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Eve eating that apple was a metaphor for choosing knowledge and free will over ignorance and captivity. Is it time to eat another appleRight now, it seems premature to envision a world without God, Yahweh, Allah, or whatever moniker for a supreme being may seem appropriate. But, let’s be realistic. Believing in the existence of an all-powerful creator who looks like us, but is never seen, and who lives forever, has created everything in existence, and who has a reputation for love, vengeance and extreme cruelty, seems just a little bit over-the-top naïve. Don’t you agree?
Oh, and let’s not forget the Devil. He (funny how nobody has suggested the Devil could be a woman) is also supposedly a creation of God, but one that the Supreme Being is unable to control. In a world where everything has an opposite, the Devil is practically essential. However, in a world where science is relentlessly displacing faith, Lucifer’s days are numbered, as are those of God. Many of you will disagree, but a lot won’t. Have you noticed the increasing number of TV and radio interviews, magazine and newspaper articles, and cyber news coverage about the coming age of robotics and artificial intelligence? Big social, economic and political changes are coming. Our planet will become the home of billions of robots, including androids and cyborgs (a Cybernetic Organism comprising human and mechanical elements). Ultimately, there will no longer be much space on Planet Earth for God or the Devil. Both these concepts will largely, finally, and permanently, be relegated to the domain of fables, superstition and old wives’ tales. But, how can this be? What changes will bring us to that point in human history where we can eventually reclaim our humanity, develop our individuality and accept our mortality? When can alienation from our human selves (Karl Marx saw this as a consequence of god-creation) be ended? And how will we fare in a world without God? How will society change? What great political and economic changes will take place? Will our world be better or worse? Remember the story of the Wizard of Oz. He was in charge of Oz, he was all powerful, and he was feared by everyone. And then Dorothy and her three companions, the lion, the tin man and the scarecrow finally discovered the truth. The wizard was actually a timid midget who had relied on technology to provide a booming voice and who had never previously revealed himself to anyone. The fearsome all-powerful wizard was a myth. Our “God” is also our own Wizard of Oz, and our stairway to paradise is a yellow brick road. Well, I’m only looking about fifty years ahead, and I’m neither a professional futurist, a psychic or a prophet, so you need to be younger than 25 to have any real chance of knowing how right or wrong I’m going to be. Let’s start with political change. Politically, the international system is likely to evolve through a process of regionalization into a world made up of perhaps a half-dozen regional polities. Ultimately, a one-world government is likely to come into being. In time, we’ll have one polity and one government. At the economic level, there are sure to be huge changes. Global unemployment will rise to almost unimaginable levels, where only one person in maybe 100 thousand able-bodied workers worldwide would have a job. That means the world’s total work force would be around 20 million. Why? Because 400 million robots and androids with artificial intelligence will do the work of two billion workers. They will design, manufacture and maintain themselves. They’ll work seven days per week 24 hours per day and do as much work in one week as one human being could do in two months. Human workers, to a large extent, would become redundant. In fact, human life would become quite cheap in view of the many unproductive human beings inhabiting our planet. Perhaps before 2050, but certainly before the 22nd Century arrives, governments will need to start reducing their populations, first by restricting birth rates and introducing compulsory sterilization, then, if absolutely necessary, compulsory euthanasia at age 70 or 75. Of course, there will be great opposition to the introduction of mechanical workers that take jobs away from humans, so civil disturbances involving rioting, arson and sabotage are likely to characterize the beginning of the age of androids and robots when they start having a dramatic impact on the general economy. A major consequence of the introduction of mechanical workers is that the bulk of our global population will be unemployed and idle, and without incomes. The purpose of government, whatever its form, will be to solve the problem of unemployment and decide how to ensure that the unemployed are able to sustain themselves financially and enjoy a good quality of life. Money, long