December 23, 2024
When AI Takes Over and Kills Most Jobs
Philip Kotler
A nation is healthy when everyone who wants a job can easily find a job. We measure the nation’s unemployed rate by the percentage or number of unemployed persons seeking employment. Today the percentage of unemployed persons is low, 4.2% or 5.5 million persons.
The worst time in the U.S. when jobs were scarce was the Great Depression of the 1930s. The U.S. unemployment rate peaked at 25% in 1933. At that time, President Franklin D. Roosevelt applied federal government power to create jobs and help desperate Americans. During the first 100 days in office in 1933, Roosevelt created a New Deal with 69 new offices to help revive the economy. Many offices worked with the Works Progress Administration (WPA) using government finance to construct bridges, airports, dams, post offices, hospitals, and hundreds of thousands new roads. The New Deal employed more than 8.5 million people in work-relief.
I mention Roosevelt’s New Deal for a reason. Since that time, we never experienced another Great Depression. Furthermore, our economy has been fundamentally transformed by new technologies going from television, to computers, the Internet, e-commerce, and now AI and robots. It is possible that AI and robots may be the force that will create once again mass U.S. unemployment.
The Potential Human Plight of AI and Robotics
AI and robotics have gradually invaded one area of work followed by another. The first sign was when factories began to order mechanical equipment that could replace human hands in building and moving products forward. Then work in offices was improved
by computers, recorders, cell phones and software and hardware tools. Bookkeeping and accounting saddled into a more automatic basis, reducing the number of needed accountants. Law firms began to adopt new software tools to carry out more efficient case law search, thereby reducing the number of needed lawyers. Banks incorporated software and hardware to make banking more efficient. Companies found that their managers could efficiently supervised more workers and therefore fewer managers were needed. All this meant that AI/robotics was not only reducing the number of factory workers but also office secretaries and professional workers. One experiment made with a virtual company tested whether a virtual AI leader made better decisions than a human president and found that the virtual AI leader made better decisions.
What is the meaning of this steady growth of AI/robotics for the economy? It suggests that AI/robotics will eventually do most of the work. The economy will once again face a 1930s situation of mass unemployment.
The Scenario of Mass Unemployment
The reduction in human jobs will happen slowly, not immediately. The economy will move from a state of recession to depression. Yet there will remain a large number of persons still carrying on paid work:
· Persons owning and/or operating AI equipment.
· Transportation workers who deliver resources or goods to other organizations and families
· Doctors and health worked that provide help that AI machines cannot do.
· Persons working in hotels and in group residences.
· Persons working in prisons
· Airline pilots
· Teachers
· Police and firemen
· Government workers
· Therapists
· Priests, ministers, rabbis and other religious figures
The nation and its leaders will have to answer three questions:
1. How will unemployed persons get money to pay for their living needs?
2. How will unemployed persons find ways to use their idle time?
3. What will life be like in the age of AI?
How Will Unemployed Persons Get Money to Pay for their Living Needs?
Persons who are unable to find a job will initially have to live on their savings. If they retired with a pension, this pension will augment their savings. The U.S. Department of Labor’s unemployment insurance programs would provide unemployment benefits to eligible workers who become unemployed through no fault of their own and meet certain other eligibility requirements. Unemployment insurance is a joint state-federal program that provides cash benefits to eligible workers. In the meantime, the unemployed person may receive financial help from their relatives. The unemployed person may try to take out a bank loan. At the same time, the person is likely to cut down their expenses and even get food from soup kitchens and other charities.
How Will Unemployed Persons Find Ways to Use their Idle Time?
Educated people may turn to other activities that they weren’t able to do when they were employed. They might try writing, editing, painting, or teaching or training other, or various hobbies. They might join book clubs or travel locally or abroad.
Various persons might turn to playing a piano or other musical instrument or joining a singing group. Many articles and books list hundreds of retirement activities. Included is pursuing a caretaking situation such as baby sitting, helping aged parents or doing charity work.
One of the most helpful solutions is finding a few friends who one could enjoy and meet at regular intervals. The person needs to avoid periods of prolonged loneliness that could lead to alcoholism or drug abuse. In such cases, they need to join a therapy group and get help from other persons saddled with similar problems.
What Will Life be Like in the Age of AI/robots?
The inevitable invasion of AI will change all our lives. Remember how our lives changed with radio and television. Our lives changed again with the computer, the Internet and e-commerce. Most of these changes have been good and worthwhile. Yet some have had bad consequences.
The same can be said about AI/robots. AI will help us in many good ways, especially to do things faster and better. Everyone dreams of having a robot butler to help us get dressed, cook our meals, and clean our home. But the robot butler won’t happen for a while. In the meantime, we will be sitting more and watching our screen, talking to friends on our cell phone rather than seeing them face-to-face, and being alone most of the time without sufficient exercising.
The time of superintelligent beings will come. Robots will be smarter than us in solving problems and in advising us. If they develop a self-will, they may start ordering our lives.
Life will be different in the age of AI/robots.
Conclusion
Life in modern times include good and bad experiences. Each person will have happy times and sad times. The economy’s performance will cycle through periods of prosperity and periods of recession. Most people will have jobs, hopefully satisfying jobs.
The arrival of AI/robots promises to significantly change our lives. More jobs will be handled by fewer human beings. Finding a job will become harder over time. Even today, many young people apply for paid jobs only to learn that hundreds have sent in their resumes and are told that no more resumes will be accepted. All this job searching and only one lucky applicant. Eventually most persons won’t find paid jobs and mass unemployment will take place.
Persons will have to rely on their savings, pensions, relatives, banks, or unemployment federal/state cash payments to pay for their food, housing, and other necessities. Each person will face the task of how to spend their idle time. Some will find and enjoy many activities; others will encounter more loneliness and loss of meaning. All persons will find that they are living in a new world where most work is done by AI/robots. Superintelligences will have appeared that hopefully will help people and societies and not end up ordering their lives.
