Google’s robotics exit and Neo-Luddism

Bloomberg has an article on Google’s looming exit from the robotics industry via their attempted sale of Boston Dynamics. Here’s a key point:

Boston Dynamics, though, was never folded into Google X and was instead put up for sale. After the division’s latest robot video was posted to YouTube, in February, Google’s public-relations team expressed discomfort that Alphabet would be associated with a push into humanoid robotics. Their subsequent e-mails were also published to the internal online forum and became visible to all Google employees.

“There’s excitement from the tech press, but we’re also starting to see some negative threads about it being terrifying, ready to take humans’ jobs,” wrote Courtney Hohne, a director of communications at Google and the spokeswoman for Google X.

I really hope that paragraph is wrong or overblown. Getting out of an area because they’re afraid of a potential Neo-Luddite backlash is ridiculous. Absurd! Instead, they should be using their considerable power to push the much-lauded “Silicon Valley Democracy.” Things like:

- Guaranteed income, or at least a stopgap like the old welfare system, but with far less means-testing, and far more generosity

- Universal, free higher education

- Free, universal health care

- Smart, flexible regulatory apparatus

- Completely rethought system of unions (a la Sweden/Germany, which are more cooperative, integrated into the government, and common, rather than adversarial and diffuse)

- Massive push (or even buildout) of dense urban housing developments. Make the modern “company town” an explicit goal if you must, then expand it to regions across the country. Put pressure on local governments, community boards, etc. where Google has an office presence for housing development, or spend the money and build housing directly. Google could buy up a whole block on the west side of Manhattan, buy everyone out, and put Singapore-style (but more stylish!) buildings there, either through upzoning or just rebuilds. They could show that thousands or tens of thousands of units being built in a reasonable time-frame aren’t just some kind of fantasy, and could do what our local governments can or will not.

I really wonder if the Nordics (and Germany) have a leg up on us here; they’re already 3/4 of the way towards this ideal, both in terms of policy and a cultural understanding of the benefits of a truly progressive taxation system/public goods and services. Would a Danish or Finnish robotics company bail out just because of fear of backlash, or would they say “society already has you covered, people”?