You Can’t Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income
motherboard.vice.com
motherboard.vice.com
Power has always been concentrated in the hands of the few. What we see is that power is being moved from the hands of a human elite to a mob of machines. The loss of work is only a prelude to a loss of purpose.
For me, the purpose for humans is to serve other humans, to work. Which we are increasingly unable to do because it turns out that this 'work' can be more easily done by mechanical brutes that happen to be programmed by humans.
Work will disappear for most of us. What will we do with our time?
Still, there's differing levels of dystopia. One where humans are still able to help each other is certainly better than most alternatives.
This at the end of the day will lead to a war of sorts, and my bet would be on the ones with the capital and the power. Against the useless masses that have been turned into little more than wild animals by machines.
Whether it's the machines that produce or the machines that make war, they are going to be owned by a few and they can then use them to dictate civilization.
Would not be surprised if in the near future some corporate CEO declares himself emperor of the world.
Imagine if the Android phones right now were actual androids, all billion of them, run by a single corporation's operating system. Over night that corporation could take power over the entire world and no one could stop them.
The argument from self reliance: I don't think people will become a "useless mass that has been turned into little more than wild animals", though. We will still be able to work directly for ourselves and to cooperate with other humans. We will work for self reliant subsistence. We will grow our own food, make our own clothes and tools, just like today, even using future technology that is still accessible to regular people.
An economic argument: Even if robots can make the same products cheaper, people won't have money to pay for them. So there will be a fall in economic production by robots for humans. On the other hand, people will need things, and still be able to work just like today. In order to solve the problem, we will need a new currency that is based on human self-reliant work. We will need to have a double economy, one for robots and human elites, one for poor people. But nothing is stopping people from working to earn a living. In the extreme case, a small plot of land could feed many and require almost nothing external, so no dependence on robots owned by the elites.
This kind of self-reliance is a last ditch measure. Before that happens, I think it is more probable that sufficiently advanced robots will be universally available, not just for big corporations, just like cell phones. We need to keep AI, robotics and 3D printing in the open source, so we can all share in the returns.
I think there will be a big boom in self-reliant living solutions. Modern farms, 3d-printing, solar panels - we need to bootstrap ourselves in such a way as to be independent from robots. We don't need to be pessimistic, humans have survived worse situations in our 200,000 years long history.
For a better overview, see CGP Grey's explanation: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7Pq-S557XQU
Certainly our ability to automate is much more refined than in the past, but I fail to see the fundamental shift you describe.
We are approaching the point where there are humans who are not needed physically, and not smart enough to do something that can't be automated. It's a slowly rising tide.