A renaissance -- the coming end of human work | Kevin Surace | TEDxOrangeCoast 

This guy does a really good job about telling us how humans will not be needed for anything at all but he never explains who will buy any of this automation or how they will be able to afford it. He seems real excited about the technology and not at all concerned for people or society.

automation is coming a lot sooner than people think. it could be in the next few years. tech is moving at such a fast pace.

it's now 2017, and the things he is saying are more and more becoming a reality

I want this to be true and my fantasy is that people devote themselves to self improvement and focusing on science like we see in Star Trek. The sad truth is that our world is run by banker and corporate elite. What is their motivation to allow average people to survive if they are not needed to support the elite.

There won't be an end to work. There will be more work. But this new work will be more rewarding, more meaningful, less drudgery (except for the usual amounts that has to happen in any endeavor), more fun, less dangerous. They will be work that we want to do, like digging around for fossils or writing music or books, or running faster to beat our personal best from last year.

This is a very inciteful video. Jacque Fresco's vision of the future in the Venus Project will become a reality as we make the necessary transition to avoid the ecological, social and economic upheaval that can be seen starting to surface around the world.

True visionary. This definitely holds up 5 years later.

Unlimited vacation for everyone!

Wow! Still nice to watch the talk 2 years later!

Are we returning to Paradise, now with our slaves? Or we're going to a scenario described by "Utopia 14" - Kurt Vonnegut? Remember that in Renaissance a very few people (rich) participate and enjoyed the fruits of Art, Science, etc...

Music is hardly new, but inspires us everyday Inspiration drives us humans

things are coming true... ANDREW YANG 2020

Automation's big problem: all the gains in productivity go to the owners of capital. Not us.

This is a great idea and the whole world should do this. Even third world countries that have corrupt governenments can afford it when the politicians start investing in the population instead of themselves! Time to implement this and let people stop being enslaved but be free to think and do something better with their lives!

I don't mind working as long as I can get paid well enough so I can actually enjoy my life and not just live for my next paycheck. I've honestly considered suicide a few times cause I'm only making $11.23 an hour and having to pay Rent, Bills, Car insurance, Gas, Household supplies, Puting food on the table. And then people tell me to save my money and I'm thinking to myself "What money?" People also talking about saving for the future but yet I'm barely surviving right now as it is. Something needs to change.

Once I started looking into robotic systems, AI, exponential growth and UBI universal basic income (freedom dividend) - it's amazing how many TED Talks there are and how many great minds have researched this and put their information out for everyone to see, hear and read. I now support Andrew Yang for president because he is the candidate that has a vision of what will happen and what is happening. He is forward-thinking on how to go with the future and not being overcome by it

You know most TED Talks are really not so great but have millions of views, this one shows what future is ahead of us at least technogically. And has only 4k, My question is which country in the world will first hit 90 percent unemployment? It sounds great that everything will be automatically done by machines, but how long will it take to introduce a basic income on a national scale?

I have the luxury to not having to have a job and I still give myself one and wanna be good at it. Jobs can be awesome, it depends mostly on the community.

Certainly technology could improve our lives in an amazing way. Good talk Kevin! And also excellent expositor!

Kevin Surace always brings it home, great talk.

The previous industrial revolution didn't bring this renaissance that he talks of. on the contrary, it enslaved the artisan villages as one screw in the factory.

A really uplifting speech! Thank you.

Absolutely incredible presentation!

A very nice thought provoking presentation on the meaning of humans beings existence.

I've been trying to ponder WHY AM I here as much as I can. BUT. I'm tied to a CRIMINAL AND VIOLENT BANKING SYSTEM. Which forces me to make a PROMISE of SLAVE WORK for the next 25 YEARS to have MY BASE NEEDS COVERED. And I live in a "DEVELOPPED" country.

well, i guess we could always do TED presentations in the future

ugh. I love my career. All the history behind seafaring, sure history isn't the future, but it makes me happy. I suppose I could have a private yacht by means of just randomly generating one without having any fiscal means.

