For the computer part of Sam's essay, I'd
suggest that we are a long way from
<i>artificial intelligence</i> (AI) software
being significantly more economically
valuable than what we've been writing
for decades -- various cases of applied
math, applied science, engineering,
and business record keeping.<p>To support this claim, once I was in
an AI group at the IBM Watson lab
in Yorktown Heights, NY. We published
a stack of papers; I was one of three
of us that gave a paper at an AAAI IAAI
conference at Stanford. My view of the
good papers at that conference was that
they were just good computer-aided
problem solving as in applied math,
applied science, and engineering and
owed essentially nothing to AI.
Later I took one of our major
problems we were trying to solve
with AI, stirred up some new
stuff in mathematical statistics,
got a much better solution (and
did publish the paper in
<i>Information Sciences</i>).
That experience
and observation since is the support for
my claim. Sure, this support is just
my opinion, and YMMV.<p>Instead of AI with a lot of economic value,
I would suggest that
closer in is a scenario of
people managing computers managing computers ...
managing computers doing the work.<p>And what work will those computers do?
Sure, first cut, the usual -- food,
clothing, shelter, transportation,
education, medical care.<p>So,
maybe John Deere will have a <i>worker</i>
computer on a tractor doing the spring
plowing, the summer cultivating, and
the fall harvesting. Then food can
get cheaper. Maybe before the
plowing a tractor will traverse the
ground, take an analyze soil samples
for each, say, square yard, and
apply appropriate chemicals.<p>Maybe GM will have car factories with
robots driven by computers doing essentially
all the work. Then cars can get cheaper.<p>Maybe Weyerhaeuser or Toll Brothers
will have pre-fab house factories
with robots driven by computers doing
essentially all the work,
self-driving trucks delivering the
big boxes, computer driven earth
movers doing the site preparation,
computer driven robots putting up the
forms for the concrete basement
walls, computer driven
concrete pumpers inserting the
concrete from self-driving
concrete trucks,
and houses will get a lot cheaper.<p>And the computers get cheaper.<p>So, right, we're talking deflation.
So, have the government print
some money and spend it on
K-12 and college education,
guaranteed annual income,
parks, beautiful highways,
etc. Print enough money
to reverse the deflation
and hire a lot of people.
Those people buy the
cheap food, cars, and houses,
have children, and fill the
classrooms of the
additional education.<p>What education? Sure: How the
heck to develop all those
robots, managing computers, worker computers, computer
driven farm machinery,
car factories,
pre-fab house factories,
etc.<p>Or, as computers eliminate jobs,
basically the result is deflation,
and that's the easiest thing
in the world to stop, and the
solution is the nicest thing
in the world --
just print money to get us
out of deflation.<p>We already know what people want
from the famous one word
answer "More".<p>Computers should be a blessing,
not a curse.