SoylentNews is people
SoylentNews
from the how-many-robots-does-it-take-to-screw-in-a-lightbulb dept.
Digital technology has been a fantastic creator of economic wealth, particularly in the twenty years since the Internet and World Wide Web were unveiled to the masses. And with non-trivial applications of artificial intelligence (such as Apple's Siri) finally reaching the mainstream consumer market, one is tempted to agree with pundits asserting that the Second Machine Age is just getting underway.
But Yale ethicist Wendell Wallach argues that growth in wealth has been accompanied by an equally dramatic rise in income inequality; for example, stock ownership is now concentrated in the hands of a relative few (though greater than 1 percent). The increase in GDP has not led to an increase in wages, nor in median inflation-adjusted income. Furthermore, Wallach says technology is a leading cause of this shift, as it displaces workers in occupation after occupation more quickly than new career opportunities arise.
This piece led to the latest iteration of the 'will robots take all of our jobs' debate, this time on Business Insider, with Jim Edwards arguing that the jobs lost tended to be of the mindless and repetitive variety, while the increase in productive capacity has led to the creation of many new positions. This repeated earlier cycles of the industrial revolution and will be accelerated in the decades ahead. Edwards illustrated his point with a chart of UK unemployment with a trend line (note: drawn by Edwards) in a pronounced downward direction over the past 30 years. John Tamny made a similar point in Forbes last month.
Original Submission
(Score: 2) by Gravis on Monday June 08 2015, @02:29PM
That's why it won't happen. Enough people have too much to lose if it does turn into a Star-Trek-like society that's so prosperous nobody needs to pay for anything to ever allow that kind of material prosperity.
i had thought about this exact issue and what i concluded is that it will happen indirectly because of the greed of corporations. basically, the allure of reducing wages to zero is just too great and as a result, the investment in automation to replace more and more people will eventually lead to automation of automation. in other words, the automated design and reconfiguration of assembly lines so that you can go from design to finished product in a single bound. honestly, this is something we could have now but articulated robots are currently too expensive because of their designs (pricey motors, servos, vision systems). when a cheap-ass articulated robot comes along, things will change greatly.
(Score: 0) by Anonymous Coward on Monday June 08 2015, @09:47PM
Not quite yet, but how about a village that has abolished its police force and which has essentially no unemployment?
It's in the autonomous region of Andalusia in Spain and is called Marinaleda. [googleusercontent.com] (orig) [jacobinmag.com]
Do I really need to mention that the means to accomplish that is Marxism?
Now, it does require an alternative to Lamestream Media. [spookmagazine.com]
-- gewg_