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Uvtha- t1_iy9c1zx wrote

Reply to comment by ZephkielAU in How will the space economy alter society? by Gari_305

Really depends how far into the future. Once advanced AI is working in tandem with advanced robotics and advanced space flight (likely once the AI comes it will develop the other two better than humans could) there really won't be much for humans to do that a AI designed and operated robot cant do like 100x more efficiently, including take care of the robots/AI. I imagine there will be people around to try to keep the AI from deciding that humans are no longer worth the upkeep, but beyond that it's just gonna be... a search of ways to pleasantly spend our time/avoid collective madness? I'm guessing virtual reality will be ubiquitous.

I don't really see how the concept of money as we understand it will be sustainable when no one has work to do, and resources are really only limited by how far we can go in space.

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ZephkielAU t1_iya1brq wrote

Automation hasn't really done much to reduce our work/workload. They just gave us new tasks to pick from

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Uvtha- t1_iyc978c wrote

Not yet, but it almost certainly will. When we have more advanced robotics, and fully functional AI systems they will replace most if not functionally all human labor.

The real reason automation hasn't replaced human labor is that the robots still require human input. When AI reaches a sufficient stage it no longer will. Also at that point there will likely be a shift away from robotics designed to be utilized by human to ones designed to be utilized by AI. Things like operating nano machine masses in tandem that humans couldn't even accomplish if they wanted to.

To be clear I'm talking about more like in 100+ years than in 10-20 or whatever. It really depends on how advanced AI gets how quickly but there's no reason not to expect (barring our premature extinction) that eventually AI/robotic systems will be able to do anything humans can currently do, but better and faster, including art. Even in it's current infancy we can see how easily it can replicate human effort, just project that down the line.

At such a point human labor (and even human creativity) will become superfluous at a technical level in almost all situations. What happens to humanity from there, it's hard to say. It could be the end of us, or some weird transhumanist shift, or I dunno a voluntary simplification into one of those goofy star-treky super agrarian utopias ... who can really say.

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