Teaching a robot to fish.

If you give a man a fish, he will eat for a day.

If you teach a man to fish, he will eat for a lifetime.

If you teach a robot to fish...what happens? Do we all eat, or do we all starve?

Quote from Sardonic Pickle

Dunno, but what would happen if you teach a fish to robot?

You gotta respect the [Serious Discussion] tag, bruh. Or I will permaban the fuck outta you. I don't care if you're sleeping with my boss, I take this shit serious, ya dig?

When it comes to robots, and more relevantly, the automation of human labor, there are two schools of thought. The first is the science fiction future, like we see in Star Trek. We envision a world where technology has freed us from our labors, and we all live lives of intellectual, scientific, and artistic pursuit. The jobs that need to be done are all being done, and so, nobody has to work.

The other vision is one that is unfortunately more grounded in reality. Detroit was an economic powerhouse in America. They made cars, and they made them well. But then we figured out how to automate car production, and everybody in Detroit lost their jobs. Now it's America's biggest slum. You can literally buy a house in Detroit for $1, because owners are that desperate to unload worthless properties they have to pay taxes on. Animals are literally reclaiming parts of the city. There's a reason Robocop is set in Detroit: a city where poverty (and thus, crime) runs rampant. And a city where police being replaced by machines would have an extra layer of meaning.

In the real world, the jobs that need to be done are being done by machines. But only the machine owner profits. The rest of us starve.

There's something to be said for the value of work. But perhaps it could be a matter of education and social pressure. We should teach our kids to find something to pursue with all of their effort and drive. A man without a goal has no purpose.

And yeah:

I honestly thought this was not a serious post at all and the tag was just poking fun at this. I think at times you overestimate our knowledge, haha.
Only after you answer SP I understood better were you were coming from. I think if we teach a robot to fish we all eat but if we mass produce Robots with the ability to fish we all starve.

I think the idea of humanity free of their labours to pursue knowledge puts way too much faith in humanity. I think without labour things can go in very different ways as not everybody values knowledge or learning as much as other individuals and even those who do the topics of their interest are also so diverse as their intentions once gained certain knowledge. I think the internet is a good reflection of what kind of things we pursue. The other extreme is scary but what makes it feel closer to reality for me is how great of a business is War and the constant fight for the upper hand. Before military suit armours or Robotic Armies I am more concerned with nano-robots. As technology allows for more capacity being planted in smaller chips.

I like the rules of the robots regarding human interaction but I don't think we should build something that can screw us over if they decide to disregard the initial purpose. When I was in school I laughed at the notion of Robot with awareness. Now while I am not believing a Robot can see itself as "I", it is possible to program self-learning techniques. I also guess Hall did leave an impact when I watched the Odyssey, haha.

I do put a lot of faith in humanity. We're deeply flawed, and we're often stuck moving at the pace of the most regressive among our number, but I believe in the infinite potential of our species for greatness. It's true that in our world today, not everyone values labor, or knowledge, or learning. But I think that, someday, their children could.

If we revised our education system to promote a love of learning and of productivity, then I think the majority of humanity would come to love those things. They'd become the sort of people who could truly thrive in a society where the ability to live was freely given, rather than paid for in drudgery. Unfortunately our education system isn't geared towards that end. In my opinion, education is one of the most important failings of the United States. (And honestly, I don't know of a nation on earth that really lives up to the potential of what a public education COULD offer.)

With regards to AI, I think that's a different issue. The majority of human labor could be replaced without the full leap to truly intelligent machines. But, to briefly touch on the idea: I think the response of machines will greatly depend on how we treat them. Will we treat them still as our slaves? Then perhaps they will come to resent us. Will we treat them with hatred? Then surely they will return hatred to us.

Or, when artificial intelligence is truly created, will we greet it as a sibling? A creature that is wholely and truly a person without being human. An equal partner in our own explorations of the universe? That's the future I like to hope for.

Although, again, I don't think it necessarily connects to issue of automation being used for the general good as opposed to being used for the enrichment of individuals.

It was always a serious discussion. I opened with an analogy that apparently didn't land very well.