New Technologies: Are We Programming Our Own Death?

New technologies are a threat but also an opportunity

What will the 21st century be made of? Many tasks will be taken care of by computers, which are already doing everything that is repetitive and who are able to learn and adjust, such as driving a car. The wheel will turn to the detriment of those with qualifications considered as obsolete.

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Robotics, digital or artificial intelligence (no longer computer-based, it seems) are regularly presented as the next threat. All these apparatuses, soon as intelligent as us, if not more, will not replace us and plunge us into unemployment. The picture can still be darkened by mentioning the civil wars that will break out everywhere when the masses of the desperate unemployed will have no choice but to use violence to express their sufferings.

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Technologies, because they upset our lives, destabilize

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This is not new. Since the dawn of the industrial revolution, the emergence of new technologies has been accompanied by similar predictions. Because technologies upset our lives, they destabilize. Because they change the way we work, they worry. Because they are accompanied by redistribution of wealth, they provoke exacerbated, sometimes violent reactions. What strikes us today is how easy it is to forget about history.

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The small shop reputed sympathetic: Done.

Cars industries, once labor-intensive, now employ a limited number of employees, many of whom only supervise robots. Retail is replaced by hypermarkets or remote shopping sites, where orders are prepared by robots. Finished the small trader reputed sympathetic, hello the anonymity of the linear or the screen of the computer. We will soon have computerized medical diagnosis and remote surgery.

It is easy to conclude that many professions are destined to disappear. It's going a little fast. Most will not disappear, but they will be profoundly transformed. For example, it is possible that the buildings will be made of prefabricated modules and then assembled. The masons of tomorrow will work either to carry out the modules or to assemble them on site, by controlling the robots who will do the work.

Two anxiogenic questions arise. First, is it going to massively create unemployment? Traditional masons will see their activity sharply decrease. This is the usual effect of technological progress. The boots have practically disappeared, but we still wear shoes, now produced in factories, often abroad and soon all manufactured by robots.

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It is the labor force that limits production capacity

However, this does not mean a sustained increase in unemployment. The reason is a very general observation. The production capacity of a country, or even of the world, is limited by a single factor: the labor force. Give me a million people and equip them with means of production - buildings, machines, infrastructures, training. Give me another million, and I'll do it again. It is the means of production which adapt to the quantity of labor, and not the other way round.

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The labor market is never working perfectly

It may be objected that the whole labor force is not employed. That is true, but for two reasons. First, the labor market never works perfectly. The more dysfunctional it is, the more people are unemployed. This is the explanation between my native and living country: Switzerland (unemployment rate of 4.5%) and France (10.4%). Then, some people do not have the required qualifications, like traditional masons. In time, they cease to be formed. In the meantime, they must recast themselves. Some will do so, perhaps with a decline in their incomes. Others will not, and we will have a temporary increase in unemployment.

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The inequalities thus created

The second question concerns the inequalities that will be created. The industrial revolution of the nineteenth century replaced the artisans by factories, increasingly automated. Those who benefited from it were highly skilled people - business leaders and professionals - but also those without qualifications whose manufacturing chains were in great need. Certainly they were poorly paid and the working conditions were painful, but it was better than in the agriculture they came from.

Those who have lost are the middle classes, the craftsmen whose trades disappeared. In the twentieth century, the wheel turned. The activities have become more complex and less routine, administrative tasks have developed. The low-skilled, the blue collar, lost and the white collar won.

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What will be done in the 21st century

What will the 21st century do? Many tasks - not all subordinate, far from it - will be taken care of by computers, which are already doing everything that is repetitive and who are able to learn and adjust, such as driving a car. The wheel will turn to the detriment of those with obsolete qualifications, such as multilingual secretaries or white-collar workers in both public and private administration. Of course, all those who can produce countless computer applications will be among the winners. But also those who are creative and those who have to react to emotions (salesmen or security guards) and unexpected events (surgeons or police officers). Coffee boys who sail around smiling tables should not suffer too much from the competition of robots.

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An opportunity and a threat

Above all, it must not be forgotten that technological progress is both an opportunity and a threat. A threat to some and an opportunity for all. Over the last 150 years, the standard of living has increased ten-fold in most European countries. It had multiplied by four in the previous two millennia. The winners compensate the losers.

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Original Article By FapFap

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Images Sources: 1 , 2 , 3 , 4 , 5 , 6 , 7 , 8 , 9 , 10

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