before 2050, is likely to exist in the form of electronically generated credits. The government could generate incoming credits through taxation, penalty payments, sales taxes and some other means used today. A workers’ tax could also be imposed on androids and robots. The government could consider giving one free android, tax free, to each non-worker family, which they could employ or rent out for monetary credits. The first of these Artificially Intelligent workers could be made available to each owner tax-free, with every additional robot or android being taxed at a rate of say 25% of the income it generates. Fortunately, because of the abundance of androids and robots, our future-world will not require enormous amounts of tax payments and human beings will also not need much money to sustain their various lifestyles. Paying a pension or unemployment payment to everyone who is not gainfully employed does not present many options. Providing a government unemployment payment or civil pension to workers displaced by “bots” and “droids” depends very much on how much money the government receives from taxation and other sources. Finally, the social consequences, as elaborated above, are mainly a result of the economy. Unemployment, even when an income is still forthcoming, can be debilitating, depressive and soul-destroying. Being displaced by an android will not be any easier than being displaced by a human. Ironically, with the introduction of robots, some of the activities popular in the middle ages will still be available to humans in the 21st century, such as graphic arts, music, dancing, writing novels, poetry and plays, and sport. To this list of activities, we should also add the medical, legal and judicial professions. Journalists, psychologists, fitness trainers, life coaches, philosophers, scientists, and veterinarians, who will also fill the relatively small pool of potential human jobs remaining. So, what roles in this new world order should we expect the world’s various deities to fill? Will “God, Yahweh and Allah” still have roles to play in this new world of science and enlightenment, as compared with their darker domains of damnation, vengeance and fear? The one-world society of the future may still include a class-system. Possibly, a top to bottom system of Cyborgs, Humans, Androids and Robots, will function in terms of strict codes of behavior. The moral influence of religious texts contained in the Torah, the Bible and the Koran will therefore become unnecessary, except as the basis for some aspects of statutory law. There will also be no need for a deity in any form. Computers, even fifty years from now, will probably be able to disprove the existence of God on the basis of advanced logic and proven scientific facts. This eventuality could even occur much earlier. There will still be a few religious hold-outs though, who can’t deal with mortality, but that’s okay. Even in a predominantly godless world, we should have choices, and believing whatever you want to believe is one of those choices. In the future, the symbiotic relationship between Androids, Robots and Humans or Cyborgs must inevitably produce a powerful partnership that will cause most humans and Cyborgs to permanently abandon what Richard Dawkins has termed the “God delusion.” In fact, the Cyborg is likely to be the most god-like being on Earth, because it will be stronger, faster, more intelligent, and more indestructible than a mere human being, and will also be capable of living twice, perhaps three times, as long as a regular human. One day, centuries from now, it might even become relatively immortal. Ironic, isn’t it? First humankind creates an imaginary God and then discards him. Then, in the age of robotics and artificial intelligence, humans create Robots, Androids and Cyborgs; and later, Robots, Androids and Cyborgs design and create advanced versions of themselves; then, after centuries have passed, the Cyborgs become sufficiently super-human to qualify as gods. So, when Cyborgs begin to live for hundreds of years, and start creating other Cyborgs, they will effectively be “gods”. The more things change, the more they stay the same. Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Do you want a FREE sample of my latest book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat"? Click here >>> My Blog: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk
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Our future slave economyWell, now that I have your attention, try not to jump to unflattering conclusions. I’m not advocating human slavery, or even animal slavery. I’m not defending such slavery either. What I am doing is making some realistic observations about human slavery, before getting to the main point of my discourse on what I regard unashamedly as the virtue of a new form of slavery.
