This title excites one of 2 reactions.

Disbelief. Thoughts of, “They have said this before, and it has yet to happen!” “If this is true, how will we feed ourselves and live?”

I assure you, this article will address both those reactions and persuade you in the validity of this title. So here we go.

Essentially, AI (Artificial Intelligence) is the cause for this automation. AI has been used very loosely in the past and is still used as loosely as Donald Trump’s twitter. Really? Actually probably not that loose. Anyways, what is AI? And if it has existed in the past, why all of a sudden would most jobs start getting automated now? Here’s the answer.

What is AI?

Before, people were eager to use the word AI. Basically, anything that resembled human intelligence they called AI. If it was just a prediction model made on excel that determined house prices, people called it AI. It made them seem Einstein smart and Elon Musk cool. I understand, I like sounding cool.

However, the innovation in AI over the last 5 years tops all other uses of the word. This new AI is called Deep Learning. I’ll try not to get too technical, but no promises. Deep Learning is basically another name for the utilization of Multi-Layered Neural Networks. The theory of Neural Networks have existed for 50 years. However, we have not had the compute power to make them feasible until about 10 years ago.

Neural Networks can predict things that no other model previous to it can do. Given the massive amounts of data that is being stored today and the power of modern day computers, a neural network can now predict things with such great precision, and speed. In order to understand how they do this and what their limitations are you must understand how NN’s work. However, this is not the article for that discussion, so I will give examples to prove it. Google Translate, Tesla’s self driving cars, Facebook Image Recognition, all use Deep learning for all their algorithms.

For all the philosophers out there, I must assert a disclaimer. I am not saying Artificial Intelligence, or Deep Learning is the same as human intelligence. They are entirely different. Human intelligence can see the causes of things, and know them to be causes. It can see order, know and understand it as order. Deep Learning can not and will never be able to do this. However, Deep learning can do things that we as humans can not do. They can leverage massive amounts of pre-existing data that have determined outcomes. There is no better prediction of future events than past events, right? They say experience makes us wise, and NN’s can use amounts of Data that would take us 100’s of years to analyze, to predict complicated things way better than any human.

It can also be used to for optimization. If it sees trends among the data it is being fed that is leading to better and better outcomes. It can predict where the maximum is and report back the parameters for how to get there. Any high precision task a human can do, a computer will eventually be able to do better and with higher accuracy. A fortiori, any repetitive task that humans do, like burger flipping, a robot can easily do.

What Jobs Can Not Be Automated

The jobs that can not be automated are anything that requires creativity. As said earlier, Deep Learning requires a bunch a data to work. If a job requires you to do something that has never been created before there is no data on it, and thus the machine can’t do that task.

These jobs are mainly Research and Development, Entertainment, Scientist etc.

Main Objection to 90% Automation

People thought that once Ford started manufacturing lines many jobs would be displaced by this new magical technology. It turned out more and higher skilled jobs were created as a result.

However, there are 2 main reasons why I believe what is going on now is different.

The first, AI is the type of thing that can automate most jobs, and the speed at which companies can build AI is exceedingly fast, and will only accelerate as technology improves. So once new jobs are created as a result of robots displacing workers, robots will quickly start to fill those new jobs as well. By the time the displaced workers are retrained there will be a new AI to take their place. Pretty grim.

The second, I believe there is a natural limit among the jobs we can do. At the beginning when our innovators like Ford automated things, new and higher quality jobs popped up. However, I believe we are getting to a limit where there is only so much we can do. The more we automate the less new kinds of jobs will pop up, given this natural limit. Once robots displace jobs the amount of new jobs created, will be less than the amount of workers displaced. Thus, an increase in a permanent unemployment rate.

With an increase of a permanent unemployment rate, companies will now be incentivized to make things even cheaper. That means they will rely more and more on automation to lower costs. This is key.

Why We Won’t Care

This is why we won’t care. With automation comes abundance. Things will get so cheap there will not be any reason to work. You will be able to live an equivalent life of a king in the 1700’s for pretty much free. With the advent of solar, and other sustainable energy sources, energy prices will drop drastically. With less workers, real-estate and rent prices will drop. We won’t really care about not having a job because we will be able to live just as well, in a sense.

What Should We Worry About?

However, most people find purpose in their job. What will people do with their new found time? My friend took a year off and dedicated it to vacationing, entertainment and not working at all. As good as that sounds, he said it was the most miserable year of his life. We need purpose, and pure entertainment won’t fill that. Perhaps, we may destroy ourselves and automation will be the fall of our society. Or we may start studying the world for its own sake, and Liberal Education will rise as the main act of this new world.

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— Brian Alois