Humans Need Not Apply

"Yes, I'm her about the exterminator job."

I've been gone for a few weeks and in my time away I have been looking into some interesting ideas about what is coming down the old proverbial pipeline. A lot of what I have been investigating stems from a CGP Grey video, which I recently led an educational discussion on: Humans Need Not Apply. (I will put the video down at the end of this post if you want to check it out, and I recommend you do.) I have also been doing a lot of reading on the subject by Andrew McAfee (You know that guy who keeps claiming you computer is not as safe as it could be.) Well beside designing anti-virus software he is also a respected MIT engineer and his book The Second Machine Age is an interesting read.

Now what does all this amount to? If you listen to these sources and others than you may find yourself getting pretty terrified because basically the economy will collapse sometime in the next twenty to fifty years. Robots, automation, and software are getting to the point where they can do our jobs better, faster, more accurate, and (more importantly) cheaper. To take an example from CGP Grey, let's look at self-driving cars.

They are already real and they already work. There are estimates that self-driving cars will be commonplace by 2025 and will be almost ubiquitous by 2030. For me that means I can read a book as my car drives me down to the Jersey Shore. For truck drivers, bus drivers, cab drivers, construction equipment operators, garbage truck drivers, and more like them, it means they will be unemployable. Not only will they be unemployed, they will have a skill set that is no longer required in the economy. Conservatives estimates put current transportation jobs as employing a little over 3.5 million people in the USA alone, but this new technology could cost as many as 10 million people their jobs. Go even further and look at the auto-parts industry, which employs almost another 1 million people who will have to be downsized. Other estimates say that this new trend is going to drop the number of cars on the road from 245 million to just 2.4 million vehicles. (Because why would I even need to buy a car when I can use an app on my phone to send for an Uber-Auto-Vehicle to transport me to my destination at cost of 50 cents per mile, and not even have to tip.) The auto-insurance industry, the rental car industry, the used car dealers, even the parking lot industry, are all going to take hits and lose employees. That is a lot of people out of work, and its just the tip of the iceberg.

Baxter the Robot can be taught any manual repetitive job, all with less cost,
less down time, and less physical comedy than you average Lucile Ball.

If you watch the video below you will see that there is a lot of new (and working technology) that already exists that will make our jobs obsolete. I am not talking about I Love Lucy assembly-line type of jobs either, but those kinds too. (Note to self: write a story about about two mischievous robot wives who always get into hijinks at the expense of their robot husbands, and one is Cuban... for some reason.) Blue collar, white collar, professional, and even creative jobs are all at risk. There is software that can take care of payroll, budgeting, advertising, and even human resource problems. There are computers that can answer the phone, sound human, and be responsive enough to solve people's problems. And that fake story and the Lucile-tron 9000... well a computer can write a better story, literally. They have computer programs that write stories, news articles, and even compose music. As for doctors and lawyers, they have an app for that. (I'm not even being flippant.) With the advent of wearable biometric technology (FitBits are only the beginning,) you are no longer going to need to have regular physician check-ups. Your phone will be able to tell you everything from your cholesterol to your blood type. It will warn you of an impending heart attack or diagnose that sniffle you woke up with. You may still have to see an actual specialized doctor for serious issues, but general practitioners will eventually become a thing of the past. Similiarly there will still be lawyers, but all the grunt work of law will be done by computers, not interns or pre-law students, or even Charlie who has failed to make partner for thirty years. Less lawyers, less doctors, less teachers, less policeman, janitors, grocery store clerks... less everyone.

Worst of all, these newly unemployed people will have no where to go. Conservative estimates put unemployment rates in this new economy at 20%, but it could run as high as 75% in the long term. What the hell are we going to do? Most of the sources I have used for my research don't give any solutions, just problems. So, I am going to talk solutions, and you may not like them...

