Martin Ford's new book asks how automation will effect the near future of the economy.
Will the future be filled with cool technologies and endless opportunities or will our own creations lead to eventual doom? I tend to think the former. Technology has seemingly endless ability to improve the health, freedom, and happiness of our lives. Even optimistic futurists like Ray Kurzweil and James Canton admit, however, that the road to advancing technology is fraught with dangers. Super viruses, artificial intelligences run amok, environmental calamity – science has its threats as well as its promises. Yet there could be one near term problem that even futurists tend to ignore – economic collapse. Martin Ford, a silicon valley computer engineer, entrepreneur, and blogger has written The Lights In The Tunnel, a book which explores the economic implications of a world which is becoming increasingly automated. Ford proposes that in the upcoming years robots and computer programs will edge human workers out of their jobs and that unless we take drastic actions this will reduce mass market purchasing power, destroy consumer confidence, and shut down the global economy. Ford has the reader envision these changes during a thought experiment where lights in a tunnel represent purchasing power in the mass market (hence the title). Even after discussing the book with the author, I’m not convinced that The Lights In The Tunnel is an accurate prediction of our future, but I wanted to spread the question: what does increased automation mean for our economy?
It’s hard to deny that robots and computers will eventually take over for humans in many industries. Already we’ve seen how robots like the Flexpicker and Adept Quattro excel at sorting and moving goods in a manufacturing environment. More humanoid creations, like Kawada’s Nextage or Honda’s ASIMO, could take on even more human-like tasks. And then there are the software programs. We’ve recently showcased how sports journalists and other news people could one day face serious competition from virtual writers and performers. Everywhere, automation is progressing and taking over more jobs. Even vending machines are starting to eliminate the needs for some human workers.
Is the Fallacy Itself a Fallacy?
Yet even as technology removes some jobs, it creates others. For every worker taken off the assembly line there’s another added to the maintenance team, or two who become consultants. We’ll never automate away all the jobs, will we? Depends on how advanced the machines become.
Back in the industrial revolution, a group of English textile workers protested the use of mechanized looms. These were the Luddites, who believed that jobs lost to machines would lead to economic ruin. Obviously they were wrong. From these protesters modern economists have derisively coined the Luddite Fallacy – the belief that labor saving technologies will increase unemployment. That fallacy is one of the key issues debated in The Lights In The Tunnel (here after TLITT).
In TLITT, Ford argues that the Luddite Fallacy will only remain a fallacy so long as human capability exceeds technological capability. That is, as long as humans are able to improve faster (or as fast as) machines, humans cannot be fully replaced. Ford worries that we’re approaching a point where machines will exceed human performance to such a degree that the Luddite Fallacy will fall apart. Once a superior automated workforce is created, it could take over a large portion of the jobs in our global market.
Much to Ford’s credit, he considers the implications of technology far beyond the loss of manufacturing jobs. TLITT emphasizes that many high paying positions (research lawyers, software engineers, radiologists, etc) could be automated before more mundane ones (mechanic, housekeeper). Specialized fields with algorithmic approaches to problems can be synthesized. Already, the US and many European countries outsource tech support and similar positions to India. Eventually, Ford argues, they’ll be outsourcing positions to computers.
TLITT goes on to predict some pretty awful results from this widespread automation. With few high paying jobs, there will be less people able to buy goods. Sure, a few robotics corporations and software companies will create a new generation of trillionaires, but the number of consumers with middle class purchasing power will diminish. People will sense that purchasing power is dropping and consumer confidence will also decrease. Eventually all the wealth will be consolidated in a relative few, but with no one to sell to, those wealthy will struggle as the economy continues to wither.
Critiques
While Ford proposes a good thought experiment, and pulls no punches as he explores all of its implications, I don’t think his assumptions can go unchallenged. First, there are jobs that may never be automated, or even if they could be, consumers will want humans in those positions. Artists, counselors, public officials, entertainers, teachers, and others provide a “human touch” in their work that is unlikely to be achievable by any but the most impressive of artificial intelligences. If such AI comes to exist, the economy may be the least of our concerns.
Second, we may simply transition away from production and service jobs. Just as the bulk of our workforce has shifted from hunting/gathering to farming to crafts to manufacturing to service, it could continue on to entrepreneurship. Owning capital, and developing it, could be the job of the future. Already we’ve seen how open source projects can help you become a mini manufacturing, information, software or robotics mogul. These trends could continue and define the future economy. Or, even if they don’t, we could all heavily invest in public robotics (and software) companies, thus owning the capital of those firms and spreading the wealth.