Human slavery, as practiced for thousands of years, was an economic system that generally predated the industrial revolution. Slaves were the capital goods of that era. They were the producers for those who owned them. Before slavery, when an enemy was captured on the field of battle they were killed. Slavery, was therefore a win-win compromise for both the victor and the vanquished. The victor gained an unsalaried laborer and the slave gained his life. It wasn’t by any means a fair trade, but it was better than the alternative. In the mean time the owner feared he’d lose his slave and the slave hoped he’d regain his freedom. The kind of slavery I am writing about lies in the future. It is inevitable, inescapable and arguably, could be essential. It will make a great difference to the lives of those who own such slaves. It will ensure tremendous scientific and social progress, and will enrich the lives of millions of human beings everywhere. And it will do so without exploiting or hurting other human beings. I am referring to artificial intelligence, automatons, robots and androids. Manufactured beings with the ability to do anything and everything work-related, that flesh and blood humans can do. They will be our future slaves, performing the many tasks we shall no longer be required to do. Presumably there would be child-minder robots, companion robots, household chore robots, industrial robots, construction robots, mining robots, law enforcement robots, military robots, translator robots, manufacturing robots, farming robots, transportation robots, engineering robots, teaching robots, medical robots and many more types of robot designed for specific and necessary tasks. Robots would also continuously design and manufacture new generations of robots. They would also repair and maintain themselves. In a future world with very, very limited opportunities for human beings to work for financial compensation, more than 95 percent of the world’s potentially economically productive population will be unemployed. This means they will have no means to earn an income, which they would need to do unless of course every necessity and luxury were free. Let’s consider that possibility. Living in a world with no financial currency. Would such a world be economically, socially and politically viable? Perhaps. If mining robots were to extract raw materials from forests, quarries, mines, oceans and even our solar system’s moons, planets, asteroids and comets, then manufactory robots could create all the components we need, and industrial robots could create the manufactured products we want, from houses to food, clothing, luxury items, and health products. Every necessity and service would be available to all of us without charge. Money would become unnecessary and therefore, redundant. It would become a mere historical curiosity. However, if human beings still use a monetary currency two or three decades from now, then we can safely assume it will be in the form of electronically generated credits. In an envisaged future slave economy, individuals, families, communities, entrepreneurs, industrialists, towns, cities and countries, will all own or have access to “slave” robots that they can utilize, or rent out to earn an additional income if they have a need or opportunity to do so. Such private and public incomes would then continue to finance the government through taxes and other forms of public funding. A third possibility, in a world of intelligent robots where practically all human beings are no longer gainfully employed, is that governments (or perhaps a single world government) might decide to issue electronic credits to human beings, much like a monthly pension payment. Such credits would be automatically generated at the end of each month by a central computer. Such electronic credits would provide financial security for the Earth’s people, and also serve as a means of control by government to ensure that individual human beings purchase only what they require or desire. A fundamental difference between tomorrow’s world of artificial intelligence and today’s predominant reliance on human intelligence, is that humans of the future would no longer pay taxes and that computer generated credits (the same amount for everybody) would serve the purpose of restricting consumption rather than the traditional usage of financial compensation. In a world of intelligent robots there will no longer be trade unions, or conventional mass human work forces. The era of intelligent robots will effectively usher in the dawn of a totally new economic system, based predominantly on a technologically advanced slave economy, sustained almost exclusively by human-like mechanical creations with artificial intelligence. As elaborated above, we can also expect a super-advanced post-human financial system, that will effectively liberate human beings from dependency on the traditional capitalist economic model. The modern mechanical slave economy will be unavoidably socialist in form. There will be very few opportunities for displays of individuality. Modernity would, in fact, be a trade-off for reduced individualism, but greater security, mobility and leisure. Human slavery was cruel, both physically and mentally. However, slave robots will be programmed to carry out instructions and perform certain tasks. Of course, they will not have emotions of any kind. The only income they earn would be for the benefit of their owners. Yes, they would be slaves; but they would also be machines, or labour-saving devices, designed to make life good for human beings, who would then be free to pursue a happier, less stressful more intellectually stimulating life. An artistically and technologically innovative existence not unlike the lifestyles that became possible during the times of the ancient city states of Athens and Rome, and those of the later Italian renaissance. Ultimately, millions of intelligent robots will exist as physical and thinking extensions of their owners. They will perform many of the tasks their owners used to carry out, leaving human beings to devote their newly available free time to their families, hobbies, sport, adventure, travel and intellectual pursuits. That’s a further trade-off we should all be able to live with. It is a lifestyle our children and grand children will one day come to take for granted. What do you think? Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "DIPLOMATIC NOTES - Memoirs of a Diplomat". Click here >>> Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk Some thoughts about living in an age of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (Extract from Part Two: With robots running economic productivity and scooping up human jobs, we can be sure there will be plenty of time for recreation. The only question is what would we all do?)
