Technology and the Future of Humanity.

Astorre

Ever-evolving technology opens up new questions for modern humans. Robots, increasingly successfully replacing humans in areas where they were once needed, are more efficient, willing to work as long as their batteries last, and, most importantly, don't question employers' respect for their rights.

It's not as if this problem suddenly arose today. Factories where labor was replaced by machines didn't emerge today. But humans have always been needed. There have always been jobs that machines couldn't handle. The world found some balance between manual and machine labor back then.

Today's new wave of "technologization" of production, the partial replacement of intellectual labor by AI, and the automation of processes, is once again pushing humans even further into the background.

I see several hypothetical problems here, which I may be exaggerating, but I can't help but ask you, dear forum members, what you think about this.

1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time.

2. Since humanity today is more educated than in previous times, the demands on work are high. Will the world be able to provide such a large number of jobs?

3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars.

4. Human rights. People have always been a necessary balancer for the state or employer. In cases of excesses or abuses, people rebelled. But they were heard because the state and employers needed them. Now, with the diminishing need for humans for production or defense, the human voice risks becoming less audible.

5. Education. It's already clear that the classic school and university format of education doesn't meet modern needs. First, it's too long, second, too traditional, and third, it produces far more specialists than is needed. A large supply of specialists, combined with their rapid replacement by robots and AI, lowers the cost of their labor.

6. And finally, humans themselves. What should they do? What should they do? Even in everyday life, machines already do our laundry, robot vacuums, and so on. And tomorrow, will a specially trained robot entertain and educate our children? Provide attention to our wives? What will remain for us?

I'm not claiming that all this is necessarily true, but questions arise. For now, reality itself doesn't pose them, but who can guarantee that it won't tomorrow?

Pierre-Normand

I think most of the worries you express are are real and well-motivated. Even if some of the scenarios you sketch turn out to be exaggerated, it's reasonable to examine them now rather than after the fact.

One thing that strikes me in your post, though, is a kind of slide from a salient technological "event" (e.g. a new wave of automation, AI replacing tasks, etc.) to very large social outcomes (e.g. mass unemployment, loss of bargaining power, markets breaking down, etc.) as if the event itself were doing most of the causal work. But in many cases what does the heavy lifting isn't the technology as such but rather the surrounding structure: who owns the productive capital, how bargaining power is distributed, what the welfare state looks like, how competition works, what education and retraining institutions do, and what fiscal/monetary policies are in place. The same technical capability can produce very different social outcomes under different institutional arrangements.

Your "if tomorrow everyone gets $1M, bread costs $1M" example could be instructive. As a thought experiment, it shows that nominal money isn't the same thing as real resources. But it's also an "extreme event-style" scenario: overnight, universal, unconditioned, with no or little matching change in the background neo-liberal free-market structures. Real policy proposals that aim to keep people solvent in an automated economy don’t have to look like that. Inflation depends on system-level constraints: whether the transfer is financed by taxes vs new money, whether the economy has slack or is supply-constrained, whether production can expand, whether rents/monopoly pricing dominate, etc. So "handing out money" isn’t automatically self-defeating (and often isn't in social democracies) It’s a collective design question about how purchasing power is distributed relative to real productive capacity.

Athena

Your "if tomorrow everyone gets $1M, bread costs $1M" example could be instructive. As a thought experiment, it shows that nominal money isn't the same thing as real resources. But it's also an "extreme event-style" scenario: overnight, universal, unconditioned, with no or little matching change in the background neo-liberal free-market structures. Real policy proposals that aim to keep people solvent in an automated economy don’t have to look like that. Inflation depends on system-level constraints: whether the transfer is financed by taxes vs new money, whether the economy has slack or is supply-constrained, whether production can expand, whether rents/monopoly pricing dominate, etc. So "handing out money" isn’t automatically self-defeating (and often isn't in social democracies) It’s a collective design question about how purchasing power is distributed relative to real productive capacity. — Pierre-Normand

Good morning, both of you- With Trump as president, we might have a real-life experiment of what happens when everyone is given a million dollars. I think mathematicians could use math to predict much of what happens. I was not that worried about every Greenlander getting a million dollars until reading Pierre-Normand's explanation, and now I am even more opposed to Trump's desire to buy Greenland. Unfortunately, Denmark made some very bad decisions regarding birth control and the education of Greenland's children. The relationship between Greenland and Denmark is damaged, and having a million dollars seems wonderful, but an even worse decision could come out of this.

