Think of It as ‘Robot Slave Labor’

Since the Industrial Revolution 200 and more years ago, there have been concerns about human beings being displaced by automation. And for just as long, there have been professors and others writing articles about how this is a fallacy. Here is a recent example:

http://www.gereports.com/basic-income-robots-take-jobs-thats-not-capitalism-works/

In my long-ago college studies, I majored in Economics (because it was and is the social science most like physics, mathematical and systematic), and I understand the argument and the case that has been made for lo these many years. Until recently, I agreed with it.

However, advances in AI (artificial intelligence) and in robotics have wrought a sea-change in the long-held cliché` that automation always creates more jobs than it displaces. In fact, the way that we conceptualize the issue (as exemplified in the above article) is actually getting in the way of our understanding the coming change. We should not think of this as innovation and automation in the traditional sense. Instead it is better and more accurate to imagine the 1%-wealthy, factory owner/capitalist as having a choice between hiring a person, or buying a robot slave that can do exactly whatever a person can do. To fix and supervise and take care of the robot slaves, one simply buys other robot slaves with different firmware plugged in.

The changes this will bring to our economics are deep and structural indeed. Within a few years, a generation or two, not only will there be no more truck drivers employed, there will be no more need for engineers and programmers; so also deal makers, salesmen, and writers of journalism and advertising copy (!). It is difficult for even those well-informed in technology to fully grasp the implications of AI’s new-found ability to subsume “common sense” and other deeply human attributes and behaviors.

Without some real changes in social structures and norms, the 1% capitalists will have an enormous capacity to produce wealth that the general population will not have the jobs and income to consume. Of course, our governments are happy to contemplate over-simplistic, sledge hammer “solutions” (sic) such as: “Let’s tax away the vast majority of the money that the 1% will make, and distribute it back to the general population as a “Basic Income” benefit (for which the general population will then be beholden to us, the power-mongers of the world).

This post is not about advocacy or “solutioning”. It is rather say out loud and clearly that for 200 years, Luddites and anarchists, leftists, and anti-capitalists of every stripe have been “crying wolf” about displacement of people by machines and automation. Finally, and this time for certain sure, there is a real wolf out there, and we as a society, need to decide what we will do about this.