Drifting off-topic (or maybe not), perhaps we need a hierarchy of wrong. As Asimov pointed out, wrong is relative. Humans are inevitably wrong to some degree. Can AI be relied upon to be less wrong than humans? How do we judge that? The median wrongness?
Bringing this back on-topic, perhaps people could be employed assessing degrees of wrong. Sort of like auditors of wrongness.
Already in place.
Which brand do you prefer?
Pope Lucius III demonstrated one approach.
For our AI future. Likely there will be a landing somewhere between legally based litigation for loss and damages, and legislative exemptions from liability for AI providers. A bright future for those with careers in political organisation and litigation. Aside from âtrickle downâ will there be any careers for the less capable in these skills areas. Perhaps as âcrash test dummiesâ might be one sad suggestion?
In a perfect AI Controlled future, Suppliers might be bound by âBest Endeavoursâ. The public/consumer might through legislation be asked to foot the bill when things go wrong. Expanded compulsory insurance (Third Party Extras - branding) and the NDIS as fall back.
P.S.
At present the closest we have to an internationally sourced and used product that depends partly on AI is commercial aviation. Airbus, Boeing, and the Airline Operators are currently exposed to litigation, sometimes due to âsystems failuresâ. Would an AI upgraded ground transport sector readily accept or survive similar circumstances. We currently have long lists of vehicle recalls that could break any one manufacturer financially if the penalties were greater. The VW emissions scandal and Takata air bag failures demonstrate how relatively minor items turn into major failures.
The argument for many AI advances is efficiency and lower cost through technology. That can only take labour costs out of the system. What is left is the human services sectors. The transition has been in full swing for decades. Iâll leave it for someone else to offer up comment and statistics on whether we are as individuals better or worse off. Ask any first home buyer?
There wonât be a perfect AI future. AI can make decisions based on algorithms, but lacks the emotional intelligence humans also use in decision making.
Where AI is adopted, it is likely that many decisons will still be vetted or overseen by humans. This vetting/overseeing is to ensure the outcome is the most appropriate one.
How many jobs will that create?
The oversight is required to consider issues that AI cannot deal with. Emotional intelligence is one way to put it, politics is clearer and simpler.
So it will generate jobs for PR people, politicians and spin doctors. All good rewarding jobs we need more of.
Many would see that as a positive! Emotional + intelligence? One just need look at the worldâs leadership as well as the rank and file regarding their decision making and what drives it more often than not to dismiss that as irrelevant.
Reality is that deficiency if one accepts it is a deficiency rather than a strength is increasingly being addressed by the AI boffins, and their âwaresâ just keep getting better.
Asimov referred to relative (right and) wrong in perceptions of empirical reality. Does conflating (supposed) moral wrong with relative factual wrong clarify or obfuscate?
Emotion can help in making quick decisions, not necessarily good ones. Often quite the opposite, in fact.
And therein lies the problem. Algorithms for AI are created by humans, and contain the biases of their creators. Even if systems were designed to create new algorithms, those systems would still have the bias which would feed into the algorithms.
Heheh as do humans, how they are raised often gives them lifelong biases but also an emotional charge to that bias. A mix that sometimes is very dangerous but so too can cold analytical non emotional processing be ruthless in itâs outcomes by not being constrained by compassion, love, a sense of belonging and a number of other moderating positive emotions.
The Australian Institute released a paper about helping Fossil Fuel workers to move out of their jobs rather than delaying the inevitable is the better way.
This has also lead to a more generalised piece about the real importance of Fossil Fuel industries to our economy. It argues that Fossil Fuels actually add very little to our economy, it is a low employer of people, and it adds very little in taxes and incomes. The data to make the call in the article is from the very Government that pushes for more Fossill Fuel expansion and protection of the industry.
Ah, but what of the fossil fuel lobbyâs political contributions? Surely they add âvalueâ in some small way.
For some people, dancing is a job 
One positioning for the future asks to maintain the status quo. Change comes through the development of solutions driven by low levels of government intervention, and a hope of new technology delivering lower or same cost alternatives and solutions. The outcomes for employment and income equity are uncertain? More of the trends evident in todayâs labour markets the base case.
Others suggest that economics is not relevant and is over-ridden by needs to go to war with what is described as an irreversible crisis. Being a war the cost is irrelevant, with immediate and absolute victory the only acceptable outcome. Change comes through using what ever is to hand to overturn the status quo. Action does not need an economic plan. Just a plan of action. Although winning examples of current progress are often extrapolated to suggest that we will all have jobs and everything will be cheaper, because renewables and sunlight is free.
