Ask HN: Where is society heading, is there a plan for a jobless future?

No, it really isn't. We've already been down this road, multiple times over history. Look at the jobs people did 100 years ago, or even 500 years ago. Core services to keep societal infrastructure running, including education and food production, is still here. Different, but still absolutely a good chunk of the work done in this world. We have never automated away that core 30-40% of work in the world, we just changed what everyone else did. The change just feels bigger to those of us who work in tech, which falls squarely in the "other" category that isn't truly the core of a functioning humanity.

AI might bring significant change, or it might not - we're still too early to tell, and recent news about how almost no companies are getting their ROI on AI is proof of that. Odds are, it will go the way the tractor did 100 years ago: Quick adoption, quick failure, quick reversion, pause for a decade to re-assess and improve, then actual adoption and success after that decade. So, around 2037.

We're 10 years from even knowing if this is a fad or if it is real societal change.

The writing is absolutely not on the wall.

living on UBI will be miserable, and as such common folk will become even more and absolutely reliant on the government, especially when services and payments are completely digitalized...

in this kind of world, unless space exploration is a thing, massive oppression of common people and wars will be on the menu

it will be a disorderly abandonment of the old order followed by warring factions seeking to impose an advantaged new order

eventually there are enough survivors sick of fighting that the fighting stops, day one of the new order

it has always been this way, there’s no stopping it

My best guess is that we will mostly see wars and a societal collapse. People want things, things have scarcity. If people feel they are entitled to more than they have, they will steal/fight/etc. As people become disconnected from the work that goes into production and the satisfaction from contributing, the entitlement grows.

Using 3-5 robots to managed whatever small acreage they amassed. From harvesting,canning and storing into a food pantry. Nearly every household has this automated and 100% owned. Robots get repaired by hand or by another robot. Robots or human operation manage Aeroponics/Aquaponics systems for growing more 'exotic' food items

The neighborhood becomes and micro economy where we barter with each other casually for swapping ingredient inventory.

Probably pretty enjoyable for the first generation or two that previously had corporate 9-5s. Maybe the kids growing up in that environment get bored and crave some other type of lifestyle. I would probably be pretty satisfied to spend my day cooking things I grew myself or shared with neighbors.

I mean think about implementing a proper permaculture food system on your property, like Mark Shepard, but automated...

A solar punk-ish future awaits.

people will definitely still fight over water resources. if not more than ever.

idk, just the scenario I fantasize about when owning a few bots. maybe I would take up some craftsmanship of some kind when I'm not debugging some robot that stalled out in the fields.

In 2025 to 2026 the UK is forecast to spend £334.0 billion on the social security system payments. This will partly cover the rollout of UBI.

There will be no tax on UBI and you still get even if you work.

The "the lazy bastards wont want to work if we give them free money" crowd are wrong.

Currently people at the bottom of the lower socio-economic classes really struggle from one day to the next. They are not living, they are surviving. The evidence shows that those same poor people will work, because the extra money they earn will lift them out of poverty.

currently, if someone in the UK is claiming benefits, they are not allowed to work, if they work they commit fraud and lose their benefits. Hence, people are trapped in the benefit system. They are poor if the work and they are poor if they claim benefits.

The rich and business will have to pay more to support the structure.

The volunteer sector will thrive. I loved working as a volunteer. I did it for 10 years as a psychotherapist offering my services for free.

UBI, I hope will provide us with a pathway back to equality, civility and humanity.

fingers crossed

The same thing happened in the industrial revolution... This might be different than that but freeing up resources from menial tasks means we can work at a higher level.

AI might be able to do that too, and there will be a period of adjustment, but we as a whole need to change a and move forward together. Not just tech bros. Government and industry will also need to change to help society... Else we will have collapse.

Why not just aim to be near the top? You don't need to be top dog, but you can at least be in the top 10% which is doable if you're able to post on HN.

