
AI Will Reduce Socioeconomic Inequality
The automation of undesirable jobs will free workers to pursue more gainful — and meaningful — work
With advancements in computing power, along with the exponential decrease in the cost of this power, tech giants like Google, Amazon and Apple have begun to incorporate machine learning — the foundation of artificial intelligence — into their products. The dawn of artificial intelligence is finally upon us.
The alarmist responses to these advances paint an apocalyptic outcome — rampant unemployment and “inevitable” uprisings of man-made beings. Hollywood has done the scientific community no favors in propagating these unfounded messages. From classics like Terminator to modern films like Ex Machina, the stories may be different but the theme is the same: mankind cannot wield the power of AI responsibly.
Little is said of the countless benefits this new technology will bring. The positives of artificial intelligence go far beyond asking Amazon’s Alexa to play your favorite song, or telling Apple’s Siri to read aloud your unread text messages, or being able to unlock your phone with only your face.
Artificial intelligence will reduce socioeconomic inequality by eliminating the need for humans to work undesirable, low-paying, unskilled, labor-intensive work.
The trash won’t take itself out
An unfortunate aspect of civilization is that there are very undesirable jobs that must be done in order for the whole system to work. When we toss our trash bags onto our sidewalk, we expect someone to come by in the morning to pick it up. When we flush the toilet, we expect the sewage system to be well maintained so that the contents successfully reach their destination. When we need to get from point A to point B, we expect a taxi driver (or Uber driver) to carry us there.
While you may find people who love sewage maintenance or garbage disposal, it is safe to say they are in the minority — outliers. Most workers do these jobs simply out of a lack of better employment options.
Furthermore, because these jobs need to be done, there then needs to be a section of the population without better job options. It is an uncomfortable truth that we must come to terms with.
If everyone had the option to choose between a less desirable job or a more desirable one, the undesirable jobs would go unfilled. If you had the choice between choosing a job that paid better than another — a job that had better working conditions, more flexible hours, gainful opportunities for promotion and social mobility — or a job that was the opposite — low wage, poor working hours and conditions, no opportunity for promotion— which job would you take?
A counter argument might be that society should simply pay these workers more. It’s a nice sentiment, but it overlooks the fact that doing so would raise the cost of these services for everyone, thus further limiting the strength of the US dollar and ultimately maintaining a person’s socioeconomic status in society, regardless of the higher pay.
Take warehouse jobs for example: moving boxes in and out of trucks and storing them in various shelves requires little skill. They are high-labor, low-skill jobs — and so they pay little, have poor benefits and unfortunate working conditions. Yet, the low-wage nature of this work is the reason why Amazon can charge you relatively little for 2-day shipping. If you force Amazon to pay these workers more and provide them with further benefits, don’t be surprised when you see the cost of shipping for your order double or even triple. Amazon would go out of business, and you would lose the service on which you’d come to depend.
Even still, the inherent nature of many of these jobs is, in itself, undesirable and inescapable. Who would want to spend forty hours each week knee deep in excrement? Who would want to say their role in society is tossing maggot-filled bags of waste into a trash compactor? Decent paying work or not, the job itself is unavoidably undesirable.
No one likes this — myself, least of all. It is a heartbreaking truth that for our stable, first-world lifestyle to sustain itself, there must be a portion of the population doing the “dirty work”, the undesirable, unrewarding, low-wage work. If everyone had the option to choose not to take up these jobs, they would go undone.
Socioeconomic inequality is, therefore, a requirement for ensuring these jobs are fulfilled.
Simply put: someone has to do it — unless, that is, something could do it instead.
The trash will take itself out
The machine learning algorithms utilized in your smartphone to recognize your voice or face have been established for decades. Backpropogation — the mathematical technique which allows an AI to self-correct its behavior until it achieves the desired result — had been theorized by Geoffrey Hinton in the early 1980’s; the concept of neural networks, formerly known as perceptrons, even earlier in the 1950s and 60s.
So why have products incorporating machine learning only begun to infiltrate the marketplace as of just a few years ago? The answer is computing power. The process of training an artificially intelligent model requires millions of iterations over high-computation algorithms, which crunch millions, or even billions, of data samples. For the most advanced models, like Alpha Go, it can take days to train, even with today’s highly advanced computers.
Yet, the door has now finally opened and the race to incorporate machine learning into everyday products is on. Google and Amazon have both entered the “smart home” arena with Google Home and Amazon Alexa. Uber attempted to partner with Tesla to produce a fleet of self-driving cars within the decade. Amazon announced its automated drone delivery service, Prime Air. Apple revealed its face-recognition technology for unlocking the iPhone X, which is built on a super advanced “neural engine”.
