I recently read “The Rise of the Robots: Technology and the Threat of Mass Unemployment” by Martin Ford, and even though I’m already quite familiar with the topics covered, it was sobering to have all of the information together in book form.
Until now I’ve read a few books about the singularity and the threats posed by super-intelligent machines, but that’s all still in the fairly distant future. Rise of the Robots discusses major problems that will arrive within the next 10 and 20 years, and in many cases are already happening: Automation will soon put a huge proportion of the population out of work permanently and create wealth inequality like we’ve never seen before.
The important take away is that the production of goods is starting to rely only on capital and not on workers, meaning that anyone with a lot of financial resources can set up a factory or a datacenter and produce tons of goods and services with very few employees. This is easily visible when you look at the tiny amount of workers employed by tech giants like Google and Facebook – most of their infrastructure is already automated and requires very little human oversight. It’s very important to remember that the number of new jobs created by automation is a tiny fraction of the jobs being replaced, and not even engineering and science degrees will guarantee a decent job anymore.
One particularly relevant point to me was that the internet itself – “the great equaliser” – is a great source of inequality. The new digital jobs being created: eBay seller, blogger, YouTuber, indie game developer, etc… are extremely unequal, with only a tiny number of people actually making a decent living doing these. It’s a winner-takes-all situation, but the platform owner always gets his cut.
The book also sold me on universal basic income, as I don’t see any other way things can turn out well once 30% or more of the population is unemployable through no fault of their own. Fast food and transport industries are upcoming targets for automation, and they currently employ a massive number of people. Those jobs are over, and the economy as we know it can’t function without money in the hands of consumers.
Anyway, I strongly recommend the book, especially if you don’t follow tech news and don’t yet realise how for automation has advanced in recent years. It’s an easy read with clear explanations and is not overly technical or longer than it needs to be. There’s a many more eye-opening examples in there that I haven’t mentioned here.
Personally, I think such advancement will necessarily bring about a paradigm shift in economics. Capitalism simply can’t work if so many people don’t have purchasing power at all – which mean businesses can’t operate either, because broke people can’t and therefore won’t bring them any revenue.
It’s not like we make a decent living out of working in a factory anyways. I can only see working in a factory or fast food as a job for experience. There are possibilities for new and upcoming jobs in the future, bringing both its pros and cons.
i believe that we should become cyborgs i believe robots only exist to improve the human race we shouldnt fear them instead we should become one with them i believe in post humanizm if we stay pure we will have major weaknesses anyway this is my view :smirk:
Problem: You can not augment yourself without a vast amount of capital. The most augmented human will be the ones who already have the more money. And besides, would you actually put yourself an implant if your boss asked you to to improve your producivity?
The augmentation humans are putting on them has always come from personnal reason (exterior factor helping), but there is a strong consent et ethic problem if you get: put that cyborg hand instead of your flesh one or you are fired (directly on indirectly by refusing it, we all know they won’t just let it go).
Forcing to be machine (and in this case, I’ll say machine instead of cyborg; for me, post-humanism sort from within, not by force) by your boss is already happening, see the company who tries to implant microchips to all its employees.
where the in the hell did i said force it or because someone said so my main arguement was we shouldnt fear it we should embrace it currently people who augment is rich yes they are rich but as time goes on augmentation will be cheaper so everyone can do it when their body starts failing
why would anyone would force it why would you bring up bosses why it doesnt counter my arguement >_> :meh:
Deus Ex, here we come. :bleh: