When technology optimists talk about the unemployment and obsolete human workforce they regard it as a fear, just like the one in the 19th century, for which they answer ”Look! It turned out great didn’t it?”. Well it did that time and humans found new areas to work in, with increased working status and wages. This is something Nick Bostrom comments on pages 160-163 in his book Superintelligence. Where he compares the humans after the industrialization to when horses got carriages and plows, meaning technology that made them more efficient. But nurses did become obsolete when the auto industry got affordable. In the United States there where 26 million horses in 1915 and 2 million in the 1950’s. Bistro is here alluding to the fact that in the case for artificial intelligence taking over our jobs, both physical and intellectual – we will reach a peak of efficient before us, humans, become more and more obsolete. If that process continues.
He also mentioned how even today people like to buy som arts and crafts from isolated tribes or from people living far off the modern chart – which means that some will even in the future want to consume stuff made from biological people. In my opinion we have seen the industry getting almost as automated it can be, the next step is the automatization of all the office jobs, including doctors. Already today artificial intelligence is handling our stock market, they are capable of diagnosing diseases and writing news articles. They need to be just about little better than us to make us redundant. And with their technological software based nature, they can be replicated cheaply – whereas we must be schooled, educated, gain experience, have vacation, sleep and so on. This is the future if we go on unleashing artificial intelligence into every aspect. The curiosity, the affordability, the profits and all those isolated gains drive us. But also the militarized aspect of it, for the one group who manages the most first will have immense power over others who lag behind.
It takes a growth in consciousness, mind understanding and the deeper sense of humanity to make the world better.
Wait, there’s some positive outcomes that could happen. For if this somehow manages well off, the reduction in work and the enormous profit from it would generate economical abundance for all humans. Meaning that we could solve poverty and all that. So say the positive technocrats – but they forget that even with todays money flow these issues could be solved. But let’s think about this positive future, how would that wealth be distributed? Bostrom basically says that anyone will be able to really get wealthy in that sort of future and he reminds us that the horse population in the United States increased to 10 million (American Horse Council – that result came from people having more money and wanting more retro-fun so to say. I don’t mean to sound negative, but this economical boom technocrats talk about is enormous, yet the less enormous economical boom we’ve seen the last 200 years hasn’t changed the world. I fear that it won’t be distributed and that we will have a breakaway civilization on the planet. Even if people got all that money, what would they do with it? Consume what nonsense? Who’ll profit from it? Whenever money is promised and it’s abundance made into a solution I’m sceptic of it. It takes a growth in consciousness, mind understanding and the deeper sense of humanity to make the world better.
Nick Bostrom’s book Superintelligence is really worth reading as he envisions the different scenarios of how an artificial intelligence could evolve to a superintelligence. In what ways we could have it under control and what risks there could be. A must read for anyone interested in this field.
What do you think?