For sure, we need a better understanding of economics. We can look at Alaska, which pays everyone who lives in Alaska.... This is too important to ignore, and we need better information than I can provide without the help of AI.

Yes, Alaska pays its citizens an annual Permanent Fund Dividend (PFD) from oil revenue, not a "royalist tax," but a share of state mineral royalties, providing yearly checks to eligible residents (including children) ranging from a few hundred to over $2,000, funded by oil extraction, and used as a model for Universal Basic Income.

.

Also, when I lived in a small coastal town, many women earned much-needed money in a shrimp factory where we removed the shrimp shells by hand. A man came to town with a shrimp-picking machine and all the women lost their seasonal income. The man who owned the machine made so much money that every year he invested in a new business to reduce the taxes he had to pay. This one man was getting richer and richer, while the women lost their much-needed money.

That is how capitalism works, but I was one of those women so, coming from the worker's point of view, what if we all got to buy the machine, and we shared the work and the profit? I was of childbearing age, and sharing the work would mean working a lot less and still having money to raise a child. As a young mother, that looks pretty good. But it does not build the capital to create new businesses. But then again, our income would go back into the community.

I want to add something very important. We not only have capitalism, but we also have autocratic industry, and from my point of view, that is the devil, a terrible evil we need to get rid of. Autocratic capitalism is a hierarchy of power, and it can be dehumanizing and bad for families and the whole community. The solution is Deming's democratic model for industry. His model of industry enables everyone to keep learning and contribute to providing a better product or service.

I could be wrong, but I think empowering us to own and manage our income could yield positive economic and social outcomes. If the US returned to education for democracy and we replaced the autocratic industrial model with a democratic model, we might have healthier communities. Now the machine that takes our jobs improves our lives and leaves us independent of government assistance.

BC

if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. — Astorre

Is this true? Maybe not.

We already do hand out billions of dollars to people, actually. Welfare payments, social security, retirement (especially from under funded plans), unemployment, and so on. Inflation does occur, but government remittances aren't the only factor.

I don't know whether a guaranteed basic income for everyone would be highly inflationary or not; would it not depend on the size of these payments? Sure, a million bucks for everyone all at once would be intensely inflationary, but that's not likely to be the case. More likely is that the basic income would be closer to "not enough to live on, but a little too much to die" -- subsistence, in other words.

At any rate, I agree with you: rendering the working class redundant -- 90%+ of the population -- would be a species-wide catastrophe.

I've done tedious white collar work which I thought a computer really should be doing. On the other hand, it paid the rent. But the fact is that the working class has not seized control of the economy in order to protect itself.

Athena

But the fact is that the working class has not seized control of the economy in order to protect itself. — BC

I think the working class seizing control of the economy would be like trying to pick up mercury with tweezers. :lol: To get control of mercury requires a different tool. To increase working-class control is a matter of organization. We need to replace the autocratic industrial order with a democratic order and return to education for democracy.

Sure, a million bucks for everyone all at once would be intensely inflationary, but that's not likely to be the case. — BC

If Trump has his way with Greenland, we will find out what giving everyone a million dollars does to the economy.

BC

↪Athena

Hands off Greenland. And Canada, too.

Ecurb

Hands off Greenland. And Canada, too. — BC

I think we should invade Vancouver Island. The 70 or 80 miles that are south of the 49th parallel are rightfully ours. We'll give up that section of Minnesota that sticks up north of 49 by Lake of the Woods. Fair trade?

Philosophim

May I present a different alternative based on history?

Nixon in 1956 thought that we would go to a four day work week based on increased production.

Throughout history, any time a new technology has come about that made things more efficient, people have worried there won't be enough jobs. The reality is that you cannot see the needs of tomorrow once those new efficiencies are in place.

People will always fine more to do with what they have. 20 years ago the idea of having 16GB of RAM on your computer was insane. Whatever would we need that for? Turns out when you have greater time and efficiency in one area, people find new things to fill out that saved time and create new complexities that need people to work through.

