Unemployment and Automation

Fear of mass employment as a result of rampant automation and the development of artificial intelligence is on the rise. In a sense, apart from global warming, it could be considered the most urgent issue of the twenty-first century. Like with climate change, people are faced with transformations whose dynamics are not quite comprehensible—the scale and logic of both processes make us doubt potential analogies from the past. How far does what we know give us the “tools for thinking,” to use Daniel Dennett’s phrase, about what could be an absolutely new phenomenon, at least in the present form?

Some scholars say we are dealing with a repetition, though perhaps aggravated by its speed, of processes we know from the start of the Industrial Revolution in the eighteenth century.

New technologies replace old, less productive ones—this results in changes that can be painful for many. Certain professions are scrapped, new ones created. Though some people fail to keep up with the changes, after some years it turns out that society as a whole has benefited.²

Another point of view comes from the assumption that the present state of automation, based on artificial intelligence, will change this logic of technological development. Much as the Industrial Revolution was not an extension of the agrarian economy, but in fact created a new world, a new world is now being created. Its foundations are computer technology based on neural networks and big data (initiated in the 1990s) combined with the earlier use of industrial robots (since the 1960s). Will people still be necessary with these productive and creative powers at hand?

The question of what professions will become irrelevant is doubtful in itself—a sensible answer presupposes a knowledge of the technological limits, and this only appears after a given technology is created. We can only work on sometimes dubious approximations—though considering how vital the questions are, these reflections, however imperfect, are necessary (the same applies to the climate).

Even if new professions do replace old ones, as the optimists claim they will, state intervention will be necessary to keep society from collapsing during the transition phase. Among concepts of how this intervention might look, ideas of a Basic Guaranteed Income (BGI) often arise. Left-wing economist Joseph Stiglitz stresses, however, that this solution could end up ossifying social divisions, and that it ignores the essential significance work has for a sense of human dignity.³ Daniel Susskind points out, however, that this could be merely our historical perspective, of people accustomed to working. It could be that future generations will make free use of the universally accessible benefits, the result will not be so evident.⁴

Among other concepts, a robot tax is being considered, which could then be allotted to schooling those who have been “left behind.” Bill Gates is one advocate of this solution.

A question often raised by Jacek Dukaj also remains pressing—the degree to which man controls technology, and how far technology controls man. Here too, no answer is possible. It would require absolute knowledge of the universe and all the possible paths of technological development. Nonetheless, the history of the last two hundred years does prompt a certain optimism. Naturally, there are certain solutions that have to be accepted, unless we want a sort of societal suicide. The structure of the modern state, broadly speaking, was this type of technology. Whoever failed to build a working administration and army in the nineteenth century condemned themselves to colonization and/or dependency.⁵ On the other hand, social structures can be rejected, even when they are profitable. Robert Fogel’s research shows that slavery was a rational economic decision, at least for the plantation owners. The liberation of Black Americans thus suggests that the logic of technology is not omnipotent, even if it can be quite costly to break the chains.

Soshana Zuboff, among others, has shown how the shape of many contemporary computer-related solutions is less the result of the inexorable forces of history than a chain of coincidences.⁶