On AI, automation, universal basic income, and the prospect of human labor...

I have meant to drop a note in my journal here about the progression of technology and its impact on human labor, but keep forgetting.  Maybe on this quiet Saturday afternoon when it's snowing out, it's high time for a cup of hot chocolate while jotting down my thoughts.

There have been a lot of noises, and fights, since Uber (and the likes of Lyft) burst on scene. As with most startups from Silicon Valley, they were successful in grabbing headlines and market share by evading regulations, effectively eating the lunch of taxi industry. This is in contrast to more evolutionary approach of Zipcar which looks to only offer an alternative to car ownership, Uber wants to replace taxis. It's only natural that taxi industries from around the world (except notably in China and India) rally against it. Governments of some countries (like France) decide to side with the taxi industry that came out in full force of mass demonstration, while others (like Australia) essentially throw up their hands, providing some one-time reimbursements to taxi owners while embracing Uber with open arms.

Some people love it, others hate it. It began to dawn on those Uber drivers who initially love the idea of working only when they feel like it, that they were paid pittance for driving Uber customers around, paying for literally everything, including insurance, gas, and more. Some try to sue Uber for formal employee status, others want Uber reimbursement on insurance and more. At the same time, incidences like sexual assaults (from India to Australia) began to emerge.

Increasingly, these human drivers are becoming more like nuisance than help. They complain, they are hard to be motivated, and they generate really bad publicity. Something has to be done.

At the same time, technology is fast maturing with self-driving cars. Google has quietly accumulated more than two million miles of test driving driverless cars. Startups that focus on self-driving trucks are getting road-tested. Tesla is shipping cars with auto-pilot system that one would expect from airplanes. It's looking more likely by the day that driverless transport will become reality sooner than anyone would think.

And this is just the ground transport alone. Others like Amazon has already tested drones delivery of shipment (albeit in rural England initially) and created concept stores with no service employees. Even factories in China are beginning to introduce automation due to rapidly rising labor costs (since the first wave of excess labor migrating from rural to urban areas in the 1980s are beginning to wind down). 

Machines don't complain, they can work 24x7 (with just the occasional greasing and maintenance/repairs), they don't ask for wage rise or benefits, they don't unionize, they don't take bathroom breaks, they don't eat, they don't sleep, they don't get sick, they have no issues with work-life balance, and they certainly don't shit and pollute the environment. They would do exactly as you tell/program them to, no questions asked. They don't worship false gods, or become terrorists. (Along that allegory, they must be excellent soldiers.)

Ultimately it is the customers, end-users, who would deal a death blow to workers. They prefer self-checkout at supermarkets and airports to avoid long lines and grumpy employees, they like ezpass with automated toll collection and no human toll collectors or fumbling with coins, they want low shipping costs and fast, accurate delivery. And they want low cost everything.

(Were those same customers who might once be workers thinking that the automated system that they so love would one day replace them? I doubt that they were that far-sighted when they were reaping short-term benefits as customers, only to find out that it's too late to stop the tide when they lose out to machines as workers.)

In a way, the decision by corporations to automate is almost a no-brainer, from a pure economics perspective. 

There is however huge human tolls as a result of automation. Huge swath of no/low-skill, uneducated workers are displaced. Even the Obama administration has issues report that sounds like siren call. These workers are shifted almost exclusively to supporting Donald Trump in the 2016 presidential election, as a repudiation to all establishments (both GOP and Democrats). There are even union workers breaking ranks from union leaders to side with Trump instead of Hillary Clinton (the de facto Dem champion for workers). NAFTA/TPP, my ass, indeed.

Indeed, the human costs of losing one's livelihood are immeasurable. So many of these workers, and younger generations too, were told to get an education, and to re-train for another field(s) that are more labor intensive (eg. health care, nursing, education, retail or service sectors). So many of the displaced heed the call, borrow to the tilt, just to get themselves a piece of paper called a degree, in some discipline like liberal arts that has hardly had any job prospects. Four years and tons of student debts later, they find themselves just as trapped, perhaps in even worse shape. 

Europe takes a different tact in handling these surplus human labor in the form of universal basic income, but the prospect is equally dim. The idea is that, government would give every individual non-means tested income, whether you work or not. Finland is testing this on limited scale. 

It's an interesting idea, reminiscent of a "social security income" to everyone. You don't have to earn it, you just need to be there. Nice idea, but I have serious doubts.