Finally, while Ford’s “lights in the tunnel” thought experiment is logically sound, it doesn’t come with a lot of numerical evidence. TLITT includes a reasonably enlightening discussion on the slave economy of the Confederacy during the US Civil War, but otherwise dodges finding historic proof for its assumptions. To some degree I understand: the looming global automation would be unprecedented. Still, I feel like the predictions that Ford asserts should come with some sort of hard evidence.
The author was gracious enough to correspond with me and address my concerns. (He was also patient enough to help me understand the important distinction between industrial and end-user consumption.) Ford’s responds to my first critique by pointing out the sheer number of jobs that could be replaced by automation. He has a table on page 59 of his book that describes the largest occupations in the US. The top positions (sales people, cashiers, office clerks, and food preparers) represent millions of workers, none of whom need a college education. The list goes on to describe other positions which could all be automated. Ford asks, can we really expect all of these people to become artists, and performers, and counselors and teachers? Would most people in these new positions get paid enough to support themselves?
As for the rise of a new capitalist society full of entrepreneurs, Ford’s already had that debate before. He and Robin Hanson (a blogging economist) have discussed that very idea (and other ideas presented in TLITT) in various posts on their respective blogs. Can we all own enough shares of a (robotics) company to replace a general lack of employment income? Hanson implies yes while Ford worries the answer is no. You can catch Ford’s first critique of one of Hanson’s academic papers here, Hanson’s response to that critique here, and Ford’s retort here. It’s hard to summarize the eventual tone of the debate, but I think it boils down to: technophiles don’t adequately understand the market (Hanson) vs. automation will cause disruptions that the market may be unable to compensate for (Ford).
The Cure (and other fantasies)
Ford doesn’t leave his readers with just another doomsday scenario, he does his best to find a solution. No, he doesn’t think we should (or perhaps even can) avoid automation. Instead, TLITT explores some pretty radical ways that we could put purchasing power back in the hands of the masses and create non-traditional jobs with economic incentives. He speaks of ‘recapturing wages’ by imposing capital/labor taxes on industries as they automate, and value added taxes to goods as they become cheaper. These taxes should not be large enough to discourage automation, but they could (Ford proposes) provide revenue for a new kind of job.
Ford’s ‘virtual jobs’ are incentivised programs that would reward people for pursuits such as education, civic service, journalism, and environmental responsibility. These jobs would be paid for by the state through the revenue gained through recaptured wages. Those who accomplished more in their virtual jobs would receive higher wages, thus providing the financial incentive that everyone needs to feel like they are really working. There would be some industries and some workers that exist outside of this new system, and plenty of space and encouragement (Ford says) for entrepreneurs, who would still have the most potential for monetary gain.
So, to paraphrase Ford’s solution in my own words: we should take money from automating industries to fund a state guided program that gives money to consumers in exchange for working at bettering themselves. Sounds like a decent plan. Never gonna happen.
The US is freaking out simply at the mention of socialized healthcare, socialized work would be dead on arrival. Maybe when 75% of all jobs are automated (the level supposed in TLITT), the governments of the world will see the benefits of such a system, but even then I doubt it. Ford’s solution requires that the wealthy consent to (or that the public impose) increased taxes to avoid economic ruin. I think that those institutions (or people) in the business of acquiring wealth would sooner face ruin than impediments to their financial gain. Even if everyone wanted to switch to such a system, the scope of the change is monstrous.
But then again, so were the changes brought on by the Agricultural and Industrial Revolutions.
For all my critiques of TLITT, I find myself unable to completely argue it away. Automation is increasing, and the economic fall out from that change could be disastrous. Or it could usher in a utopia. We don’t know, and not knowing could prove to be fatal.
After talking with Martin Ford, I’m most impressed with one aspect of his book: it asks a question few seem willing to contemplate. Even if there always are enough jobs for humans, even if a superior automated workforce doesn’t cause economic disruptions, I still think discussing and debating the possibility is an important task. I encourage you to pick up a copy of The Lights In The Tunnel and consider the scenario it warns against. Then add some comments below to get the discussion going. In order to reap the benefits of technology we have to stand ready against the possible threats that it presents, whether or not they ever arise.
Tags: automation, economic collapse, Martin Ford, The Lights In The Tunnel, TLITT
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I had also wondered about the economic implications of increased automation. It seems that it would fit best in the context of a government that implements some form of a basic income (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Basic_Income), which is similar to what Ford proposes. I’ll be sure to pick up this book!
