Synthetic Super Intelligence and the Transmutation of Humankind

Chapter 12: What Will Happen to our Jobs?
today’s economic situation, one-sixth of people in their prime-age are not
working; they are either unemployed or out of the workforce altogether.
According to The Atlantic, under a sound economic system, almost all of
these prime-agers would be working. 334
As it is now, wages are at the lowest (compared to relative inflation)
since statistics on this matter were initiated in the mid-twentieth century; 335
and wages keep souring in the same manner. Although The Atlantic reports
that there is not going to be a mass unemployment within the next decade,
I think there is a great chance there will be, taking the current acceleration
of technology into consideration. The Industry is not slacking on this
subject; they can’t robotize the market fast enough. However, they still
would need some kind of balance because there’s interdependence between
human workers and the Industry. They pay us so we can use the money to
put back into society by the usual commerce, which will benefit the same
companies that paid us our wages in the first place. If too many people are
unemployed, it also negatively affects the Industry. Alternatively, a new
system of exchange could be implemented.
The Atlantic is revisiting an event that happen in the 1950s, related to
Henry Ford II, the CEO of Ford. This event has become a classic. It is
highly relevant to our current discussion, so I’d like to include it here:
In the 1950s, Henry Ford II, the CEO of Ford, and Walter Reuther, the head
of the United Auto Workers union, were touring a new engine plant in
Cleveland. Ford gestured to a fleet of machines and said, “Walter, how are
you going to get these robots to pay union dues?” The union boss famously
replied: “Henry, how are you going to get them to buy your cars?” 336
We all might think that there are quite a few jobs that cannot be
robotized because they require human emotions and compassion to be able
to serve their customers. We may need to seriously reconsider this idea, and
here is an example from The Atlantic, telling us why we should:
In 2013, Oxford University researchers forecast that machines might be
able to perform half of all U.S. jobs in the next two decades. The projection
was audacious, but in at least a few cases, it probably didn’t go far enough.
For example, the authors named psychologist as one of the occupations least
334
The Atlantic, Jul-Aug 2015, “A World Without Work”
335
Ibid.
336
Ibid. op. cit.
229