Matt Grigsby, senior program engineer at Otto, takes his hands off the steering wheel of a self-driving, big-rig truck during a demonstration on the highway, in San Francisco on Aug. 18, 2016. Uber's self-driving startup Otto developed technology allowing big rigs to drive themselves. Tony Avelar / AP, file
With transformative technologies like artificial intelligence and machine learning poised only to improve over time, the stage is set for even higher-level knowledge work to go to the machines — they'll soon replace our accountants and our call center operators. They'll diagnose our diseases. They'll
get better at their tasks with every iteration, until they are able to do certain jobs at least as well as people can."It will take a century, maybe two, for machines to take care of all our basic needs, like food, clothing, and shelter. People won't have to work for that," says MIT professor Brynjolfsson.
Instead, we will work for other reasons. Some people find a value in work that transcends money, perhaps endowing them with a strong sense of purpose or identity. Voltaire wrote in 1759 that "work saves us from three great evils: boredom, vice, and need." Some jobs will still be out there for those who pursue them, but they would no longer be essential. You'll work to preserve some sense of status.
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Could One Person Take Down the Internet?"Humans care a lot about status. It may not be important that you have a boat for getting from A to B, but some will care if it's a bigger boat than theirs," Brynjolfsson says. "Certain workspaces in an office are more prestigious locations, certain seats at the table are closer to the head than others. Status is finite by nature, so people compete for it. Keeping a job in a mostly jobless world may be one way to do that."
A
basic income pilot program will kick off next year for 250 residents of Utrecht, Netherlands, and momentum is gathering for a similar program in Fife, Scotland. Jamie Cook, head of the Royal Society of Arts Scotland, told The National, "This is an exciting opportunity for Scotland to look at something quite radical and put the country at the forefront of work in a policy which is getting growing levels of support across Europe."Jason Furman is President Obama's chief economist and chairman of the Council of Economic Advisors, and a noted opponent of instituting universal basic income in response to job automation. In a
July speech at New York University, Furman argued in favor of increasing policymakers' focus on job skills, training, and employment assistance programs as the better place to start.Related:
How Scientists Confirmed One of Einstein's Controversial Theories"Replacing our current anti-poverty programs with [universal basic income] would in any realistic design make the distribution of income worse, not better," Furman said. "Our tax and transfer system is largely targeted towards those in the lower half of the income distribution, which means that it works to reduce both poverty and income inequality. Replacing part or all of that system with a universal cash grant ... would mean that relatively less of the system was targeted towards those at the bottom — increasing, not decreasing, income inequality."
It remains to be seen how our unknown future will shake out. Will we be earning our same workaday living as today? Or will we be laying in the grass, playing guitar and living off of government cheese? As talk of basic income mounts up in a time of intelligent automation, your perfect jobless life is closer than it's ever been.
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