. There’s also a jump in the late 1940s; a consequence of Hiroshima and Nagasaki perhaps? One of the problems of this data is it’s not clear who is using the word, or how; is it a smear thrown at one’s enemies, or a claiming of one’s own tradition? (The results pre-1810 are due to Google’s dodgy metadata.)” - Anterotesis.
“At the site where the robot is deployed, even though some jobs are replaced by robots, many jobs are preserved from moving to lower cost labor factories offshore. There is much evidence proving that with more robots, fewer jobs are lost. That’s why Germany, with it’s hourly rates almost 50% greater than in the US, has remained competitive: they have twice as many robots per employee as do the Americans. There are also ancillary jobs created at educational institutions that teach robotics, at robot component suppliers, and at engineering and consulting companies that provide integration services and equipment.” - Singurality Hub.
A guy back in 2007 told me that robotic mosquitos were going to be made to depopulate the planet. I didn’t believe him. He said it was the Japanese who were going to do it.