You know if you just look at the last even like 200 years people have been through like 100x worse shit, let alone the last 2000.

This is just how life is, there will always be massive disruptions.

Long story short: massive reduction of population

Of course, this is science fiction; But the answer is still legit and everybody knows that: how do we keep 8 billions occupied ? Useless work (as of know, for an increasing part of the population), drugs or thinning the herd

That already happened decades ago. Less than 10% of the population does the work necessary to provide more than 80% of goods and services.

The majority of adults in the industrialized world do not do any productive work (regardless if they have employment or not). And on top of this, a huge percentage of adults - maybe 20% - have never done even one day of productive work in their entire life and will live from cradle to grave without ever having contributed.

Among those who actually do some productive work, most are doing it at a small fraction of their potential.

Industrialization of goods production and agriculture, combined with digitalization, has made contribution and reward completely disconnected. Meaning most industrialized nations have scam economies, regardless if the nations are communist, capitalist, or anything in between. Your salary, your employment, your wealth, has no connection to how much you contribute to the economy. That is true both for individuals and for businesses.

Everybody I know in real life who actually works for a living is doing the work of 5-10 people. That's their productive output. A factory worker is probably in the range of 40-50 people, as well as an industrialized farmer.

So you are already living in the scenario which you fear. We're already in the jobless future, and the solutions will continue to be the same: government handouts, fake jobs at fake businesses and fake public services, money manipulation to boost real estate fake appreciation, regulatory manipulation to create new streams of income for people not working, etc.

We are still quite a ways away from a robot showing up to the home or business to fix plumbing along with many other blue-collar jobs. It will happen but I have no clue when or if it will even happen in my lifetime. The prototype robots that could in theory do these jobs have a lot of development, real world testing and improvements before they are commercially viable in my opinion.

Like FSD they will have to prove themselves to multiple levels of government before they are permitted to perform regulated and licensed functions. Electrician, Plumber, Civic Engineering, Certified Aircraft Mechanic, etc... There are known-unknowns that will have to be dealt with before a generic robot is permitted into a home and operate around children such as security hardening and physical safety. How much strength, bending and killing power will a generic robot be permitted to have? What is the most damage a hacker can do to adults and children via remote control of a robot? Will all robots be required to have a "safe word" that is hard wired into their firmware and a physical cut-off switch in a standard location?

There will be unknown-unknowns that pop up along the way slowing their progression. There is also the aspect of insurance and liability for generic robots operating in a commercial environment, proof of protection from IP theft, protection from take-over by competitors. There will be questions such as what is a robots responsibility if it observes a human in danger, a human breaking laws, another robot malfunctioning or harming a human and so on.

Will these robots be permitted to share everything they witness with a company and / or government? What privacy laws will exist? What happens if a robot starts to exhibit true sentience and not just mimicry of sentience like LLM's? Will their be a legal process to validate sentience? What rights will robots be afforded? Will sentient robots be given human rights? Will a marriage between a human and robot be legally recognized? If a robot breaks the law will it be punished or would that fall back to the corporation as a "industrial incident" of sorts? How will we determine the line between accident and remote assassination?

Yes I have watched iRobot way too many times and I have always enjoyed Isaac Asimov's works.

As for UBI, something has to pay for it. In the USA we already have a massive national debt and the petro dollar may not exist much longer the only thing allowing us to have such a massive dept. Do we cancel all existing welfare and related programs and consolidate them into UBI? Would that even begin to pay for such a universally applied program for hundreds of millions of people? I know people will suggest Robin Hood tactics like excessive taxes on the wealthy but that would be short lived even if it were ever approved. What would be the viable long term strategy?

Oh right, and there will still be a need for firefighters, law enforcement, medical response. Do we trust robots and their masters enough to have Robocops, ED-209's, Armadyne Corp. droids and all the other dystopian fictional robots regulating us humans? Corporations and their lobbyists make most of the laws.