What if robots and AI take our jobs?
Tank, the roboceptionist, greeted my family and me when we visited Carnegie Mellon Robotics Institute in Pittsburgh, Penn. during March break. In Hamilton, not once have I received a greeting from a robot.
It was fascinating to compare two steel towns; Pittsburgh and Hamilton both struggled due to the decline of manufacturing economies. Today, Pittsburgh boasts of its future as a brighter technology-centric economy surrounded by Robotics Institute, Apple, and Google.
The city partnered with Uber and piloted a driverless car initiative in 2016. Nevertheless, Mayor Bill Peduto is facing backlash as unions are protesting the displacement of workers. In Hamilton, the city’s economic diversifying efforts contributed to weathering the recession and thankfully we have not yet seen robots competing for our jobs to that extent.
However, we need to act toward a solution because cheap and smart robots are outcompeting humans for jobs. Globally, in both industrial and commercial settings, automation is increasing rapidly.
In 1997, IBM’s Deep Blue defeated world class chess champion Garry Kasparov; by 2020 driverless cars will be on the road by Tesla, Google, Ford, and 16 other large companies. John McCarthy, the computer scientist who believed machines could be simulated to learn, coined the term “artificial intelligence” (AI) in 1955. Look how far we have come.
Advances in AI are automating not only blue-collar, but white-collar jobs as well. Robots are being built worldwide for disaster response, construction, agriculture, health care, residential care, judicial work, and journalism. That’s not all, AIs are into art too; composing music and painting.
According to Philippe Chabot, basic income activist, within eight hours a robot can produce 2,400 shoes, whereas it would take 200 humans to do the same task.
Boston Dynamics/Google, MIT, and Japanese telecom Softbank have all built revolutionary robots; Baxter, Atlas, Spot, Cheetah, Pepper, and ASIMO will replace many human jobs. In the future, robots will walk and talk like humans, without demanding a living wage, costing less than minimum wage to employ.
We are living in the midst of a grand transition in the economy, and according to a Brookfield Institute (2016) study; 42 per cent of the Canadian labour force is occupying jobs which are at risk of being lost to technology within the next decade or two. Recently Prime Minister Justin Trudeau announced his commitment to funding $125-million toward leveraging AI’s economic potential. Technological advances have raised human living standards beyond expectations yet social inequities, political stresses, and reckless use of technology have degraded humanity. Ideally, we would trap this technology beast, rethink its impact on humanity then proceed with a controlled release.
However, these efforts will be useless as the beast is enormous. Also, proponents argue AI has the capability to increase human’s wealth.
Within our control is establishing policies to manage adverse effects to people. Economies should serve people; therefore, a closer look at social and ethical issues should be made a high priority locally, nationally and globally.
Paid work is becoming a less reliable source of income for many. Therefore, basic income may be a measure to ensure people have a steady stream of income. It is also important to have policies to create new types of human work as studies have shown there are deep links between unemployment and unhappiness; unemployment or volunteering cannot compare with leisure.
So what is basic income? It is a no-strings attached stream of income that is sufficient for a person to meet basic necessities (food, water, shelter, and clothing) and enable them to live above the poverty line. It does not prevent additional income, including employment.
The idea of basic income owes to 18thcentury radical Thomas Paine who proposed 15 pounds to 21-year-olds funded through land taxes. Paine wanted to support people who weren’t able to work or survive with their earnings. In 1962, Milton Friedman, a libertarian economist, supported a safety net a guaranteed income. Later Martin Luther King Jr, Richard Nixon, and George McGovern also advocated.
In the absence of work people can engage in volunteering to fulfil their need to be productive members of society if a reliable source of income was in place. Canadians are known for dedicated volunteering. According to Statistics Canada 13.3-million people, almost half of the population — aged 15 and over — volunteered in 2010.
Despite the need, basic income raises concerns; primarily funding and side effects. Charles Murray, in his 2006 book “In Our Hands: A Plan to Replace The Welfare State” proposed eliminating social security and medicare for such funding. Bill Gates proposed a tax on robots to make up for the lost tax from displaced workers. Other ways include savings made on health care.
I have followed the Universal Basic Income campaign since 2015 and convinced of its potential to protect dignity of displaced workers. There is an urgency to tackle the issue of precarious work and give dignity back to the worker.
Of the many ways proposed to fund the program, implementing a tax on robots is my preferred choice.