Basically since the dawn of humanity, people who are able to work have been an important resource. People possess different knowledge, abilities and physical properties so it is not a fungible resource, but there was also plenty of demand for labor that doesn’t come with a lot of requirements. Groups of humans, be it tribes, settlements of civilizations, always relied on processes that simply involved work. Work that any healthy human could learn to perform. There was always something that needed hauling, building, fixing, searching, or organizing. This remains true to this day. While machines have replaced a lot of manual labor in nearly all industries, some tasks remain that are just work. But what if that were to change?
If you read last week’s post, you might understand why I’m asking that question. AI is making it cheaper than ever to replace human labor with automation and while I don’t think we will make people obsolete within the next decade at least, the movement is already starting. If you walk into an Indian sweat shop today, you will see people churning out manual labor as before, but wearing cameras on their heads. They are already generating the data which might be used in the not so distant future to replace them with machines. This is not merely hypothetical, technology is almost there. This will happen. And low wage countries like India will be the first to feel the effects.
Don’t get me wrong, I’m not saying that all manual labor will necessarily be replaced. There will probably be at least some tasks that are not feasible to automate for a long time. But that pool is shrinking. When technology threatens people’s jobs it is common industrialization era wisdom to assume that the new technology will probably create more jobs than it replaces. But I find it difficult to believe that this will also be the case with AI. Sure, AI creates some jobs but those are for highly skilled individuals. What value could an unskilled worker provide in a world where nearly any task could be automated by a skilled worker in the time it would take the unskilled worker to learn to perform the task?
At what point will we come to terms with the realization that some people are just … useless. How will we deal with that? It’s really about time we think about this as a society. It’s hard to know if it has already started because the issue is buffered by welfare systems and unemployment statistics are often made to look better than they are by politicians who fear for their reelection. Nevertheless, recent statistics show an increase in unemployment in most western countries. There are people in our society who could have easily found work just a few decades ago but that now are considered unemployable due to low IQ, physical disabilities or mental health issues. And I’m not saying people who are seriously ill need to work, but I’m just wondering what will happen once that threshold at which you count as unemployable shifts more and more towards the mean.
I just know that, if many people were reading my blog, some of you would be screaming “universal basic income” at your screens right now. It’s an appealing idea, but it is just not that easy. Assuming we had a government that paid UBI to its citizens and collected taxes from corporations to finance it. What would stop those corporations from paying their taxes? You might say: the police. But how is this government going to pay the police if the corporations decide to cut their only stream of revenue? A flow of money always creates a relationship of dependence and this hypothetical government would be very dependent on those corporations. All the “useless” people would necessarily be at the mercy of those who are still part of the system.
So why should people keep a bunch of strangers around who don’t do anything for them? It sounds horribly inhumane if you ask it that way but debating it on moral ground bears little value. I don’t think we can count on morality as it is highly subjective if not founded in a common belief. The responsibility to care for a bunch of people who have nothing to contribute to society is easily explained away. After all, most countries deny refugees if they fled for purely economic reasons. But are there other reasons why one might want to keep a bunch of people around without wanting anything from them?
I can’t predict the future, maybe there will always be enough tasks for people that just cannot be automated away by definition because humans performing them is a quality criterion. Maybe people will start valuing human interaction so much that getting their coffee from a shop with a human barista will be so preferable that they are willing to pay more for it. Maybe there will be a lot more artists, athletes and entertainers. Our society already supports an astounding number of “influencers”. Others have already conjectured that “unfiltered humanity” will be the ultimate luxury good. Maybe humanity is looking towards an incredible, never ending party. Maybe the elites will want to keep those people around because it means they can be the kings of that party instead of having to party alone. Maybe financing a bunch of people will be the ultimate status symbol, even if those people don’t do much.
It seems like a hopeful thought, but it is really not. Remember how the flow of money creates a relationship of dependence? Yeah, those people might be at a party but they’d be there as slaves.
