Robocalypse Now? Central Bankers Argue Whether Automation Will Kill Jobs

The upside is that automation makes goods and services less expensive. A minimum national income and a do gooder job for everyone is practical, affordable and preferable as we go forward.
Full employment ...even if it means rubbing the shoulders of the person next to you. That's the future.

What we want is revenues, not jobs.
Give me revenues, and I'll gladly let go of my job.
I welcome the robots.

The Governor of the Bank of England, Mark Carney tells us 15 million British jobs will disappear and presents the detailed study with the whys, where and wherefores.
Mark Carney's resume confirms his accuracy in understanding global economics and I am certain if we don't turn around our neoliberal economy the next 15 years will announce how bloody accurate his prediction is.

This is stupid; everyone already knows it does and it is used for no other reason. Automated production goes back to Fords early days. Anyone who grocery shops knows how many jobs check yourself out and bag yourself have costed....over one half of front end jobs. There are no job creators and never have been;jobs are there when necessary, and necessity is being eliminated.

Fossil fuel industry will soon be perhaps 15% of what it is; this terrifies the Koch's, fossil employees and investors. Sad!

Nationally and globally there are two many of us to keep meaningfully and gainfully employed. Infrastructure is a short period fix. The global work force is exploding in numbers, education and training...the world is changing.

The savior economic system is not capitalism; it doesn't even have a name yet.

I think Robots should replace a lot of mundane boring jobs but the caveat is to have a Guaranteed Minimum Wage for every Person displaced. More Socialism is upon us my dear American friends. Europe is way ahead in that chapter and better prepared for a robocalypse future, even if the robots are invented at MIT.

Central Bankers are "arguing" about technology taking jobs? What, exactly, is there to "argue" about? Sure, Bill Gates and Steve Jobs created "millions" of jobs over the years, but their contributions to our economy eliminated TENS of millions of jobs.

Sorry, but this time it probably is different. The rich, the educated, the adaptable will succeed, but the poor, the uneducated and the inflexible will be treated as worse than worthless. We are already seeing the beginning of this and the earthquakes that will follow -- just look at all the angry trumpian voters.

With all the technological advancement and productivity gains, people in America have never been more unhappy. As an immigrant I have never sensed such an overwhelming sense of pessimism among middle-class Americans. Jeff Bezos may make a billion more this year but I hope he and his brethren know that they are sucking away the joy of hard-working Americans. I am sure it's hard to see the hardship of every day American when you sit in your ivory tower.

Mon dieu, an apocalypse now that investment advisors and their ilk might be affected by technology. This calls for a meeting at a luxury golf course in Sinatra!

Ah, now that investment managers and their ilk might be replaced by artificial intelligence, an emergency is clearly here, calling for no less than a hundred meeting of Cental Bankers at a luxury golf course in Sinatra Portugal, so nice to be away from the angry masses. Wait there is more Draghi assures us there will be more zero bound rates for the foreseeable future as well, if you can't fix vompanies and create jobs you might as well keep there stick prices up as the mumbling nabobs are herded to the slaughterhouse! Don't worry though Blankfein is probably arranging derivatives to bet against the artificial rise in stock prices, he and his friends will be well insulated from the coming Robo apocalypse, as a matter of fact they seem to be capitalizing on it as we speak. Every day a new little Sanford or Harvard grad comes up with a way to sreal the other guys cheese. What happened to Alexander Flemings, A.P.Gianninis and Henry Fords, today we are stuck with Kalnicks, Kushners and Blankfeins, parasitic societal and economic destroyers, not creators.

I hope to never see the word "robocalypse" again

I don't go to self serve cashier machines. I demand a human.