Iâve possibly exaggerated the extremes in both instances. Informed commentators suggest most Australians are genuinely concerned about their futures (all aspects). Their comfort zone is neither extreme.
Is this the middle ground, what does it offer, and is aligned with what Australia can achieve?
The article is aspirational and a little educational giving a nice metaphor to represent a simple idea that doesnât really need it. I suppose the author hopes to be inspirational as well.
The first problem is that the reader needs to already accept the ideas of tension between environment and the welfare of society, and that doing sufficient harm to the environment will bite us in the bum eventually. If you donât accept both then too little is done to convince you.
The example is given of societies willingly doing what was unthinkable (or at least unpalatable) during the COVID crisis. The inference is that we can do the same for the looming environmental crisis. You would first need to convince enough people that doing the unthinkable was actually required.
A pandemic is rather like a war, the threat is so large and imminent that we will give governments huge power to make it go away [some donât know what to do with that power but that is another matter]. What isnât explained is how to convince people that we must treat the risk to the environment the same as a pandemic. Itâs old frog in the pot problem, if the temperature is raised slowly enough the frog never notices and is cooked before it jumps out.
The second problem with the article is that should we decide to act there is no clue given as to what to do.
We need the best of our economic minds helping us to build frameworks that will keep us in the doughnut. The future of our species depends on it.
I have to agree, but I would hope that a research economist might throw something on the table at least. Does he have nothing? Clearly he does, it is to say we must do better. However, the mission to convince the reader that some action is required is weakened by not saying what the action is. He says:
It was possible to embrace shift to âprivate sufficiency and public luxuryâ
That link gave me nothing at all so I can only guess if there is a hint of a solution there.
I may seem a little sour. Those who have read my stuff before will realise that the distaste is not about the topic but an author who fails to do justice to such an important subject. To be fair The Conversation (where this came from) has strict limits on the size or articles.
George Monbiot gives a review of a book by Kate Raworth who coined the term âDoughnut Economicsâ that gave me much more.
Maybe I have to buy Raworthâs book and not expect to find the full argument elucidated online. I could post a review if I do.
As soon as I found in this article the âenvironmental Kuznets curveâ, it was flagged as BS for me. Same idea and basic shape as the âlaffer curveâ, which capitalists have relied upon to argue for tax cuts for businesses and the wealthy for years. Also utter BS.
Appreciated the summary @syncretic.
I also wonder about the bones of Raworthâs thinking. Once upon a time there was âthe triple bottom lineâ. For some there still is. Aspirational and more a qualitative concept than quantitative process.
The work of an Aristotle or an Oppenheimer?
Available on the Apple Bookstore. My mind tends to be more procedural and process orientated than conceptual. It could be a challenge?
Dr Ross Garnaut has made a further argument for a Universal Basic Income (UBI) in his book âReset: Restoring Australia after the pandemic recessionâ. His request/desire is for "the government to pay most adults in Australia $287 every week regardless of whether they have a job.
The policy would cost about $40 billion a year, but Dr Garnaut believes thatâs good value for money as it would protect workers from unemployment, years of stagnating wages growth, and the disruptive force of increased automation."
To read the news article see:
What are your thoughts on UBI?
Is the cost worth it?
What benefits could flow from having a UBI?
I have already stated earlier in this thread that I am for a UBI. Our current arrangements for the poorest in society are inadequate and in a lot of cases involve victim-blaming and punishment.
A universal basic income would replace any unemployment benefit, along with all of the hoops we require unemployed people to jump through. Those hoops are allegedly to help the unemployed, but in reality applying for twenty jobs a fortnight is in many instances an exercise in futility.
It is likely that some people will simply not want to work. A UBI does not change this at all - they are already not working, all it means is that they do not have to beg for their supper. What is highly unlikely is that a bunch of people who currently work will decide to âdrop outâ and live on or near the poverty line that is the basic part of a UBI.
An entire industry of outsourced âmake-em-workâ entities would disappear, along with the financial and mental costs of that industry. There would be no overpayment of benefits, and no subsequent illegal robodebt ârecoveriesâ.
$40 billion is not chump change, but even looking pre-COVID the Commonwealth spent nearly $505 billion in 2018-19 (PDF) and a fair chunk of that would be part of the total $125.3 billion in personal benefits that would be replaced by a UBI.
In short, a UBI solves more problems than it creates.