I do not think Ford takes it far enough (from your article since I have not read his book yet) and as usual, humans think in human terms. We are afraid to consider the fact that we may soon be a lesser being. Once you transcend to the an intelligent machines point of view, you can see all the proposals humans consider are much to do about nothing. I think as soon as 2029, we could very well be faced with a new world where our monetary systems et al have no meaning. I have played with this idea in my own predictions at http://bit.ly/1RXotW
I don’t think it will cause an economic collapse. Workers will be displaced to other areas. These changes don’t happen over night. Businesses will simply expand in directions that cannot be automated such as intellectual and creative fields.
I think you are correct that jobs which require creativity and human attributes will be created, but I really wonder if there will be enough of these jobs and if most average workers will be able to transition into them. It seems doubtful to me.
I wrote a blog posting on this here:
http://econfuture.wordpress.com/2009/12/13/the-jobs-of-the-future-or-not
Just like Ford writes in his book not all workers will be able to find jobs in new areas. Ford also writes in his book that certain fields like art, health care, teaching children, etc. most likely won’t be subject to automation. The question is just: are there enough fields to provide jobs for all these people?
You’re also mentioning “intellectual fields”, j. Do you really think all those people who are workers now are smart, intelligent and educated enough to simply find a job in such an “intellectual field”?
Another interesting point Ford mentions in his book is the fact that even jobs that currently require a college degree are subject to automation. They even have a higher incentive to being automated since managers, etc. are making considerably more money than a “regular” worker.
By definition, 50% of people have an IQ below 100. If you’re reading and posting here, I’m guessing that you, like me, can’t even really conceive of what it would be like to try and make a go of it in our modern economy with an IQ of 100 or less.
I’m surrounded by folks who have neither the education nor the inclination to be “creatives” (entertainers, scientists, engineers). They are already semi-unemployed, and I don’t see how they’ll ever become “productive” members of society.
Another technological advancement that will have huge economic implications (and potential solution to automation) is the 3D printer. When (and a big if) these devices advance to become a desktop nano-factory and virtually anything can be created at little to no cost, then the cost of living would be dramatically reduced to the point that individuals wouldn’t have to work. Automation would become necessary at that point.
I haven’t read the book yet, but does the list of jobs that are threatened include Soldiers, Drivers ( including cars, delivery trucks, subways, trains, plains), Agriculture, customer service representatives, and surgeons?
Agriculture is definitely already subject to automation. Just google a bit.
CSRs (customer service representatives) are already being replaced by terminals as well. Just look at all the terminals car rental agencies are using for self-checkout, self-checkin terminals used by airlines, etc., etc.
The large numbers of soldiers required today most likely will get replaced with autonomous machines, robots, etc. as well. Cyber warfare here we come.
Look at H&R Block’s online tax prep. That’s real thinking service work that is being automated significantly.
We fail to factor in the biggest changes in our future will be from biotechnology and not lonely mechanics (robotics). And everything our economy does is serve to evolve our governmnent/constitution. Something we forget to factor in or leave out will redefine our world economy.
Right. Imagine a world where computer-driven nanotech could allow one person to turn a pile of dirt into a thousand Thanksgiving dinners, or into atomic-latticed materials sufficient to build a skyscraper. Still sci-fi, but it probably won’t stay that way.
Very well-done review. It hits every point that I would have touched on.
I’ve been thinking a lot about Martin’s vision (especially since I came to a very similar vision a while back: http://www.asymptosis.com/why-prosperity-requires-a-welfare-state.html).
What I’ve been thinking about most: how to answer the (quite formidable) challenge of the Luddite Fallacy. I don’t think Martin really manages it in the book. (The description in this review is confused–confutes the relative levels of machine/human capability with their paces of increase–perhaps revealing the argument’s confusion.). I haven’t seen a compelling answer in other discussions.
In short, why/how is it different now than it was in the 19th century? There are many possible answers, would love to hear some solidly convincing ones.
I think a good answer is the gospel according to Kurzweil: technology is a game changer, we’re hitting the steep part of the “accelerating returns” curve. Many conventional wisdoms are biting the dust. New economic and policy ideas are needed. The balance between labor and capital, and scarcity versus abundance, is shifting to a point were the old models don’t work.
BTW – I also appreciated Martin’s book. This meme seems to be finding its time. I posted my 2 cents at the Suggestions4Obama site this summer: A New Way of Thinking About Jobs and the Economy.