We are told we must cut taxes on the rich so they can invest. Republicans want to cut capital gains to zero, Democrats barely pretend to differ.
And what are they investing in? Training employees?
No, they are building our robot replacements, while workers are to pay the taxes for a police and military (that's the only thing they actually want to pay for as entitlements are "out of control" and all other programs are being slashed) that are really there to protect the 1% from us. Soon the police and military will also be robots. And they won't care about your skin color, only your bank account.
It is time to change the incentives so that investments go to humans. It is time to take back the media and the government from the global oligarchy. It is time for true democracy that takes care of people and our Earth.
We are already productive enough to take care of the needs of everyone on the planet. Instead we make mega tons of disposable junk, much of it not even used before is thrown away. We are shredding the planet to "grow the economy," but we are making ourselves less happy.
The model that the global billionaires have sold us on global corporate media, where they have veto power, is only good for them.
We need a new paradigm. Get involved in creating a new paradigm before they invent you put out of your home.

Whenever someone says that is labor competition from China and other low wage nations that have stagnated US wages, people scoff and say no, it is automation that is killing the job market. But when you say robots are competing with workers, they say but new industries will be created.
I can't predict the future, but I can look at a graph of productivity over the last 30 years and see it rising exponentially (if it's "stuck in neutral" it's only in the short term), while wages are flat.
Whether it's robots or competition from the developing world doesn't matter so much to people who can't make more (if they can even make as much) than their parents made.
If all of this new technology, that promises to replace even high skill careers is going to create a new set of careers, it is not likely they will pay well as long as.01% of the people own most of the robots.
Markets do not have a solution for this problem. It is time for democracy to get it's act together. Which means you have to stop expecting politicians to do their jobs and start putting as lot of pressure on them every week.

What if the capitalistic economic formula evolved to the stage where the capitalist, having exhausted and rendered superfluous the human worker-consumer, was only left with his robot workers? Without a consumer to exploit for a profit (and no one else to tax), the capitalist would rapidly wither away, but not before exhausting all ways to claim the wealth of his fellow capitalists. Hence, the final stage of capitalism commences when capitalists begin feeding on one another, as Karl Marx foresaw.
With the introduction of productive artificial intelligence in the 21st century, the human race will increasingly face the need to discard the capitalist formula for one that strives to equalize the wellbeing of all in order that humankind can continue to survive. Perhaps the highest use-benefit potential for AI is in its application as an adjunct to fair and equitable management of governments at all levels.

The private sector might wish to create/develop more advanced robots going forward. Sell them to government agencies at vastly inflated prices. Hire countless government purchasing agents to buy/sell the excess robots to the private sector at a loss. This is will create an endless/buy/sell economy and employ people in well paid meaningless government jobs. They will simply be hired so they can be paid. Actually, that's how almost all current government employees exist. In a pretend economy, anything is possible. Not to worry..

So who will repair the robots? Who will program them to be ever more productive and collaborative? Who will create the entertainment and food experiences everyone now has more time to enjoy?

Tech is tool. Sure it's glitzy to journalists and economists because they don't understand it is just a tool to help humans be more productive. And we will always look for ways to do that with -- our tools.

People are always the most important resource - they create the demand. In the past, too many futurists missed this. In that regard the future's probably no different..

Caution is advised when describing "productivity". To the average person, productivity means how many widgets per hour of labor. Typically to a business, productivity means how many widgets per unit cost of labor.

If you pay a person half as much, productivity doubles for cost based productivity if the person still produces the same number of widgets per hour.

Factor in inflation-- as defined in the US by the COLA for Federal Civil Service employees (averaging 1-2%/yr in the last 10 years)-- and you can see why the middle class has decreasing support for mainline politicians, bankers, plutocrats, and others opining about things like Robocalypse while lining their nests.

"seriously discussing the risk that artificial intelligence could eliminate jobs on a scale that would dwarf previous waves of technological change."..."a fear that the economic expansion might bypass large swaths of the population, in part because a growing number of jobs could be replaced by computers capable of learning — artificial intelligence." "artificial intelligence threatens broad categories of jobs previously seen as safe from automation, such as legal assistants, corporate auditors and investment managers."

My, my. A trend noticed for decades has finally dawned upon bankers, and some economists too!

Maybe next it will dawn upon the Democrats, who have ignored Sanders and Warren and several other Congressional authors. Not to mention Robert Reich and others not actually in office.

