Gavin: The Robots Are Coming

Kelly Gavin at London’s Observer observes the coming of the robots, and it’s “eating into our jobs,” he says.

This is because the power of intelligent machines is growing as their cost collapses. They are doing things reliably now that would have sounded implausible only a few years ago. By the end of the decade, Nissan pledges the driverless car, Amazon promises that electric drones will deliver us packages, Rolls-Royce says that unmanned robo-ships will sail our seas. The expected use of machines for everyday purposes is already giving rise to angst about the nascent problem of “robot smog” as other people’s machines invade ever more aspects of our personal space.

As economically significant, perhaps, as the rise of super-gadgetry is the growing power of software to accurately process and respond to data patterns. This raises the prospect of machines reaching deep into previously protected areas of professional work like translation, medical diagnostics, the law, accountancy, even surgery…

The rise of the robot is likely, for instance, to result in an increasing share of GDP flowing to the owners of capital at the expense of labour – something that has recently been occurring across many OECD countries (though less so in the UK than is often assumed). An acceleration of this should rekindle interest in finding ways to distribute the ownership of assets more evenly as well as finally prompting a serious discussion about shifting some of the burden of taxation from labour towards wealth.

Accelerating wage inequality, together with a rise in economic insecurity, would sharpen the need to bolster our working-age welfare system at a time when it’s already creaking and has few political friends.

 

By: Alan

Alan Colmes is the publisher of Liberaland.