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Discussion on: Why are you NOT worried about the robot apocalypse?

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dmfay profile image
Dian Fay

Because there's no reason to prefer a human labor pool over more robots. The next question of course is whether they'd simply kill us; but while it's easy enough to see a lack of concern for individual humans (witness the ongoing discussions over driverless cars), it's difficult to come up with a compelling reason for a campaign of extermination that doesn't presuppose a capacity for abstract thought.

The most likely scenario as I see it is that automation will continue to put people out of work since robots are better in every way than humans at physical labor, and programs are faster and more reliable than we are at calculations and algorithms. Under the present capitalist paradigm this means more and more un- and underemployment and a concentration of wealth in an ever-smaller group. As of 2016 the richest ten billionaires combined owned half a trillion US dollars. If you ranked that figure on a chart of national GDP for that year, those ten people would land on a position in the low 20s. Imagine what you could do with the labor power represented by $505 billion in a society that put it to work!

The problem with automation isn't the robots.

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andy profile image
Andy Zhao (he/him)

Because there's no reason to prefer a human labor pool over more robots.

Never thought of it that way; great point.

I guess "inequality apocalypse" isn't as catchy huh?

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dmfay profile image
Dian Fay • Edited

The big question to me is whether the development of surveillance, policing, and military technologies (all inextricably related) will outpace the capabilities of a good old-fashioned angry mob with pitchforks and torches. The super-rich have been asking themselves this too: check out this article in The Guardian from a year ago about Silicon Valley royalty buying "just in case" property in New Zealand. They aren't thinking about robots or zombies or a titanic wave of molten metal covering the earth; they're worried about being called to account for a level of wealth that can only be termed obscene in the face of any amount of human suffering or privation.