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Last class period we briefly discussed the question of...
If advanced A.I. takes everyone's jobs (except perhaps a few super-wealthy CEOs and presidents of the robot companies & robotic factories that are self-contained wealth-production machines), then... what?
Someone mentioned UBI (Universal Basic Income) as one possible solution, and some people have been promoting this idea for several years (NY Times article from 2016). However, there are also a variety of potential objections to it.
An A.I. mailing list that I read posted a link to this article that proposes "Universal Basic Jobs" as an alternative to UBI.
I don't know if this idea would work, but it caught my interest. What do you all think? (Let's discuss in the comments below!)
If one assumes an AI that can do intellectual work better than people can exists, which is something I think one must do for this debate, than one must assume that every job will replaced by this superhuman. Any government or company who did not would be at such a disadvantage to all their opponents who would replace their merely human workers, so that all would be forced to. At which point large sections, possibly the entirety of society, would be unable to find a job no matter how hard they look for one, since there would be no jobs for anyone.
ReplyDeleteIn this scenario, I prefer the optimistic future, that where the AI is governed by the state and works for the benefit of all.
Or perhaps the AI CEO's will recognize that in order for their company to make money, then people have to be paid so they can spend money. Therefore, all the AI CEO's might assume the optimal solution for each is the optimal for the whole, which is to establish some kind of wealth redistribution.
I do not know what if this wealth redistribution would take the form of a universal basic income or some other means of wealth redistribution, but it in the extreme case, it is obviously preferable that 80-99.9 percent of the population unemployed.
The difficulty in my mind is the intermediate time, after the unemployment starts to rise, but before it has taken everyone's job. Here is where the danger lies, for human greed to exploit the ever growing unemployment rate. That could spell disaster for the entire economy.
I definitely agree with you about the intermediate time. I think there's a lot of potential to make something good out of this, but it's going to be disastrous when automation takes over all/most of the jobs, until we decide to restructure to accommodate it. I'm also very concerned at the possibility of the automation being owned by private entities that will in that situation just own everything.
DeleteI don't necessarily think that total automation of necessary labor will take away everyone's jobs, though. Even now we value handmade products. I don't think that will go away. There's a certain appeal that human labor has for humans. For that reason, even if robots can do everything, I think humans will still want to do some things, particularly tasks that can pertain to emotion like cooking, therapy, or art.
One thing I was pondering was most business startups are risky. Usually the less money one has the less risks they take. But when people are given safety nets they seem to try more risky things. I was interested in whether this would cause people to become lazy and drug addicts on the government's dime, or if it would allow people to do some really cool things for their local communities knowing that the government is helping them. I guess it is just a belief of human nature that is a much deeper conversation. I don't have statistics or hard facts but did think this was an interesting counterpoint to the "lazy people" argument.
ReplyDeleteI disagree that companies would keep their employees. Companies that refuse to move with the trends get over run by their competitors in a capitalist society. Let's say we have a bread factory (just for kicks) and there is a new bread making machine that comes to the market. The cost to produce bread is much cheaper and the new company that just uses 1 bread making machine instead of the family owned 10 man bread factory will produce at a much cheaper price. One will survive due to competition in the market. We see this time and time again in a capitalist society of cheaper goods winning the battle of the fittest. Walmart stays while Bread & sons dies off (Fictional family owned bread factory). If companies care about their employees it is nice, but unfortunately it isn't supported in our current system unless we choose to buy more expensive products produced by old means vs new means. Unless we can argue that AI produced goods are not as good quality as human produced goods I think that AI will win this competition.
In a Utopian universal basic income society, the thing that bothers me the most is what that means for my economic freedom. With UBI will I just be making enough to get by, or will I have enough to buy an item from the latest Supreme drop? Also what does UBI mean for the economy itself? Is it possible to have limited supply items like Supreme, or will the economy be planned so that supply always meets demand for products? Will this system allow me to better my condition in certain aspects of my?
ReplyDeleteWhile the fruits of UBI may seem promising, I believe it is worth asking these questions and think about what that means for our socioeconomic lives.
You raise some good points for consideration. I think one thing to consider is that if everyone is on equal footing economically, then products being sold would either be affordable by necessity or fail due to inaccessibility. I think you could interpret that as either a good or bad thing. Maybe you view the world as a competition, and you want to be able to compete. Also maybe focusing on accessibility to everyone inhibits progress in some ways. Maybe it's prohibitively expensive to make the best product available to everyone, but if it's only available to some people it won't be purchased, and this stops the product from being improved and made. I personally subscribe to a more collaborative philosophy where I think we should all be on equal footing and work together to better the world. However, I recognize that this is a very idealistic philosophy and doesn't properly acknowledge human nature. Maybe it is important to move up in life as an individual. I don't think these questions have easy answers, but I do think they're worth discussion.
DeleteI find your concern for economic freedom both interesting and insightful. What this makes me think of immediately is the concept of artificial scarcity. Already today, scarcity is artificially added to some digital goods, thereby changing the supply/demand ratio. This is also used in some specters where there is a monopoly on a good (cough diamonds cough). I expect something like artificial scarcity would be implemented to help monitor prices. After all, if supply is infinite than no demand would offset it.
DeleteIn a sense the cost of running a UBI system and revenue generated would be the scarcity of UBI. Unless the cost of operating the system is low and revenue is high, UBI has the potential to be prosperous privatized Welfare system if Zuckerberg decides to go through with this. It will definitely be interesting to see how this may be implemented in the future.
DeleteI am not a fan of the universal basic income / universal basic job idea. I feel like having a job and making a difference is important to a lot of people. I think a lot of people are happier when they are busier, but to a certain extent. You don't want to be overwhelmed with work, but you don't want to be underwhelmed as in the case of universal basic jobs.
ReplyDeleteI've been a proponent of UBI for a long while now. It has always been my belief that UBI should be enough to live comfortably on but not enough to provide you with funds to have fun. I shouldn't be able to go see a movie or buy drinks with those funds; there should be some system in place, either as traditional jobs or something else, that allows us to make extra income. There are a lot of details that would need to be worked out, and admittedly I'm not the most well versed in the points against this beyond what's brought up here, but I think it's the way of the future.
ReplyDelete