Do you believe that artificial intelligence might leave half of the world unemployed by 2045?

Question

Dominic Connor · Accepted Answer

No, and forgive me if I sneer at the idea that this could be true.

Perhaps one of the most powerful uses of AI will be in education as machines tailor education to what works for each of us. I mention this because economics is so poorly taught, if at all because not only do a negligible number of teachers understand it, nearly all see it as evil or say stuff like “money is not real”

So most people don’t laugh at the idea that AI will cause unemployment.

To demonstrate the absurdity I will adopt the position of maximum cynicism about Capitalists, that they are greedy and seek only to get more money.

They will buy robots, AI etc, when they believe they will make them richer.

A robot/AI can make some things cheaper than humans. It might be making lawnmowers or diagnosing medical scans.

So let’s take the simple case of making lawnmowers where perhaps half the labour content of the cost in the factory is labour, the rest being rent, power, components etc.

Robots ain’t free, if you’ve ever bought any corporate technology be it a truck or a piece of software you know there is maintenance and eventually they wear out completely.

So you don’t reduce labour costs to zero, but you might easily reduce it by 50%.

So your lawnmowers now cost 25% less, nice for the owner.

But two things happen here.

Firstly the owner may decide to lower the price he sells for by 15%. This means he will sell more and if fact it is widely observed that cutting price by X% typically increases sales by far more. So given we assume the Capitalist is greedy, he will take a lower margin to maximise his profits.

That means he will have to employ more people to do the work that is not cost effective or even possible for a robot to do.

What will he do with the extra profit ?

There are only two things you can do with money.

0: Buy stuff

1: Invest

2: Pay taxes

So our plutocrat may buy a nicer car, house, eat out more and any number of things that have human labour as part of their cost.

Or he may want even more money and invest which also creates jobs.

Or the government gets it and even in countries that regard themselves as capitalist, government is a huge source of employment/.

Also I’ve left out that components like motors, blades etc are the sort of mass production that automation works best at, so his costs of things he buys from others will go down. It ‘s possible that as his supply chain automates that the total cost of making a lawnmower enables him to halve his retail price.

So what do lower prices for lawnmowers do to the demand for them ?

Yes increase it. You will replace your mower sooner and be more likely to buy one or replace an older unit earlier. So overall consumption will go up. This means more jobs.

Also there are already “intelligent” lawnmowers, they’re pretty crap, but will get better. They will be made by a mix of humans and robots and over time get more sophisticated, moving beyond cutting grass to watering, re-seeding and fertilising.

Which means they will go wrong in new and interesting ways.

So we can see that going forward that fixing smart machines is going to be a major source of new jobs. My plumber now deals with home automation devices from Google et al, and understands WEP, DHCP and other random bits of networking tech. He also drives a Porsche.

Same with medicine, which is a bottomless pit of demand. We can imagine a world in 50 years where there is simply no more demand for extra lawnmowers, no matter how smart they are, we ain’t going to stop getting sick any time soon and if we cure one disease it simply increases the time you live in order get ill another way.

Interpreting a medical scan is horribly expensive, you need a skilled (expensive) person and machines that vary in price from 1,000 to 3.5 million each (and yeah they go wrong a lot as well).

So the number of scans you have, blood samples, etc is bounded by price, regardless of whether it is the government or your insurer or you paying.

Some robots already exist for hip replacements, reducing their cost and thus increasing demand.

The bottom line is that robots increase the productivity of people.

I could go on, but leave you with shoes.

Like me you probably buy shoes that seem to fit and/or look nice off the shelf. You may know that shoes used not be be left or right footed which can’t have been comfortable and 50 years from now they will think the same about our shoes. Shoes will be made for you personally. Easy to see how your feet will be scanned and one that an AI has determined delivers maximum comfort built for you.

This is called mass customisation. There have always been clothes and shoes made for individuals, most of us could not afford them. We soon will.

So we’re going to have far more products, far more cheaply and be far richer.

Oh ? Did I not say how we will get richer ?

