The problem with discussions about AI and robots is they talk about replacing your current job. While that may be true, the real issue is what jobs they enable?
The future is not so much about improving the past - important as that is - as about discovering new possibilities since that's where the growth is.
While robots sound scary and exotic, we actually do have a past era where we had robots - of a sort.
We can learn plenty about human behavior from that.
Robots Eat Your Lunch?
A lot of the talk is about robots eating our lunch and how we will need to offer a Guaranteed Minimum Wage to all these sorry people who will be displaced. The past however, tells us a different story.
While
I agree that we need a safety net for the victims of disruption, I
think the idea of giving people money for nothing is corrosive and
self-destroying.
I think there is a better way. A much better way.
Enslave Them!
Oddly
enough the idea comes from a book I read about the slave trade in
Barbados where sugar, slavery and the first wave of "new money" came to
England. In
fact, you could say that sugar and slavery was the dotcom billionaire
bonanza of 1644. There are schools, libraries and mansions in London and
Oxford that come from this slave/sugar money.
The book I am referring to is Sugar in the Blood by Andrea Stuart, a stunning read!
Roll Your Own Robot
The
slavery model is more relevant than the industrialization specter
because a coming generation of low-cost robots will be more affordable
than industrial machinery in the same way slaves were in their time.
Displaced workers should have the option to use that money to buy a
robot or invest in robot workers, just as the early colonizers of
Barbados were able to do with slaves.
(I also think we owe the desecendents of slaves, reparations - not a check necessarily, but
something like a Marshall Plan for Africa and the Inner City. That is
another story of course, and I am only stating this for the record so
the PC mob doesn’t crucify me for using the abominable slave phenomenon
as my guide.)
What
makes the slave trade so interesting is that once upon a time, there
were all kinds of slaves and mostly white. They generally came in the
form of indentured workers and even then, the term itself derives from
word, Slav. These workiers weren’t well treated but the
demands of general work weren't that critical and so it was a faintly
humane labor system. Barbados used these people, sometimes Irish or
often the poor and criminal from Britain, as general laborers and tobacco workers.
Robots Are Nothing Until They Mean Money
It
was only when the islands discovered sugar that slavery really took off
and Africa became the biggest player in the system. Sugar was
incredibly hard work and pale Europeans were completely unsuited for it.
Sugar is also addictive in its way and the demand for it exploded
woldwide.
Suddenly,
there was a need for cane labor and within a few decades, hundreds of
thousands of sorry Africans were abducted and brought to the tiny island
of Barbados where they were generally worked to death within about 3 - 5
years.
Just
as important, semi-civilized Brits quickly and seamlessly devolved into
monsters who managed their slaves with terror and barbarous
ruthlessness. The Nazis might actually have been kinder to the Jews than
these landowners were to their slaves. This was tolerated for about 200
years because there was just no better way to make sugar. Even freed
slaves who could afford it, were likely to own slaves!
Slave Geeks
There
was even a kind of slaveowner geekiness - planters made it a point to
have slaves do ever possible form of menial work for them - including
dressing, washing and holding their chamber pots for them.
What
matters with our robots however, is that, until you have a real need,
predictions are just fluff that will disappear the moment a real need -
and a market - appears.
So Last War
People
who talk about robots eating our lunch and so on are really discussing
the last war. It is like saying in 1899, that the automobile will make
it easy for famers to get to church on Sunday and go shopping, when the
real advance was mechanized farming with gas-driven engines.
Likewise,
robots that displace drivers or mid-level clerks aren’t the real story.
The real story is transportation experts using robots to do stuff they
never dreamed of in the past. Instead of driving a taxi why not manage a
fleet of 10 robot transporters. These will ferry people all day long to
work and shopping. They will carry partygoers to their soirees and
drunks back to their homes at night.
Similarly, clerks can let robots do their clerical work while their people skills are suddenly in higher demand.
Most of all, we are going to find higher level things to do once we populate our workplace with enslaved robots. We will burn them out. They will need programming, fixing and replacement - all human work.
The Displaced Know The True Value
Most
of all, they will be best managed and most usefully employed by people
who actually know the business they were displaced from - only now, they
can do more thanks to their high tech slaves.
So
much of the "give people something for nothing" school underestimates
the value and creativity of working people. They are not idiots, they
will know what to do with robots - given the chance. Taking the
socialist view of just giving away money just doesn’t tap this kind of human motivation.
Where, Oh Where Did The Digital Divide Go?
Think
about it this way. Do you remember the so-called digital divide? That
was when poor people just couldn't afford computers and that only rich
people could enjoy its benefits. So what happened to it?
The Internet.
Once the Internet came along, supposedly poor people found computers. They made money online. The did stuff or got stuff for free. With increased demand, the price of computing dropped drastically and even wound being cheaper than TVs.
Now,
imagine if society had given poor people money for NOT having
computers. That would have been ridiculous and indeed most would have
used the momey - if they didn’t squander it - on buying a computer
anyway, justso they could take advantage of the internet.
The New Slavery
So the real question is not what to give displaced workers but what would they do if they owned a slave/robot?
I
believe they would consume these robots just like their ancestors did
with slaves and then invent new businesses that can harvest great uses
from them.
Putting It To Work Now
If we were smart, we would begin the contest of ideas now - what would future workers do if they were their own slave?
That folks, is the real future of robots.
© Alan Brody, 2017