It has been evident for decades that skilled, adaptable workers are underemployed throughout the West and in other countries as well. The simple fact is that the bottom-line profit-before-all-else business sector cannot employ enough humans to float the middle class. It's also evident that the bottom-line profit-before-all-else business sector is not at all interested in floating all boats - only in improving their bottom-lines.

The point so far eluding the Dems and others is that the work that must be done: basic research, infrastructure, affordable housing, healthcare, child & elder care, environmental protection ... all are of no interest to the private sector and require gov't.

That's a hoot!
Central bankers talking about automation in business taking jobs away.
Up here in Canada, automation and ATM machines have replaced lots of bank jobs. Of course, those at the top still have their jobs.

One of the dangers in this kind of a discussion - whether Robocalypse or not - is that people take comfort in history. With technology has come economic progress in the past, so it will forever.

One of the things that risk managers/modelers are taught is no to project ahead solely based on past experience. You have to take pulse and look at the landscape around you and if there are danger signs, be cautious and do research to understand the likelihood of different outcomes. I would say that my assessment is that the likelihood of long term sustained high unemployment is high. The two tech dangers are job-impacting technology and debilitating cyber breeches.

It is interesting that a couple of things were not mentioned in this article. One, is the work by Thomas Piketty and his colleagues as represented by his book "Capital in the Twenty-First Century" where he makes a very strong case concerning income and wealth inequality. A second is any discussion of a "Basic Income".

What seems increasingly obvious is that capitalism is surely the best way yet devised to maximize the production of goods and services. But it seems to fail quite spectacularly in equitably distributing the wealth that is produced. It is possible that a solution can be found that involves most of us working to service the very few - it takes lots of people to build service and maintain 200 foot yachts. But hopefully we can do better than that.

And then robots caused the rise of Jeremy Corbin, lol. Not unless robot todo lists and robot alarm clocks reminded the British ppl to vote! This time is different because central bankers realize their friends may be affected. Globalism has driven the retlentless movement of low paying jobs away from the industrialized countries and towards the developing world. We don't need economists to tell us this, but the lesson to be learned is that economy didn't rebalance by creating new opportunities. And mind you, no single can escape this. Instead central bankers have left the task to policy makers, who left it to big companies and so on. Developments in automation of our economy will render large swathes of jobs obsolete, while creating new ones. What I've learned is that maybe now is the time to have the conservation because the for the first time, the white collars feel threatened.

Economic growth requires spending on goods and services. The accumulation of excessive wealth and assets is the biggest overall job killer. The related biggest job killer is not having time to spend money on goods and services. AI is an opening for new things, people who are flexible, resourceful and able prosper and the others require the support of those who are.

"Why is productivity — the amount that a given worker produces — stuck in neutral?"

Especially if robots, AI , downsizing , etc. should all be increasing the productivity of the workers that remain. ?????

I think the above statement overlooks the productivity gains in the underdeveloped world such as China , India , Taiwan , Korea , etc. The people of these nations are increasing their productivity/person. The West is now suffering/sharing the wealth that they alone enjoyed.

In just the 240 years that America has been in existence, it has transformed itself, several times--from an agrarian society, to industry, to service and, now, to digital. Along the way, as old industries became less important, new corporations replaced old ones, and job skills had to be updated, as well!

Gone are the secretarial pools--dictation, typing and filing--of forty years ago. PCs, with their word processors, are more convenient. Fast-food drive throughs enable more people to be served, more quickly, at lower labor costs.
But, many employers have become much too greedy!

Prior to the first Reagan Administration, labor generally participated in the benefits provided by automation and new technology. But, over the ensuing 36 years, corporations have been absorbing more and more of the gains, until at present, the only reward that employees get are Pink Slips.

https://thetruthoncommonsense.com

“But, as recent political developments have brought home, growth is not always enough.” Hey Ben, you're missing a couple modifiers there. SLOW, SCLEROTIC growth driven only by money printing that papers over falling real wages is NEVER enough. Bring back an economy driven by real investment and risk taking rather than central-bank-backed financial engineering. End the Fed!