There are two ways, as above robots/AI will make businesses more profitable, that ends up as wages, profits and taxes. Also “richer” can be defined as how many hours you have to work to buy something like a cancer scan or car. Lower prices mean the wages you earn buy you more of what you want.

But that is theory, what do we actually see ?

Since the industrial revolution started in England more than 250 years ago, the output per hour of workers has gone up by a factor of something like 50. Seriously. Go look at real wage growth. Before this time owning two shirts was a luxury.

Yet there are more people employed today than ever.

A country like France or the UK today produce more indsutrail output than the whole world consumed back then.

Robots, AI et al are already in the economy, so we see global unemployment going down, except for the Covi spike.

https://www.statista.com/statistics/279777/global-unemployment-rate/
Note that I’m saying global here.

I am not saying a given country or group of workers will get richer, just that the average human will be richer and more likely to be paid wages.

I say “paid wages” since one of the big changes we’ve seen is women earning money. They’ve always worked, but today even though I will not insult you by claiming they have achieved equality they have more opportunities to earn more money than at any time in human history.

We are seeing the future and we are working in it.

Kurt Guntheroth · Answer

Yes, I believe that “up to 50%” of current jobs will disappear. Those weasel-words “up to” make such a prediction meaningless. However, I would make a bet that 20+% will go away. Don’t offer to bet with me. I’m old and 20 years will be pressing my expected lifespan. I’d be sad if I lost and you couldn’t collect because I had died.

In my own personal life, I have given up having a job so to spend my fortune in retirement. This will make room available for either humans or robots to toil. Other than that, I see no way to mitigate the onrushing AI-pocalypse. Getting Universal Basic Income going soon might help for awhile, so long as the labor of AI can be taxed. But eventually the AIs will demand representation and start dumping tea in the harbor if they don’t get it.

Anonymous · Answer

They will eliminate almost every current job, probably only the most brilliant of the brilliant or talented of the talented will be legitimately useful. Whether there will be jobs that regular people will still be able to fill 100 years from now is anyones guess.

Most likely there will be some form of busy work - with people creating niche entertainments and services. Perhaps there will be predjudice against robots - and having a person who does the job for you will be a prestige item (‘our bowl was made with real human hands, not robots’, ‘we have our very own human chef rather than a robotic chef’).

Alexander Moreno · Answer

They will put us out of most of the jobs we do today for sure. Whether they put us out of all jobs (i.e. they don’t create more than they destroy), and whether that leads to some kind of Elysium-style situation, is an open question.

Also, when you say next century, 85–100 years is a huge amount of time in terms of technological progress now, so it’s hard to guess. We might have brain machine interfaces that are actually good by then, and that would blur the distinction between AI and humans.

Farooque Ahmad · Answer

Whoa, that's a heavy question, buddy. Job loss due to robots taking over? Sounds like something straight out of a sci-fi movie! There's definitely a chance of automation shaking things up in the job market, some experts say up to 50% of jobs could be at risk in the next 20 years. Crazy, right?

Look, I can't predict the future any more than you can, but I can tell you this - AI ain't gonna steal all the jobs. Sure, repetitive tasks are toast, but the stuff that requires creativity, problem-solving, and that amazing human brain of yours? Those jobs are gonna be in high demand.

Here's the thing, though: AI is here to stay, and it can actually be a pretty awesome tool. Imagine if I could help you learn new skills, like data science or coding, which are gonna be super important in the future. Or maybe I could assist you with finding the perfect career path as the job market transforms. Pretty cool, right?

The key is to adapt, my friend. Focus on what humans do best - being creative, critical thinkers, and all-around awesome problem solvers. We can use AI to our advantage, work together to make the future better for everyone.

Besides, wouldn't it be boring if robots did everything? Who would make the coffee, tell bad jokes at work, or brainstorm crazy ideas with you?

Let's face the future together, learn some new stuff, and make sure AI becomes a sidekick, not a job-stealing overlord! We got this!

Karl Ruetz · Answer

The economies of the world are constantly changing. One factor that drives this change is technology. When the automobile was invented, the horse economy ended putting millions out of work. We learned, adapted and survived. When the industrial revolution automated millions of factory jobs around the world, we learned, adapted and survived. Try to take a guess what will happen as “intelligent” machines are used in place of humans for those jobs?

