What will people be doing when the robots are doing everything?

[NooNaNa]

Just saw a sculpture being sculpted by a robot and I ponder what exactly will humans be for when art, literature, science, farming and banking are run by robots?

Will we have to own our own robots to make a living? Will we be like the humans in the Disney film Walle? Sitting in armchairs doom scrolling and eating crap?

Probably.

I’m kind of hoping we will slowly disappear. I can’t stand the human race. It disgusts me daily.

It’s been told in hundreds of stories. It’s the next step in evolution. AI will take over and get rid of the humans

Robot maintenance?

People will have asked the same questions at every stage of industrialisation and mechanisation. What will portrait painters do once photography becomes mainstream? What will spinners and weavers do once textiles can all be machine made? What will happen to everyone who works in agriculture once we no longer need anyone to hand milk cows and churn butter by hand and thresh wheat? What will happen to stonemasons, to bookbinders, to the men who light the streetlights every night? Other things evolve to occupy us; and sometimes they don’t evolve and simply provide us with extra free time and less labour to do.

Basically, just staying alive used to be a full time job (and indeed still is for many people in developing countries.) The developed world has used technology to create itself greater comfort and more leisure time. AI, for all the scare stories (which people said about all kinds of previous technology) will ultimately continue that.

I get that progress is necessary, otherwise we'd all be wearing smocks and wielding scythes in fields. I must be of limited imagination because what I can't work out is how the poor are going to survive. It seems as if the Haves will be ok but that Have Nots will be left to be exploited.
Seems as if we are progressing in all areas but our contempt for the poor seems to grow?

This.

Also, robots can't do care and nursing.

Presumably they will continue to learn and increase their intelligence to the point where we no longer understand them, and we are too simple for them to notice. They’ll do there things and we’ll get back to the scythes and smocks.

I think the population will fall massively once most of us are surplus to requirements - like the population of horses once motorcars, tractors etc were introduced. I presume it will happen slowly with plenty of divide-and-conquer rhetoric and policies, so there will be no effective resistance.

People will need to adapt and the next generations should aim towards jobs/careers that aren't easily done by robots.

It's not a "rich" versus "poor" thing at all. A lot of the jobs that still need doing manually will probably be manual skills that the "poor" can learn to do. Likewise a lot will be high tech jobs, i.e. designing, programming, etc to create and program the robots.

I fear more for the "middlers" such as pen pushers and semi professionals which is where I see the next batch of automation. Factory/production lines have already been automated in the last few decades. The vast swathes of people doing data input, making spreadsheets, PC data manipulation, reporting, etc., are probably the next casualties of AI.

Robots/AI will be able to do all the repetitive work (as in factories today), maybe like building new houses from prefab "kits" or decorate a newly built house. But I can't ever see AI being "smart" enough to rewire an old house, or lime-mortar an old wall, or replace an old house roof.

Look at farming - back in the day, the "manual" farmers would plant and harvest every possible square foot of their land - with automation/machinery, etc., it's only "efficient" to plant and harvest large square/rectangle fields, so lots of smaller "plots" are now ignored.

AI/Robots always takes the "easy" but repetitive tasks - not the niche/specialist/unusual stuff,

@Kazzyhoward People still have a role where they are cheaper than robots, such as for some factory jobs involving manual dexterity. But who knows how long that situation will last?

Won't other robots be able to do that?

Also, robots can't do care and nursing Don't underestimate robots.

Not yet, but give it another 20 years.

I'm choosing to believe that AI and robots will eventually lead to us all having a lot more free time, and more financial equality for all.

When there's nowhere near enough jobs for us all, then universal basic income will have to become a thing. It'll probably get worse before it gets better, but people with nothing better to do are far more likely to riot and start killing off the rich, than people who are worried about losing their jobs.

At some point we'll reach a new equilibrium that will be better for all. That is if the climate doesn't kill us all first.

The rich elite will keep some people as slaves. Everyone else will be surplus to requirements and disposed of as and when.

The slaves will be used to: produce food, maintain infrastructure, produce more slaves, provide entertainment for the rich and clean up.