This commentary misses the the real motivation behind industry's captains embracing artificial intelligence: It is the perceived burden that labor, especially organized labor, places on a company's profit margin, healthcare, sick and vacation leave and of course, pensions; Those properties of human labor make machines preferable to a worker who will be looking for a raise because he/she has taken on additional responsibilities in order to support the baby the spouse, who is on maternity leave, has delivered.

Henry Ford, despite his character flaws, was no corporate dummy, and understood that, in order to sell automobiles, he had to pay his workers a salary commensurate with their desire to own his Model T, and having done so, turned his workers into a free form of advertising for his products.

If corporations tun to artificial intelligence to maximize profits, they had better make sure robots will buy their products. We humans are doomed to become Uber drivers competing with errant driver-less electric cars GPS'd into dead-end cul-de-sacs without a battery charge station anywhere in sight..

In related news, America's opioid epidemic is worsening.

Of course robots are going to replace humans - that's why they are being created. A robotic vacuum cleaner in your living room, an autonomous car, automated check out, ATM machines - they all replace humans. For a while there may be compensating factors but robot designers look at jobs performed by humans and then build something to replace them. Simple. Profitable.

Hopefully they'll soon figure out a robot to replace central bankers.

The only way to stay ahead is to invest in robot makers. They relax and let the vending machine pour you a drink.

but people like Cook, Jobs and Thiel have been telling us that this cannot be the case. that the workforce should just embrace it.

Technology will always go where it can, not because it should, but simply because it can. The rise of AI exposes the dark side of capitalism that was always there for the few but will now be there for the many. When technology replaces your real and potential skill set, capitalism says you have no value and discards you to to the waste heap of humanity. When doctors and lawyers and investment bankers find themselves on the waste heap because AI tools do their jobs better and for less money, there may be enough of a popular uprising to break the capitalists' hold on the status quo, but even then it may require a revolutionary uprising to wrest control from their hands. Even so, high value work will require ever higher levels of education and native problem solving intelligence that will exclude an ever growing percentage of the population who no longer have the intellectual capacity or access to the education they need. Kai-Fu Lee's recent essay posits a new category of heart-centered work in the service of caring of one another that is done today by unpaid volunteers. Bill Gates posits that government should tax the users of AI to generate the revenue stream to provide basic income to the technologically dispossessed. Both suggestions envision a brave new world where both capitalism and the Puritan work ethic have been thoroughly demolished.

The comments from this conference strike me as small talk after a funeral following a tragic overdose death. They are fumbling for soothing things to say and trying not to offend the drug dealers present.

Like most historical events, the problem with aggregate wages probably has multiple causes. In no particular order: hundreds of millions of unemployed or underemployed people globally--as long as that pool is there and can be tapped wages can't rise much; in developed countries, a generation of policy assaults on the value of labor; AI--anyone who thinks this isn't a major part of the problem simply isn't paying attention. AI is THE PROBLEM of at least the next 50 years. It's unpredictable how things will look then, but there is no question this time is different

It's already happening and on a wide scale. I can write a book and get into finished form by myself. Only need an editor. I do my own taxes and accounting with a program. I can design printed circuited boards myself with a free program. Don't need a circuit board designer. I can layout sheet metal parts myself with a free program and have them made for me by a machine. I bought a CNC machine to cut out front panels and enclosures for me. Don't need to hire it out. I can do all of this and I am a tiny business.

Larger businesses can buy the technology to do much more. They have machines make the parts, put them together and test the product.

We don't need people to do repetitive tasks. We need people to do creative work. To invent, to innovate, to make things of beauty. Pretty soon, we won't even need doctors for initial screenings. Just a tech to take information and draw some blood.

The world is changing and changing super fast. In ten years, lookout. When we have cars that can drive themselves, we will have computers that can do many,many jobs.

The 99% require SECOND INCOMES. Universal Basic Incomes can be transitional.

The Second Income Plan originated with the late Louis O. Kelso, father of the Employee Stock Ownership Plan used by 11,000 companies. It does not depend upon jobs or savings.

