terrifying

I watched a video on YouTube the other day about the concept of free money for everyone.  The speaker outlined a, erm, concept where every citizen had a right to a certain sum of cash; he reckoned around £1000 or so a month in return for doing absolutely nothing.

Fascinating.

He made positive arguments against all the problems such a system would bring.  It would, he said, be self-financing within a very short period of time due to reduced health-care and crime costs.  People, he said, would still work and contribute to society.

Still fascinating.

And, this would be absolutely necessary before very long as we enter an era when artificial intelligence machines will be performing virtually all the tasks that humans currently undertake.  Even the (pardon me for his crude words) “bullshit” jobs.  The jobs that have always been created in the past when technology has moved on making human labour less and less necessary.

There are, he said, any number of these jobs currently being done.  Things like business performance measurement managers, marketing executives, brand consultants, PR researchers.  I could go on.  The sort of job often justified by a culture of totally unnecessary long hours and a laptop.  The sort of jobs that if they weren’t done, no-one would notice.  But strangely always the last jobs to go in a cost cutting exercise.

I can't leave yet - the boss is still here

It seems that even these jobs will be cast on the waste tip of human resources when the machines take over and we all get our monthly handout though.

But there will be other problems.  Of course there will.  Most people, even those in utterly pointless jobs, want to work.  To actually contribute to their society in a positive manner. And if they can’t?  When all the jobs that can be done by humans are taken up and machines do the rest, what then?  Not everyone can open a coffee shop or be an artist.

War?  Worldwide rioting and an end to civilised society?  Armageddon?  

Or meek acceptance?

I don’t know which is more terrifying.