Today’s episode focuses on a thought experiment — assuming technological unemployment happens and capitalism continues in its current form, what new platforms might allow average folks to monetize the remaining scarce resources? What kind of jobs and economic platforms might arise in a future of automated labor? We discuss current platforms like Kickstarter and Etsy and we wonder about their continued robustness. We also propose a platform for monetizing the attention of the unemployed and discuss the possibility of monetizing slack computing resources through Distributed Autonomous Corporations. We discuss the wisdom of making many small bets over single large bets and wonder whether a distributed black mail platform is in our future.
Today on the podcast we talk about a simple way to predict the future — simply exaggerate current trends. But this doesn’t lead to accurate prediction, it leads to “Super-Now” predictions where everything is shinier, faster, or on steroids, but nothing is actually new. We cover a lot of classic and modern Sci Fi that fails in this regard and talk about several of the people who are pushing back against the conventional wisdom that the more things change, the more they stay the same. We discuss the movies SLEEPER, STAR WARS, WALL-E, IDIOCRACY, SECONDS and ETERNAL SUNSHINE, and work by Greg Egan, Cory Doctorow, David Marusek, Ramez Naam, Ray Bradbury, Gary Shteyngart and Albert Brooks.
“I’m appalled by the notion of ‘eternal human verities’ — a loathsome concept, foisted by brooding, husk-like academics, proclaiming that people will forever be the same, repeating every Proustian obsession, every omphaloskeptic navel-contemplation, and every dopey mistake of our parents and their parents all the way until time’s end. A horrible concept that is-fortunately disproved by history and science and every generation of bright kids who strive to climb a little higher than their ignorant ancestors. And to raise kids of their own who will be better still. The greatest story. The greatest possible story.” (David Brin)
In this episode, we ask how culture would be impacted by radically increased lifespans. We go over the main arguments made by longevity research experts like Aubrey De Grey and Ray Kurzweil, and we discuss Sonia Arrison’s book 100+. We discuss expanded health spans and acknowledge that a right to die would be even more important in a world with such technology. What kind of impacts would this type of technology have on work, leadership, inequality, social services, and family? Would we design high-efficiency people to defeat starvation? Would term limits apply to immortal individuals? Are we heading for a nightmare world where the poor are condemned to death and the rich live forever?
Addendums/Corrections:
Right after we recorded this, Peter Diamandis and Craig Venter started another new longevity company, Human Longevity, Inc.
In the podcast Jon says Pasteur proved germ theory in the 1860s. That’s not exactly right. Agostino Bassi proved germ theory way back in 1813, but it was Pasteur’s more rigorous later experiments that further cemented his findings. However that information still hadn’t reached the President of the United States’s doctors in 1881, when doctors removing a bullet from James Garfield did not use antiseptic, leading to his death.
In this podcast we return to the idea of technological unemployment: if it’s happening, what should we do? We consider three ways technological unemployment might be defeated: rising standards of living might outrun inequality, education and cognitive enhancement might solve our retraining problems, or new platforms and needs might emerge and create new demands. But if that doesn’t happen, we have three types of options. We cover the range of options from recidivism to artificial scarcity, to enhanced social safety nets.
In this week’s podcast, we discuss common communications and computer interfaces in science fiction and ask whether those AI assistants and videophones really make sense. We retell David Foster Wallace’s story about the failure of the videophone from Infinite Jest, and we argue that Samantha from Her would be just as annoying as Microsoft Clippy. We also wonder whether the mind-to-mind connections in Nexus are as likely to take off as a future Snapchat might be.
In this extra-long podcast, we review the important new book from MIT’s Andrew McAfee and Erik Brynjolfsson, THE SECOND MACHINE AGE: Work, Progress, and Prosperity in a Time of Brilliant Technologies. The first half is a detailed, Cliffs-Notes version of the book’s arguments for those that have not read it; others may want to skip to our criticisms, which begin in earnest at 00:38. The book details how technological progress is driving growth of both ‘bounty’ and ‘spread,’ and makes a compelling argument for the possibility of technological unemployment occurring. It also makes suggestions for the long and short term, and there is where we have most of our disagreements with the authors.
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A COMPARISON OF NEGATIVE INCOME TAX WITH BASIC INCOME
In the book the authors argue that a negative income tax is preferable to a basic income because a negative income tax will better incentivize people to work. But is there really any substantive difference?
(1) Negative Income Tax
(As described by Friedman/McAfee/Brynjolfsson in the Second Machine Age)
MILTON FRIEDMAN: “Under present law…if you happen to be the head of a family of four, for example, and you have $ 3,000 of income, you neither pay a tax nor receive any benefit from it. You’re just on the break-even point… The idea of a Negative Income Tax is that, when your income is below the break-even point, you would get a fraction of it as a payment “from” the government. You would receive the funds instead of paying them.”