Now, what IS important is making sure regular workers aren't left behind and exploited. Because that's historical. Unchecked there will always be people in power who will rape a person happily and tell them to be grateful for it. We'll need to see how people abuse AI. For example, if an artist creates individual work, if AI scans it it should be paid to the artist. AI should have careful logs of data that it pulls from, even though it might slow AI down. But if artists are properly paid for AI use, it could be they also profit from AI.

I think we're also going to face real limits on energy and infrastructure vs demand. This will likely cause new wars over resources like we do with oil. We'll still need people to fight those wars too. :)

BC

↪Ecurb

We Minnesotans are fond of our map's shape so we would regret losing Lake of the Woods. In the bigger picture, though, the southern 70 miles of Vancouver are undoubtedly worth a lot more than Lake of the Woods, which is just one more lake among many. It would be a good deal for the US. Vancouverians probably like the shape of their map too, so they'd be unhappy. In the end, it doesn't matter, since when we take over Canada, all of Vancouver will be ours, and maybe Minnesota and Manitoba will be merged. We'll lose our little chimney up there.

Janus

3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars. — Astorre

Inflation will only result if there is insufficient product to meet demand.

Ecurb

In the end, it doesn't matter, since when we take over Canada, all of Vancouver will be ours, and maybe Minnesota and Manitoba will be merged. We'll lose our little chimney up there. — BC

Maybe by that time the independent nation of Cascadia will emerge, comprising Oregon (my home state) Washington and British Columbia. We will not let California join, beg as they may.

BC

↪Ecurb

Right, the 9 Nations of North America -- one of which is Cascadia.

Another nation is the morally upright Yankeedom, which extends in a gerrymandered state from New England to Minnesota, leaving out large parts of PA, NY, OH, MI, IN, IL, WI, and MN. It isn't that the areas not included in Yankeedom are shameless immoral shit holes, or something; they just have different affinities.

But to be fair, there are pockets of shameless immoral shit holes which are close to, but aren't appropriate for Yankeedom--like southern Ohio, Illinois and Indiana. In the same way that Idaho, Wyoming, and Eastern Oregon / Washington have more in common than Seattle, Portland, and Vancouver have. Yeah, you don't need Los Angeles.

Astorre

↪Athena

↪BC

↪Ecurb

Frankly, I didn't plan for the discussion to go this way. However, based on previous events, my prediction regarding the Greenland insinuations is that the US will benefit in the short term. Whether they'll legally take Greenland is questionable. They will most likely simply take over (virtually) everything that can be considered an economic and military asset in Greenland, including the Arctic. The downside could be a erosion of trust among its allies in the long term. But in that case, the US will once again rewrite the rules of the game to suit its own needs.

↪Janus

In my opinion, this is a classic view, but it doesn't fully take into account all economic factors. For example, the explosive growth of the US stock market and the rise in stock indices, as well as real estate, over the past five years wasn't due to a sudden shortage of stocks or real estate. It's simply that a huge amount of dollars were printed, and the excess ended up there.

↪Philosophim

In my heart, I agree with you. The concerns I've raised in this thread are more of an attempt to break away, and an answer to the question "what if..." As I've noted, humanity has dealt with this many times before.

But there are nuance here. This time, things are a little different. Humans have never had a rival in their ability to think or evaluate anything. Now that's gradually changing. I'm not saying that AI in its current form is capable of creativity or transcendence, but within the limits of what's known to science, they navigate just as well as humans. For example, you'll agree that it's always been enough for humans to simply acquire good knowledge and simply use it, without inventing anything. This, at a minimum, provided sustenance.

Today, that's changing. Good knowledge in a narrow field is simply not such a valuable asset anymore. Contemporary people are required to be creative and constantly seek new solutions. This is the value of a modern specialist (of course, I don't rule out the possibility that simple knowledge still works).

Zebeden

1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time. — Astorre

As entertainers for the rich and for one another. Technology allows some people to have more than enough bread. So add games on top of that!