Kelso saw automation coming. He believed it could liberate humans from toil, work we do not choose to do. He thought that by age 50, almost everyone could receive about 50% of their income from diversified investments.

This is the key to reversing the dangerous growth of inequality and loss of purchasing power.

Robert Ashford, a Professor of Law at Syracuse University has developed Louis Kelso’s Binary Economics expanding upon Kelso’s work. Unlike mainstream economics, it offers a clear plan to end poverty and expand prosperity. See Binary Economics: The economic theory that gave rise to ESOPs; or his book, BINARY ECONOMICS: The New Paradigm. (Coauthored with Rodney Shakespeare.) http://www.cesj.org/learn/binary-economics/binary-...

A History of Economic Thought: A Concise Treatise for Business, Law, and Public Policy, Volume 1: From the Ancients Through Keynes Paperback – April 4, 2017 by Robert Ashford & Stefan Padfield

In order to provide immediate impact, combine SECOND INCOMES with a transitional Universal Basic Income. These interim funds would gradually be replaced - as growing income is derived by individuals from SECOND INCOMES. See that title at aesopinstitute.org Look under MORE.

When the English had too many citizens in the 16th century, and employed the term "surplus population," they had a solution, ship them off to the new world. Then when the phases of the Industrial Revolution increased productivity, the division of labor dramatically increased such that individuals had their specific job and lost the living-on-earth skills possessed for countless generations. But they have made do, they figured out how to go shopping instead of harvesting, and they cleaned up quite a bit too.

The carrying capacity of the earth and the volume of the natural resources we extract have limits and the atmosphere and ocean have been loaded up with our waste, which also have certain limits for absorption before the negative impacts affect life on earth.

Since the past 12,000 years humans have been on a singular mission to turn the ecology into the economy with ever increasing veracity, and the rate of this alchemy has picked up to such a degree that the last 100 years accounted for most of this activity. The next 50 years will be even more all-consuming given the population increases and the desire by everyone to live like an American.

So when the tractor disrupted the farm life, planes increased our globalization, when computers increased productivity, and when all this happened with a population that could be repurposed and not just be surplus, things worked out fine. But now, artificial intelligence and robots will do our work and we will finally become surplus.

Self-driving over-the-road trucks, 18 wheelers, long-haul trucking is about to be automated. All the technology is available right now. It will happen in the next 5 years.

Trucking automation will put hundreds of thousands of men in the US out of work for whom there are no ready alternatives to these jobs. What work will these men be able to do to support their families and feel like contributing members of their community?

Very few people are thinking about the answer to this question.

I'm struck by this paragraph: "Why is workers’ share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs? Why is productivity — the amount that a given worker produces — stuck in neutral?"

Okay, AI is real and we have to deal with that. Fine. Human productivity is stuck in neutral. Again, okay. Maybe there are limits to human productivity, even in (or because of) an age of extreme automation.

But the question of workers' share of earnings when corporate profits are at record highs? This is a no-brainer. Sure, corporations answer to shareholders, but they should also answer to their employees and their communities, whether it's a small town in the midwest US or scattered in facilities around the world. And it's in those latter domains where they fall short. Workers' share of earnings are declining because corporations choose to pay them less. Where do you think those record profits are coming from?

Those who think that AI is not ready to be used on a mass scale are delusional. It is here. It is coming. It will replace many jobs. Tell your kids to develop skills or learn trades that cannot be replaced with machines and robots. As tired as this sounds, a robot likely won't be a car mechanic anytime soon. Or a plumber or a carpenter pr a tree trimmer. Technology will replace doctors (it's already happening in radiology, coming to pathology). These are not sexy jobs but they will pay the bills. It is replacing truck drivers, recruiters, fast food workers, waitresses, bank tellers.

First came touting the service economy, which would replace the industrial jobs displaced to China and elsewhere, and I had to wonder, "How can corporate overhead replace main productive business?" Patience, we were told, we could not imagine what was around the corner: .

