“I Think Eventually We Will Have Technological Unemployment”

September 24, 2014 in Excerpts, Politics, Science/Tech, Urban Studies | Permalink

Philosopher Nick Bostrom, who has AI on the brain these days, just did an Ask Me Anything at Reddit. One exchange about the future of labor:

“Question:

Good evening from Australia Professor! I would really like to know what your opinion is on technological unemployment. There is a bit of a shift in public thought and awareness at the moment about the rapid advances in both software and hardware displacing human workers in numerous fields.

Do you believe this time is actually different compared to the past and we do have to worry about the economic effects of technology, and more specifically AI, in permanently displacing humans?

Nick Bostrom:

It’s striking that so far we’re mainly used our higher productivity to consume more stuff rather than to enjoy more leisure. Unemployment is partly about lack of income (fundamentally a distributional problem) but it is also about a lack of self-respect and social status.

I think eventually we will have technological unemployment, when it becomes cheaper to do most everything humans do with machines instead. Then we can’t make a living out of wage income and would have to rely on capital income and transfers instead. But we would also have to develop a culture that does not stigmatize idleness and that helps us cultivate interest in activities that are not done to earn money.”

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