Robots for Hire (Rob) by Rob L

While running through some research, this short talk jumped out from the Singularity Summit in 2008 on robotics and the coming economic shift pre-singularity. Marshall Brain (what a name for an AI researcher, just wow) relies mostly on labor statistics that are all fairly common knowledge to us. Using this data, however, he makes some interesting points about the 2000 - 04 recession, maintaining that IT replaced many jobs such as grocery clerks (a personal threat to yours truly), call desks, and travel agents. The resulting productive obsolescence of simple service jobs is a reduced exponential growth in global jobs contained within the economy. That trend continued ended up hobbling the uncharacteristically short recovery after 2004. In just a few years we hit another recession, where we sit now at the tip of the downswing.

Based on this, I feel it is important to consider that our present problems, while largely caused by debt, are concurrent with a deconstruction of our industrial economy and its transition into an information economy. This deconstruction has been long to build, itself an exponential process, but we are now past the knee of the curve. Is it possible then that the declining rate of profit is itself an exponential phenomenon?

The service sector which was touted to replace manufacturing and heavy industry is itself disappearing. This isn't all terrible, since these jobs are mostly held at below subsistence wages anyway. That is about as positive a spin you can wrap this in once it is also accepted just how broad sweeping these job losses will be.

The convergence of these forces, debt and obsolescence, among other factors, will result in a deep and long depression while the world economy adapts to the next paradigm. Brain's panic scenario hinges around the likelihood that nearly all service, transportation, and education jobs will be replaced by sufficiently functional robotics, resulting in 50 million jobs lost over the next 15 years. These people, Wallmart workers up to Fed-Ex drivers, are already at or just above poverty. They have little access and even less support for the education and loans necessary to enter the creative class. While 50 million may be excessive, even a significantly smaller percentage would be catastrophic to existing economic structures.

At the same time, the rest of the world is catching up to our productivity, i. e., "the world is flat/spiky". IT is transforming Africa, South America, and the rest of the world at an amazing yet welcomed rate. The potential here is the realization of our dream. Massive efficiency in production can allow for a fractional work week, material equality, etc. But without major preparation and the incentive, political or otherwise, to assist the poor in their own transition, this dream seems improbable.

However the transition is navigated, exponential learning continues. We run smack into the singularity just as we recover our footing, if we do at all. I postulate that we must be standing as equals in at that moment, or we will fail to singularize as a species. The dynamic between rich and poor will mutate into a new dynamic between smart and left behind.