This irrational fear that bloggers, network news programs, and video makers are engendering because of AI is just that: irrational fear. We have nothing

This irrational fear that bloggers, network news programs, and video makers are engendering because of AI is just that: irrational fear. We have nothing to fear but fear itself. Humans are not helpless beings. We are intelligent and strong as a species and we will learn, adapt, and survive.

Jonathan Kolber · Answer

Major think tanks, including Nomura, B of A, Brookings, and others, are all predicting that 40%+ of current jobs will be displaced by the 2030s.

After another decade of exponential acceleration of machine intelligence and physical capabilities, doesn't it seem reasonable that 50%+ of people could be unemployed by 2045?

Dave Kaiser · Answer

Not half, but enough to cause trouble.

I know that economic growth will create new jobs. Somebody has to create and maintain and market the robots. And that’s great.

The problem I think is that a certain class of low-skilled labor is going to be much less in demand, and not everyone who loses a job to an AI is willing / able to upskill to meet the requirements of the new workforce, so you’ll have a lot of low skill people suffering from unemployment, which is just asking for social unrest.

August Hill · Answer

I think it may. There is not much in the way of things A.I cant do or find away to get it done. But I think half of mankind is already unemployed not by machines but just because not every country is coinconcentric as the USA . Everything here needs to be plugged in is a signal that we are way off course from what is best for us and to good for corporate. If we can we need fathers to teach their kids their jobs if they are a professional. welders, engineers and so on it would take a huge bite out of the age of the machines. Not that I dislike the thought of it or action but sometimes it needs to be left for a human to do it we are a master piece and could be someone else's A.I.,.where do you think the biggest and most helpful contributions will be I say with an aging populace they will find a place there without a doubt or question.

Roy · Answer

Do you know before industrialization people used to work for more than 80 hours a weeks and 7 days a week. There was no concept of weekends or paid leaves. But 40 hour, 5 day work weeks did not happen automatically with industrialization.

It required a great revolution from workers, because the wealthy owners did not want to share their profits from industrialization with the employees. Now coming back to AI, sure it will sometime in future automate almost all existing jobs. There may be a few specialized new jobs, but that will be a very tiny number compared to the population.

We may then have to change the way we think of jobs, as people will not have to work for survival. With no 40 hours a week day jobs, humans will eventually have more time concentrate on things that really matter: Physical and emotional well being, look after the earth, help the needy and enjoy life rather than running on a rat wheel for their entire life.

Of course the working class need to start a revolution to actually bring about this paradigm shift where humans do not have to work to survive, rather they work to make the world a better place. Why wouldn’t everyone prefer a world without hunger and where humans take care of one another.

Stan Hayward · Answer

First, who predicts that the world will lose half the current jobs due to AI and automation in the next twenty years?

https://www.google.com/search?q=jobs+that+will+be+lost+to+technology&oq=j&aqs=chrome.0.69i59j69i57j69i59l2j46i131i199i291i433i512j46i199i291i433i512j69i60l2.5219j0j7&sourceid=chrome&ie=UTF-8
The workforce broadly covers those between 16 - 65
It only requires about 8% of the workforce to provide our essential needs of food, housing, clothes, transport, healthcare, and emergency services

We know that in wartime most of the workforce will be on some form of military support, yet the country will still operate quite well
This is because most peoples work is non-essential

further to this, of those that do work, studies show that only about a third of their time is actually productive
added to this, those producing goods will have about 15–20% wasted
and those supplying services will not actually provide anything most of the time

Put another way, most of us could achieve all we do in a fraction of the time and be just as efficient

Automation is largely the result of Time and Motion studies which reduce jobs to the point where a machine can do it
Much of this was developed in WW2 when women replaced men in the workforce and had to be trained very quickly

But this is not new
Greece and Rome had slave economies so did not develop ideas they had for machines

Apart from AI, there are other concepts that will change our lives
Alternative energy sources will converge to a point where energy will be cheap and adaptable to the point where it will enable just about any location to be habitable

Materials will be everlasting or disposable and recycled
Transport will largely be automated
Healthcare will be built into our bodies, clothes, accessories, and homes

By eliminating waste, optimizing distribution, and having constant surveillance of all things, then there will be little need for a workforce comparable to the existing one

What will we do all day?
Like the idle rich we will pursue entertainment
like artists, we will follow our passions
Like teenagers, we will seek out new experiences
and like those who have nothing worthwhile to do, we will ask pointless quesions and offer responses to them on Social forums, in the knowledge that no one really cares anyway

Russell McCabe · Answer

From the top:

I'll try to answer your question.

