Moshe Vardi, a computer science professor at Rice University, thinks that by 2045 artificially intelligent machines may be capable of “if not any work that humans can do, then, at least, a very significant fraction of the work that humans can do.”
▻http://singularityhub.com/2013/05/15/moshe-vardi-robots-could-put-humans-out-of-work-by-2045
Are machines really replacing humans faster now than say in the early 19th or 20th centuries ? And are workers really falling behind at a greater rate ? We can’t say with certainty.
However, we can say that accelerating technology over the last few centuries has consistently erased some jobs only to replace them with other jobs. In the short and medium term, these transition periods have caused discomfort and vicious battles in the political arena. But the long-term outcome has been largely positive—that is, improving living standards thanks to cheaper, better goods and services.
By dismissing qualitative historical evidence as newly irrelevant, you’re left with a quantitative vacuum into which you can inject any number of competing theories, fascinating but as yet impossible to prove or disprove.
As you may have gathered, I fall into the boring mainstream on the subject. To me, the technological unemployment thesis is too dire and what humans will do too hard to imagine. But just because we can’t imagine something, doesn’t mean it won’t exist.
Le travail humain ne contribuera bientôt plus que marginalement à la satisfaction des besoins réels de l’humanité. L’appropriation locale des technologies apparentées est certainement la clé de l’émancipation du système d’exploitation capitaliste.
