Last week we looked at how artificial intelligence (AI) was affecting the job market. I've been trying to read more widely on the subject, in an effort to understand its implications for all of us over the next few years. Jonathan Turley, well-known lawyer and legal scholar, offers these thoughts.
We are looking at one of the greatest job losses in history.
In a free-market system, such technological changes tend to offset losses with new jobs in emerging industries. And there will be such growth with the AI and robotic revolutions. But it is also likely that we are looking at a static class of unemployed and practically unemployable citizens as this new revolution unfolds.
. . .
The impact of AI is not confined to factory workers and truck drivers.
The danger is that politicians will react predictably and try to subsidize jobs that are no longer viable and industries that are being dramatically downsized. At the same time, they are likely to expand model programs in Democratic cities for universal basic or guaranteed income.
Democrats have moved forward with more than 60 bills creating such programs, and this week, Cook County, Ill. (the second-largest county in the U.S.) made permanent the universal basic income program it had originally launched with federal COVID-19 relief funds.
The problem is the creation of what I call a “kept citizenship” in a republic designed for people who are economically and politically independent from the government. That system is seriously undermined by a large percentage of citizens living off the government dole.
The solution cannot be an “arts-and-crafts” population kept entertained by government programs to learn glassblowing and pottery-making. A different type of citizen would emerge that is unlikely to be sufficiently free of the government to counter its excesses or failures.
. . .
All governments will face this existential crisis in the 21st Century. It will create growing instability globally. Although AI and robotics will make goods cheaper and more widely available, they are also likely to have a dramatic effect on populations. For example, as production costs drop with the new technology, there will be less advantage to moving factories to other countries with cheaper labor forces, such as China and Mexico.
Companies may choose to build near consumer markets to save on transportation costs while utilizing higher-skilled worker populations to maintain robotic and AI systems. That could produce massive unemployment in certain countries with low-educated, low-income populations. That in turn could destabilize governments and increase the chances of war in countries with large populations of unemployed young men.
There's more at the link. Recommended reading.
Mr. Turley outlines a very real constitutional issue for the United States. Our federal government is specifically restricted by the constitution in what, and how much, it can do - even if much of those provisions are today observed more in the breach than in the observance. Nevertheless, I think it's a valid argument that our system of government, and how we vote for it, are designed for citizens who are not dependent on that government. They are able to vote as free men and women because they are not dependents. The moment they cease being free - the moment they become financially dependent on the same government they're helping to elect - the greater becomes the danger that they will vote for their own financial advantage, rather than the good of the country. As the Roman poet Juvenal satirically pointed out almost two millennia ago, people will vote for "bread and circuses" rather than what their country needs to remain viable. The fall of Rome not too long afterwards tends to bear out his point.
So . . . if AI leads to increased unemployment (as appears likely at present), what will the newly unemployed do? Can they, on their own initiative, figure out new ways to make a living and rebuild their society? Or will they listen to the siren song of politicians who promise them all sorts of freebies and benefits in return for their vote? (For that matter, any politician who promises to set up government programs to do the hard work for people, so that they don't have to think and work for themselves, is almost guaranteed electoral success. See the universal basic income (UBI) scheme being pioneered by Chicago, and look for something similar in New York and other "blue" cities.)
The biggest threat posed by AI job replacement is one that Mr. Turley has not mentioned at all. It's simply this: if government is to provide a basic guaranteed income to every citizen, it can argue that private pension schemes, IRA's and 401(k)'s are now obsolete and unnecessary. After all, if the state will provide our needs, why do we need to make provision for them ourselves? That leads directly to the next and larger problem: what if the state decides it can confiscate or "nationalize" our pensions, because with UBI we no longer need them? There are many trillions of dollars saved by Americans in such pension systems, and a left-wing government will be frothing at the mouth over the temptation to seize them all. It would wipe out a huge chunk of our national deficit (at least until such governments spend it all again!), and can be "sold" to the underfunded portion of the electorate as a "tax on the rich" who want to "hold on to money they don't need any more". The massive population of "blue" cities and states can be expected to vote for it en masse, overwhelming the more conservative vote of those who've worked for their future income and want to keep it for themselves.
That will, in turn, beget a whole new series of arguments and confrontations over how much UBI should be, and whether "richer" people whose private pension funds were "nationalized" are entitled to a higher UBI payment as compensation, and a whole range of related issues. What if housing were folded into the UBI arrangement, so that anyone receiving UBI was also guaranteed a place to live? What quality of place? In what sort of suburb? Will everyone be forced into Cabrini-Green style housing, or will there be any freedom of choice?
I have no idea what may emerge from the current state of affairs, but I can foresee far more problems for society than are presently being discussed. In days past, laissez-faire economists used to claim that "What's good for the banks is good for the country". Well, AI may be good for business, but it may very well be "double-plus-ungood" for our jobs and for our society. Right now, we just don't know . . . and that uncertainty is dangerous in itself.
Your thoughts, dear readers?
Peter
9 comments:
UBI is just Communism under a glitzier, "more caring" name. But you cannot provide UBI without the money taken from someone else. Of course, some of our politicians are so economically illiterate that they said, "What's the problem? We can just print more money."