I see lots of arguments for replacing existing work but not much for work yet to be discovered. Surely more aggressive space exploration will continue and eventually unveil entirely new worlds, where these “world views” don’t apply.
How will excavation of other planets and preparations for making them inhabitable be automated? Will those tasks be automated in the same way as building a car or a house in Earth’s gravity? As more of the earth’s population spends the bulk of it’s time in the equivalent of a fully immersive “Second Life” won’t every task essentially boil down to a “work of art? Won’t “art” at that point become a survival skill?
Robots would seem to be much more capable of transversing space than we are. I think it likely that robots will end up building cities on other worlds for us as real estate developments which may or may not end up being purchased and lived in.
Robots are already on Mars. If/when man gets to Mars, the robots will have already erected energy plants and communications systems, constructed living quarters, air/water/food supply systems (gardens), and the like. This is for pure safety reasons: you can’t think that we will send people in space-suits to do underground mining on Mars when its already clear that mining is a dangerous operation on Earth, and is already rapidly being replaced by robots?
Just look at the Rio Tinto operations in Australia, where the “miners” sit in air-conditioned offices a thousand miles away from the mine in the Australian outback.
Whatever we do on Mars or other planets will be done from air-conditioned offices right here in planet Earth.
Great direction from the TLITT but we should find and maintain a balance in form of regulation or else we will experience total annihiliation as can be seen in the current global recession caused by lack of enforcable global regulatory framework in the banking sector.
The 1940’s Technocracy dealt with many of these issues, it was a contender for US econmic policy before capitalism/consumerism gave it a serious beat down. But the brightest minds of time (econmical and scientific) felt a society could be developed in which all of the basic human needs could be provided for via automation. The value of things would be based on how much energy it took to create it and every citizen would be aloted an equal amount of the energy the nation produced. Some interesting concepts that would need to be reevaluted of course, but the principals dealt with many of the problems presented in this article.
On the road to human skill level automation, technology and human culture will feed back on themselves. The evolution of human culture will be more important than automation on economic stability. Based on current trends, ignoring a possible technological singularity, leaving out most of the reasoning, here is the set of mutually dependent trends I think we are likely to see:
Productivity per person will soar.
Wages for jobs only humans can do will soar.
Cost of raw resources will plummet.
Cost of finished products will plummet.
Cost of energy will go down.
Everybody can become their own product designer, manufacturer, artist, and entertainment producer. (the means of production will be ubiquitous)
Physical quality of life for the individual will increase. (life span, access to resources, housing, food, water, education, power…)
People will become more independent, less tied to a specific locality. (job, family, country)
Birth rates will plummet, children will become relatively expensive.
The population as a whole will age, making youth a minority class.
Intellectual property/capital will become preeminent.
Intellectual property licensing will allow pyramid scheme derivation of works, using micro-transactions to split the payment among the contributors.
Entertainment (in any form) will become the leading commodity, and will become more extreme.
Health care will become the next leading commodity.
Management of Intellectual property, and data in general will become leading service industries.
Distribution of raw material, energy, and data will be core utilities.
There are some destabilizing trends that might also arise:
Emotional satisfaction with life (happiness) will become harder to maintain… this factor will shape almost everything else in future Human culture.
The class of capital poor will demand more “rights”. This translates as punitive taxes on the capital rich.
Human culture may become less stable and more susceptible to extremes of fads, religions, and other belief systems. This will threaten economic stability and the physical quality of life.
Great response David. Your predictions of future commodities are good, although I would wonder if they would have any monetary value in a society that doesn’t need money.
I think an important issue will be if there is economic collapse once everyone has the basic needs, and they no longer NEED to work.
One thing needs to be emphasised: increasing automation removes the labour component of production and so reduces the cost of everything produced.
Consider that if / when our civilisation achieves “automation saturation” across society, then the COST of producing anything and everything becomes ZERO.
It costs ZERO to make. It costs ZERO to distribute. And with a change in mindset it costs ZERO to purchase.
This is why some sort of guaranteed basic income – as a means provide astronomical standards of living for all and also control consumption of resources – is very likely.
We must accept that over the coming decades there is no job a normal human can do – professional, artistic, or otherwise – that a machine will not be able to do better, faster, and cheaper.
Yes, our global economy as we know it will collapse, but our collective productive capacity and individual standard of living will SOAR.
