The end of jobs
Many people are talking these days about how robots and AI will replace humans in many jobs. Some examples:
Self-driving trucks
Now see what is the most common job in many states in USA:
No cashiers: Amazon Go
Fast-food
Is this the end of jobs?
Many people say that the Industrial Revolution also destroyed lots of jobs, but created new ones. As an example they say that somebody will need to create and maintain those robots, etc.
But with robots and AI we are talking that any low qualification job is susceptible to disappear. If new types of jobs are to be created, they must be high qualification jobs. Yeah, maybe there will be a huge demand of people that can create new robots, maintain existing ones, etc. and are super well paid. Like software developers these days.
But, what do we do with the people that won’t ever have the abilities to apply to a high qualification job?
Why do we need jobs?
Wait a second. If robots and AI can do almost everything, why do we need to work?
Technology is supposed to give us the ability to avoid unnecessary work. If technology makes half of the jobs unnecessary, is that good or bad?
I think we will live soon in a society where many people won’t have jobs because they are no longer necessary. And we need to think what do we do?
- How that people will live?
- What so many unemployed people will do in their free time?
- In a far future if almost all jobs are not necessary, what will all we do with so much free time? It can be a utopia of happines, a boring society, or a dangerous one. Not having anything to do can create many types of mental illness, sociopats, etc.
I think that at some point the basic income will be implemented in many countries, we will also have lots of public workers and we will focus on being happy instead of having an economy that grows exponentially.
The alternative to me is a lot of poor and unemployed people. Which path we take is something that we should be start thinking on.