The changing technologies we used to say was like the buggy whip manufacturers. Back in the 1900's, they went out of business. Today, the Gov't would find some way to subsidize them. Unfortunately, that doesn't prevent change, with the issues you have noted.
Steve
I think all this talk about AI making everyone unemployed is overblown. Just like the cotton gin in the automobile, people on certain industries will lose their jobs, and they'll go and they'll do something else. I don't know what that might be, and neither does anybody else. But neither did anybody else when the cotton gin was invented or when the automobile came out. It's not the end of the world as we know it. People will be more productive, and that doesn't necessarily mean everyone will lose their job. That just means we will produce more. Humans are industrious creatures and we will find a way to work.
Texas Mike
Response to Texas Mike.
I get where you are coming from, and there is still the potential for this all to be a nothing burger as I believe the term is. However we must consider what if this is not in fact a nothing burger. What if this indeed removes an absolutely massive number of jobs.
The difference between this and the cotton gin or name any of a dozen other industry disruptors is that this is not specific to one industry. Second unlike in the past where yes you did have a few large company's running huge parts of the industry, you had just as much, percentage-wise controlled by medium and small companies.
This meant that when new tech was introduced it typically came in waves as some tried it, found it worked, then others seeing that success followed suit, then those who were cautious, and then lastly those who refused to change failed and were bought out by newcomers or other companies.
Today is very diffrent. Today the vast majority of industries are owned by just a few businesses. So when they all push for something at the same time, it will effect the overwhelming majority of whatever field they control.
So for instance, take the financial world. Intuit or Quickbooks as its also known, has made a major push over the last decade to convince everyone to use their platform. They have gotten so big, that they have a huge amount of the bookkeepers, accountants, etc. using their software. Over the last few years they have been pushing hard to get people to do their taxes using Quickbooks as well and a lot of people now do so.
If they go with the AI model. Suddenly a massive amount of bookkeepers, accountants, smaller tax firms and likely the medium tax firms are all out of business. The expenses of operating are already massive due to the government, and this will effectively knock out huge chunks of the industry practically overnight.
That's one single field. AI touches almost every field outside of manual labor. Which I will get to in a moment. All current reports seem to indicate that the large companies controlling nearly every field are pushing for AI all at the same time practically in lockstep. If it goes through, you are easily looking at millions of suddenly unemployed people at the same time, in every single country. As the field expands, so to will the unemployment crisis from millions at a time to tens of millions at a time.
Now we come to manual labor jobs. Right now they are a mix of good pay or starvation wages. With a massive flood of people desperate for a job to feed themselves, don't kid yourself, those jobs will pay as little as they possibly can. After all, there will be someone desperate enough to take starvation level wages. Then from the other direction, most of those blue collar companies require people to hire them to fix things. If their customers don't have a job, why would they hire them unless they absolutely had to?
Again, you could be right and this might be overblown, and I certainly hope that is the case. However the odds are quite high that this is coming, and if it does, it is going to be absolutely miserable for everyone except for the so called elite.
- W
Don't forget the pain of adjustment. Some of those buggy whip makers never move on, never learn anything else. What happens when AI combined with robotics can do jobs like plumbing, electrical, and the other trades? Many humans are not industrious. Please note all the COVID, Medicare and other fraud. NY, CA, and MN are the tip of the iceberg.
Currently employers are incentivized to work people 50-60 hours a week rather than hire 2 employees at 30 hours per week. It will take time to undo the regulatory burden that makes this so. We need to start.
This has the potential to get us down to 1 income households working <40 hours per week with no debt. Want to bet that TPTB do not want us to achieve that goal.
I can see an advantage to some level of UBI, the fact is a large amount of the left's power comes from a not insignificant group of "people" who already do not work and live completely off of government handouts. Many of them, in order to increase their dole, squeeze out more members of said group that are at best useless and often criminally malicious. If they don't need to do that to sustain their lifestyle there is good odds their numbers will go down.
Tip of the iceberg. We have people on one side hyping the AI movement and we have others on the other side saying Pooh Pooh. Over my life I have seen two major things happen. We have a food glut right now that almost anyone can get more calories than they need any day of the week.
The other is that we need to work less to get the food we need.
I know it has been posited that when man kind in general has more free time we witness fast advancement. But I think the fallacy of that is that most of those populations are white. When you factor in some of the other races we do not trend up anymore.
I am reminded of the Chinese curse, May you live in interesting times.
One huge difference I see between the references to the cotton gin, automobiles and buggy whips is that back then, you changed jobs or died of starvation. There was no government safety net.
The biggest thing I got out of Political Science 101 back in the 70s was that "The purpose of government is to provide those things for the people that the people cannot provide for themselves." Protection (police, fire and military)? - yep. Education? Nope. We've been trying that, and government schools fail miserably no matter how much money gets thrown at them. And we had no department of education prior to Carter. Infrastructure - roads, utilities? Some regulation thereof, yes, such that there is consistency in standards. Arts - what's that got to do with government - a big NO!
Government sticks its nose in in way too many places it has no business being. Let business to business, and government do what the free market can not, which is very little.
Oh, crap. Here we go again for UBI.
Hopefully some of the "influencers", government and otherwise, will recall that when property starts being nationalized, then the rules are no longer valid. On all sides . . .
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