BC

We need to replace the autocratic industrial order with a democratic order and return to education for democracy. — Athena

That's why I support "industrial democracy" and socialism. I'm not optimistic about the working class (90% of the population) self-organizing in the near or intermediate future. Provided that we did self-organize, the new order would replace fake democracy and autocratic control with democratic ownership and management of the economy. Don't ask! Nobody has worked out the details of how that would work. I believe it can work, will work; but 300 years of the capitalist management since the Industrial Revolution hasn't paved the way. Ursula Le Guin proposed a radical anarchism in The Dispossessed (a great sci-fi novel).

BC

↪Astorre

One of the great fears that haunt me is that ecological disaster will overtake technological and economic predictions and render them irrelevant. A heating climate, rising oceans, erratic weather events, unorganized population displacement, food production crises, and so on. It isn't that I expect the human species to be wiped out, but the carrying capacity of the planet could fall enough that all social, economic, cultural, military, political bets are off.

I'll be 80 this year; I won't be around to find out what happens by 2050, or 2100, but billions of other people will be.

Investors, capitalists, techno-optimists have a lot of faith that new technology will solve the problems of global warming, and produce an economic boom too. I'm not confident at all that there is any sort of technological fix in the offing.

And finally, humans themselves. What should they do? What should they do? Even in everyday life, machines already do our laundry, robot vacuums, and so on. — Astorre

I am grateful that I don't have to do my laundry by hand, beating it on rocks in the river.

Were I 18 instead of 80 this year, I am not sure what it is that I should/would/could expect for my future. I don't know what I would recommend to an 18 year old who wanted to find the best way forward for himself.

I'm not sure what I would advise my species to do, either. There may be ways to roll back global warming, but the fixes might be as intolerable as the problems. We should immediate cut consumption of resources in food production, clothing, housing, transportation, and so on. Mass transit instead of individual vehicles; apartments over individual houses; far less clothing production (both natural and petroleum based fibers); much less meat production; produce far less plastic; leave the oil in the ground, along with coal; refrain from introducing technologies which render large numbers of workers irrelevant--and so on.

I don't see any of this happening voluntarily. We'll stop producing steak when there isn't enough corn and wheat to feed us, just for example.

Astorre

I am grateful that I don't have to do my laundry by hand, beating it on rocks in the river. — BC

Humor is an effective way to overcome depression in today's world.

But what's really going on? Man and humanity are too indebted to reality. Aren't they? We've brought ourselves to the brink of crisis. Your generation, or those before you, laid this foundation of mirth and uncertainty. But if someone has the right to declare that, starting tomorrow, they'll rethink the rules of the world order if they're not given favorable trade terms, then that's a sure sign we're close to that threshold.

Reality, with its unpredictable power, will surely ask us all, "Have you behaved well?"

So, even though I'm middle-aged, I hope that prosperity will last me a lifetime, and that I won't have to witness another great migration due to climate change. It's a comfortable position. However, I feel a responsibility (and I can't explain its nature) to the future, at least that of my children.

In times of crisis, humanity remembers wisdom and philosophy. But what should we do if true sages are so constituted that they know nothing?

And by the way, it's funny, but I myself chose to live almost in the very center of Eurasia (in case of a global flood of the seas, I'll at least already be here) :lol:

Janus

In my opinion, this is a classic view, but it doesn't fully take into account all economic factors. For example, the explosive growth of the US stock market and the rise in stock indices, as well as real estate, over the past five years wasn't due to a sudden shortage of stocks or real estate. It's simply that a huge amount of dollars were printed, and the excess ended up there. — Astorre

You've changed the subject. You were talking about printing money to give to those who had lost jobs due to technology so they could remain as consumers buying, presumably, consumer items including food clothes, cleaning products and less essential items. I thought you were claiming this would cause inflation―"if you give everyone a million dollars then a loaf of bread will cost a million dollars"―and I pointed out that this would be the case only if products (the loaf of bread in this example) were scarce.

Astorre

↪Pierre-Normand

↪Janus

I wasn't changing the topic, but simply trying to broaden the perspective to take into account the broader context of economic processes. Your argument that inflation only occurs when there's a shortage of output is certainly true in classical economic theory—it's the basis of supply and demand. However, in reality, especially under modern monetary policy, things aren't so linear. When central banks print money in huge quantities, these funds aren't always distributed evenly throughout the economy. They often end up in financial assets, real estate, or speculative markets, causing inflation—rising prices of stocks, houses, etc.—even if the production of consumer goods (like that loaf of bread) remains in surplus.

