Debate: Robots will eventually dominate the world

Soho Forum Debate,
October 17, 2016
"Robots will eventually dominate the world and eliminate human abilities to earn wages."

Robin Hanson of George Mason University
vs. Bryan Caplan of George Mason University.

The Soho Forum is a monthly debate series held in Soho/Noho, Manhattan.

Moderated by Gene Epstein, the economics editor of Barron's, The Soho Forum features some of the most highly regarded speakers across varied fields, and the audience actively engages with the speakers.

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[tomekczajka]

18:00 Bryan claims that robots will *never* create original music. Well here we are 6 years later -- he was wrong.

[LukeAvedon]

Caplan is my favorite super-duper-uber-nerd in the whole wide world.

[SilvioPorto]

"He's the CEO, bitch". Nice, Caplan is such a boss.

[usandmexico]

Bryan dismantled Robin's arguments. The fact that they are friends and colleagues, and how well aware Bryan is of Robin's views, is indicative of how decisive Robin's failure is here.

It seems to be an example of how a smart guy like Robin can affirm erroneous things in face of overwhelming arguments and still not relent.

[CarrotManShow]

Caplan destroyed Robin's argument pretty quick.

[fikamonster]

sorta interesting to listen to, but it feels like both of them were talking about wildly different things

[StatelessLiberty]

Bryan’s argument about domestication makes no sense. We know why domestication hasn’t produced dogs that play chess — because when you selectively breed you eventually use up the variation in the population, after which you have to rely on mutation (a slow process) to introduce new variation. There’s also the fact of long generation times. AI doesn’t have similar problems.

[lemonpaper]

I, for one, welcome our new robot overlords.

[SpeakBritishEnglishTV]

This argument that productive robots would have the 'aggression' of productive people is blatantly flawed. That 'trade of'f is a characteristic of humans, not a universal characteristic of productive systems!

[juscuzz]

From the start..they couldn’t even keep with their own guidelines for the debate. LOL

[nonmagicmike]

Did this... did this guy just said machines earned income?

[johnkosowski]

Let's ban farm machinery to create jobs! We can farm with shovels and employ many more people. Better yet, let's farm with spoons. We can have full employment, but no one could afford to eat.

[CopperNoir]

Conclusion: robots will dominate half the world.

[strawprophet]

16 min in and caplan's argument is just terrible.

[AtlasFullsun]

Workers would no longer be exploited! Yay. We can get our communes or socialist co-ops going.

[EdSuastegui]

Bryan just keeps hand-waving the "construct" away, simply asserting "I don't think that's possible" without presenting any compelling reasons for the assertion. What would prevent a select-powerful few humans from evolving robots to serve them at the detriment of the rest of mankind is not something to be waved away with facile shoulder-shrugging.