Robots and algorithms are getting good at jobs like building cars, writing articles, translating -- jobs that once required a human. So what will we humans do for work?
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Andrew McAfee walks through recent labor data to say: We ain't seen nothing yet. But then he steps back to look at big history, and comes up with a surprising and even thrilling view of what comes next.
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This video mixes apples and oranges a bit, and to not good effect. The effects of “droids” taking our jobs and the expansion of our mental capacities are really two different things, and unfortunately the former may negate the potential of the latter. What this video ignores is that unless there is a massive restructuring of how global economies function continued productivity gains will, as the speaker admits, reduce required labor, this means that for the vast majority of people incomes will continue to fall since the wages labor are paid are based upon a supply demand dynamic. If there are excess workers for the jobs required employers are able to pay them less, only when required labor is near the supply of available labor will wages rise. Unless the technology anticipated is free it is hard to imagine how many people will access it, and if they have no jobs their primary use of their increased mental capacities may just be to try to figure out how to tear down the system.
There is no dynamic involved in current global economies to transfer the profits from enterprises to the population as a whole without restriction, and that is what you need to make an economy where production doesn’t require labor to work. That doesn’t mean there may not be ways to accomplish this, but don’t expect the powers that be to allow that change easily.
The view presented here is one that is familar and sad, the idea that work is drudgery from which we must be freed. Work is in fact what gives meaning to most peoples lives, and it should be honored for its ability to do so. Perhaps the speaker has spent a lot of time with people who would delve the depths of understanding with all their free time, but that is not the case for a lot of people. If you have free time what would you do? Garden? Write? Build? These are all work, and if people find work that they may share with their communities, if they find vocation, then they should be able to do so without fear of having that most basic of human dignities taken away.