Now, with the evidence quite in hand that the tech revolution, that , is certainly eating jobs far faster than it creates them, while the old industries are now mechanized or handed over to slave/child labor, we are cautioned that central bankers have yet to make up their minds "if this is a thing."

Well, it is a "thing," and it is called shifting all returns to capital, either as plant and equipment, or as pure financial speculation on markets (that use wage earners to fix any flaws in the casino, er, system). Fact is, labor was intended to be squeezed out from the get-go, while the losing middle class was told the money went to "the poor, the colored, the unfit." A bought-out political class, meanwhile, does everything to hide where the capital went: trillions now offshore, enough to eliminate the entire US deficit.

AKA: "The Reagan Revolution." How absolutely revolting.

"Why is workers’ share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs?"

The question is posed as if declining real wages were an unintended result of our policies over the last 30 years (and as if the record profits weren't the result of exactly that decline in labor's share of GNP), when "reduced labor inputs" are, in fact, the all-consuming obsession of the business and ownership elite. Replacing an employee in Pittsburgh with one in Tijuana, replacing a union roofer with a new-arrival from Central America who will work for $7 an hour paid under the table, replacing a cashier with a self-service kiosk . . . they're all paths to higher profits. How could anyone think 30 years of all that could lead to anything other than lower real wages?

Firstly, focusing on job losses is a mistake. They (we) should focus on stagnant wages. And secondly, as Bill Gates advocates, corporations that displace humans with machines should pay the income tax that the humans would have paid.

People don't want to talk about this, but there is already mass underemployment. Even people with full time jobs are not hugely productive, statistics be damned, there's so much time now to argue and conspire. Idle hands and all that. And at prior transitions, we had women entering the workforce increasing demand, middle class unions increasing demand and gov't redistribution to level the playing field. That isn't happening now. There's less and less demand because digital media is a one-time unique event in human history. There's no coming back from that, and some weak comparisons to the first industrial revolution isn't applicable.

Look at the decline in manufacturing in the US. It wasn't trade, it wasn't Japan, it wasn't China, it wasn't NAFTA, it's a smooth curve. It was automation. It always was. The ind revolution isn't over.

After many years of false promises AI is finally realizing its potential. This time it may very well be different. It's urgent that we start seriously talking about what may become an existential threat to our way of life.

Anyone involved with public policy on this issue should be required to read "Player Piano" by Kurt Vonnegut. The stratification of society and the despair and loss of self worth among those left behind by automation are already present in our society. Look at the current opioid addiction and the rise of demagoguery. We have been listening to the siren song of silicon valley for too long. Human dignity matters and it is not always served by technology.

Too bad there aren't some robots/software to replace the bankers. Just kidding. Not. Anyhow, re the question of taxi and truck drivers, between uber/lyft and self driving cars, I would be surprised if the re-sale value of a NYC taxi medallion is going in any direction other than down. I suppose if the bakers drove their cars to the conference, if the Europeans have toll roads, they used the Euro version of the EZ pass. At the parking lot, they paid by credit card at the kiosk machine. If they flew, they bought the ticket online and got an electronic boarding pass on their phones. They didn't buy the local paper because they have media subscriptions on their laptops/phones. During the conference, they used their cell phones to check in back at the home office, no need for local land lines. When they checked out of their hotel suites, the bill was pre-paid off their credit cards, so they just strolled out. I am surprised that they are aware that machines/robots/automation are eliminating workers.

Things were considered bad when the unemployment was over 7-8%. I wonder how it will be when the figure will rise into the fifties which is entirely possible if not probable. AI will be a major disruptor, comparing it to the tractor is simply narrow minded as AI will affect a MUCH larger portion of the workforce, across pretty much all areas of activity. Automation for the sake of replacing labour and lower prices in looking to boost profits is a death spiral if you consider it does not matter how cheap the products are if people are out of work and can't afford them. But the dangers of AI don't stop kere and with the risk of sounding dystopian, I have to mention that with all the fantastic good this technology can bring, it is almost inevitable not to be wilfully misused by someone in the future. For once, progress scares the heck out of me.