First off, the money has to come from somewhere. These European countries thought they were ingenuous to discover this, but they are not. Just ask Saudi Arabia or Brunei, both of which have been giving out freebies and cash to their citizens for the longest time. 

Before one asks the question of "how did they do/afford it?" a better question to ask is "where does the money come from?"

They share a couple of common traits. Both Saudi Arabia and Brunei derive so much of their free money from oil. Their people don't have to work for it, they just need to have the good fortune for being born there and with the right lineage. The government can afford it without taking on debt (to finance the cash handouts) because all they need to do, is to pump more oil.

Right there, you'll see the problems: (a) Not every country has that kind of good fortune of "natural resources" to fund your lifestyle, (b) The size of your total population cannot be too large, (c) What would happen when the oil runs dry some day? Population is only going to grow, and oil reserve will continue to go down, thanks to all the pumping. These two trends are going to diverge and deteriorate. 

Is it any wonder that even rich country like Switzerland rejected this idea of universal basic income? 

The one thing that perhaps no one can and will dispute, is that, technology will continue to advance, whether you like it or not. There will come a day when automation is here to stay and become reality. What will we do with all the surplus human labor, all those no/low-skilled, non-educated workers? This is assuming that there will still be jobs for the highly skilled, and highly educated workers, who are presumably citizens of the world who can still command decent-to-high salary. And then there is the ruling elite class, the investors, the moneyed class, the CEO types, who control not only the purse string, but corporation decisions. 

In short, what would our world be like when all resources are controlled by an increasingly small group of individuals, while the rest of the world population festers? How could these poor individuals continue to be "customers" when they cannot "produce"? As offensive as it might sound, what purpose would they serve on this planet earth, except to consume? Increasingly too, the world as depicted in the Hollywood movie Elysium (2013) doesn't look that farfetched. The AI story from Google is great in terms of technological advancement, but it'll only serve to highlight the impotence and the very many shortcomings of humans. What are we to do about it? What can we do? Would the coming of age of AI be like the success of the Manhattan Project, introducing a weapon of mass destruction that the scientists ultimately would lose control of, much as Oppenheimer introduced, then opposed nuclear weapons, to no avail?

Can there ever be a happier middle where humans can reap the benefits of technology and automation, without sacrificing our soul? I really don't know.

But I do know this: As much as I hate to say it, there are way too many humans on this planet earth. For those who are born into misery and suffering, would it have been a better fate if they were not born at all? I don't want to answer for others, but I know it would be a yes, if it were for me. That would make birth control an altogether positive thing to promote. I hate to say this too, but looking at China today, versus 35 years ago when it started opening its door to the outside world, its mandatory one-child policy has, by all likelihood, reduced at least 1 billion additional mouths to feed. Some thirty odd years later now, the younger generations and its government are able to focus on moving up the food chain than to toll for laborious work (although it must be said that China still has a large portion of population that falls in this "surplus" category, but at least the country is in far better position to help them). It's the best possible outcome for a country to have. And for those who complain about the draconian government policy, and the reversal of it without so much as an apology, I don't think they are (or can) look at the better picture of who much good the one-child policy had been for the world population as a whole. Such is human toll on individual levels, as opposed to the larger collective common good.

Compared that to, say, Africa or Middle East or South America, the situations of the latter look almost hopeless, sadly to say.

Ok, I digress. Back to the prospect of human labor. If the size is to shrink to a more manageable size, there would perhaps be a better position to consider universal basic income for the remaining humans, while delegating all work (and wealth creation too?) to machines. When that day comes, the idea of productivity gain will no longer be relevant. As always, there will no doubt be winners, and losers. 

But wait, what would become of the differences in countries, what with all their strengths and weaknesses, since machines are machines, and it makes no difference between a machine in the US, versus those in China, or India, or Africa, would it now.

Even if the world over can afford it, to have a universal basic income for all that survive, for them to continue consumption while machines will serve humans, I'm not sure if that's the nirvana that we are sold. There is virtue in work, and the art of creating things by hand, the craftsmanship that goes with it. The work that makes humans feel productive, fulfilled, belonged. A monthly check can never replace that. 

And what would the world be like, when machines and AI take over? Would The Terminator (1984) and The Matrix (1999) be our cautionary tale? Why would machines even need humans at all? What is our value of existence, except to take over this planet until we eat or consume all other species to extinction, and wreck so much havoc that climate change will become permanent?

Boy, now my head really starts to hurt...