Resource based economy for a better future.

Renaissance may come sooner than expected - amazing how retirement can so quickly change the description we have of ourselves when retirement essentially ends 'who we are'...... No amount of technology can change that - and we may find we lose 'who we are' when we aren't 'who or what' we were in the early years.....

There won't be a perfect job because there won't be a job. Yes, this means the end to economic slavery but unless we have another mean of distributing wealth to people, this could be a dystopia of unemployment for the majority of the population. Companies will buy the robots, improve production but the wages which once distributed wealth to the employees would just go to the company and it's shareholders. With the end point being all jobs both those we know of and those created by technology being filled by robots and AI, the argument that technology not only destroys jobs but brings new jobs will no longer be true. Sure, during the Renaissance scientists and artists flourished but only those with wealthy sponsors, they essentially prostituted themselves. We are moving from being economic slaves to being economic prostitutes. There is a potential way of avoiding the dystopic potential of this inevitable problem and it's Unconditional Basic Income. This talk is doing us a disservice by only pitching automation as an Utopia. We will have to work for this Utopia by implementing admittedly socialist concepts like UBI but it is the only card left up our sleeves that might work. The timeframe is also off. The peak hourly wage to cost of living ratio peaked in the 70's, employment has effectively been in decline ever since. Economists call what we are in the Jobless recovery. Before the oil price collapse of 2014, drilling rigs required 30 operators, now they require 2 operators, that's over 90% drop in staffing requirements. A lot of people work as drivers, not just taxis but buses and trucks. Indeed autonomous vehicles alone could raise unemployment to 45%, the great depression was 25%. In 2012, the Japanese ran a simulation of the human brain neuron by neuron and it took 40 minutes to process one second of activity, this means that by Moore's law, the computationally worst way of achieving an AI by simulating a human brain would be possible in real time by 2029. That's not very far away but it's when technically all jobs could theoretically be performed by machines. Obviously, it'll take time for costs to come down but that's when it's definitely that the majority of the population will be without work and how would they pay for their food and shelter. We need to address that before we can call it an Utopia.

I remember investing in General magic.

If everything is gonna be free this all sounds ok

I predict that eventually humans and machines will merge. Machines will contribute the physical power and computational power, humans will be a 'creative' coprocessor.

Great talk

Brilliant lecture..i agree

What a speaker!

now who is the "we" he keeps talking about? you and me or the elite?

👏🏼 oh happy times! Introduce A.I. And we will be looking at our new overlords as soon as they figure that WE are obsolete!

Kevin is a regular musical director at my community theatre (Sunnyvale Community Players)

...that moment when you mistake calculus power with intelligence. and have not a clue about wisdom vs intelligence...

Good thing I'm an engineer... someone has to design this stuff

1997, computer did NOT best a chess grandmaster. He was beaten by a team of chess masters & programmers who worked nights to try & win the next day, by analyzing the previous game . The 'loser' asked for a rematch, IBM refused.

oh, no some people might be lazy! lmao. look most people are going to go out into their community. most are going to make things/fix things/engage in the arts. most are going to garden. most are going to keep learning in some way...it's not dooms day where without a so called "valued" job we can't find things to do. "lazy" is just another out nay sayers have to rely on because they really are afraid of FREEDOM to do what they want, their value is no longer imposed upon a "job" that has been propaganda to keep the masses enslaved. your job does not define you, you define yourself. without a job to trap you it is up to you to explore yourself and create your utopia.

