If you happened to read my previous posts you would know that I haven't talked about a specific topic than I have A.I. Whether it is robots ethics, driverless-cars, etc... The reason I do is because I believe they might actually be the end of this planet, more than climate change is. Now before you hand me a tin foil hat sarcastically, hear me out.
While I do believe it to be a far distant possibility, I am not talking about machines taking over the world in Matrix-like dystopia. I am talking about something to which you are seeing what resembles a small sample caused by covid-19: lack of jobs.
I could confirm that capitalism has been the main factor as to why many on this planet are materially better. After all I am able to write this post in my hot sauna-like room in Iraq and you are able to read it somewhere in the U.S.A, Netherlands, Germany, Mexico, or somewhere in Thailand thanks to technological advances that for which we could more or less thank capitalism. I could probably write a long series about ways we benefitted from capitalism, communication, technology, even water and food. But the issue at hand is that capitalism might be going too fast for us to benefit.
New challenges have risen to which capitalism have no answer, not only that, capitalism seems to be the culprit. It is expected that by 2030, robots/A.I would be doing 800 million jobs. In terms of percentage that is 30% of the total of jobs.
And if that doesn't speak disaster on its own, you need to remember what it means on social level, if I were to build a factory in a remote place and hire workers from the local lever, the whole place would thrive. The money workers would make will be spent to buy services and goods from the local community. Groceries, restaurants, repair shops, etc.. would benefit as a whole from some workers having work. The same can't be said about machines.
Many pro free market pundits and technology advancement advocates would make the argument that this has always been a thing, after all, we moved from agriculture to factories, then to technology, and after all, America alone has 20 million jobs in coding. But one factor these people seem to forget is the I.Q limitations preventing a truck driver from using a laptop. This is not to mock or insult truck drivers, or any simple worker. Life after all is more than just I.Q level. Emotional intelligence, kindness, love, forgiveness, understanding, sympathy, empathy, are all pillars in what creates a human life whole and be a source of happiness.
Human happiness isn't measured by how many shows you watch. It is not about how many movies you watch, games you attend, or even books you read. Happiness comes in serving a goal, a goal leading you to meet more likeminded people, creating a society, a society created by communities, and those communities are created by one kind of blocks: Family.
Many side arguments to such advancements were made, I am personally guilty of doing so, that consisted about the morality of those advancement and whether they are dangerous to public consumption. But in the end it comes down to one factor, 800 million people or 30% of the workforce shouldn't be out of the job, never mind the morality of it. the cascading effects of having around 800 million families could, and I would argue should, wreck the countries allowing it to happen.
A big segment of the population no longer can meet the demand set by new industries. We are not talking about weed smoking, avocado eating, safe space needing people. But rather hard working, honorable college graduates. Advanced industry where those 20 million jobs waiting to be filled await demand cognitively gifted in coding, mathematically intense people at accounting. Simply put, at least 800 millions now, and probably more in the future will be left behind, along with their families, and possibly communities.
The argument numbers like poverty line being at its lowest provide while answers to simply having dinner at night, doesn't provide an answer regarding the protection and preservation of communities. The difference between the switch from agriculture to factories and between switching from factories to coding neglects the fact that most of those jobs require high I.Q and training that in some cases starts at kids level. Hence why we have so many coding for kids programs available. Such unattainable jobs, alienates a big portion of the population deemed unworthy into deadly paths. After all, their value amounts to 0.
Here's an excerpt from Kurzweil, a director of engineering at Google and part of many projects.
An analysis of the history of technology shows that technological change is exponential, contrary to the common-sense “intuitive linear” view. So we won’t experience 100 years of progress in the 21st century — it will be more like 20,000 years of progress (at today’s rate). Although exponential trends did exist a thousand years ago, they were at that very early stage where an exponential trend is so flat that it looks like no trend at all. So their lack of expectations was largely fulfilled. Today, in accordance with the common wisdom, everyone expects continuous technological progress and the social repercussions that follow. But the future will be far more surprising than most observers realize: few have truly internalized the implications of the fact that the rate of change itself is accelerating.
The result of such acceleration is one of two, the best being a portion of the population willing to watch system fall and replaced entire, the worst is much like the half a million Hikikomoris in Japan, check out of society completely. A recent example can be seen is in a portion of supporters of people who would have been outcasts in the political spheres, Donald Trump and Alexandria-Ocasio Cortez. The labelled "Trump counties" where most people voted for Trump, those people didn't have many college degrees, unhealthy, with shorter lifespan ended often by drug overdose, abuse, and suicide.
The sad truth that can be said about the population of people mentioned above, one that will be accompanied by millions of people, and I am definitely including myself, is that they deserve to die. Economically, they are negative assets. Morally, they are indefensible.
Forget for a second about the value of life and all you know about the sentimentality of loving people trying hard to make it, and all about immigrants taking the jobs. These underclass people are in thrall to a vicious, selfish culture, whose only means and goals are misery and opiate doses. They will jump on any train led by a conductor aiming to get off the track and into the station. That sort of rhetoric makes them feel good, almost as good as OxyContin and heroin needles. What they need however, isn't pain killers, whether in literal, social or political sense. What they need is actual change, that means what they need is a truck to drive or a bottle to cab.