What is more worrying – economic inequality or artificial intelligence? According to physicist Stephen Hawking, machines won’t bring about the economic robot apocalypse – but greedy humans will.
In a recent Reddit Ask Me Anything session, a user asked him a pertinent question:
“Have you thought about the possibility of technological unemployment, where we develop automated processes that ultimately cause large unemployment by performing jobs faster and/or cheaper than people can perform them? Some compare this thought to the thoughts of the Luddites, whose revolt was caused in part by perceived technological unemployment over 100 years ago. In particular, do you foresee a world where people work less because so much work is automated? Do you think people will always either find work or manufacture more work to be done?”
Hawking, predicting that economic inequality will skyrocket as more jobs become automated and the rich owners of machines refuse to share their fast-proliferating wealth, replied:
“If machines produce everything we need, the outcome will depend on how things are distributed. Everyone can enjoy a life of luxurious leisure if the machine-produced wealth is shared, or most people can end up miserably poor if the machine-owners successfully lobby against wealth redistribution. So far, the trend seems to be toward the second option, with technology driving ever-increasing inequality.”
Responding to a query by a teacher tired of having the “The Terminator Conversation” with his students – that is, explaining away the notion that evil, killer robots will be the main danger with AI, Hawking noted:
“The real risk with AI isn’t malice but competence. A super intelligent AI will be extremely good at accomplishing its goals, and if those goals aren’t aligned with ours, we’re in trouble. You’re probably not an evil ant-hater who steps on ants out of malice, but if you’re in charge of a hydroelectric green energy project and there’s an anthill in the region to be flooded, too bad for the ants. Let’s not place humanity in the position of those ants. Please encourage your students to think not only about how to create AI, but also about how to ensure its beneficial use.”
According to a 2014 University of Oxford study, 47% of the world’s jobs are set to be automated in the next two decades. And remember what Marx said? Automation that displaces workers in favour of machines that can produce more goods in less time is part and parcel of how capitalism operates.
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what happens if people find a way to get into these A.I. machines? would be nice to see A.I’s tampered with so they help do tasks for the Anon movement, I mean if sum1 was good enough to get inside drones and perm disable them right? It would cost the us a lot of $$ but at least they cant recklessly kill people that way. that’s probably asking a lot, but I think that would strike a huge blow for the movement, if it is indeed possible….? idk I’m nowhere near good so im just shooting out ideas here 😛
This isn’t a bad thing at all, once there is no possible way to employ willing workers the government will have to pay for everyone, or make living conditions free to the public, however we still have space travel and planet colonizing to master so maybe we will get to keplar452b faster than we thought? until we make machines that can imagine and design better futures for all humans, I don’t think we will be out of jobs entirely.
Concept Frontier has published a quantified solution to the issue of inefficient resource allocation caused by capitalism & job automation: http://www.conceptfrontier.com/concept-blog/automation-mass-unemployment-wont-kill-the-job-market