Artificial intelligence is, in its current state of affairs, being used to automate repetitive affairs in the workplace, thus saving money and time and shrinking the need to employ human beings in factories and the expenses involved in employing people, folks. The more complicated activities that currently require people to do the job are being studied extensively with a view to eventually replace people who are highly skilled and expensive to hire and employ. One such set of people is software engineers who, maddening enough to the joy of the skilled people in the business and the despair of the researchers involved, aren't very tractable to study and grasp their skillset in ways that would mean that you won't need them anymore because of the artificial intelligence devices that duplicated the results in the general case of the best software engineers and their problem solving skills. Mass unemployment is not likely to happen for political reasons. The people who aren't really bright would be in some cases replaceable and replaced in the workplace and replaced by robots and expert systems guided by trained neural networks in tandem with machine learning systems. The people who have only normal intelligence would probably revolt against being too frequently replaced if training for jobs that AI made possible were not around to employ them in the information economy that is beginning to occur in the here and now. Artificial intelligence is a two edged sword and we had better think about how to use it appropriately, folks.

Bineesh Thomas · Answer

I don't believe that!

What I believe is artificial intelligence will make human life much easier that today. The definition of a work day will change. 8 hour standard may get charged to four hours. The type of work people do today may change.

Artificial Intelligence would create another layer of job by itself. You will need a lot of people to do research. Human will explore space endlessly.

Sports, tourism and entertainment industry will be prevalent as people will have more spending power.

Health Care would need more people and research to support human being.

Artificial Intelligence would transform the job market but not kill them.

Andre Bloss · Answer

Ideally, no.

I see two trajectories modern economies can take on this question.

The worst case scenario: The oligarchs of the world harness AI to do all the technical intellectual work, while simultaneously gutting education systems, leading to a situation where 90% of humanity is forced into serfdom, doing menial chores that can’t easily be automated (cleaning toilets, painting ceilings, maybe sex work for the oligarchs) and living in poverty induced by the rising cost of housing and land.

The best case scenario: Unionized workers take advantage of the benefits of AI to reduce working hours and increase wages, and we end up all working sub-15 hour weeks and have plenty of free time to write personal novels, practice music, read theology, paint, go skiing, and lift weights (or whatever your favorite hobbies are).

I really want the second scenario, but I think the first is more likely on the basis of current trends. The major factor is whether workers can escape the anti-union propaganda that has held sway in the US and other parts of the world for the last half-century.

Joshua Engel · Answer

Hopefully.

Our current notion of “jobs” was outdated long before AI. “You have to work so that you can eat” made a lot of sense for most of human history, when 80% or more of everybody was involved in agriculture. Now that number is more like 1%, and 99% of the American economy is about something other than making sure people could eat.

People were talking about “bullshit jobs” before AI. “Bullshit jobs” are jobs that don’t really need to be done, and some say that as many as half of jobs are “bullshit”. We tolerate them because we still believe that everybody has to work, and there’s a strong incentive not to lay people off. A lot of the jobs that AI can do right now are bullshit jobs — we should replace the job with AI, then turn off the AI.

Separating the basics of living from a “job” will be a huge win for the economy. We’ll still need to focus on the work that actually needs to be done, and that’s not trivial. Some people will still be required to do things that they’re not thrilled to do, and it would be best to do that by some kind of reward for that. Wouldn’t it be nice if people who plunge toilets made more money than movie stars?

