Brave New World
They say a revolution is in the offing — one that will turn our world and our lives upside down. They include both prognosticators of a promising transformation, and diviners of an impending doom. The two camps agree that change is nigh, but differ in what the change entails. In reality, though, we have long crossed the event horizon and are hurtling inexorably towards our superposed futures. What remains to be seen is which way the wave function will collapse.
This is about automation, about intelligent systems replacing humans in the workforce, and the societal changes that results. If a point in time has to be chosen to mark the beginning of this transformation, it lies perhaps in the heydays of the Industrial Revolution. In the early 1800s, when mechanized weaving equipment began replacing human workers, the Luddites were up in arms against the change. Today, the word ‘Luddite’ is derogatory, and is used to refer to anyone who opposes technological change. In 1961, when Unimate, the first industrial robot started die-casting car parts in a General Motors factory in New Jersey, there was very little opposition to it, if any — perhaps because it took over a job that was hazardous to humans. There was some opposition to the introduction of personal computers in offices in the 1970s and 1980s in developed countries, and at later times in developing countries, but, like the actions of the Luddites, ended up being Sisyphean. The world continued to prosper. Jobs that did not exist hitherto materialized, and the idea of technological unemployment remained merely a socialist bogeyman, relegated to the ranks of theological apocalypticism.
The central argument of futurists is that it is different this time around, because it is no longer just jobs that relied on human muscle power and physical dexterity that machines are taking over — they are replacing us in jobs that require our cognitive faculties. Automated trading systems are raking in billions of dollars in profit. Machine vision has revolutionized the world, from the simple and ubiquitous barcode-scanners to experimental self-driving cars. Even commercially available cars, for the most part, can drive themselves through chaotic human-infested roads, and park themselves. Additive manufacturing is replacing less efficient traditional forms of manufacturing and require much less, albeit more specialized, human intervention. Additive manufacturing has also found its way into the kitchen, and, along with robotic chefs, have begun manufacturing edible goods. Robotic systems have taken over factory and warehouse floors. Everyone with a smartphone has a personal assistant that keeps track of their daily activities. Wearable devices are helping us live healthier lives. More sophisticated systems, such as those along the lines of IBM’s Watson, are about to transform healthcare. The people who stand to lose jobs include not only relatively unskilled workers such as drivers, transportation workers, factory and warehouse employees, and fast food cooks, but highly skilled workers including doctors and surgeons.
At the same time, people are getting more educated, and have increasingly specialized skills, making them more immune to the onslaught of automation. But the rate at which machines improve is faster than that at which people improve, so machines are bound to catch up, sooner or later. Improvements in healthcare is leading to people living longer and healthier lives. Moreover, the fertility rate of the world is still above replacement levels, and the population of the world is not expected to stop growing — even in the most optimistic scenarios — until at least 2050. Together, this points to a large, potentially unemployed population just a few decades from now. The question, then, is how society would take care of people who have no income. After demonstrating the success of capitalism in increasing prosperity and eliminating poverty, and the failure of socialism in achieving either, do we fall back on the socialist idea of basic income for the welfare of the society? Barring that, will the civilization that we worked hard to create collapse in a popular uprising against corporations that run the automated systems? Or do we ship the unemployed off to Mars, where presumably, automation may not have made as many inroads as on Earth? Or, could it be that new jobs that do not exist today would crop up, leaving technological unemployment to continue to be the fantasy that it is today? No matter what happens eventually, one thing is sure: The changes we will witness in the coming decades will be orders of magnitude larger than what we have witnessed in the past. Assuming the extreme, unlikely scenario of apocalyptic social unrest does not transpire, there has never been a better time to be alive, to be participants in and witnesses to the surging rise of a planetary civilization. The revolution is upon us, and a brave new world awaits us on the other side.
