I recently read Andrew Yang's new book "The War on Normal People", which discusses the displacement of a large portion of our citizenry through automation, and I wanted to delineate how automation may affect Texas, how Austin is contributing to it, and some potential solutions.
Over the course of the last 100 years the socioeconomic trends set forth by the Industrial Revolution have been rapidly manifesting themselves as an increasing emphasis on hyper-specialization and cognitively complex occupations. In other words, our current system rewards mainly those who are extremely educated and capable of tackling novel problems on a day to day basis. This is not currently much of a problem because the U.S. is a service based economy that is in large part comprised of menial labor markets. But, with the unrelenting progress being made in artificial intelligence research, a large portion of our workforce is facing certain unemployment. I can not overstate the importance of this issue. It will cause an unprecedented economic shift on a global scale.
The same catastrophe will eventually befall Texas as it befalls the rest of the world. So the question remains, is there a way to stop it ? Well, the most we can do is mitigate the potential ramifications is by ensuring a certain amount of economic stability for our populace as they learn to transition to new occupations. I recommend UBI, that is universal basic income, as a potential solution. The money for such a program can be garnered via a value added tax on the use of automated systems by companies. Thus, we can gain the financial resources necessary to abate poverty and economic hardship while increasing our populations chances of success in multiple domains. For a multitude of further information on the topic I suggest reading the book.
In their latest post, Skeptical Centrist describes how upcoming economic changes, automation in particular, would affect the working population. They'd read the book "The War on Normal People" by Andrew Yang and wanted to depict the impact such an economic change could have on Texas. The author describes how as technology advances, especially with artificial intelligence, greater numbers of people are going to face unemployment as computers and robots begin to take over different jobs.
ReplyDeleteWhile we are seeing increasing instances of human jobs being replaced with automation and it is a reasonable concern, I think there's also a different way of looking at the situation that isn't so dire. While technology like robots can be programmed to perform tasks and be continually improved to better predict or understand what we want from them, like smart home devices for example, there's something to be said for a real human touch that is irreplaceable.
How many times have you been trying to take care of something or get in touch with someone at a company and end up getting frustrated because you keep getting taken in circles of phone call directories or online forms? Just let me talk to an actual person! Whether its banking, customer support, or insurance (just to name a few), sometimes an automated chat bot or robot phone recording trying to get you to the right department just doesn't cut it.
Another thing to consider is what kinds of jobs will open up as things like robots begin to take over more menial easily automated tasks? There's a reason there are sayings like, "when one door closes...another door opens" and I think this may be an opening to different kinds of career paths than we've seen previously. I think an argument could be made that as automation takes over some aspects of current jobs, new opportunities will arise for people to venture into that will be more creative or interesting and may not even exist at this point in time.
Automation is certainly something to be cognizant of, as I do think there are problematic aspects to it. However, automation in the workforce is something that is inevitable (we already see it in many ways today) and luckily can also be beneficial in some ways. Like any period of transition, it can be distressing as people adjust, but if handled responsibly I think it could be an exciting time where humans may be opened up to explore paths of work that have not been seen before (or at least not in much quantity or capacity).
This is a response to classmate “Skeptical Centrist’s” blog stage 7 (https://skeptical-centrist.blogspot.com/). I feel that as automation/AI grows, it truly does pose a threat to those in the workforce who have very labor-induced jobs. While I agree with you that AI/automation does pose a threat to the working class of the US who have very labor heavy occupations, I feel an alternative solution to yours would be coming up with ways to integrate automation/AI with humans in the workforce, or at the very least being able to come up with alternate jobs for those who have/will be replaced by AI technology in the future. What those jobs can be I honestly do not know, but hopefully someone is thinking of similar solutions to mine as well as yours.
ReplyDeleteOne of my classmates in my Texas government class wrote a blog titled "Stage 7." They go by the tag Skeptical Centrist. This student attempted to tackle the age long question of how to end poverty. This student recommended a UBI, a universal basic income. This program would be funded by companies who opt in to using automated systems to replace human workers via taxes.
ReplyDeleteWhile many people use Sweden as the Hallmark for socialist policies, it is evident that productivity has gone way down and they economy has suffered for it. Along with that, using taxes to fund a UBI will cause a seep rise in the price of goods and services affected by the tax. That tax would be added into the production cost of the goods and or services that people would pay for, thus raising the prices.
While this student's blog is full of passion, I don't see how it connects to Texas policy. If a plan like this were to be implemented, it would need to be done at a national level in order to raise enough revenue to actually fund this program. And, while economic and government policy are closely linked, Skeptical Centrist seems to be more focused on economics rather than policy.