In the context of my original idea about handing out money to support consumers in the age of automation, I wasn't referring to a sudden "million for everyone" (which is, of course, a hyperbole for illustration purposes), but to a systemic basic income. If such income is financed by new money without a corresponding increase in real productivity (or if production is concentrated in the hands of a few), then inflation may manifest itself not immediately in everyday goods, but more broadly: through rising inequality, the devaluation of labor, and, ultimately, pressure on prices. After all, if people receive money "just for living," then excess liquidity may lead to speculation rather than to investment in the real sector. Moreover, compare prices in countries with different income levels. We see that prices are significantly higher where income is higher. For example, food.

And here's another thing to illustrate this dynamic: let's take a small town. Let's say, for example, that bread is produced by drones or fully automated systems. Then investing in such machines, owning real estate for production, or developing a business will only be profitable if this creates better conditions than simply receiving free money from the state. Otherwise, you can do nothing—the benefits will come anyway. This means that bread (or any other commodity) will be quite expensive relative to the "free allowance" because entrepreneurs or capital owners will demand high margins to motivate themselves to take risks and make efforts. Ultimately, the basic income may only cover the bare minimum, while real prices will rise, eroding purchasing power. This isn't pure inflation due to shortages, but rather a market distortion due to a lack of incentives for production and competition.

Do you agree that in such a scenario, inflation becomes not only a question of shortages but also an imbalance between the money supply, resource distribution, and the incentives of economic agents? This, in my view, is the key challenge for a market economy in the future, where technology is increasing the concentration of wealth.

Astorre

↪Zebeden

It's even funny to imagine such a world: In the morning, you work at a hair salon, come home and watch poker on TV, in the evening you go to a hockey match, and after all that, you compete for money by throwing tennis balls into cups.

I agree. Our modern economy embraces and easily tolerates gaming. Meanwhile, players have multimillion-dollar contracts, and it works. This generates interest and demand.

L'éléphant

1. Humans remain needed as consumers, but not as producers. Given that the population of our planet is much higher today than in previous times, the problem is intensifying. So, how should people earn their living? Perhaps they can fill a niche in services? But even this is not infinite and will eventually be automated over time. — Astorre

It's been suggested that one solution is to provide a combination of government services and universal basic income for those that have been displaced by AI. Many workers just cannot retrain or transition fast enough to other field of work either due to age or abilities or economic reasons.
In the past displacement wasn't because there's a faster machine/AI that can do the jobs, it's because supply and demand drove the changes.
Retraining was also offered for free as a parallel transition to other jobs.
Today, it's a different fight.

3. How will a market economy cope with this challenge? After all, if we simply start handing out money to people simply for living, inflation will instantly reduce this money to nothing. Prices will simply rise. For example, if tomorrow everyone had one million dollars, then a loaf of bread would cost a million dollars. — Astorre

Would it?
Are you saying that competition for business would also disappear?
You just don't hand out money -- like during Covid. Yes, that's a good example of just handing out money. Let's use that as a lesson.

Astorre

Would it?
Are you saying that competition for business would also disappear?
You just don't hand out money -- like during Covid. Yes, that's a good example of just handing out money. Let's use that as a lesson. — L'éléphant

Yes, I just discussed this in my previous answer:

And here's another thing to illustrate this dynamic: let's take a small town. Let's say, for example, that bread is produced by drones or fully automated systems. Then investing in such machines, owning real estate for production, or developing a business will only be profitable if this creates better conditions than simply receiving free money from the state. Otherwise, you can do nothing—the benefits will come anyway. This means that bread (or any other commodity) will be quite expensive relative to the "free allowance" because entrepreneurs or capital owners will demand high margins to motivate themselves to take risks and make efforts. Ultimately, the basic income may only cover the bare minimum, while real prices will rise, eroding purchasing power. This isn't pure inflation due to shortages, but rather a market distortion due to a lack of incentives for production and competition. — Astorre

Technology and the Future of Humanity.

Welcome to The Philosophy Forum!

Categories

More Discussions