The AI Will Steal Our Jobs!

They say that starting a post with a bolt statement is a good idea, so here you go: Artificial Intelligence will destroy our current economic structure. How’s that?

While that statement may seem like a gross overreaction and sound a little nutty, it is quite possibly true. As we move forward, AI will take more and more of the tasks we currently do ourselves. Right now they are mostly in highly repetitive tasks, such as manufacturing. These robots have already displaced many workers, they are cheaper and more accurate. But the presence of those robots have also opened up new opportunities in research and development as well as in maintenance. Here’s the catch: displaced employees cannot afford the new education necessary to go into these fields.

In the past, new technology has largely been geared towards making human beings more efficient at their jobs. If one person makes more stuff, the price of the stuff goes down and makes it available to more people. This has been the driver of our economic growth and high standard of living. Thus far technological progress has been the facilitator of our modern world.

But we are at a moment when this status quo is changing. Artificial intelligence is becoming better than we are at tasks we once considered exclusively the domain of human beings. This means that the jobs that were more nuanced and variable, are going the way of the dodo as those get replaced as well.

For awhile there will be new jobs created by this boom, but eventually those will be taken over as well. Eventually there will be very little, of anything, that human beings need to do.

So now it is not only the ‘unskilled’ laborers who will be out of jobs, but the more technical fields as well. The only people who will be able to make money will be those selling the products that the robots make, this will soon include such diverse things as health care and art to add to the products they manufacture today.

That won’t last long, if no one is earning, no one is spending.

So, now that I have completely depressed you; let me tell you why this could actually be awesome, and what we have to do to make sure that it is.

If you think about it, if robots are doing all the work and there is plenty of everything to go around, why should anyone ever have to go without? The only way this would happen is if we stay on our current economic course. If people need to trade their labor for money to trade for goods and services.

However, if we eliminate the need to pay for those goods and services, why do we panic over the loss of income? In other words, if we make those basic necessities available to all, it won’t matter if the robots do all the work.

Here we get a choice, how do we create an equitable system?

Option 1: Necessary goods and services are provided to all, and money is used to buy luxury goods.

This option is a good middle ground, and very likely to be the solution, but as I see it being implemented, it would be in a simple reactionary way. Like refugee camps, or homeless shelters. Necessities are covered, but living conditions are appalling with no visible path out of the situation.

If we plan ahead, we could create this as a positive way to keep everyone happy and healthy. But it would still leave the wealthy with power and influence over those who just get by on the basics with little upward mobility.

Option 2: Basic universal income.

The results of this option would be very similar to the plan ahead version of option 1. People would get some support, (although that income may not cover everything they need depending on health, implementation, and local economic variation.) but would still struggle to grow. Any growth would depend on the movement of currency to people from all walks of life. This would require that anyone attempting to improve their station from subsistence would have to advertise essentially, to gain the attention of those who do have money to burn. It would just be redistribution of the wealth between the wealthy.

Option 3: Preemptively create a non-monetary based system. No money means that all basic services would be available to all add needed. And anyone willing to grow would not need to convince someone else to part with their money, but only to show that they are providing some benefit to society. Without competition, the existing barriers of the economy would break down.

Everyone could be required to work a certain amount of time in service to community or society as we grow to reach the time of robots doing all of the work. As robots take on more of the workload, the required human workload would be readjusted and distributed equally. Less work for humans would not result in lost jobs creating starvation in a land of plenty.

As a bonus to this idea, if we got rid of money, there would be a huge number of ‘jobs’ that surround the redistribution of wealth that would disappear with it. This means that the starting workload for each person would be much less work than we currently do today. These jobs would include things like cashiers, loan specialists, stock traders, bankers, accountants, investors, and sales to name a few.

Even if we only eliminated that workload and required a lot less work to keep the status quo, I suspect that we would actually make progress toward a work-free future faster. Without all that time spent on the redistribution of wealth, the free time that people would gain would go towards hobbies.

Everyone has a few things they enjoy doing in their free time, and some of those have the potential to drive us to the future. Some people enjoy listening to music or watching movies. Some people enjoy creating neat things. Some people enjoy robotics and coding in their free time. Giving people more free time, and unlimited access to education (one of the most basic services provided) would spawn a massive outpouring of growth in many areas, including STEM. There are many people caught in the day to day grind of living paycheck to paycheck who could do so much for our world if we can unchain them from the money train.

This does require a whole new way of thinking. But in a world without scarcity, we do not need to create a system of artificial scarcity, which is how money works.

Thank you for your time and consideration.

AUGMENTED REALITY

Virtual reality, Augmented reality, holograms; it all sounds like science fiction. But we are entering this age. We already have motion controlled computer interfaces (Wii, Kinect, Playstation Move). Brain controlled is around the corner (Force Trainer, Necomimi, and the most advanced I have seen, from a TED talk). All of these are getting better as we speak. These are all about how we communicate with the computer, but there are advances in the way that computers communicate with us as well.

We have had new projects delving into different ways to present information to ourselves for many years. Today we see 3-D, curved screens, projectors. We have seen more risky things flop before. The Virtual Boy is a prime example, it was an early attempt at virtual reality video games. So what is virtual reality? Virtual reality is being able to enter a world that does not actually exist. There is also ‘Augmented Reality’ which is using a computer to change, or ‘augment’ how we see the world. This is basically using a computer to overlay virtual images into the real world. Hologram is altogether a different beast. They use a projection system to put an image into the real world that anyone looking at it can see.

Today we are seeing these things on the horizon, some are even on the market already, many will be out in the next several years. The Oculus Rift is a cutting edge virtual reality gaming device. It tracks the motion of your head to control the game world, as well as using a traditional controller to actually move. Google Glass is the most well-known augmented reality technology coming to the market. Testers have already been using them in the real world. It is being marketed as a heads-up display, this is the most common idea of what augmented reality is. Google Glass has the capability of showing a video to the wearer, projecting maps onto real world streets, and even letting us interact with games that only we can see. Even the Nintendo 3DS has an augmented reality game where the player shoots little pictures that pop up around the room. The most hyped Augmented reality right now is being terribly mis-marketed. The Microsoft HoloLens. This may be the technology that interacts the most with the real world. It can show images interacting with real-world objects. Like a game of Minecraft sitting on your living room table (until I saw this I was wondering why Microsoft bought Minecraft.) or someone pointing out what to fix. This is all incredibly cool, but it is not a hologram. A hologram is a three dimensional virtual object in space, like Hatsune Miku. This is a popular singer from Japan who is completely a computer construct (including her voice) and still does full concerts.

I am absolutely fascinated by all of these technologies, but I believe we need to maintain realism in their marketing. If Microsoft is so keen on selling the HoloLens as something so much more advanced than Google Glass as to do so much work to make it seem like an entirely different technology, why when I search Google Glass do ads for HoloLens come up?

While the HoloLens is interesting to me, it is not as friendly for everyday wear. I am excited to see it, but I really look forward to Google releasing Glass for the public.

Update 1: Since I first published this about a year ago I have found that Google Glass has said that the prototype phase is over, and is still committed to the product, but do not have any official release dates

Update 2 – Google Glass has been shelved for the time being. On the Virtual Reality front however, the HTC Vive has been making a splash with its superior motion control features, while another Google entry, the Daydream, is intriguing. In brain-control there is the Mind Flex, and an unnerving TED talk about controlling another person! The future is out there!