AN EXTREMELY PESSIMISTIC PREDICTION
These three articles, all by the same author, and this
Youtube video, all make a very convincing case that the massive increase in
automation that will no doubt occur over the next decade or two could have
dramatic consequences on employment, and that it won’t create nearly enough new
jobs to fill the vacuum. As Rotman argues in his articles, this process of automation
and roboticisation – already begun in supermarkets and airports, and about to
happen in the transport sector with self-driving cars – could dramatically
increase inequality, since the revolution will benefit only those with jobs in
the relevant technological industries, thereby massively increasing their
wealth. The executives and CEOs of companies like Google, Apple, Facebook, IBM
and Microsoft will likely become even more obscenely rich than they are currently,
while, at the same time, millions will be thrust into poverty. A global
underclass will likely emerge. Indeed, it seems to me perfectly possible that literally
billions will be living in poverty, squalor and misery. This expanding
population will put an ever-greater strain on our fragile earth, which is
already becoming uglier and more polluted by the day. A revolution might be the
result, which could easily spell the end of civilisation (and could finally
trigger the nuclear Armageddon we’ve been eagerly anticipating since the end of
World War II).
I suspect that the impending tech
revolution will have one major positive result: it will finally tip the balance
of global economic incentives towards action on climate change, producing an explosion
in the green energy industry, particularly solar power. This shift might
already have happened if it weren’t for the oil industry’s deliberate global campaign
to slow down extraction and supply, and their immense lobbying power in
governments across the world. But this is a small consolation (and I’m not even
100% sure it will happen).
The immense power of these tech corporations
will likely enable them to all but destroy democracy, which has already been
severely damaged since the 1980s by neoliberalism (as all right-thinking people
recognise). In fact, neoliberalism is arguably best characterised as the
attempt to merge the political and economic spheres, and this is the same thing
as destroying democracy. Once the political and economic spheres are merged, only
one party is left: the business party. It is fair to say that us Westerners
already live under the rule of the business party (it is worst in America but
the pattern is not so different elsewhere). Yet I fear that, as a small group of
tech countries acquire a level of power that is unprecedented in history, the business
party we live under today will become even more corporate. And, at the same
time as the business party is becoming a literal arm of business – i.e. a Libertarian party – huge swathes of the
population will be becoming unemployed and unemployable. Since the politicians
will be beholden to the massive corporations producing the AI technology, the
money created by these corporations won’t be channelled towards an
extra-fortified welfare state, but will simply be used for greater government subsidies.
That is why I suggested that billions would be left in poverty. The tech
corporations will be able to further increase the rent-seeking and tax evasion they
are already carrying out, totally ignoring the unwashed, diseased, starving
masses as they moan and writhe and cough up blood and mucus, and stumble around
in their own shit.
Ultimately, the world could quite
easily become a full-blown libertarian fantasy. In other words, a terrifying
dystopian nightmare, far worse than any vision of Huxley or Orwell.
I’m probably going to be proved
wrong about the apocalyptic predictions here. But I’m not blowing smoke either.
That should make you worried. Do something about it.
http://socialdemocracy21stcentury.blogspot.com.au/2015/02/automation-and-robots-in-news.html
ReplyDeleteOf course, it's worth bearing in mind that if a great many people are left penniless and destitute by unemployment caused by the rise of the robots, then demand for the products produced by the mega-corporations will fall dramatically, thereby creating the conditions for state intervention to restore the wealth of these penniless and destitute masses. This would either happen via an expanded welfare system (say, a fixed spending income for all) or a government push to create jobs in various sectors (aged-care will probably be a big source of jobs growth in the West over the next couple of decades -- robots will be good for wiping wrinkly old anuses but not for tending to the emotional needs of demented geriatrics)).
ReplyDeleteThis countervailing economic force, which would hopefully kick in quite soon after a mass lay-off, definitely mitigates the bleakest predictions…
Naturally, it's impossible to actually know what will happen. In fact, it seems to me that it's even possible that once mega-corporations replace much of their workforce with robots, they won't even need to worry about profits anymore. Capitalism as we know might cease to exist. My thought is that, given robots don't need wages, if a corporation produced millions of robots that are ultimately under its control (perhaps remotely reprogrammable by the mothership), then these might give it immense political and military power -- the kind of power that a state wields. If the company's profits then fell, they could still use these robots to expand, and build more robots, and make the company yet bigger. So you'd have humans at the head of new, undemocratic robot-states, with absolute control over every square inch of our planet (and perhaps other planets) they could get their grubby hands on…
But now I'm really getting carried away. These speculations are too wild.