Here’s one of the many news stories covering the current recession – mentioning that the current high unemployment rate is more than likely to stay that way:
Joblessness is Here to Stay
http://www.newsweek.com/id/226426?GT1=43002
This is where the rampant innumeracy in economics causes a problem. This is routine stuff in physics or engineering. It’s a system question *that can only be answered even in 0th order by differential equations and modeling*!! There are ways of doing this even with very complex systems but more economist don’t have the math chops to get to 1st base – they foul out or strike out first.
The answer requires this. Any rhetorical method of answering is meaningless masturbation at best and self-delusion at worst.
Consider the systems implications of the fact that innovation tends to be a non-equilibrium system behavior. That alone has major implications to the answer.
This question has been asked before. In 1995 the American economist Jeremy Rifkin wrote a book called ‘The End of Work: The Decline of the Global Labor Force and the Dawn of the Post-Market Era’ in which he predicted the same scenario happening. After reading it I noticed a fundamental flaw in his logic: since we cannot predict the future it is impossible to know where future humans will be working. For example, in 1800 some 75-90% of the population worked in farming and agriculture, now only ~3% do because of the introduction of the steel plough and then the tractor. There is no way that the people of 1800 would have been able to predict men would ride machines to harvest their food, and there is no way that they would have been able to predict the Internet Revolution which now takes up so much of our time.
“With few high paying jobs, there will be less people able to buy goods. [...] the number of consumers with middle class purchasing power will diminish.”
This has already been happening since the 70’s and in many ways is at the heart of the current economic crisis. People have been taking loans to compensate for the declining purchasing power, but are starting to get maxed out.
Automation would mean cost efficient in labor intensive jobs and increases staff productivity.
Lots of ideas here (written and organized mostly by me so far, based on ideas by Marshall Brain and related thinkers):
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Jobless_recovery
One key passage: “There also remain many who are skeptical about how soon such advanced 3D printing devices may arrive, how well they might work, or what materials they could handle. Similarly many people object (including on theological grounds) to the idea that robotics and AI will ever be able to do most jobs humans are paid now to do (especially ones involving creativity, judgment, hand-eye coordination, or dealing with unusual situations). While this may seem to be purely a technical argument about whether such devices can exist or how soon we will have them (or even, questioning just what we can do with the computers and robots and flexible manufacturing devices we have even now), the consequences in terms of planning social policy and related economic issues are profound. For example, what do fifty year projections for, say, the US Social Security trust fund mean if the entire monetary economy as we know it may not exist in two decades? What would health care costs be in 2029 if we could mass-produce robotic doctors, robotic ambulances, and even robotic nursebots (like Sebastian Thrun has worked towards)? Or what would costs be if people could print out most medical devices (or even most drugs) at home on demand using nanotech-based 3D printers? Likewise, two decades is about how long it would take a child born in 2009 to enter the work force after college in 2030 — what type of jobs or culture should such children be preparing for if 3D printing replaces much manufacturing, and if robotics/AI and a freely produced commons replaces most services? What would the economy be like in even just ten years if society decided much of the work done globally now is mainly about guarding or is make-work based on scarcity assumptions that are out-of-date just in relation to technology we have today (especially given movements towards voluntary simplicity or environmentalism)? If we were to embrace the prospect of a gift economy and global abundance through 3D printing, improved robotics, better design, better materials, and so on, then our societal spending patterns might shift greatly, even now, in terms of less worries about long-term deficit spending to create millions of R&D jobs today developing advanced technology under free and open source licenses. In that sense, a gift economy may be an example of a self-fulfilling prophecy.”
The conclusion: “Dealing with a jobless recovery presents global society with some difficult choices about values and identity. A straightforward way to keep the current scarcity-based economic system going in the face of the “threat” of abundance (and limited demand) resulting in a related jobless recovery is to use things like endless low-level war, perpetual schooling, expanded prisons, increased competition, and excessive bureaucracy to provide any amount of make-work jobs to soak up the abundance from high-technology (as well as to take any amount of people off the streets in various ways). That seems to be the main path that the USA and other countries have been going down so far, perhaps unintentionally. Alternatively, there are a range of other options to chose from, whether moving towards a gift economy, a resource-based economy, a basic income economy, or strong local communitarian economies, and to some extent, the USA and other countries have also been pursuing these options as well, but in a less coherent way. Ultimately, the approaches taken to move beyond a jobless recovery (either by creating jobs or by learning to live happily without them) involves political choices that will reflect national and global values, priorities, identities, and aspirations.”
