“Man is the lowest-cost, 150-pound, nonlinear, all-purpose computer system which can be mass-produced by unskilled labor.”
Wow 150 pounds…
In 1919, an average American wage earner had to work 1,800 hours to pay for a refrigerator; in 2014, he or she had to work fewer than 24 hours (and the new fridge was frost-free and came with an icemaker).
This is where people get confused, because they do not look at the bigger picture of time and how much they can learn from looking at history.
Changes in productivity, like changes in birth rate, take place in modest degrees and gradually, and they require long periods to take effect. They stem primarily from advances in the productive process. The first big gains occurred during the Industrial Revolution of roughly 1760 to 1830, when human labor was replaced by machines driven by steam and water power, and when large factories replaced the work that was done less efficiently in small shops and at home. The second major gains occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when electricity and automobiles replaced older and less-efficient forms of power and transportation. The third major change occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, when computers and other forms of automated control began to take the place of humans in guiding production machinery. And, of course, the fourth wave is underway now, during the Information Age, as massive advances in information acquisition, storage and application—and such activities as metadata and artificial intelligence—are permitting tasks to be accomplished that weren’t dreamed of in the past.
We humans want everything fast…. take a lean production class and bam! were off to better productivity, it takes time and commitment to introduce lasting change, the world will shift as with the tides and phases…
Changes in productivity, like changes in birth rate, take place in modest degrees and gradually, and they require long periods to take effect. They stem primarily from advances in the productive process. The first big gains occurred during the Industrial Revolution of roughly 1760 to 1830, when human labor was replaced by machines driven by steam and water power, and when large factories replaced the work that was done less efficiently in small shops and at home. The second major gains occurred in the late 19th and early 20th centuries, when electricity and automobiles replaced older and less-efficient forms of power and transportation. The third major change occurred in the latter half of the 20th century, when computers and other forms of automated control began to take the place of humans in guiding production machinery. And, of course, the fourth wave is underway now, during the Information Age, as massive advances in information acquisition, storage and application—and such activities as metadata and artificial intelligence—are permitting tasks to be accomplished that weren’t dreamed of in the past.
The speed of the fourth industrial revalution is coming at a speed that human kind has never seen before, we are used to slow gradual change. This rate in change will leave a lot of people behind… I myself am not really sure how this will have an effect of those people
[This list seems ridiculous until you realize that in the last few generations, we created vaccines, antibiotics, smartphones, GPS and the Furby].
1. High efficiency, sustainable method for growing sufficient food, including market-shifting replacements for animals as food
2. High efficiency, renewable energy sources and useful batteries (cost, weight, efficiency)
3. Effective approaches to human trafficking
4. Carbon sequestration at scale
5. Breakthrough form for democracy in a digital age
6. Scalable, profitable, sustainable methods for small-scale creators of intellectual property
7. Replacement for the University
8. Useful methods for enhancing, scaling or replacing primary education, particularly literacy
9. Beneficial man/machine interface (post Xerox Parc)
10. Cost efficient housing at scale
11. Useful response to urban congestion
12. Gene therapies for obesity, cancer and chronic degenerative diseases
13. Dramatic leaps of AI interactions with humans
14. Alternatives to paid labor for most humans
15. Successful interactions with intelligent species off Earth
16. Self-cloning of organs for replacement
17. Cultural and nation-state conflict resolution and de-escalation
18. Dramatically new artistic methods for expression
19. Useful enhancements to intellect and mind for individuals
20. Shift in approach to end-of-life suffering and solutions for pain
21. Enhanced peer-to-peer communication technologies approaching the feeling of telepathy
22. Transmutation of matter to different elements and structures
23. Off-planet outposts
It’s going to get interesting. Especially if we can imagine it.
Manufacturing jobs in the United States currently account for well under 10 percent of total employment. As a result, manufacturing robots and reshoring are likely to have a fairly marginal impact on the overall job market.
While lower-skill occupations will no doubt continue to be affected, a great many college-educated, white-collar workers are going to discover that their jobs, too, are squarely in the sights as software automation and predictive algorithms advance rapidly in capability.
I see many people that refuse to see the change and want to keep doing what they have done in the past… but expect the future to better, its a big scary lesson to have to make our own future, just waiting for the world to hand them the best and complain when thy don’t get it…
Persistent, consistent, and frequent stories, delivered to an aligned audience, will earn attention, trust, and action.
If you want to make change, begin by making culture. Begin by organizing a tightly knit group. Begin by getting people in sync. Culture beats strategy—so much that culture is strategy.
As always Seth has a way of stating the obvious, I think the key is that so many times we want to make everyone happy, or market to everyone and that just creates a race to the bottom. Pick a small group and be generous build a community, its had work that is consistante that brings change and real community that will grow.
Should we hope that AI is used for good? To heal rather than to harm? Should we commit ourselves to this goal and work toward it? Of course. But not at the cost of deluding ourselves into thinking that we can simply ban our problems away. AI is here and it is here to stay. It will keep getting smarter and more capable: no ban can keep an innovation from breaking out when its time has arrived.
Husain, Amir. The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence
It is slowly creeping in on us, my car adjust its speed automatically and it breaks for me, it even helps me to stay in my lane, it is becoming normal and a part of our fabric…. day by day it enters into the everyday things that we use.
our current debates over the future of artificial intelligence tend to get stuck with either the loss of our jobs or a fear for our own mortality.
Husain, Amir. The Sentient Machine: The Coming Age of Artificial Intelligence (p. 169). Scribner. Kindle Edition.
Its crazy that so many people complain that they dislike to work, yet they are concerned that the robots will take all the jobs they hate… its the fear of the unknown and that we may have to do something different or the unfamiliar, when will my money come from?
Learning to meditate helped too. When the Beatles visited India in 1968 to study Transcendental Meditation at the ashram of Maharishi Mahesh Yogi, I was curious to learn it, so I did. I loved it. Meditation has benefited me hugely throughout my life because it produces a calm open-mindedness that allows me to think more clearly and creatively.
There is a Zen saying, "Before Enlightenment chop wood fetch water, after Enlightenment, chop wood fetch water." What’s the difference? The tasks are the same. The need is the same. What about the frame of mind? Who is chopping? Who is fetching water?
It seems that getting in the zone, flow or killing it... what ever you want to call it is so easy when you are involved in a sport, skiing for example most people like the the nice smooth runs that are predictable. But the unpredictable is the part that most people stay away from, you know the BIG FEAR creeps in and we stay the same as we have always been. Flow can come from skiing, martial arts, just about anything can fit in, something that you can lose yourself in, where time blurs and you move with little or no effort, you connect to the force of the universe, your breathing become refined, you make that connection to the force behind the breath.
Silicon Valley computer coder may experience a midnight epiphany as being in “the zone” and see streaming zeros and ones like the code from The Matrix; a French peasant girl might experience divine inspiration and hear the voice of an angel; an Indian farmer might see a vision of Ganesh in a rice paddy. But once we get past the narrative wrapping paper—what researchers call the “phenomenological reporting”—we find four signature characteristics underneath: Selflessness, Timelessness, Effortlessness, and Richness, or STER for short.
Why is it some much harder to apply this to or work? is because we are not invested, or the environment is not what we think it should be, we have been trained by the system that work and life are separate...
So, when we do experience a non-ordinary state that gives us access to something more, we feel it first as something less—and that something missing is us. Or, more specifically, the inner critic we all come with: our inner Woody Allen, that nagging, defeatist, always-on voice in our heads. You’re too fat. Too skinny. Too smart to be working this job. Too scared to do anything about it. A relentless drumbeat that rings in our ears.
This seems to be more prevalent at work