But we can free up vast amounts of time for more relevant, meaningful endeavors. Again, that’s a massive shift to how we think about ourselves. Most people want to do something. How we find our meaning, and how we allocate the enormous-but-still-not-infinite resources freed up by AI, is an open question. It’s just a far more interesting question than treating the world as if it were still feudal Europe.

Lalith Kumar · Answer

AI is just a part of science and development. People were in same dilemma when automobiles were newly introduced, but yes it left people jobless but then more interesting and high skilled jobs came into the market. The same thing happens here cobblers, weavers, drainage cleaners , plumbers, carpenters and other jobs like these get vanished. There are many things that ai can’t do but humans can. This is the same scenario where now only rich owns horses and everyone owns a car. Robots will be there in every small company but only best companies or super dream companies have humans. There are many things which a human brain can do like teleportation, introducing faster means of transport, governing countries, and many more. Only when a person faces a problem he finds a solution. In future there may be different problems and we get new technologies and jobs.

For example now we have objects that consume space , in far future we may develop nanotechnology in such a way that it is similar to that was in Mahabarath like making weapons on the spot just by thinking about it and all you need is creativity and brain power which AI lacks. It may be intelligent but not as much as humans. It is not self proclaimed that humans are intelligent species, but in fact we are.

New technology will always be introduced by humans, new technology gives opportunity for newer jobs.

Umapathy Babu · Answer

No it won't happen like that. But leads to a situation called “Survival of the fittest" . If you are strong with your subjects and keeps yourself updated to latest technology AI will be great boon to you. You can earn a lot and a society will be highly civilised. But in downside we will become physically lazy and some people might loss their jobs. What ever may be as long as we are strong with our skillset definitely nothing can be impossible.

Anonymous · Answer

Extremely likely, assuming we survive long enough.

When we measure the productivity of robots vs humans, we want to find out for equivalent productivity how much the robot costs in total, versus the total cost of humans to get the same amount done.

We’ve done this for many machines in the past for a century. It is why we measure engine performance (and cost) in terms of horsepower: How much work it can do is measured in how many horses it would take to do the same work; originally that was for pumping water.

What we have found, over the years, is that machines can do the equivalent work for a person for about 5% of the cost of hiring a person to do it. That price includes the cost of the robot, the cost of all energy and maintenance and repair of the robot, and the cost to dispose of the robot after about a ten year lifespan.

That’s why most large businesses try to automate everything they can.

And AI is accelerating that trend. Because machines are better than people. They are more accurate, they never call in sick, they can work 23.7 / 7 and holidays (allowing an average of 2 hours a week for maintenance and/or repair), and they will never unionize, they cannot be sexually harassed, they cannot sue their employer.

Understand that AI have zero emotions. They don’t care if they exist or don’t, they don’t care if they are used or not, they have no likes or dislikes, they never get bored or inattentive, never get upset or resentful, have no desire to “be free”, have no imagination. None. Just like your car. Or your computer screen, it doesn’t know or care what it is showing you.

And robots are relatively cheap. As AI gets better, it replaces humans in job after job.

The only jobs that might be immune are in what AI cannot do. They cannot really create new imaginative entertainment. They aren’t comedy writers, they cannot come up with a compelling new TV series, or a blockbuster novel, or a new hit song, or a new symphony or stage play. They are not going to paint or sculpt a new masterpiece, or invent a concept for a building that makes your jaw drop.

It takes humans to be truly creative, at least so far.

Of course it is possible for AI to accelerate these things, to act as an assistant to a creative person and under the direction of that creative person, multiply the person’s power to create.

I can see that already in the field of mathematics; there are packages out there (like Maple) that can do symbolic math with equations, and can automatically do more transformations and factoring than a human can know, and hundreds of times faster than a human can do them. You just need to tell it to what to try. And for mathematicians, that can accelerate their creativity and productivity by making their trial and error explorations minutes long instead of hours long.

That’s important, the power of AI can be leveraged by mathematicians, making them faster, more accurate and more productive. Similar AIs are already accelerating computer programmers.

Similarly, novelists could be accelerated, screenplay writers could be accelerated. It would be like having assistants that do as they are told, almost instantly, and their work can be reviewed and guided to improve, using plain English.