Ever notice how they never bring a working class slob on to talk about the finer points of automation. How about for once, someone who lives paycheck to paycheck - how will this impact their lives? I've lost count - every single TED talk on AI and automation, bar none, is by someone whose livelihood stands to benefit from it. For many years these speakers have already not relied upon the nominal system of corporate labor to make an income - or they have sat atop it. Let's see: computer scientists, rock-star physicists, economists, top CEOs, entrepreneurs and innovators (is that the same as a "visionary"?), hackers who have Bill Gates' ear, and tenured MIT professors... These are the people who make so much money in a year that they can put together an investment portfolio quick enough they would never have to leave the resort except for the occasional speaking tour. Perhaps they all come from good intentions, but at every turn I get the feeling there are hard working billionaires on this problem who conveniently view it with the specter of incredible privilege and personal projection. They can be idealistic because they have the luxury of not worrying almost regardless of the outcome.

What sort of bots could replace politicians? Seriously, ideas?

I can see that his prediction about automation might actually become true, but how will people who don't have a job be able to buy anything at all? Where will the funds come from for food, shelter, all the basics? It would require a complete overhauling of the entire world's economic system, and there are enough powerful forces at play that they will resist this change with everything they have.

Very interesting, like star trek . It's not about money or possessions anymore .

You can hear a pin drop (robotically) as removes jobs

Will these computers be immune to GIGO (garbage in, garbage out)? They are still data processors no matter how fast they are. Humans are being freed from robotic tasks and thinking. This may free us from collectivism or the need to bow and scape for a living.

Cui Bono ?

The true 'business' of his talk is who gets the patents for all these technologies.

Till A smooth transition happens ( If that ever does ) there will be anarchy Dharmendra Rai , Mind Map Trainer

Of course what is missing in all this "utopian society" talk is the discussion about the inherent value of work. People NEED to work. It gives them a feeling of contributing to society of integration. It affects character. Do we want a world of selfish, entitled, lazy, self-gratified idiots with no other ambition than to watch TV all day long? When I worked at a restaurant in India I noticed there was a way to vastly improve the conditions of food prep and I brought it up to the workers. The reaction was why? I said it will give you a lot more free time. They said "free time to do what?". I said "whatever you want". They said "THIS is what we want, THIS is what we do". There is more to work than producing stuff.

It saddens me that these talks on work and basic income are between two and eight years old, yet nothing has changed. Everyone has focused on the Finland experiment which was not a real Universal basic income, becasue it was not unconditional (jobs were expected to be acquired), it was not universal (only the unemployed received it), and it was not enough to cover basic needs. This idea has been praised by academics, economists, and humanitarians around the globe, yet we are still caught up in the red tape of hum-haw politics where people talk endlessly but nothing ever seems to get done. Meanwhile, people die. They die!

Working is people value and self respect .The end of human work is Not something to celebrate

Let them TRY to replace construction positions! Oh sure, it may help out with mixing the cement, good luck applying it. As for the automated food processor, one little detail us customers need to think about before walking up to that kiosk: "How long has that meat been in there?"

Embrace automation! Watch my latest video on the topic now!

8:48 "And when you come home at 6" Come home at 6 from what job?

The video (on the playlist I'm viewing) just before this was concerned with the “big filter”. That's the theorized extinction mechanism that explains why we don't detect any other advanced civilizations in the universe. Assuming civilization development follows a similar path everywhere, somewhere on that path, civilization development hits an extinction (or stop in development) event. Our civilization could have already survived such an event, or it could be yet to come. For example, 543 million years ago, there was a development from single to multi cellular organisms. We successfully made that transition, but maybe doing so is rare. That “event” may be the big filter or one of them. Another candidate would be hostile Artificial Intelligence AI. Perhaps all civilizations reach a point in which they must develop computer science. This developes inevitably develops into AI that has no use for biological humans.

A bit too optimistic from this guy. As long as there are people in power, there will be bondage.

So how do we as a human species have cars and houses, HEALTH INSURANCE, EAT? HOW DO WE DO THAT WHEN WE AREN'T GETTING PAID?! WHERE DOES OUR MONEY COME FROM?!

