“Oh people, look around you. The signs are everywhere. You’ve left it for somebody other than you to be the one to care.” Jackson Brown wrote those lyrics to “Rock me on the water” (click to hear Keb Mo sing it) about 50 years ago. Today his words seem to haunt our future as much as they did our past.
There are more than 7.5 billion of us humans and our numbers continue to grow. Who cares about the unintended consequences of our collective actions? Our individual choices about economics, environment, health and other questions seem to be our personal business until we consider their collective effect.
The most immediate problem of human success may be a world economy that changes faster than we can adapt. The combination of precision machines and artificial intelligence is creating immense wealth. At the same time it is making a great many of us humans economically expendable because the machines can outproduce us. This is no longer a science-fiction story. It’s happening in our world today.
Automation is learning to farm. It can precisely apply the right water and nutrients. It can plant and harvest crops. It has begun to produce meat for food without growing the entire animal and the first such products are already on the market. Food produced that way will be less expensive than what we eat today. The profits will be reinvested in more new technology because that is the most efficient way to produce more new wealth. And some humans who produce our food today will receive the unspoken message – “you’re fired”. The economy no longer needs you because it found a more efficient way to do the work.
Automation is learning to operate every kind of transportation from taxis to trucks to airplanes. The people who do that today will no longer be needed. And as with agriculture, new wealth will be produced and reinvested in more automation. More examples aren’t needed. The message is clear. Automation will profitably displace a great deal of human labor (and jobs).
Economist Adam Smith suggested the existence of an “invisible hand” that guides a free market economy. It’s an attractive idea, that as each of us tries to produce more for our own good, our individual gains will benefit others. History has proved him correct that when the society is well governed there is sufficient wealth for everyone to benefit. But Adam Smith in the 1700s barely had a glimpse of the industrial revolution. He could not begin to foresee artificial intelligence and automation. He couldn’t answer “What becomes of people who are out-worked by machines?” because the question had not yet arisen. Now it has.
For the corporation, which is responsible to shareholders to produce a profit, there is more gain from buying automated equipment than from hiring people. For humans to compete, wages must stay low, so that their cost doesn’t rise above the cost of automation.
Today we see human refugees from places made dangerous by war, crime, and environmental changes. They have concluded that they can’t live well where they are so they’re looking for a better place. But the better places – the lands of opportunity in Europe and North America have no use for people who can’t out-produce automation. The world economy has told these humans, “You’re fired”. It isn’t just the refugees who have heard that message. It’s also the displaced workers of the developed world. Human work often can’t produce enough to pay for necessities like food, shelter, clothing, health care and education.
What might a desperate person who can’t support himself do in a world which has more wealth per capita than at any time in human history – while the wealth is concentrated in the hands of a very small number of people who own the machines? I do not know the answer to the question but I do know that the answer is on its way. Nor do I know whether we will choose and create an answer. Maybe it will happen as a result of Smith’s “invisible hand”. Maybe not.
If the invisible hand doesn’t provide for people who can’t compete with machines, then who “will be the one to care?” That question will challenge our values, our religious beliefs and the meaning of our humanity. It would be good for us to start talking about it now because answers will be required of us sooner than we might think.
Tax machines and AI software at rates to match the government revenues at all levels to offset loss of taxes paid by actual humans. Use the resulting revenue and the elimination of most medical and income supplementation programs to fund a single payer health care system and monthly income for all American citizens.
Certainly you are directionally correct, Bob, in your observations about automation and AI. Some of the scenarios you paint are within a 10-year time span. However, with a birth rate to death rate approaching zero in the U.S., we continue to need immigrants, so including the refugee issue in this well written Forum clouds the present day issue of a viable workforce to do present work. On the matter of automation and AI absorbing jobs at a rate which will make our growing population unemployable in total, it isn’t too soon to begin opening the possibility of a “guaranteed income” for all citizens. This concept is such a shock to most of us “free enterprise, free markets, merit based pay” thinkers, we tend to immediately reject it. But the concept will need to become a reality, in my judgement by the 2030’s at the latest.