Wait until the CEO'S are replaced with learning intelligence? Wonder how much money is going to be in dividends and profit when no one is buying product and living on food stamps and welfare. Last I checked robots don't by TV's or appliances, just a can of oil now and then.

I had a 1970 summer vacation job as a teenager, writing computer programs for a trucking company in downtown LA. After I finished coding a new report, my boss asked me to share it with the employees of a small department. As I told the fifteen people present what I had done, I saw their reactions as they and I realized that my monthly report replaced what they had manually been doing for a paycheck.

I never found out the consequences of my innocent programming, but stories like this have been repeated millions of times over the last fifty years.

As we increasingly build and bring to market machines that can perform what were formerly thought of as high-level executive functions (e.g. legal advice systems) and "job-safe" manual labor (industrial and service robots) I believe we are indeed at a tipping point where the unexamined assumption that there will somehow always be enough paid work for people is breaking down.

Our children have a much harder time entering the workplace with a "good job" unless they have an ever-shrinking set of very high-level and constantly shifting and narrowing set of skills.

It's time to face the reality that the capitalist notion that there will always be paid work at a level that allows workers to make enough money to live well enough is breaking down.

We need to seriously consider implementing basic income approaches before we end up in a world where a tiny elite is paid for work and the rest has nothing to do and no income.

Yes AI will kill certain jobs. They will be jobs that have become outmoded and not cost effective. There is a genuine fear regarding AI, but fear should not be the determining factor in moving forward.
There will be many jobs apparent and not apparent as the result of AI. It is societies job to manage that sometimes painful transition and prepare the workforce for those jobs. In that regard it takes leaders with foresight and determination to develop and implement policies and programs to help it's citizens to be part of the advances and not the victims. Unfortunately I do not see our leaders with those qualities.

On the Jetson's TV Show, the benefits of technology were shared by everyone. The idea that 'the other', the other country, the other race, is at fault, is a diversion from the truth that the owners of production are squeezing out labor costs and endangering one principle of capitalism - that one can trade labor for what one needs to survive. As the AI becomes more effective, larger swaths of humans will no longer need to participate in the production of goods and services. What then? A Post-Capitalist society.

The repeated references to video games and scare quoted "Robocalypse" feel somewhat flippant in response to potential economic collapse. Wages are stagnant, capital is massively concentrated, and entire classes of jobs may be eliminated, but sure, let's focus on how "sci-fi" this all is. The "Robocalypse" may not be now, but it's real enough for plenty of folks to be worried. In particular, I think taxi drivers and truck drivers jobs may be in imminent danger. That's a huge segment of the population. I've seen fast food restaurants installing terminals to replace cashiers' jobs. Sure, this isn't the skilled labor segment, but where are these workers going to find their next job? So far, the answer seems to be "Oh, we don't know, but technology has always provided before!" with little thought to consider mitigating the alternative scenario of this time being different. Even if new roles are created via scientific and technological advance, there's a good chance they'll require more advanced skills than the jobs that are eliminated. Job retraining doesn't seem to have great prospects for success either. The Robocalypse may not hit the white collar class en masse yet, but there's a very real possibility of erosion of unskilled labor with no hope going forward.

A large portion of unemployed citizens who can't find work is a recipe for societal disorder, and not just some wacky science fiction fear.

A European conference. Attendees living lives of the one to five percent top-tier. And they scratch their heads wondering why labor wages haven't risen with technology's efficiency. THEY NEED TO READ YESTERDAY'S ARTICLE ON HOW THE SENATE'S HEALTHCARE GAME WILL AFFECT KENTUCKY (and particularly look and listen to the Kentucky patient in the photo, in bed). I'm sorry but a very, very large swath of the U.S. population is completely off the radar of these global masters and I'm quite fearful of what the final fix will be.

Why is workers’ share of total earnings declining, even though unemployment is at record lows and corporate profits at record highs? A question that answers itself. Corporations are not sharing the profits with their workers but rather are boosting dividends, management, and investing in robotics to replace workers.