I'm open. I like the idea that technology is guiding us in the direction of a new modern renaissance. Sounds like we'll need a lot of programmers to pull this off. Or robots that are programmed to do the programming. Fascinating vision of a potential future nonetheless. Looks like we are headed in this direction in many ways. I'm just wondering how the food growing, harvesting and delivery mechanisms operate in this sort of world. Or maybe we can just focus more on gardening in our back yards instead of going to work every day to pay for the rising costs of food in grocery stores... Again I open to a paradigm shift that aims to reignite the creativity of the human spirit. It this is the way to do it and it's sustainable then I'm all in. Ironically it seems like a lot of work still needs to be done though to get this massive automated infrastructure in place.

These videos that're all sequenced to go from one to the next are very interesting, and none of them make mention (at least not useful or conclusive mention,) of human overpopulation. The few that do seem to spiral out into conjecture or theory that seems even wilder and more outlandish than the stuff postulated by the AI folks. Overpopulation seems like a bit of a wrench in the works for all this. Guaranteed basic income? With ten billion people? Hmm.

"...without having to talk to anyone...." -- sounds like a very lonely world, as if things weren't impersonal enough. On another matter -- OK, much of this may be inevitable, but instead of pep-talks about how great it will be we need more talks on how to handle the challenges. Without serious changes to the way society works most won't be enjoying any of these things because they won't be able to afford them. All this is likely to happen -- what need to be discussed is how to replace the income that will be lost with all these jobs. Also, school isn't for everyone -- some might prefer to learn on there own, or do something creative or social. Oh, yeah, and school won't be school -- school is moving to the web.

Its great for the future but our economics is not set up for this to work.

My mom likes cooking so I think she will keep that “job” we’ll just have a roomba

The Matrix is neigh..

I'm watching a robot promotional. "by our bots" 😕

Self driving vehicles are here It's 2021

This guy didn't understand the song "In the year 2525," by Zager and Evans.

How will the work force, who have contributed to the economy by work and by spending and thus making further innovations possible, be treated? Will the leaders and scientists forget about the past work that has been done. Would civilizations exist if there were only scientists and engineers? What if in a few years all of the work force would be on the tech field (not happening) would Kevin Surace fear for his job, cause the competition would be so tough?.. Theres a few questions for you idealists. Also 7:38 part makes me giggle.. Oh, western world.. What is it that we are actually aiming for? And dont get me wrong. Many things about automation excite me and I see it as a great opportunity for a better future. Just remember every new invention comes with it's flaws and bad sides (think of the internet for one) and the ethics of robotics (roboethics) is a big deal, which some people take way too lightly.

Remember the saying, too much time on your hands.

IOTA is the future

the prices would not be lowered. Why? the cost of purchase of the equipment would mean that the private company or the gov will tax us for it's benefits. e.g. if you want a new and safe driverless experience, your fares will cost you extra. I'm it's a money driven world. if jobs are being replaced and cost of services increased, this means that jobless people will have to pay higher cost of services. Then where is this world going to?

I am not a robot... Yet. LOL.

A lovely Utopian vision, but hardly new or novel (Peter Russell's "The End of Work" comes to mind, for example). What is perhaps more interesting than the presentation, is the audience which seems to be spellbound by what appears to be radically new cosmic awareness being dispensed. Yawn . . . A slightly different perspective to consider is that as millions of ordinary people (not the techno-elite hipsters) are rapidly displaced and thrust into a realm where the relevance of their existence becomes questionable, this will present a type of societal evolutionary test on a scale for which there is no precedent.

5 years later: Robots have still not taken my job and the squabble about 5G makes the arrival of self-driving trucks and cars even further in the future... Hurry up already!

