Will AI allow us early retirement?

In the 1960s, politicians told us that technology would herald a leisure economy.  This didn't happen. Today, those in power are preaching the same message about AI and predict that robots will soon do our jobs so we don't have to.

If we take a step back, history teaches us a different lesson. Since the invention of the microchip, most people have had to work harder and longer to put a roof over their heads. This wasn’t how the technological age was sold to us was it? It would appear that those putting about such ideas, either lied to working people about the benefits of technology, or just got it wrong.

We must remember too, that the only thing that working men and women have to bargain with is their labour, so if robots can be programmed to work in their factories and farm their land, then the rest of us will be increasingly less useful to prospective employers, who will no longer need us to turn a profit.

Before pushing the AI button, however, those that own the country’s wealth have a problem. because at the moment, they are hopelessly unsure how far the technology should be allowed to go.  Too little consciousness and the robots won't be able to do the jobs they are predicted to be able to do, too much awareness and they will start making their own plans, that may or may not involve the ruling elite.   

We were told in the 60s by the then Labour Prime Minister, Harold Wilson, that new technology would mean working less. The sound-bites of the day was "The White Heat of Technology and the Leisure Economy". Back in the real world, the consequences of new technologies is that when once a single person could afford to buy their own home on an working wage, it is now difficult for two or three working adults earning an average income to get on the property ladder.

The intelligence they call artificial may well change the way we live, but don't be fooled that those that invest in the technology are doing so for the benefit of working men and women. They are sinking billions into AI so that robots and not humans, will do their chores, and fight their wars.  While the ruling elites plan your redundancy, the big issue for them is whether they are able to control the technology they crave as easily as they do their current human workforce.     

 

The debate around A1 is dressed up as an immeasurable benefit to mankind, whose champions pretend that it will mean humans will no longer be required to work.  Theoretically, and for some, this may well be true, but the practical reality is that the benefit of AI to you and me is dependent on who controls it. As I write, the multi-national tech giants with money to burn, are engaged in a desperate scramble to see who can crack the AI code first.  This is where the danger lies.  In the race to be first, the tech-giants and the governments dependent on them, have lost sight of the probability that, if their technology is successful, robots, despite their fake intelligence will be less easy to manipulate than we are.

 

There is little doubt, that one way or another, AI will provide benefits we may be allowed to share, but in the end, I believe it is extremely unlikely that AI will reduce the retirement age or make it easier for ours or future generations to rent or buy their own home, any more than the technological age of the 60s and 70s did.