The emergence of AI has left everyone a little stunned. We don’t really know what to make of it. Will it kill us or are we heading to a golden future?
At this stage we already have powerful enough AI to do some revolutionary things. With a simple written prompt Claude AI can animate a ball rolling around a spinning box. Midjourney can design incredible buildings. Sora can create life like movies. As far as jobs go the writing is on the wall. AI will enable workers to be massively more productive. One lawyer armed will AI will do the work of 10. One waitress can manage 10 serving robots. One animation artist can create an entire movie that previously took 100 animators.
This will lead to a massive redundancy. What are the call centre workers to do? What about the production line workers and Uber drivers?
With less jobs more people will need to get money from the government. One simple solution is to increase the number of people on welfare. This works but has causes dependency and a loss in purpose and self respect. Ideally a better solution can be found. In Australia the NDIS employs a large number of people to look after handicapped people. This is an effective way of giving employment and also getting a benefit to society. Government projects also are a good way to increase employment. During the great depression Franklin Roosevelt initiated a number of public works projects to give jobs to the unemployed. Greater support could also be given to re-skill employees in affected industries, with government funded education and living expenses during the study period. Another option could be to allow self sufficiency by giving farm land, perhaps with a manageable level of debt. This a strategy that Australia used with some success after WWI and WWII, settling soldiers on farms who otherwise may have been without jobs. Larger properties were compulsorily acquired and broken up and the soldiers were given loans for machinery and livestock. After early failures in the scheme they were also given training in farming techniques.
There is sure to be a painful adjustment to AI. Those who think that there will not be winners and losers are kidding themselves. It will be a time similar to the industrial revolution, with tremendous upheavals and communist political pressures due to the unequal distribution of the wealth. A similar result needs to be avoided in AI development, while at the same time safeguarding freedom and democracy.