Dont worry folks, AI is not about to take over the world.
That’s what many people are saying. They clearly dont know much about AI.
This subject is, in my humble opinion, rather important, and it cant be dealt with in five minutes. As it is I have needed to severely cut down the amount of information I have decided to use, and I have left the worrying stuff till last. At the time of uploading the first segment there are going to be at least four more segments to follow, but I have by no means finished checking my sources, so more may be in the pipeline by the end of the month.
We are well into the age of disintermediation. That means, getting rid of middlemen. (Sorry ladies, but most of the useless middle workers are men. They cost us money and add nothing to the end product.)
That disintermediation includes the use of blockchains, robots, and AIs. What this is doing is removing the need for humans in the workplace. Who needs lorry drivers when we have self driving vehicles? So far I note the UK has banned such vehicles. But how much longer can they hold up the march of automation?
Who needs office workers when 99% of the work can be done by blockchains. Who needs banks, lawyers, doctors, surgeons, et al? All these jobs can be taken over by androids. (I am using the term android to mean a robot with an AI embedded, and with an external form designed to look like a human.)
Clearly, this isn’t going to happen this year, or even sometime later this decade, but five to ten years down the line rather a lot of people will be fighting an android or some computer code for a job.
Maybe you should consider adopting an android?
Maybe you should be thinking along those lines before you are dependent upon government handouts.
I was taught my basic economics by one of my uncles, a certain Sir John Templeton. Look him up one day. He was a clever man, and all round good egg. He wasn’t a blood uncle, but one of those uncles we tend to collect that are friends of our parents.
He once asked me who I thought was likely to be my most dangerous enemy. I had no idea. I was only sixteen at the time. He claimed that the organisation I had to beware of most was the government. A lifetime later I can confirm he was dead right.
Think about it. They create the laws. They run the police force and the army. You and me, we are seriously out-classed. Have as little to do with governments as possible, and certainly dont depend on them.
And where do they get their money? From you and me. But if our jobs are taken by androids and computer code, where is our income? If we dont have jobs, we dont get pay packets, and without pay packets where does the government get its money?
If you lived in the eighteenth century or earlier, you didn’t really have to think about the future. It was likely to be more of the same. The nineteenth century changed all that.
The good news is that since the middle of the nineteenth century the rate of change has been startling. Industrialisation has made most of us immeasurably richer.
The bad news is that these days the rate of change is so rapid that it is likely to cause serious mental indigestion.
My own lifetime has encompassed insane changes. I was brought up in a small Hertfordshire village where all but two people worked in the village on the local farms.
These days there are farms that operate much more efficiently with no human workers at all.
A century or two ago people who were displaced by mechanisation went to work where there wasn’t any mechanisation. Nowadays that is rather difficult. Mechanisation is invading just about every sector of the job market. And that includes the services.
A couple of major think tanks maintain that by 2040 the developed world is likely to find that 40% of existing jobs will have vanished. The trouble is, this time the machines can take over any new jobs. And we now have intelligent machines that can self repair.
How many jobs will have vanished by 2050? 60%? 80%?
That would cause a complete readjustment to the way we live. And that is just one generation away. For centuries people have either had money or resources, or they have worked to get the money and resources. That way of life is heading into the sunset.
First we had machines to help us. The first trusty machine was the horse. That was made obsolete by the car. But a car needed a driver, and needed to be made and repaired. These days most car factories are operated by machines. The new cars can almost be made without humans, can be repaired by machines, and can drive themselves. Humans are being edged out of the employment market. That displacement will take a time to have a major effect, but what jobs will be left that a machine wont be able to do? And how will humans adjust to this new situation? And what is AI’s role in all this?
Let’s try and answer some of those questions next week.
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