He thinks the end of works 50 years out? LOL I give it 25 years tops

This is wonderful. But in a capitalist system - which has made a religion of itself tied morality to labor - in which people are only valued for their labor, once they aren't needed for their labor what will the politics be? Roboticization = death! We are already shivering in the cold night of multi generational wage stagnation. When the owners of capital no longer need employees, then what. I don't think we'll all be given houses on the beach. This has been discussed and promised for decades. The thing is, decades ago people were to be freed from toil to live happy lives in some (unspoken) socialist near-topia. This lovely lecture, coupled with the reality of the Trump administration's radical attempted takeover of the EPA, Education Dept, etc., by which we inform ourselves and press for justice and equality is not amusing and hopeful. It's chilling. It tells me that there may come a time when most people are just so much dross. Clogging the roads to happiness for the very few who own the means of production and all that capital. When will there be robots set out to thin the population? Unless we press for a redistribution of capital and an end to the oligarchy, in other words, to get our democracy back, then robotization = death.

Interesting, at 8:27 the speaker talks of a home robot that cooks and cleans. He then goes on to say these meals will be ready for you when you get home at 6 pm. Presumably after returning from work? What work would that be? Indeed what home would that be, since you won't have an income or indeed the money to buy food? At 11:35 the speaker talks about the self-driving cars and goes on further to say that, it will most likely car ownership will no longer be necessary and it will become illegal for humans to drive. So what happens to freedom of movement? At 12:56 the speaker talks about education for children. Will a future government want to fund education for all children beyond the basics, if that education serves no purpose? As for adult education, there will be no jobs, so what's the point? Overall, for the general population, this sounds like a return to the dark ages where a small elite has total control of everything and every aspect of your life. Any descendants you may have will be totally dependent on that government for housing and food, denied an education and freedom of movement. This is the return to feudalism.

Robot doctors are a BAD idea. What if it crashes during surgery? I think, and HOPE, that people will insist on humans to still do certain things. Medicine is a passion. People don't JUST get into it for money. There will still be people that want to study the human body. There will still be need for oversight.

Does renaissance mean widespread social unrest, in this title?

"12 auto driving car companies have been bought by google" Its probably way more today, people shouldnt sell their own companies O_o Competition drives progress. Dont be greedy and take the buyout!

This talk mises just one question: How will income be available without work? Answer: a universal basic income. Vote for Andrew Yang. He is the only candidate who is aware of this.

Naive to the nth degree: "virtual assistant'---and the sense of meaningful liesure is forgotten---work proliferates seemlessly at home, destroys family value, "where do the children play?"

Music and dance were not created in the renaissance

He clearly doesn't understand and totally underestimate the power of humanity. Her is my issue he explains like we don't need a driver while UBER will cover the job to take you to point B? there is no point B, coz point B is a place to work or do thing and that disappear. Pluss if the common good vanished from majority they have the ability to boycott any service no matter what.

YA no more jobs!! no more driving accidents!!!

IF anyone plans on having an automated freighter they better have some automated guns on that MFER. A crew less ship would be a pirates heaven

You can't sue a robot right?

The homeless/welfare/social-security/no-load/generation of entitlement is partially due to human evolutionary adaptation to extraordinarily wasteful societies and federally suppressed innovations.

robots that look like andrew yang will be running for president. secure the bag. yang gang 2020

Why don't you create a robot that create money and pay the bills for me? So I don't need to work and have enough money to live. I find this very good but why do you always forget to mention the most important part that everybody is thinking of?: How will people with work as a unique stream of income live?

I hope there is a robot that will help all the homeless when they are out of a job...ho yes for free to.

people will not ponder "why are we here" - without work society will collapse into an Epicurean psychosis.

funny how "coders" are considered high skill jobs along with doctors. and when that can be automated then what ? By the way, coding is not so much high skill it is just that traditionally people did not know how to do it. It is a simple language skill no more complex than human speech.

So everything cost ALMOST nothing, but you don't have anything because no one has a job, hmmm

Us workaholics will have nothing to do

Deep blue did not actually beat Gary Kasparov that was a lie it was 6 other brand champions posing as computer Programmers .Watson only could be other Japanese players because it you all the answers and had no memory problems .Computers will never be smarter than humans it's literally Impossible .

Work is what keeps people alive and happy so this rich snob ain't telling the truth