Future of Work, Part II - The Rant Edition

Physical Attraction

Last episode on the Future of Work, I described the problem – artificial intelligence is going to potentially make a lot of people unemployed in the near-term future; and the range of opinions, you can kind of pick and mix from: It’s the robot job apocalypse! Society as we know it will soon be over! It’s okay, we’ll just give everyone a Universal Basic Income and they can all start small businesses or learn to code or something. It’s okay, we’ll just retrain everyone so that all the coal miners are making solar panels now. It’s okay, AI won’t replace that many people and has been greatly exaggerated; just because a job has the potential to be automated, doesn’t mean that it will be automated. Instead AI will become a tool that enhances our productivity It’s okay, AI will replace a lot of people but we’ll just come up with new jobs. No one is smashing spinning jennys nowadays and there aren’t thousands of unemployed loom-weavers on the streets of Manchester because everyone moved on, got new demands, and now they all work in PR. As for me – I fall in the middle of the two extreme viewpoints, the “we’re all doomed” and “it’s fine” viewpoints. Nice and convenient, you might say. Let me explain in a rant. I imagine a lot of people listening are going to disagree with me. I'm not always right! Send your *constructive* criticism to www.physicspodcast.com , the contact page, or get in touch with us via Twitter @physicspod If you like what you hear, or just that I took the time to say it, consider helping me towards my own basic income via the Patreon account or the donate button, both of which you'll find on www.physicspodcast.com . You won't even need blockchain to do it.