Solution: We do nothing. Anything we try to do to bolster a human driven economy over an automated one is only going to delay the inevitable and wind up perpetuating the idea that humans have no purpose but to work, which in my opinion is a dangerous and stupid idea. Think about it. Why the hell do we need employment? We work forty or fifty years at jobs we barely tolerate and what do we get out of it? Satisfaction? (Maybe if you are lucky.) Even worse we condition ourselves to believe that it is our employment that makes us useful. In a lot of cases we make work to make jobs to make more work to make even more jobs. How many people do you know who have retired from work and have no idea what to do with themselves? It is because they have been conditioned to think that they need to work and they have never experienced a world where that was never true. Jobs are like prison walls. Its like what Red said that one time, "First you hate 'em, then you get used to 'em. Enough time passes, you get so you depend on them. That's institutionalized."

With C3PO doing all of Luke's tricky translation work he was free to live
the luxurious life of a moisture farmer/rebel/Jedi Knight.

But it was not always like that. In our hunter-gather days estimates put the work day at anywhere between four and six hours, (of course 25-30% of hunter-gathers also died by homicide, but that's a whole other issue.) The point is that we have to ask ourselves if the purpose of human life is to sit behind a desk, earn a wage, pay into a pension, and wait for death once you retire? Twenty years ago, futurist believed that we would only be working about a 25 hour work week, because we would have things like 24-hour access to our messages, devices that would let us work from anywhere, and computers that could take a lot of the necessary grunt work out of our lives... You know what? They were right about everything, except the length of our work week. It stayed at 40-hours, not because of necessity, but because of fear and tradition. It is arguable that our current 40-hour work week does more harm than good, yet we cling to it because we believe that is the way things have always been done. Its the same for when I say, "In the future we may not have to work a full day or at all," that you have an instinctual spike of dread or fear... "How can that be?" you wonder. "What will we all do?" The short answer is: innovate and create. The long answer is: the impossible.

I understand there will be economical difficulties, but products will be cheaper and faster, and probably more disposable, but that doesn't mean all the problems will be solved. Some people have thrown out the idea of a minimum guaranteed income, a subsidized wage given to every adult after they turn eighteen. To a lot of people that sounds like Marxism, but the truth is, if we find ourselves in a world  with 75% unemployment, welfare and unemployment is going to basically become a minimum income. Then it will run out and people will still not be able to find jobs, because there will be literally no jobs to be had. So our economical thinking will have to be adjusted. Communism never worked because people like stuff, and there is no reason that changes in this new economy or that people can't make additional money on top of a minimum income. With all the free time I would expect people to use it to innovate, discover, and create. Now we won't all become famous actors or writers or software designers or scientist, but people will be free to follow their passions. If you don't believe me check out games like DayZ or Eve Online.

Both games are basically MMORPG's where the point of the game is that there is no point in the game. Sure there is survival and looting and leveling, but there are no involved storylines or epic multi-part quests. They are games where people are pretty much left to their own devices, and when you let that happen, you discover two rules: A.) Humans can be complete dicks; B.) Humans can create some pretty amazing things. There are fake multinational corporations that have arisen in Eve that are completely player driven. In DayZ players started a Hunger Games-like event that has become so popular it is now broadcast live on Twitch and other sports-gaming sites.

Yes, Jimmy Fallon, one day there will be robots doing that
job too, because of course there will be.

When left with time and resources people create (and yes sometimes they destroy because refer back to rule A.) In Star Trek, the Federation, is a society built not upon commerce or greed but upon discovery and the maximum potential of humanity. They are not driven by the need for objects or money, because why would they be? They don't need or want anything. You want ice cream? Boom... replicator makes you ice cream. You want to go to the beach? Boom... teleporter. You want the latest fashion? Download them and replicate them... Boom... The only thing left to them to get excited about or hungry for is discovery and creation. Art, music, poetry, and science are the driving factors of the Federation. I am not saying that is going to happen in the next fifty years, (or even at all,) here on Earth, but I am also not saying that it is not a worthwhile goal. It may seem overly optimistic, but when I think of the future I would rather believe in optimism, because even if we fall short we may still get something truly unimaginable.

So maybe it is time we stop being terrified of a world with high unemployment, and wonder what possibilities it can bring. In a world where everything is cheaper and abundant (including free time) maybe we can find a new paradigm for the human experience. Maybe we can create something amazing.

CGP Grey: Humans Need Not Apply