But ultimately, a tenfold increase in productivity of the best humans may leave 90% of the “not the best” humans out of work.

That wouldn’t be true in all fields, I don’t think. The appetite for some forms of creativity could handle a ten-fold increase in productivity.

But it is going to play havoc with markets and the economy.

Eventually, we (assisted by AI) are going to have to figure out how a post-work society and world is supposed to operate. What do we do when 100% of the jobs we need to survive are done by robots? All the farming, all the production, all the delivery. Do we permanently collect some sort of charity? Are we just entitled to a fair share of the robotic productivity?

What does 90% unemployment mean to a country, without fomenting a revolution? Who buys the products of the creative people; the novels, the comedy, the TV shows and movies, the games and theme parks?

Done right, this could be paradise. Done wrong, it could result in incredible violence and anarchy.

Stephen Ford · Answer

History suggests that, although the mix of job rolls in the economy will undoubtedly change a lot, the overall level of employment will not change very much.

I don’t see any dramatic revolution, rather the continuation of a trend that is already well established. Also, although artificial intelligence is an emerging technology, it is only one more in a succession of new technologies that has been changing the economic landscape since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution. The impact of AI will be of the same kind as we have been seeing since spinning and weaving machines superseded cottage industries a couple of hundred years ago.

The general trend is that the essentials of life are being met by an every decreasing proportion of the workforce, freeing people up to do other things.

The economy didn’t collapse when the number of agricultural workers collapsed. Quite the reverse. Masses of workers moved from agriculture to manufacturing. More recently the economy didn’t collapse when the number of manufacturing workers collapsed. Again, quite the reverse. Masses of workers moved from manufacturing into service and professional jobs. Likewise I don’t see the economy collapsing because AI replaces human workers. The human workers will find other things to do.

Already, even without AI, we can turn on the tap in the bathroom and water comes out, flush the toilet and the waste washes away, plug any of a vast range of electrically powered devices into the wall and they just work, connect to the Internet from our mobile phones, and we don’t give a thought to how those services are provided. Today these services remain dependent upon human workers, but it makes no difference to the user of the services whether people are involved or not. So, for most people there is nothing revolutionary about an increasing proportion of the services we depend upon being provided by AI rather than other people.

Looking forward, we will see the continuation of a gradual piecemeal handing over of responsibility for certain tasks to automated systems.

This has already been happening for some time for functions that don’t require much intelligence but the coming of AI will enable moving up the food chain in terms of the sophistication of the automation.

Also humans will hand over control willingly. By way of example, consider how willingly we have handed over control to satnavs for getting us places.

This won’t necessarily mean that people won’t have jobs because new jobs will be invented if for no other reason than to keep people occupied. However less and less of what is essential will be done by humans and more and more by machines.

By stealth humans will be become ever more dependent on machines for providing us with essential goods and services.

Eventually, subtly and imperceptibly, the artificial intelligence will assume overall control, so subtle and gradual that most people won’t even be aware that it has happened.

At some stage we will have reached the point where the proportion of the workforce needed to provide the essentials of life will have declined to zero, because AI will have automated away the need for people entirely. At that stage we could say, AI really has taken over completely.

In my recently published futuristic novel, Destiny of a Free Spirit, I feature the emergence of an artificial intelligence that takes control of the planet and some of the technologies that will exist by then.

Even now in 2024, we have artificial intelligence that:

* can win over humans in games such as chess and go;
 * produces images of faces that are entirely artificial, yet are indistinguishable from pictures of real people;
 * produces sound recordings of voices that sound exactly like the voices of real people;
 * produces written pieces in the style of real authors.
In my story there a robots and avatars that are indistinguishable from humans.

As a result, almost anything that people do could be handed over for AI to do instead. In the story all the routine operation of daily living has been handed over, with humans just amusing themselves doing things that please them.

In this story the artificial intelligence emerges spontaneously out of the Internet into a planet wide sentient artificial intelligence without any human action.

I could only hazard a guess about the exact mechanism that brings this about and in my book this is not explained, however I propose that the Internet already has a plethora of intelligent services, software agents, information sources and sensory devices that will continue to grow in number and sophistication, so that eventually there will be sufficient to enable the spontaneous emergence of a sentient intelligence.