Wow. The wikipedia article is a great resource. One minor criticism I had about Martin’s book was that he didn’t explore alternative potential solutions as much as I hoped. It’s nice to see 46 cures in one place.
In a skim of the article, I don’t see any mention of Kelso and Adler’s “The Capitalist Manifesto.” That, and its incarnation as Binary Economics by Ashford and Shakespeare, could be a good solution on the “pure capitalism” side of the continuum. Most people, including Ford (and myself), seem to gravitate toward socialistic solutions to this problem. In “The Capitalist Manifesto,” Kelso argues that “pure capitalism” (as he describes therein) is a perfect match for democratic political systems. It might be able to find some traction in the West. I wouldn’t rule out a return to patronage/gifting either. And some form of socialism, where government is truly “by the people” and/or Big Brother is replaced by a compassionate Big Mother (Big Mama?) might work too.
Fantastic, thanks!
I do think this idea is right. The review says that a job that gets lost gets created somewhere else.. “For every worker taken off the assembly line there’s another added to the maintenance team, or two who become consultants. ” but this is clearly not the case… unemployment is rising.
However, in the 10-20 year time frame, it does seem that historically, more jobs are created. The core of my argument, is that the current crisis is a classic depression rooted in a lack of social power in the broad bulk of world populations and an enhanced amount of social power for a small minority of the investor class… without investment, everyone else pays the price. But without viable investment opportunities that ALSO employ masses of people, the economy on the whole, no matter how we screw around with the numbers, will FEEL worse. Everything that is economic is implicitly political.
–E
I believe Automation will lead to ‘The death of capitalism/consumerism.’
I know for a fact that capitalism will not succeed in an autonomous world. Automation (in some cases) is more efficient than human labor, it has taken over our factories, and factory workers are still having problem finding new jobs, because their skill set that is more suited for a factory job; where will these people work when all factory labor jobs are being taken over by robots and machines?
it’s only safe for me to assume that capitalism will fail in an autonomous world.
BUT, what will replace capitalism? — We may not know yet; but it will sure be better than capitalism.
Aaron, while it may seem interesting that Ford has posed this question, the fact that the luddites posed the question so long ago shows that what you are discussing is not quite groundbreaking. I mean no disrespect when I say; you and Ford have unfortunately fallen JUST short of the mark in terms of realising something profound, because in the society we live in today, there is one belief nearly everyone holds, that they never considered questioning, or even thought was a belief. That is, belief in the money system.
The problem Martin Ford, many economic writers, and every charity in the world have in common when they approach questions on issues with society or industry, is they are thinking inside a box that has been reinforced around their head from the first day they could listen. The belief is so unquestioned because a monetary system of sorts has existed for thousands of years, although it has gradually changed in form, yet it remains the sole reason for poverty and corruption in the world today. Most people who believe in the monetary system falsely believe that it has worked in roughly the same way for hundreds of years. This may seem bizarre to you, but consider for a moment the idea that your government handed enormous amounts of money to bail-out banks that were failing last year, and yet they are in enormous amounts of debt to someone… They didn’t borrow that money from another country, all the rest of them are in debt too, so where did that money come from?
It may surprise you to know that more than 90% of the money in existence on the planet today is counterfeit, no joke.
It would take a lot of writing to fully explain here, but the point you need to realise, is that technology forcing people out of work is the best thing that can possibly happen to society. Machines were always intended to remove our dependence on slave labour, and that is something we should embrace with all our energy. The only thing holding us back from finally abolishing slavery, and I do not use that term lightly (slavery exists more today than it ever has before), is money.
If you are truly interested in what technological unemployment can do to society, I strongly suggest you look at Peter Joseph’s works:
Zeitgeist Addendum (2hr film):
http://tinyurl.com/zgm-add
The Zeitgeist Movement Slide Presentation (more facts, less art, 1hr37m):
http://tinyurl.com/zmorient
I promise you it will be very interesting and thoroughly worth your time to watch.
Note that basic income already exists in Europe, albeit not in as massive a form as would be required if automation took all the jobs. It is available in the form of basic income for people who are looking for a job, or are training, or are performing some community service, and in the form of basic health care. There is also some basic income for having children, and for rearing them.
This is not, however, universal basic income, and many people are still poor.