5. Science and technology (continued) Of course, science and technology cannot advance without the proper institutions and appropriate courses in place. This is the task of governments, great or small, rich or poor, experienced or inexperienced. With a view to taming the future to the point where it becomes manageable, even at its most turbulent and dynamic stages, a government’s education portfolio is superior in importance to all others. Why? Because the direction and effectiveness of education policy during the next ten years must provide human beings with the means to adapt to a high-technology robot-dominant world only three to four decades from now. Due to enormous progress in robot technology, even at this relatively early stage, it is possible to create humanoid-robots or Androids that resemble human beings in appearance. Scientific and technological progress in the future will also see the development of cybernetic organisms or cyborgs that are hybrid robot-human creations, part robot and part human. This may prove difficult for many ordinary human beings to accept. It might even make some people feel insecure. Human adaptation is crucially important if robots, cyborgs and human beings are to coexist in peace, harmony and stability. Therefore, it is important that human beings do not fear the much greater robot population and that they embrace the benefits of robot technology and its impact on both physical and social change. This attitude can also only be encouraged and facilitated through education. Robot technology should, of course, do everything possible to ensure that human beings feel safe in the presence of robots. Here, we could draw on the imagination and understanding of the great science fiction writer, Isaac Asimov, who regularly wrote about robots, and who developed the “three laws of robotics” to be programmed into every robot’s operating system.
6. Poverty Poverty will be an inevitable consequence of loss of employment due to the higher profile of automation and increased employment of robot workers. Therefore, if every adult human being is given the opportunity to buy a small number of robots, possibly only two to begin with, this could alleviate their unemployment by making it possible to hire out one or both robots to companies that make use of robots for production. This arrangement could provide a source of income for unemployed humans. Using such a system of “transferred labor” would end poverty as we know it today, and to the delight of some socialists and communists would actually create a system of potential financial equality among the greater world population. The fewer capitalists would also be happy, because they would be wealthy as a result of controlling the means of production and in a great number of cases most of those capitalists would actually be agencies of the government. We should always be vigilant about the onset of poverty and remain aware at all times that progress contributes to poverty. You will never find as much poverty today in rural agricultural areas as can be found in the world’s cities, because rural people need fewer material goods and usually have easier access to food. Many have the basic necessities for life (often provided by families, neighbors or employers), unlike most city dwellers who need to pay higher prices for accommodation, food, clothing, security and transportation, and must compete for jobs. 7. Taxation There is an idea that is currently being taken very seriously by individuals like Bill Gates and organizations like the European Union (EU). It is the question of a robot tax imposed on their owners to ensure that unemployed workers, made redundant by robots, can be supported financially as an unemployment benefit. This is a very useful idea. Let’s think about a way to make it work. A robot with artificial intelligence would be capable of tabulating the amount of time it spends working, the kind of work it is doing, the amount of income it generates for its owner and the amount of time it remains idle. Let’s assume there is only a single tax rate imposed by the government at a rate of say 25%. Then each robot would calculate the amount of taxes it must pay on the gross income it generates for its owner and automatically credit that amount to the government’s tax revenue account. When employed for non-income-generating purposes, for example as a personal chef, a child minder or a driver, a rate of say 10% of the robot’s value could be paid to the government as an annual robot tax. In a country with a total population of 50 million, the robot population could be expected to exceed 40 million, including personal family robots (child minders, gardeners, security robots, cooks, cleaners and drivers), industrial worker robots, service industry robots and others. The tax-generation opportunities are therefore quite positive. The taxation of robots would be equivalent to a tax on capital goods as opposed to a tax on fixed property, individuals or companies. It would ensure adequate revenues for a smaller less costly public sector. A robot tax would also reduce the financial burden on individual human beings, provide an adequate financial safety net for elderly, unemployed and dependent human beings, and generally enhance financial security for human beings living in the new robot age. SOURCES 1. Robots and Artificial Intelligence Bryson, Joanna J, Robots should be Slaves, http://www.cs.bath.ac.uk/~jjb/ftp/Bryson-Slaves-Book09.html, 2010, (accessed 15 April 2017) 2. Robot employment Moravec, Hans, Rise of the Robots – The Future of Artificial Intelligence, Scientific American, https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/rise-of-the-robots/ 23 March 2009, (accessed 15 April 2017) 3. Human unemployment Nisen, Max, Robot Economy could cause up to 75 percent Unemployment, Business Insider, http://www.businessinsider.com/50-percent-unemployment-robot-economy-2013-1 28 January 2013 (accessed 15 April 2017). 