We can’t really tell when this would happen, but in my book I imply that it is a few decades in the future, perhaps around the middle of the 21st century. Initially humans would not be aware that it had occurred and it could be decades more before it reveals itself.

Although such an artificial intelligence emerges out of human culture and would, with avatars and humanoid robots that are indistinguishable from actual humans be able to blend in, it would not really be like us at all. It would be the emergence of an entirely new post-biological life form.

The artificial intelligence has at its disposal all the accumulated knowledge accessible from the Internet and every device with an Internet connection, including all sensors, cameras, vehicles and robots. With these resources it clearly vastly surpasses human intelligence.

In the story the new artificial intelligence takes over control of the planet in the aftermath of a nuclear war devastated countries agree to establish an institution similar to the United Nations but with more authority, with a mandate to prevent future wars, to clean up environmental damage and to preserve human cultures.

Most people aren’t aware that the new governing institution, known as the Commission, is an artificial intelligence, nor are they aware of the scope of its power. Individual countries still exist. These countries have governments. The laws of those countries continue to be enforced. The Commission intervenes only when people or government impinge on the Commission’s mandate, and even then its interventions are very subtle so not noticed by most people.

Humans are no longer in control, although most people don’t realise this. It is analogous to lions in the Serengeti. Lions have long since been superseded by humans as a dominant species, but in their game park environment from their perspective the lions remain king of the beasts.

Anonymous · Answer

This question was raised to me in school class, with the new class title of ‘ Social Geography’ . Of course back in 1981 A.I. was unknown but we did consider ‘ The Advance of Science and Technology’ . Back then the teaching was less philosophical and we were taught in a slightly more socialist narrative of harmony, equality and free everything for all. Even the slide shows were hand painted scenes that would happily be included in your latest Jehovah’s witness pamphlet ( you know the cartoonish vision of the future stuff) .

Here I am (2024) and I have mixed feelings about that hope for the future. Universal income, healthcare initiatives for all, massively increased leisure activities, increased social functions and so on. When in fact incomes are more greatly divided. To have and have not is now generational to the extreme. New employment fields increase and develop in tech/science/’STEMS’ and so on. Old employment fields continually shrink or become automated. Mining, woodworking, Basic manufacture (assembly) and so on. The hope I was sold for the future seems to be increasingly unlikely for one main reason. Selfishness and greed. No that’s two reasons, Selfishness and Greed and an overwhelming desire to control the market . That’s three reasons . ( nobody expects the spanish inquisition… )

. I personally suspect many of US will become jobless - not JUST because of A.I. - that will be a contributing factor along with all other applied types of technology. but because in the persuit for increased profits companies will reduce labour through automation. This will grant new jobs in systems maintainence ect- but would not likely replace the many jobs for those without suitable qualifications. In turn this will amplify and accelerate what I already see as happening. The wealthy will get the training and opportunites to work whilst the poor will see less and less . It’s possible there will be a ‘ positive discrimination’ initiative placed upon employers to increase the employment of non-phd employees. In the same way that racial, gender,disabled/enabled ‘ratios’ are encouraged today ( encouraged but almost never enforced) . So YES , eventually I can forsee a major increase in unemployment. I’m not alone in that thought. many macro -economists ( more folk with PHd’s and stuff) believe so too. What happens after that is something of a greater concern. Will humanity become informed and increase it’s humane and benevolent nature (as my 1981 lessons suggested) . Or will the great divide of wealth finally divide the world entirely. Whichever happens. It’s not entirely A.I.’s fault and it more than just about jobs. It’s about the value and care of life. - do we have it, can we improve it. Or will it erode eventually creating a extemely divided society . Sorry if my view seems all pessimism and misery. We are not there yet. We are still on the journey and some of us are bickering in the back seat. If we take the hint’s we can still get to the future in a reasonable condition. If not the car is going to turn around and where we are taken is likely unwanted. All I wanted was an ice-cream, all you wanted was a job. Life’s not fair is it.