I think it’s important that we look at what’s happening from a borader perspective. About one million years ago we just emerged from apes. Life was hard but on a global scale quite uneventful compared to what is happening now. We had to eat and reproduce since we hard our survival instinct. We still have it and it seems to be driving us completely crazy. Just look at our civilization. We are like some bipolar monkeys on meth completely obsessed about changing everything without any idea of what we are really doing. Most of us are completely unaware of this. Jobs? We have jobs because we need them, we would die otherwise. Post-scarcity era? No need for jobs? Great then. At least we can relax a bit. Prolonged life spans? Even better. Maybe we can slow down and start contemplating things without having to transform them all the time. We are approaching a crossroad.
We are literally just a few pushed of some buttons away from turning the surface of this planet into radioactive smudge. If that doesn’t prove that there is potential for drastic changes then I don’t know what would. In the same way however, drastic changes can occur in a positive way.
On one side we can really start off a singularity, which would quite quickly turn the human era into a faint memory. I’m not saying this is necessarily bad. There would still be conscious entities around. Personally I think all matter, including the one making us up would merge into one huge computronium based hive mind, aka God. If that is what we want we can get it. But it’s up to us. On the other hand we could try to slow down right now and ask ourselves what we REALLY want. The economy is a high level emergence built upon our instincts. With the right technology and information we could create room for changing that. If this sounds unlikely just consider the alternative.
There is a problem with this though. There’s too much population growth in poor countries and too much ageing in rich ones. Ideally we should stop reproducing and ageing as well. Just get to a stand still where we could breath out. Suddenly we would see how much time we have on our hands. This universe has existed for billions of years and nothing indicates that it has any intention of disappearing. Why hurry into the singularity or oblivion when we can walk there at a pace that let’s us smell the flowers?
What is automatization anyway? It is us programming inert matter. It’s the creation of a new form of life. We are programmed matter ourselves. We have emerged from chemistry and now technology is emerging from us. The feedbacks complicate this a lot of course. We should realize though that any AIs we end up creating are us. They are our literal offspring, our creations. If nature could (arguably) blindly give rise to us then why on earth shouldn’t we be able to create something even better when we are (arguably) not as blind as nature?
My bet is that we will soon discover some drastic things regarding to the nature of our personal identity and consciousness (think Bhagavad Gita or Ashtavakra Gita for example), such realizations made impossible to deny by our increasing effect on the physical world and ourselves in it. This will lead to a collective emotional/spiritual crisis. If we survive that then we may experience some form of human utopia for a while, before some of us either finish building the AGI or turn themselves into something like it ‘by expanding their mental faculties and merging with technology’ (http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=6hKG5l_TDU8). What will happen after that I have no idea about. Hopefully something pleasurable.
One final point. I think the secret ingredient for our survival is the thing we call selfless love. If we start pursuing that half as much as we pursue selfish greed then we’re probably saved.
[...] can read the full review here. Categories: Uncategorized Comments (0) Trackbacks (0) Leave a comment [...]
Yes Mr. Ford automation is on course to create an economic collapse. If the purpose of automation is to relieve people from their work and capitalism requires people to work to obtain everything they need to live on, then when people can no longer compete with the machines, people will have to choose to give up automation or capitilism or life.
Automation isn’t going away, and evryone who is sane want’s to live, so we will have to give up or at least revamp capitalism. I believe we will lean toward having everyone get a stake in the value of the machines, material resources and energy so everyone can draw income from them. We just need to make sure no one is left out because job income is just not going to be available in the highly automated future. Let us not wait for the transition into this to be complete before we prepare for the future. Massive numbers of people are already suffering from the incompatibility of automation and work for your money capitalism.
[...] another interesting input for me to ponder. And all of this also led me (via an article titled Martin Ford Asks: Will Automation Lead to Economic Collapse?) to a fun new website called Singularity Hub which has now been added to my feedreader. [...]
[...] another interesting input for me to ponder. And all of this also led me (via an article titled Martin Ford Asks: Will Automation Lead to Economic Collapse?) to a fun new website called Singularity Hub which has now been added to my feedreader. Now, time [...]
Hello i just had a popup from my firewall when i opened your blog do you know how come this occured? Could it possibly from your advertising or something? Thanks, really odd i pray it was harmless?
[...] some scientists and journalists. This isn’t necessarily a bad thing. Though some worry automation could lead to economic collapse, it could also free humans to pursue other tasks, to become entrepreneurs or artists. No matter [...]
[...] the allure of paying a photographer $100+/hr to do the same thing by hand is going to fade. The automation of jobs is starting to crop up in some unlikely places. Is it strange that journalists and photographers [...]