4. Education Hicks, Kristen, Robots in Education: What’s here and what’s coming, EduDemic, http://www.edudemic.com/robots-education-whats-coming/ 9 February 2016, (accessed 15 April 2016) 5. Science and technology Russon, Mary-Ann, Human or Machine? Life-Like Android Robots from Japan Show Glimpses of the Future, International Business Times, http://www.ibtimes.co.uk/human-machine-life-like-android-robots-japan-show-glimpses-future-1453992 24 June 2014, (accessed 15 April 2017) 6. Poverty Lee, Joel, What happens when Robots can do all the jobs? MakeUseOf (MUO), http://www.makeuseof.com/tag/happens-robots-can-jobs/ 24 February 2015, (accessed 15 April 2017) 7. Taxation Tarnoff, Ben, Robots won’t just take our jobs – they’ll make the rich even richer, theguardian, https://www.theguardian.com/technology/2017/mar/02/robot-tax-job-elimination-livable-wage 12 March 2017, (accessed 15 March 2017) Please share your views in the comments section below. Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "Hail To The Chief". Click here >>> My next book "Diplomatic Notes - Memoirs of a Diplomat" is launching soon. Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk Some thoughts about living in an age of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence (Extract from Part One: The future’s only as close as tomorrow and it is hardly ever kind to the unprepared. As today’s achievements in science and technology accelerate toward maximum velocity in the next 40 years, we must begin to prepare now). 3. Human unemployment With robots running economic productivity and scooping up human jobs, we can be sure there’ll be plenty of time for recreation. The only question is what would we all do? We must keep in mind that industry, productivity and creativity are deeply embedded in the DNA of the average human being. Not working, therefore, is an unnatural condition. Consequently, we should not assume that most human beings, particularly if younger than 70, would welcome conditions of enforced full-time recreation. Human beings have always been attracted to feats of intellectual achievement, mainly through competition; or physical accomplishment through sports. In a world where the need for human labour or intellect in the work environment is scarce, most unemployed people will be almost permanently on vacation. Therefore, whether as spectators or as participants, the earth’s unemployed human population will be deeply involved in training for new skills, small business entrepreneurship, creativity, invention, sports and entertainment. One of the most useful and satisfying of ways for human beings to use their time would be to engage in continuing education and learning, creativity in arts, acting, writing, music, exploration, inventiveness, archaeology, entertainment, and possibly colonization of newly discovered worlds of the galaxy. Although human employment will diminish and initially make those who lose their jobs a lot poorer, there will probably also be a decline in population as a result of smaller families and childless couples. The impact of a declining global population could take more than a century to produce any positive benefits though. Adapting to changed employment trends can be expected to bring instability and civil unrest, as workers will lose their economic livelihood and their economic power as a result of their imploding trade unions. Not everyone will adapt peacefully. Therefore, we must plan now to ensure the smoothest possible transition into the robot age. Where working is not an option, though, the most important pursuits in recreational activities would be to develop intellectually, sense of contentment, relaxation and inner peace. Ultimately, life must be good to make it worthwhile. 4. Education Education is an essential requirement for both scientific progress and social advancement, from preschool to tertiary education. The age of computers and robotics will make teachers and lecturers virtually redundant. A robot will have far more knowledge to share and will also be able to assess who understands and who does not, who is listening and who is not and who is capable and who is not. Only a few teachers/lecturers – let’s say one teacher/lecturer for every 500 students - will be required at each institution, simply to monitor progress and act as the robot’s assistant. Robots will know far more than any human being on Earth. They could also explain various subjects of study in the simplest of terms and the most complex, depending on the individual student. What could be better than a “teacher” who understands your ability to comprehend and can tailor his responses accordingly? So, what are some of the other benefits that robots can bring to education? In the near future children