Will our robot overlords come with payment dispensers? (Obama and AI inequality)
As I write this, people in the United States, Europe, and other parts of the world are approaching a major holiday. While the holiday itself falls on a Sunday, many people will celebrate the holiday on Monday.
For these people, this will be a paid holiday, in which they will get money even though they don’t do any work.
But what if this situation becomes permanent, as robots come in and do the jobs that Americans don’t want to do?
The concept of guaranteed income has been bandied about for a while. As I noted in a 2013 post, the theory is that as robots take over jobs and massive unemployment results, governments will be forced to pay guaranteed income to keep citizens afloat.
There’s a second point of view – one that I expressed in 2013, and still hold today. I believe that as the robots are implemented, new jobs will be created.
Well, now a third point of view has been expressed, by a guy named Barack Obama. In case you haven’t heard of him, he’s the President of the United States. Yes, I know that if you read Twitter, you’d get the idea that Donald Trump is President of the United States, but technically he won’t take power for nearly a month. So in the meantime, Obama gets to do Presidential things and say stuff:
In a report examining the economic impact of AI, the Obama administration trumpeted the technological advances that are expected in the coming years, but warned that automating mass amounts of jobs could exacerbate wealth inequality.
“AI should be welcomed for its potential economic benefits,” the report reads. “Those economic benefits, however, will not necessarily be evenly distributed across society.”…
Tuesday’s report laid out a number of recommendations for Congress and the next administration to help mitigate any negative economic impact that AI could have on the workforce. The recommendations include strengthening the social safety net, raising wages and investing in retraining and education to keep up with the shifting demands of the economy.
Now a “safety net” isn’t necessarily the same thing as “guaranteed income.” We’ve had a safety net for a while, which was described by the noted NGO The Clash in a multimedia presentation entitled “Know Your Rights”:
You have the right to food money
Providing of course
You don’t mind a little
Investigation, humiliation
And if you cross your fingers
Rehabilitation
And it could be argued that “raising wages” would have the effect of actually INCREASING the use of robots to replace people. Think about that the next time that your favorite food establishment provides a super cool app to let you place your order. That app is cheaper than a $15 minimum wage order taker.
The report is addressing present concerns as expressed by voters. But what’s the chance of the report being consulted a month from now, when (as I noted) we have another President?
Donald Trump was propelled during the campaign by his argument that free trade agreements were depriving Americans of manufacturing jobs, but he spoke little about the threat that automation posed to employment.
So what’s going to happen? The federal government isn’t going to do anything, blue states are going to jack up the minimum wage, red states are going to give tax breaks to corporations, the corporations are going to continue automation, low wage workers are going to be unemployed, no guaranteed income will be implemented at the federal level, and even California and Washington won’t implement it at the state level. And then in 2020, we’ll get two Presidential candidates that will make the 2016 ones look like massively adored heroes. (Michael Moore vs. Michelle Malkin?)
That’s my prediction, and my predictions are always right.
Usually.
OK, not so much.
tymshft 