Have we already hit technological singularity? How would we know?
Today and Yesterday I sank about 14 hours into.... hand sewing a tunic. That places it's labour cost at $280 or therabouts. That's not including the cost of making the fabric, or creating the thread. Factor in the time to do those manually and the cost quickly goes into the thousands. (Having spent an hour and making ~1m of string from hair, the kilometers of thread in modern fabric is crazy)
The local store stocks t-shirts for $10, and curiously a very basic sewing machines for $12.
When last did you see a team of road workers without an excavator? It is cheaper to throw tech at a problem than to use people.
7 months ago 路 馃憤 superfxchip
You ever watch the anime movie "Summer wars"? I sometimes wonder if we're totally heading into that. Coming from an app delivery driver, lol. Cheers! 路 7 months ago
It's always cheaper to throw technology at problems rather than using people, yes; thence the proliferation of service jobs in so-called 'developed' countries. Some things can't be done with computers lol 路 7 months ago
If by technological singularity you mean the point where We intent sentient AI or merge human conciousness with said AI conciousness to create a new hybrid being a la Ghost In A Shell style, then no powered tactile production machines aren't making much progress on that front. I do agree with your overall assessment that technology brings down commodity prices (and work-slaves) through cutting out large efforts of human labor. 路 7 months ago
Thing is, it has allways been cheaper to use technology than to just use brute force. A caveman with a sharpenned stick could hunt a lot more efficiently than one using persistance predator tactics. The technological singularity is described as when technology progresses to the point where distinguishing between individual pieces of technology, or even between technology and life becomes impractical, and the unified processing power is enough to develop new technologies at a rate approaching infinity. 路 7 months ago