MCAFEE AND BRYNJOLFSSON: “If the negative income tax rate were 50 percent, the person making $2,000 would get $500 back from the government, which is $1,000 (the negative taxable income) times .50 (the 50-percent negative income tax rate), and would thus have total income for that year of $ 2,500. A person with zero income would get $ 1,500 from the government, since they had $ 3,000 of negative taxable income.”
The Math:
Break-Even Point (BEP): $3000
Negative Income Tax Rate (Rate): 50%
Formula: Income + (Rate)(3000 – BEP)
Summary:
Sets an income floor at $1500. Each $1 earned adds $0.50 to your bottom line.
(2) Basic Income
(Calibrated to match the negative income tax example)
The Math:
Basic Income (BI): $1500
Tax Rate (Rate): 50%
Formula: BI + (1-Rate)(Income)
Summary:
Sets an income floor at $1500. Each $1 earned adds $0.50 to your bottom line.
CONCLUSION
As you can see, the Negative Income Tax and Basic Income systems produce very similar results. We’re not sure how Negative Income Tax is supposed to do a better job of incentivizing work.
In particular, we can’t make sense of the book’s claim that “Below the cutoff point in the example…every dollar earned still increases total income by $1.50.” Using their own numbers it seems that every dollar earned below the cut off point only earns $0.50.
There are real potential advantages to a Negative Income Tax: most importantly that it can more easily be implemented using existing infrastructure, a fact which McAfee/Brynjolfsson do acknowledge in the book. We happen to think this particular advantage vastly outweighs any theoretical premium on work.
In this week’s podcast, we do the thought experiment of what happens in a theoretically super-abundant future: what things remain scarce and still retain economic value? Further, as we approach that point, where are the safe areas to try to find work?
We list all the scarce goods we can think of in four categories: scarcities of time such as Attention, Convenience, First Release, Novel Real-time Experiences, Originals, Potential, scarcity of space such as Land, scarcities of matter like Computation and Raw Materials, and scarcities of what we call human interaction like Empathy, Goodwill, Belonging, Privacy, and Status.
Please help us add to or defeat the items on this list. What are we missing?
On the podcast this week, we discuss the state of narrative in a world where technological change is accelerating. We start with William Gibson’s now decade-old attempt to write recent-past rather than near-future speculative work and continue to talk about the perceived rise in period, future and ambiguous time periods in contemporary films and novels. We suggest that trend might continue as the present technological moment becomes more and more of a moving target.
Today’s podcast reviews Tyler Cowen’s new book Average is Over: Powering America Beyond the Age of the Great Stagnation. The book’s thesis is that machine intelligence and other factors are driving a trend toward much greater inequality in America. We discuss Tyler’s conservative political persuasion and the relative plausibility of his near future vision. Will we build a favela in Texas? How much can man-machine freestyle chess competitions teach us about the future of the job market? Will free wifi really be enough to keep the bottom 85% from revolting?
In this week’s podcast, we review Her, Spike Jonze’s entertaining new movie about a human-AI relationship. How well does it hold up from the point of view of speculation? Is the world fully realized and consistent? Do the characters seem like they inhabit the world of the film? We discuss the construction of a near-future Los Angeles out of Pudong skyscrapers and consider some elements of its future world that the movie did not address.
An Intelligence Explosion is the idea that a greater-than-human intelligent machine will quickly design a greater-than-itself intelligent machine, and so on, until very rapidly the intelligence of artificial systems greatly outstrips that of humanity. Is this hard takeoff scenario realistic? Is it possible? Is there any way to encourage future super-intelligent machines to be friendly?
When we were growing up, kids knew how to use the internet and adults didn’t. Should we expect that our kids will have a similar experience? Are generation gaps declining as access expands, attitudes change, longevity increases, and interest trumps age as an indicator of knowledge? Rebellion largely seems irrelevant and the only exception to that we could imagine is rising inequality.
We ask “Is privacy coming to an end, and if so, what does that mean exactly?” We examine progress in the areas of always-on surveillance and lifelogging, facial recognition, and other technologies that are eroding traditional spheres of privacy. Might this lead to tyranny or to greater tolerance? Is a transparent, sousveillance society that watches back the answer?
What is technological unemployment, and should we be worried about it? Hosts Jon Perry and Ted Kupper discuss the problems associated with technological unemployment and some possible responses in this episode .
In this first episode of the REVIEW THE FUTURE podcast, we speculate on the topic of accelerating technological returns. If technological progress is truly accelerating, that has wide reaching implications.
