I particularly liked one of the points that Grey made towards the end: what do we do about all of the people who will be "unemployable through no fault of their own"? Right now our economic system is predicated on rewarding those who deserve wealth (as judged by ability or hard work). The converse of that is that we as a society accept that the undeserving (stupid and/or lazy) will be punished economically. We rationalize this because we convince ourselves that it was their own fault, therefore it's "fair" . But what happens when intelligent, hard-working -- and therefore deserving -- people are unemployable? It's going to be a massive shock to people and to the system. (Or we will enter a state of mass cognitive dissonance and convince ourselves that the majority of the population has become stupid and lazy and so is getting what they deserve.)
We already have an issue in the united states with not enough jobs to go around, if this dystopian outlook is truly inevitable, what are our options for mitigating it, or at least coping with it?<p>I have thought quite a bit about autonomous vehicles and how I can't wait to buy one and never have to drive again, how many benefits it will have on society (faster commutes, fewer accidents, etc), but I hadn't considered how much the transportation industry will be affected and especially how much truck drivers in particular would be ideal to replace. The NYT ran a story the other day (<a href="http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-industry-needs-more-drivers-it-should-try-paying-more.html" rel="nofollow">http://www.nytimes.com/2014/08/10/upshot/the-trucking-indust...</a>) about how we don't have enough drivers to fulfill the needs, but "Autos" could swing that pendulum swiftly in the opposite direction once legeslation and production catch up. How do we handle 3.6M truck, delivery and taxi drivers looking for a new job?<p>I haven't read it yet, but I have recently had recommendations of the book Superintelligence: Paths, Dangers, Strategies (<a href="http://smile.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00LOOCGB2/0sil8/ref=smi_ge_rl_btns1_setch?_encoding=UTF8&ie=UTF8&redirect=true&tag=0sil8&pldnNew=1" rel="nofollow">http://smile.amazon.com/exec/obidos/ASIN/B00LOOCGB2/0sil8/re...</a>) which I look forward to reading and hope it might be relevant.
I don't buy the "this time it's different" argument. The reason to automate things is to make more money, right? If you believe the video, nobody will be able to afford the stuff that is being made cheaper through automation.<p>If we're making everything faster, cheaper, and more efficient, the overall wealth for humans can only go up, not down. The question is who will get that wealth. My guess is it'll be the same as it always is: A small group of people will get most of it, and everyone else will get a little bit. In other words we'll all be better off, I think. To assume the destruction of the middle class means that the upper class will lose all of its buyers. Economics has proven time and time again that over the long term, improving efficiency makes everyone better off.
I read about this 10 years ago, from a book published in 1998 <a href="http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class" rel="nofollow">http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/The_Theory_of_the_Leisure_Class</a>