Technological advances are transforming human life. Machines are taking over human roles, making us more efficient, but they are also creating technological unemployment and social inequality. We need to think about how we can overcome these changes.
The symbiosis between humans and machines has begun. From being passive tools that help us do our jobs, machines have evolved to become agents that network with each other, recognize our needs, and respond directly to them. The ubiquitous refrigerator knows what’s in it and suggests meals for the day based on your preferences and health status. Driverless cars for the visually impaired not only understand real-time road traffic conditions, but also the physical environment and weather, and calculate the shortest route through systematic analysis. If you look at human history as a 24-hour day, all of these changes have happened in 20 seconds.
Technology has improved the quality of life by taking over tasks that people don’t want to do or shouldn’t do, while the increase in leisure time and the use of robots has created new industries and created jobs. Just as there were no gas stations or mechanics when there were no cars, the advent of the automobile has created a vast amount of jobs and economic value.
But will technological advancement continue to go hand in hand with personal enrichment? The author’s answer is no. He puts the brakes on the public’s expectations of modern technology, arguing that the three pillars of modern technology – exponential growth, digitalization, and combinatorial development – will eventually lead to social inequality, reducing the relative and absolute value of life.
My point is the same. Future technological advances will be of a scale and power unparalleled by past examples, and their power will shake up our societies as well as our individual lives. The use of Neolithic tools increased agricultural productivity, which led to population growth, and the medieval steam engine enabled mass production and mass transportation, which led to economies of scale. Technological innovation has always led to social transformation, and the magnitude of that transformation has been amplified. So what will make the next technological revolution different from past revolutions?
The answer is the development of IT technology and the emergence of Big Data. Not only is a machine more labor productive than a person, but it now holds a larger amount of data and processes it faster. It’s only natural that capitalists would want to use robots to increase productivity. In fact, in 2011, Terry Gou, the chairman of Foxconn, the world’s largest computer component manufacturer, announced that the company would replace employees who paint, weld, and assemble products with 1 million robots within three years. While this goal was not fully met, thousands of robots have been put into the field to replace human labor in the past three years, and the trend is not limited to Foxconn, but is being seen in a variety of industries around the world, including Google. As a result, 47% of U.S. jobs are at risk of being replaced by robots, and the list includes not only assembly line workers, but also areas of thought and logic that were once thought to be the sole domain of humans, such as pharmacists, lawyers, and journalists. Technological unemployment is the phenomenon of human labor being replaced by automated robots that are “more efficient” than humans.
Technological unemployment leads to the breakdown of hierarchies and reduces the purchasing power of consumers. It disrupts the flow of money and predicts economic collapse. The effects of technological unemployment don’t stop there. It leads to further social disruption, namely polarization. How does technological unemployment lead to polarization?
First, there is the Great Decoupling, where technology is dramatically increasing the productivity of our society while decreasing employment and income. Most of the jobs being replaced are among the skilled workers who make up the middle class. As the middle class disappears, the productivity gains from machines go to the owners of physical capital (machines) rather than to labor as a whole, and the gap between workers and capitalists grows wider and wider. In fact, in the United States, the capital share of GDP has been increasing while the labor share has been decreasing for 50 years.
Second, technological change in production and distribution leads to a winner-take-all phenomenon, as relative advantages turn into absolute advantages. In an era where valuable products of creativity can be replicated indefinitely at low prices, the breakdown of market barriers in space and time leads to the loss of competitiveness for the No. 2 player, who could compete with the No. 1 player with a relative advantage due to consumer ignorance or geographical barriers. This leads to the elimination of the second player and the monopolization of the first player.
The symbiosis between humans and machines has begun. No, they are now taking over, “usurping” human roles and “marginalizing” humans. There is a movement to correct this through economic and educational institutions, but it will take more than technological advancements to keep up with the pace of research and establishment of such institutions. This is because, compared to the creation and impact of revolutionary technologies, achieving social change is difficult for a small group of people, and there will be a lot of disruption and values that will have to be given up. This is why I emphasize that we cannot be optimistic about technological progress.