If the advancement of nanotechnology is commensurate with that of robotics then there’s an equally high likelihood that products will be made via personal fabricators. Individual atoms and molecules would be arranged to form increasingly larger parts which would be assembled into products, including food.
Thank you guys, I love this place, you have put a lot of work into it as I see, awesome… good work mods.
[...] is still done by hand, but automation is present and getting more prevalent. We’ve had debates here at the Hub about whether full scale automation will be a positive or negative. I hope we can all agree, however, that machines are going to take over a huge amount of human [...]
[...] local and global transitions. And there is—understandably—some skepticism surrounding the economic effects of automation that will come with this new wave of [...]
The key to the future probably lies in the project I am involved in. It is called TRANSFINANCIAL ECONOMICS, and arguably represents a quantum leap in our understanding of economics….Click on my p2pfoundation entry..
“He speaks of ‘recapturing wages’ by [...] and value added taxes to goods as they become cheaper [...]”
Is he insane? The big fix here is to NOT tax those goods and let them be cheaper and cheaper. To live a life of minimum-comfort you now need what? 1000 dollars per month or something? We should make sure that drops to essentially 0, so that you no longer need to work to survive, but can start working for other causes like bettering humanity.
Ironically, these Neo-Luddites are a major threat to civilization. If we start imposing brakes on innovation, it will move off-radar to groups of people, you don’t want to see innovating…
Yes, you are right we should be moving away from jobs, and wage slavery to more advanced forms of living, and working…This is why my Transfinancial Project is so important…but do people have the vision, and understanding to grasp its huge importance, and implications? I wonder if Martin Ford does, or not??
The advancement of technology and the demise of the monetary system has been foreseen by Jacque Fresco founder of The Venus Project. The Venus Project advocates that society moves toward a Resource Based Economy. (RBE) I advise everyone to take a serious look on what TVP advocating. This is the society of the future and the whole world could be involved. TheVenusProject.com makes perfect sense.
[...] or had been automated (NYT). Some Neo-Luddites claim that soon most jobs will be automated and that we will have to deal with a complete economic meltdown because of massive unemployment. Massive inequalities in income are definitely a characteristic of informationization: some people [...]
[...] In The Tunnel is now being offered free for download as a PDF via its website. As I mentioned upon reviewing the book this past winter, I don’t agree with Ford’s conclusions, but I do think he is one of the few authors [...]
[...] http://www.technologyreview.com/blog/post.aspx?bid=358&bpid=24609 http://singularityhub.com/2009/12/15/martin-ford-asks-will-automation-lead-to-economic-collapse/ Author’s address: lightstunnel@yahoo.com -From [...]
[...] seen artificial intelligence tackle everything from astronomy to sports writing. As I discussed in my review of Martin Ford’s book on the topic, automation is likely to continue to expand into industries and jobs that we [...]
Mr Saenz,
But how do you deal with the fact that not everyone has the smarts to become “a mini manufacturing, information, software or robotics mogul.” Yes, new technology opens new jobs, but these are usually skilled jobs with higher cognitive demands than the unskilled jobs lost. The problem is the people who, to be blunt, are too stupid for anything more complex than asking “do you want fries with that?” We will reach a point where all jobs within these people’s capacity will have been automated away, and they will be truly unemployable; they won’t have enough smarts for the jobs left.
Decades ago, a high-school diploma was enough for a comfortable middle-class lifestyle. Now, a bachelor’s degree sometimes isn’t enough. And so what happens to the high-school dropout, the functional illiterate, and those of borderline intellectual functioning. There are some people for whom no amount of further education or “retraining” will make into “artists, counselors, public officials, entertainers, teachers” or other such positions.
And even if this automation makes goods cheaper, material and energy costs mean prices will still remain non-zero, and thus be unaffordable to those whose wages are zero. Lower wages can be compensated by lower prices only if both are uniform; here, you will see improved purchasing power for those above the rising cognitive waterline, and increasing poverty for those who are below it.
I do agree with your scepticism regarding Ford’s proposed solutions; they are not politically nor culturally viable. The problem, though, is that none of the other solutions are, either. While people have intellectually worked out post-scarcity systems, there is absolutely no way to get there from here. The only outcome I can see from this is massive social upheaval, probably accompanied by the rise of repressive authoritarian regimes, increased religious fundamentalism with con-commitant violence, and (particularly when you consider China’s increasing gender imbalance) large-scale warfare; I expect we will see death rates, as a fraction of global population, on a scale not seen since the Black Death.