So what do we do when when nobody has a job?

[Lorizael]

What about people whose idea of creativity is Jackass and whose last learning experience was Duck Dynasty?

/me shrugs. Not my place to judge. But when our education system is run by super-intelligent robots, we might not raise people with such interests.

Anyway, why should the owners of those robots pay you to go all tie-dyed and Walden Pond?

Perhaps they'll set apart reservations where the unemployed masses can make a living on their own dimes.

Well, TMM mentions a Basic Income. But more generally, economics is the science of scarcity. When scarcity is gone, we don't need economics. (Yes, there will always be scarcity of one sort or another, but there won't always be scarce resources we decide to pay for with money earned from labor.)

[Felch]

Anyway, why should the owners of those robots pay you to go all tie-dyed and Walden Pond?

The same reason the Romans had their bread and circuses. Rich people don't want their houses burnt down or their throats cut.

[N35t0r]

circii?

[korn469]

Everyone talks about how Netflix killed blockbuster, but in many ways it wasn't Netflix, which relies heavily on automation. If you think about it, redbox is a type of robot and it replaced the ubiquitous movie rental store. Where I'm at there are redboxes all over. I've read that McDonald's is working on an automated cash register. I think when deployed it will be like automated cash registers, with some type of network app support as well. There will still be one cashier, but there will be multiple automated that can take orders. This will replace between 2-6 workers per McDonalds, and it will rapidly spread to other restaurants similar to McDonalds. Because of the assembly line process subway has, I predict in 10 years time there will be a fully automated subway. it would be bigger than a redbox, but smaller than a current subway, open 24 hours a day, with no labor costs. I need to paten this, so I can sue them when it happens.

[ColdWizard]

I'm sure that's already been patented and is probably already in operation in Japan.

[Spaced Cowboy]

I just hope I can make it to retirement before I get taken out 10-15 years... I got a shot.

Honestly, spending 3 hours at the Baxter demo made me not worry so much. I deal with electrical and mechanical design, can you guess which is less problematic?

[The Mad Monk]

If my experience at the plant means anything, it's mechanical. Mechanical breakdowns are easy to identify, and delays are a matter of finding the parts. Electrical breakdowns are anything between a blown fuse and somebody messing with drive parameters, with the occasional 3-phase going 2-phase as a change up. Man, I just love those $15,000 drive replacements.

edit: changed electrical to mechanical; I misread the question.

[Dr Strangelove]

The same reason the Romans had their bread and circuses. Rich people don't want their houses burnt down or their throats cut.

The Romans didn't have robot guards. Perhaps the unemployed could be placed in economically efficient reservations where they could practice their "creativity" at a minimum of expense to the Owners.

[Sir Og]

The unemployed have a lot more votes than the Owners however.

There is bound to be more distribution of incomes if it becomes obvious that only small fraction of the people are needed for production of all necessary goods and services.

If the Owners decide that they don't want to make all those goods and services if they have to pay such high taxes then there will be more jobs for the unemployed so problem is fixed either way.

[The Mad Monk]

It is also interesting to consider the impact on trade. A number of nations are dependent on income generated by cheap industrial goods made by low-paid workers. If Automation out-competes them, how will they be impacted?

[Sava]

I thought you were saying you're a human level AI.

I've not ruled out that possibility

[DaShi]

My goal is to be one of the last productive humans. I'm pretty sure that by the time the bots get to me there will only be a million or so people working. I bet this will prove lucrative. Then I can enjoy the singularity on a private beach somewhere.

My goal is simple to be the last human.

[My Wife Hates CIV]

I camp a lot.

[Elok]

I didn't watch the OP video (bandwidth limits) but I was thinking something vaguely similar to this. I have a hard time believing in a work-free utopia; I can, however, easily believe in a situation where all unskilled labor is automated, leaving low-competence workers completely SOL. I know the traditional economic argument is that such fears are unfounded, because automation creates new opportunities, but if all the crappy jobs are taken, what do all the ex-grocery checkout people do? They're not likely up to programming and maintaining robots, and in any case those robots shouldn't need caretakers in a 1:1 ratio.

[Ben Kenobi]

In theory, the way it works is that the average unit cost would drop. Thus, making things more affordable than they were previously. This is no different than the question of, "what would people do if there was no farming work?" We went from about 50 percent of the people employed in farming to something like .2 percent now.

So what happens to all these low skill jobs? There will be other low skill jobs created as a result of the increase in productivity.

Think about what jobs a robot couldn't or wouldn't be able to do anytime soon that still need to be done.