Courtesy of Rutherford Classics.com
With so much political turmoil around the globe, much of it spawned by our President, I wonder if anyone is thinking about the future?
All this concern for North Korea’s and Iran’s nuclear capabilities, for example. How does it compare to the growing cyber threat? Are nuclear wars likely in the future when an aggressor can avoid environmental fallout with well-designed algorithms that destroy a country’s infrastructure?
I also ponder the fate of the richest among us, the one-percenters. When artificial intelligence takes over the world – when the last truck driver steps down from his vehicle; when the last doctor performs his final brain surgery; when the solitary nurse checks out of the nursing home; when the lonely grocery store clerk hands over her keys to a robot, how will the superrich guard their treasure against the 99% who become unemployed? Will the superrich live behind impregnable walls, their perimeters guarded by robots? (For an interesting look at AI Click.)
Without jobs, there is no capitalism. How do the superrich plan to stay rich, I wonder? And what will the banks do? Or multinational corporations? Who will distribute the goods that robots will go on creating but the 99% can’t afford? What happens to an economy when work and production are divorced?
In the wake of the revolution already underway, talk of nuclear war seems quaint.
Finally, and his question is one I especially like, Kevin Drum asks what happens to God when humans devolve and the world belongs to robots? (“Tech World,” Foreign Affairs, July/August, 2018 pg. 48.)
(First published 8/3/18)
