When we begin to open up the
topic of a world where labor and hard work are run by machines, we as people
often begin to think of the abundance machines have created for us. An
excellent example of this is agriculture; nowadays machines handle and manage
the majority of hard labor that is involved with harvesting and planting crops.
John F. Reid published an article in 2011 to the national academy of
engineering where he states “key factors influenced increases in the rate of
crop production: more efficient use of labor… and more sustainable
productions systems.”( Reid, J. F. (2011, Fall). Fall Issue of The
Bridge on Agriculture and Information Technology.) Due to better technology and their implementation
in these systems of production, the majority of humans aren’t required to
maintain their own sources of food, and in fact are benefited by a surplus of
commercial product for consumption.
Mechanical Agriculture is a great
example of automization going right for humanity, its freed up our time and
allowed us to specialize in higher paying fields, however where there is a
demand for labor there is a demand for technology, and eventually one will
supersede the other. The company Bosch is and excellent example of this. If you
aren’t familiar with the company, Bosch is currently leading in the development
of intelligent navigation software for cars and on-road vehicles of any and all
kinds. Bosch hopes to use their line of self-driving cars to help aid in the
transportation of both people and cargo through the use of autonomous drivers.
The
short-term benefit of self-driving cars of course is the minimization of human error;
given that car accidents kill 1.3 million people each year there isn’t a lot of
resentment toward smarter assistive technology going into the cars we drive.
However, in the long term self-driving cars very easily could turn the
transportation industry into an entirely machine based industry. The U.S bureau
of labor statistics currently states that there are over 5 million people
employed in the transportation industry. Loosing this many people at one time
due to an influx in technology could be a detriment to our economy if no plans
for compensation are made.
There is a simultaneous give take
system to machines replacing human work, when smarter technology overtakes an
industry, investors and stockholders see a financial boom due to an increase in
the demand of hardware. However, members of the workforce face an underlying
deterrence to consume and purchase goods as much as their wealthier
counterparts due to the fear of being laid off without a replacement line of
work. The fear for these people is that doors for new industries are constantly
closing. Ever since America hit is recession back in 2007 the demand for
investment in smarter technologies has increased while the demand to fill the
empty shoes of an unemployed workforce has gone seemingly unnoticed.
For many people, the quick
solution to being replaced by intelligent machines is through getting a degree
and specializing in a certain line of work that is particularly complex, to
complex for an industrial grade machine to compete with. Sadly people working
in this field aren’t irreplaceable either, and can just as easily be made
useless thanks to smarter and more efficient AI’s capable of doing their jobs
at better levels of accuracy and efficiency. For starters some computers are
being developed to write quarterly reviews for certain companies, their rate of
efficiency is tremendous and also indistinguishable from that of an ordinary
human being. In addition to this smart assistive technology like IBM’s Watson
is becoming the new resource for doctors in diagnosing cases of lung cancer and
many other forms of illnesses that doctors often misdiagnose.
As technology progressively gets
more and more intelligent, there is a growing fear that it will easily
outcompete its human counterparts within the near future.
The
question of intelligent machines taking over the workforce isn’t a question of
how, so much as it is a question of when. Us as a society have always managed
to push our outputs in production further and further beyond the boundaries of
those who came before us. In doing this we as people have also pushed our
efficiency to the point where it eliminates some jobs entirely. However, many
people are now predicting that we are at the dawn of a new structural
revolution that could lead to a massive spike in permanent unemployment, and
while there might not be any ability for us to prevent the development of
better technology, there might be a way for us to reduce the impact that this
new wave of intelligent machines will have on our society.
Solving this is no easy task and
there aren’t many solutions that’ve been proposed to help give us as people an
idea on how to resolve this dilemma. For one, better innovation in technology
has never really been a problem, and of course revolutions such as IBM’s Watson,
and Apple’s Siri aren’t necessarily bad things for humankind, if anything
they’ve benefit people since their introduction to the general public. However,
these same kind of self-thinking autonomous machines aren’t just in our phones
they’re also in our workplace as well, and can often work at an efficiency much
higher than that of the average human. Companies like Narrative Science have
developed self-thinking algorithms capable of writing consumer reports for
major business with tact a precision comparable to that of a human being. It’s
no question that the machines are here, now our only question that remains is
how will we adapt to this coming shift in structure.
The
first idea that has been proposed is the idea of a guaranteed national income,
this would hopefully resolve the damage that unemployment could have on society
in the future. However, not everyone might be in favor of such a radical
provision being put into place, especially in nation’s like America with
extreme free-market economies. While I do personally believe that this idea
could be a temporary bandage on the wound that this future may leave the
working class with, I do not believe that it is any feasible solution for
society in the long run. The most complex part to this epidemic is not in fact
the epidemic itself, instead it is finding a long-term solution to this issue
before things get out of hand. In a lot of ways, the idea of this issue could
be seen as that of an existential one, as it questions the role humans have to
play in a world where are technological innovations surpass our own minds and
bodies. Although we shouldn’t live in fear of this future, somehow we must
confront it, much like Albert Camus confronts the idea of existentialism within
his novel “The Plague”.