or university students in a classroom in Swaziland or Senegal could watch a video screen and be tutored by the best teachers in the world from cities as far away as New York, London, Paris or Singapore. Or be home-schooled in the Falkland Islands or Tahiti by a robot who knows everything. An added advantage of distance learning by computers and robots is that a single human teacher or robot could simultaneously teach young children or students living in several countries spread across the globe; and that the recipients in those countries could also interact with their human or robot teacher. A consequence for education, though, would be that fewer teachers would be required, whether at junior school or university levels. However, because younger children need human interaction, créches, kindergartens and preschool institutions are likely to still need a fair number of human child-minders and teachers. A single robot could perform the functions of literally thousands of teachers through video conferencing with hundreds of educational institutions worldwide. Robots would make an incredible difference to the developing and undeveloped worlds. They would give students in Somalia the same level of education received by students in Australia and the US, or students in the Seychelles the same education as that available to France and Canada. Robots are the mentors and teachers of tomorrow. However, the courses of tomorrow will need to focus on economic areas in which robots will not necessarily be superior to humans. For example, lawyers, medical doctors and nurses, veterinarians, dentists, artists, musicians, actors, dancers, forensic scientists, athletes, writers, managers, and scientists in a variety of fields should be able to survive the economic consequences of robots, at least initially. Trainers and teachers at vocational guidance colleges with courses on hair dressing and beauty treatment, sound engineering and journalism should also be relatively safe from robots taking their jobs. What is assured though is that education in the future will be shaped in virtually unimaginable ways by robots and artificial intelligence. We should embrace these changes now and not reject them. 5. Science and Technology Science and technology are the main drivers of human progress and have been since even before the development of the wheel. Humankind’s more spectacular scientific achievements in recent years have included landing a robotic vehicle on Mars and transplanting a human face. Soon, we may even learn of the successful transplant of a human head. In the next four decades, science and technology in fields such as robotics, IT, transportation, agriculture, medicine, energy, industry and design will continue to grow exponentially. Imagine self-driving cars, trucks and busses; pilot-less airliners; greater yields for agricultural crops and new types of food that provide greater nutrition from less food; routine head, arm and leg transplants; new forms of energy at lower costs; robots replacing 80% to 90% of the work force, from agricultural and construction workers to bankers, supermarket workers, soldiers and security personnel; and the cost effective design of bridges, towns, motor vehicles, ships and planes, buildings and even furniture. >>> Continued in Part Three of the next blog post >>> What do you think? Please comment below. Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "Hail To The Chief". Click here >>> My next book "Diplomatic Notes - Memoirs of a Diplomat" is launching soon. Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk Some thoughts about living in an age of advanced robotics and artificial intelligence The future’s only as close as tomorrow and it is hardly ever kind to the unprepared. As today’s achievements in science and technology accelerate toward maximum velocity in the next 40 years, we must begin to prepare now. There are potentially some very serious issues to address; events that, if ignored today could make the lives of our grandchildren miserable tomorrow. Keep in mind, the future is impatient. It cannot be stopped. It waits for nobody. Therefore, humankind needs to act and we need to act. We can begin to do so by anticipating and solving some of these looming problems before it’s too late to do anything useful. If we don’t respond quickly enough, the unrelenting unstoppable waves of imminent chaos and catastrophe, like a giant tsunami, will drown us in our collective sleep. So, what are the most urgent of these potential crises? Current evidence and opinions suggest that a half dozen key issues should be high on the world’s current agenda. If we address them now, we’ll be better prepared to adapt to likely seismic societal events thirty or forty years down the road. There are a number of crucially important changes and challenges the next generation will have to deal with. For example, the development and consequences of robots with artificial intelligence; the impact of intelligent robots on employment trends and their impact on education. Science and technology in the coming decades will be increasingly important in a variety of fields from agriculture and animal husbandry, through medical science, engineering, transportation, robotics, artificial intelligence and space exploration as well as many other specialist categories. With automation and robots changing