AI & Robotic Workers

A lot of people in so-called developed nations, previously known as "industrialised" nations complain about mass migration into their countries, especially from "under-developed" nations. The people that complain the most, usually, are mainly from the working class since, more often than not, they are the ones that are first directly impacted by such an influx. The reason being, the incoming people are likely to take up employment in the low-skilled pool, leaving fewer jobs for the said working class indigenes. That is, of course, because low skilled work is likely to be lower paid and, by definition, the prerogative of the working class work force.

The incoming migrants, who are not necessarily low-skilled by the way, but are faced with a choice between a low-paid, low to no skill job, and no job at all, would often enthusiastically take up those sometimes unwanted jobs. Moreover, they are likely to be unaware of any existing legal protections or benefits that the indigenes do and demand, so greedy corporations that care only about the bottom line are often eager to employ said immigrants, particularly if they had previously struggled to fill the roles with indigenes due to the antisocial or unfavourable conditions associated with the jobs.

This can lead to much anger and animosity between members of the indigenous working class, and the newly imported and de-facto working class. This is due to the perceived, and sometimes actual, competition over scarce resources. It's basic resource guarding.

While this animosity is clearly justified, within reason, in my opinion the real risk is being ignored. I believe we are at the precipice of something monumentally paradigm shifting when it comes to the low-skilled workforce. In fact, it's been slowly rolled out over the decades but it's being perfected as we speak and one day the big switch will be triggered and boom!

I'm talking about Artificial Intelligence and Robotics.

When the time comes, both the indigenous low-skilled work force, and the immigrants will be immediately out of the job. They will be replaced by generic, programmable, humanoid robots that can perform their jobs at multiple times the speed with a low maintenance cost.

At first the unit cost of the robots will be cost prohibitive for all but the wealthiest corporations but, with mass production, the unit cost will dip bellow the minimum human wage. At that point, it will become a no-brainer for virtually all organisations that use this kind of labour. All factory work will be replaced.

The only thing that can stop such a thing is government interference and the law. Unions can get involved and prevent this by influencing legislation to protect the human work force but, not even that will put this advent of the machines off indefinitely. Companies will simply move to a jurisdiction that permits such a thing. We have already seen this with outsourcing in this era. In fact, I believe massive generic factories will be guilt in places like India and China with thousands of these robots ready to be provide outsourced manufacturing services. They need only receive instructions in the form of code to be loaded into the robots, and appropriate payment.

There is also another thing that may happen, if the past is prologue, and that's violence and terrorism. The current human workforce may take to physical and direct action to sabotage, delay or even destroy said factories. That isn't without precedent if you look at the history of horses being replaced by automobiles.

Personally if I were a labourer under the age of 30, I'd think about retraining. I'd definitely make sure I direct my offsprings and younger members of my family away from that line of work because we are moving into the Information Age when the machines take over that genre of employment.

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Peace & Love,

Adé