The
Plague is novel written by Albert Camus, a European philosopher, who is most
often credited for his observations and contributions to the subject of
existentialism and nihilism and like many good novels, The Plague holds many
different meanings all of which stem from the novels central theme. It’s a
novel that quite unsurprisingly focuses on a plague breaking out in a small
Algerian town named Oran, delving into the psyche of the many different
characters found within the novel when they are faced with the inevitability of
death. The novel sets itself up very early on to be a gruesome and depressing
read, that at first glance explores the theme of death, however when analyzing
the novel in a more critical fashion one might find that it explores the theme
of life far more intuitively than it ever attempts to on the subject of death
itself.
For starters, the plague explores
the lives of many characters, primarily a doctor who is accredited with
discovering the plague and secondly a reporter who provides a lot of exposition
on how the plague is affecting this small town. The novel quickly becomes an
interesting read as it spends more time detailing the interactions on those who
are forced to deal with the inevitability of death, and spends a large portion
on time describing and detailing how various characters’ cope and react to the
shocking news that their life will soon be over in the most unpleasant of ways.
When analyzing this novel personally
I found it to be very interesting to remove the idea of death from it entirely,
for Camus novel is deceptive in that it never aims to directly question things
like. Why do we die? or What is the greater purpose of life? Instead The Plague
asks a more serious question, that question being this… When a man is faced
with the inevitability of life as he knows it changing indefinitely, how will
he react? Will he deny the truth that everything he has known or loved is soon
to be lost? Will he reconcile what few things he can before change washes his
current life away, into an ocean of memories? Will he lose all hope in reality
and discontinue a pursuit in all things, including life itself? The shocking
reality that the novel points out is that we as humans are none the wiser when
it comes to answering this question.
Whenever people find themselves
within the innerworkings of an existential crisis, only then can we know how
we’ll take to handling it. For those who find themselves afflicted with the
plague in Camus novel, each case is different, some deny their fate and fight
tooth and nail to return back to a normal society where their fears are quelled
and their mind is set at ease. Others accept the notion that death has come to
claim them much sooner than they had likely anticipated and spend their last
few days thinking their lives over amongst company. The interesting thing to
consider about this scene depicted by Camus is how often it occurs in everyday
life when we begin to remove the plague itself from the image.
Existentialism is a quite horrifying
piece of subject material to read within a novel and Camus proves it within all
of his writings. He very quickly establishes this theme of imminent death
within this novel in particular, but then slowly through the interaction of
characters; Camus shifts are focus from death and puts emphasis on life and how
fragile of thing it really is when the slightest of changes are made to it.
This idea of fragility in life quite easily transcends into fears that we as a
people have in the modern era of human history. There is always a fear that
political tensions with rise, war will begin to destroy our way of lives as it
has before, or that one day we might all become lost to our own insanity as
humans. However, as The Plague points out. In times when pandemic strikes, it
often goes unseen to the majority of the populous and fails to be taken into
consideration until it is far too late for a solution to be proposed.
Enter the Automization epidemic,
a future that by most accounts is quite self-predicting given the rate of
advances in technology over the past decade. We as humans are quite aware that
our jobs aren’t as stable as they used to be. We often find ourselves
confronted with massive amounts of layoffs and our ability to replace old jobs
with new ones is becoming more and more challenging every time we slip back
into a recession. The concern of this new wave of technological advances is
that unemployment will cease to be a result of economic instability and become
a part of economic prosperity as we lose our jobs to machines far more capable
than that of the average worker.
This fear isn’t new by any
measure, and then again neither was that of the plague in Camus novel, however
much like the people of Oran, we as a society are doing nothing to anticipate
and counteract the danger of automization. Instead we rejoice every time a new
piece of technology is unveiled without ever questioning the repercussion of
becoming progressively more and more dependent on the very computers we as
humans have fallen in love with. Perhaps seeing the workforce become replaced
with machines could be a new phase for human prosperity, one without a working
class and something far more unique from what we as a society have known.
However, without taking the time to plan for this shift in economic structure,
humans will be left in panic. We will question life as we know it and the
safety of the world around us much like the people in Camus novel did when the
plague was among them.
We will live in a state of
confusion and fear if we do not begin to openly discuss as a society what
things will and will not be feasible in an age of machines, and to go on about
our daily business as if there isn’t a thing to be afraid of, well that truly
would be absurd.
Works
Cited
Camus, Albert, and
Stuart Gilbert. The Plague: Albert Camus. London: Hamish Hamilton,
1948. Print.