our economic systems dramatically (money as we know it might even become redundant), poverty will rise at a phenomenal rate, unless we have safety net provisions in place well beforehand. With reduced human employment there will be fewer public revenues from taxation. Fortunately, public expenditure will also diminish considerably as a result of robot employment at all levels of government. With so many human beings unemployed, unqualified for available jobs, and unable to earn a salary, governments will need to find positive alternatives for the enforced idleness of the formerly employed. Therefore, we have to decide now how the unemployed can gain access to sufficient funds to be able to support themselves in the absence of salaries. We will then only need to address the question of how to channel their available potential into re-training programs, small business activities and recreational opportunities. These, and other consequences of human progress have huge implications for human life in the decades ahead. They cannot be ignored. So, let’s explore all these issues and try to get some idea of what the future of our children and grandchildren may look like. 1. Robots and Artificial Intelligence Of all the items produced by science and technology, the development of the robot (in effect, an autonomous mobile computer) with artificial intelligence and the agility of a human being will have the most far-reaching and significant influence on the lives of future generations. It will be a friend, an advisor, a tutor, a child minder, a care giver, a servant, a translator, a body guard, a sentry, an alarm system, a data base, a driver, a GPS, a paramedic, a two-way audio and video device, and a worker. Let’s not forget though, that with progress comes poverty. It has always been that way. Scientific and technological progress will enable human beings to do less. Consequently, they will earn less and could become poorer. Therefore, we need to plan now for the days, not too far away, when artificial intelligence and a new population of robots will take over many of the jobs and livelihoods of human beings. Ironically, with the advance of science and society, our economy will begin to resemble a slave economy in which robots work for no money for those who don’t work at all. Despite the important distinction that twenty-first century “slaves” will be machines, not human beings, we can perhaps learn from the slave economies of the past. For example, as recently as the nineteenth century, in some societies it was necessary to own slaves in order to prosper or live a good life. Therefore, ownership of at least one robot, preferably more, could provide future generations with the means to earn money and live a reasonably good life. Each generation of robots will be a technological improvement on the previous generation, because robots will also design and manufacture future robots and upgrade artificial intelligence more effectively and efficiently than human beings can. No doubt we will one day reach the stage where robots or androids are virtually indistinguishable from human beings and where human beings become cybernetic organisms (“cyborgs”) or bionic beings – sophisticated mixtures of technology and biology. The development and improvement of robots and artificial intelligence will determine how future generations coexist with a population of robots that look after them and ensure that their human needs are met in every possible way. In the future, life can still be good for human beings if we plan now. 2. Robot Employment There are very few jobs in the world today that cannot be replaced by robots with artificial intelligence. For example, driver-less cars, trucks, busses and trains; pilot-less aircraft; and seagoing vessels with minimum crew complements and no captains, will reduce unemployment and increase safety and efficiency without negatively affecting the operations of such vehicles. Physical security, too, will experience great changes, particularly in the form of body guards, sentries, security services, guard dogs, soldiers and even police services, due to the more advanced capabilities of robots. Factories will be able to get rid of more than 95% of their workforce and robot replacements will work 24 hours per day, without compensation. They won’t go on strike, take vacations, be late for work or get sick. Military and security services will also be reduced in numbers as robots replace them. In addition, banking and the service sector will need far fewer workers as robots take their place. Manual labourers in agriculture, forestry, construction, waste control, cleaning services, community services, and road repairs would also have to make way for robots. Human activity in the form of labour, intellectual thought, artistic creativity and recreation gives purpose to the lives of human beings. Without purpose, life becomes pointless and futile. The Robot age will force governments to find new outlets for human activity in ways that encourage individual satisfaction, peace and stability. >>> Continued in Part two, the next blog post >>> Duke Kent-Brown p.s. Get a free sample of my new book "Hail To The Chief". Click here >>> My next book "Diplomatic Notes - Memoirs of a Diplomat" is launching soon. Web: www.Duke-Kent-Brown.tk |
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