Artificial intelligence is poised to take over many of what CNBC claims are the “worst jobs in America” — from taxi drivers, to warehouse workers, to farmers, to garbage disposal workers. With self-driving cars, the long, grueling cargo hauls currently done by humans will be fully automated — making them safer and cheaper. Warehouse jobs are already being replaced by robots.
The garbage will, finally, take itself out.
Humans need not apply
The downside of these technological breakthroughs is the wave of unemployment that is inevitable as a result. Undesirable jobs are soon to be fully automated, leaving those who posses only the skills for those tasks unemployable. Some predictions claim that 800 million jobs will be replaced with automation.
Yet, there is an upside to this, though it may not be immediately apparent.
Earlier, we established that lack of job opportunity was essentially required, else the “bad” jobs go unfulfilled. If everyone had the option to not work these jobs, no one would. This ultimately meant that socioeconomic disparity was mandatory to ensure the gears of civilization turned.
Now, however, with the automation of these jobs, if no one chooses to work those jobs, they can still be satisfied by machines. This breaks society free from the constraint of inequality. We no longer need to ensure that a segment of the population is disadvantaged to the point of having no choice but to work the undesirable jobs.
All this has happened before, and will happen again
The industrial revolution of the late 1800s and early 1900s replaced manual labor at an unprecedented rate. Yet, the result of this evolution in economic productivity was not apocalyptic unemployment. On the contrary, our economies exploded, especially capitalist ones. The standard of living for everyone was elevated to previously unimaginable levels. Modern medicine eliminated the threat of plagues, the cheap cost of refrigerators allowed everyone to store more food, the invention of the automobile increased the physical mobility for even the poorest of Western civilians, sanitation improved with showers and toilets in every home, clothes became cheaper, food became cheaper, medicine became cheaper. The dollar could go further and things everyone takes for granted today — a car, a home, kitchenware, a decent pair of shoes — became commonplace.
Artificial intelligence will push us once again to a higher standard of living.
To be clear, there will still be inequality. There will still be those who have less — much less — than others. But the quality of life for those at the bottom will be elevated greatly. The economic tide will rise as a result of this new technological revolution, lifting all boats — big or small — with it.
It is easy to forget the living conditions of the early 1900's; how truly little people had, how sick most people were, how downtrodden and miserable their lives, how brutal and laborious their work. Today, even the poorest of Americans are well-off when compared to those living at the same socioeconomic position just 100 years ago.
Artificial intelligence will be the next revolution to catapult the global standard of living higher than previously imaginable. Ten or twenty years from now, the poorest of Americans will have more than their present-day counterparts could dream of having. As self-driving cars mature, the need to own a personal vehicle will disappear, freeing up a large portion of disposable income for everyone. The cost of transporting goods will plummet, making those goods cheaper for everyone. Smart-home technology will be commonplace, making everyday, mundane tasks easier or completely automated.
Additionally, each person working one of these high-labor, low-wage, unskilled jobs, today, counts as untapped human potential. We are the most intelligent species in the known universe — all of us. Yet, some of us are forced to forgo using that intellect to solve big problems, simply so that others don’t have to drive their trash to the dump.
AI will free those people to utilize their intelligence and competence in various areas— the field of medicine, for example. Maybe one of them will find the cure for cancer. When we have more people working toward solving these problems, we increase the odds of finding a solution.
The new world job market
Replacing human labor with mechanical labor may seem politically disadvantageous, but the reality is that it frees those would-be laborers to specialize in higher paying work, bolsters our economy and raises the standard of living for all of us. Artificial intelligence will be the single most important innovation since the industrial revolution to elevate the living standards of Americans — all Americans, rich or poor.
There still remains, however, the issue of unemployment. While we may all agree that removing the need for human labor for undesirable tasks is a good thing, the predicted 800 million people who will lose their job as a result might beg to differ.
Automation, though, creates new problems as quickly as a it fixes old ones. Software must be developed and maintained. The robots themselves need repair and upgrades. These jobs require a more advanced skill-set than the jobs being replaced by automation. These jobs will likely pay more, have better benefits and working conditions, as well as room for upward mobility.
The more innovation occurs, the more complex our civilization becomes, and so with it the more complex our problems become. This creates new demands for new skill sets to address these problems. The feared unemployment of artificial intelligence may be nothing more than a false prediction.
The issue then becomes: how do we bring those newly unemployed laborers into this new world job market? I will leave it to the politicians and economists to decide the best approach for this. But for starters: dedicating a portion of state resources to establishing retraining programs and helping these lower-income workers enter higher education would seem like a good start.

