CLEVELAND -- I can't be alone in my dismay over the cynicism, hypocrisy and craziness that grip the United States. The mutually binding values needed to sustain a national community are dead. We are nothing more than a bunch of angry gangs living inside the territorial boundaries of a "disunited" America.

This hatred and bitterness have taken hold at a time when wrenching societywide consequences are coming our way at high speed due to artificial intelligence and robotics systems that are destroying jobs and opportunities, and blocking social mobility.

Could we please wake up and set priorities that help rather than destroy?

If our economy is not robust and open to all, there is no opportunity, no social mobility, and a more limited ability to assist those in real need. Our country needs collaboration, compromise, and honest discourse about what needs to be done, not hate, violence and unthinking opposition. We are in thrall to a vitriolic subculture whose members are so committed to their own thirst for power that no space is left for the negotiation needed to build effective economic strategies.

What has been called the Fourth Industrial Revolution is a disruptive transformation involving the evolution of amazing systems of artificial intelligence and robotics (AI/robotics). As fascinating as such developments are, these systems are destroying millions of jobs, reducing social mobility and opportunity, and imposing massive financial costs on governments.

AI/robotics, computers and information systems are not just tools but "evolutionary events."

Even while he sees some positive attributes, world-renowned physicist Stephen Hawking warns: "[T]here is no deep difference between what can be achieved by a biological brain and what can be achieved by a computer. [AI] will bring great disruption to our economy. ... AI could develop a will of its own - a will that is in conflict with ours."

AI is developing capabilities even researchers do not understand.

Masayoshi Son, the CEO of Japan's powerful Softbank, expects that sometime within the next 30 years there will be AI systems with IQs of 10,000, compared to the human "Einsteinian" genius level of 200.

Elon Musk, CEO of Tesla Motors, is designing Tesla's next production facility to be fully roboticized because human speed is too slow.

There are already robotic farm workers, bricklayers, apple and grape pickers, nurses, travel and insurance agents, financial advisers, physical therapists and much more.

A very small sampling of projections by credible analysts paints a troubling picture. An exceptional report, "Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace," predicts 50 percent of today's U.S. occupations could disappear by 2025.

A 2013 analysis by two Oxford scholars, Carl Frey and Michael Osborne, projects that 47 percent of U.S. jobs are at risk.

This is on top of the more than 5 million U.S. manufacturing jobs lost between 2000 and 2010.

The job loss is diverse and sweeping.

One estimate is that 4.1 million U.S. driver jobs (taxis, semi-trucks, delivery vehicles, buses) will be lost to the self-driving vehicles that numerous companies, including Ford, General Motors, Tesla, Google, Apple and Mercedes Benz, are preparing to market.

There is even the possibility that imposing a $15 minimum hourly wage could eliminate between 3 million and 5 million jobs as employers shift to robotic systems to avoid higher labor costs.

The conservative Heritage Foundation concludes that the overall job loss from a national $15-per-hour minimum wage mandate could be as much as 7 million jobs.

Wendy's has announced it will install 1,000 robotic order-takers in some restaurants for efficiency and in response to rising labor costs driven in part by the movement to legislate a significantly higher minimum wage.

Honesty requires admitting that Wendy's and other fast food franchises are likely to have shifted toward robotic systems regardless of current labor costs; the minimum-wage issue simply is accelerating the change.

No mission is more important than strengthening the American economy and protecting human jobs. Without that, we will tear each other to shreds over access to shrinking resources, as we are already doing over Obamacare.

The growth of the U.S. national debt has rendered the United States effectively bankrupt. The Congressional Budget Office warns the United States faces a fiscal crisis within the next decade.

David Walker, a former U.S. comptroller general, warned in 2015 that the U.S. national debt obligation is closer to $65 trillion rather than the official figure, now at $19.8 trillion. Walker's calculations include large-scale off-budget borrowing such as Social Security "IOUs" not included in the official numbers.

The situation may be worse than the $19.8 trillion, or even the $65 trillion figure. Laurence Kotlikoff, a Boston University economist, argues that when you apply what he calls the "Infinite Horizon" fiscal gap methodology to legally required U.S. debt obligations projected over time, the fiscal gap is $210 trillion.

We need to stop the whining, idiotic accusations, vicious partisanship and backstabbing that has become the new normal. Are we going to remain paralyzed by ideological "turf wars" or do we want to set limits on AI/robotics growth that will otherwise rob us of human jobs and impose high costs and undesirable conditions on our society?

David Barnhizer is an emeritus professor of law at Cleveland State University.

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