How Artificial Intelligence Will Eliminate Most of Humanity

There is currently much talk about how artificial intelligence will develop a will of its own, destroy humanity, and take command of the Earth. This is rubbish based on no plausible scenario. However, the danger of artificial intelligence to the continued existence of the mass of mankind is both real and imminent. It will happen as the result of developments, each appearing to be harmless and actually rather cool. 

Thus for example, if you call your doctor's office for an appointment, you will be answered by a synthetic  voice that will negotiate an appointment date and time. In addition, it will ask for information on the reason for your visit with the doctor, and will then provide the doctor with a report not only stating your problem, but advising on the current best practise in treating it. In fact, This talented receptionist might very well provide all the medical assistance you need over the phone, in which case, it will not only eliminate the need for human medical receptionists, but for most if not all human doctors too. 

Likewise, when you need a retail store assistant, your only option will be to address an intelligent machine that speaks Swedish or Swahili, or any other language you care to use as well or better than you do -- and with exactly the accent you happen to use, Ottawa Valley, New York, or that hideous, fake upper-class, cut-glass English accent spoken by the likes of Ghislaine Maxwell and Christiane Amanpour. What's more, this machine will be able to tell you pretty much anything you want to know about the product you seek as well as whether it is available in the color and size you require, and if not, whether and when it will be available. 

The same substitution of machine intelligence for human service will occur throughout the economy reducing the majority of the population to unemployment. If you are not an AI techie, among the safest jobs will be those involving manual labor, lawn mowing, for example, window cleaning, or prostitution. Birthrates will plummet, the incidence of medically assisted death will grow exponentially as dispair and despondency give rise to a pandemic of chronic depression. Thus, within just a few short years, the plutocratic elite will have what they want:  a world largely free of useless eaters cluttering the best beaches, poisoning the planet with their carbon emissions and spreading ugly suburbs across the landscape. 

Related: 

Goldman Sachs Predicts 300 Million Jobs Will Be Lost Or Degraded By Artificial Intelligence

A Man's a Man for a' That

Since Edmund Cartwright invented the power loom in 1784, mechanisation and automation have destroyed jobs at an ever increasing pace. That these processes would have a huge impact on working people and the distribution of wealth was already evident two hundred years ago. Thus, in the Edinburgh Review of 1829, Thomas Carlyle wrote:

... Nothing is now done directly, or by hand; all is by rule and calculated contrivance. For the simplest operation, some helps and accompaniments, some cunning abbreviating process is in readiness. Our old modes of exertion are all discredited, and thrown aside. On every hand, the living artisan is driven from his workshop, to make room for a speedier, inanimate one. The shuttle drops from the fingers of the weaver, and falls into iron fingers that ply it faster. The sailor furls his sail, and lays down his oar; and bids a strong, unwearied servant, on vaporous wings, bear him through the waters. Men have crossed oceans by steam; ... There is no end to machinery. Even the horse is stripped of his harness, and finds a fleet fire-horse invoked in his stead. Nay, we have an artist that hatches chickens by steam; the very brood-hen is to be superseded! For all earthly, and for some unearthly purposes, we have machines and mechanic furtherances; for mincing our cabbages; for casting us into magnetic sleep.  ...

Yet despite the ongoing destruction of jobs, prosperity as Carlyle noted, had never been greater or more widely spread:

What wonderful accessions have thus been made, and are still making, to the physical power of mankind; how much better fed, clothed, lodged and, in all outward respects, accommodated men now are, or might be, by a given quantity of labour, is a grateful reflection which forces itself on every one. 

Yet, Carlyle asked:

What changes, too, this addition of power is introducing into the Social System ...increasing the distance between the rich and the poor, will be a question for Political Economists...

And today, the answer to Carlyle's question for the Political Economists is at last becoming evident. Not only is machinery replacing human labor, but automation, robotization, and control by artificial intelligence is altogether eliminating the economic value of human intelligence except for that of a tiny elite of highly trained specialists. Increasingly, the objective of the business corporation is not to increase the productivity of human labor but to eliminate it from the productive process.

Thus the telephone company has no human to answer the phone, but seeks to meet their customer's need with a synthetic voice driven by artificial intelligence. Though, currently, the response such systems provide to any inquiry is generally inane, confidence must exist that with incremental improvement, the system will become a fully effective replacement for human intelligence at a great saving in expense. 

The auto industry, likewise, seeks to eliminate the need for for human intelligence as well as muscle, not only in the production of motor vehicles, as evident with the introduction of lights-out robot factories, but in the operation of both cars and freight vehicles. The result: not increased labor productivity, but labor elimination, indicating that we are fast approaching a period of massive and irreducible unemployment. What then for the mass of mankind? 

As we noted several days ago, Yuval Harari, a futurist much admired by Klaus Schwab, founder and Chair of the World Economic Forum, considers that other than the class of high IQ and highly trained techies, the plutocrats who seek control of the globe will have no desire to perpetuate the existence of what Harari calls the "useless people," which is to say most of humanity. 

The implication is clear: the human surplus should off themselves, in the way that the Government of Schwabb-acolyte, Justin Trudeau intends with its Medical Assistance In Death legislation for the old, the depressed, and the terminally ill, to which list will surely be added the permanently unemployable. 

Though shocking to those not familiar with it, this is a solution long endorsed, not only in Nazi Germany but by many in the enlightened West, as these comments by the famous Anglo-Irish playwright,George Bernard Shaw make clear:

In the face of this prospect, I am grateful to Yusef for his response to a question I raised in an earlier post. Namely:

"what are the alternative futures, if any, for the mass of humanity when a pair of hands is no longer worth its keep."

 Yusef provides two quotes:

(1)

Mark 2: 23: And it came to pass, that he went through the corn fields on the sabbath day; and his disciples began, as they went, to pluck the ears of corn.

24 And the Pharisees said unto him, Behold, why do they on the sabbath day that which is not lawful?

25 And he said unto them, Have ye never read what David did, when he had need, and was an hungred, he, and they that were with him?

26 How he went into the house of God in the days of Abiathar the high priest, and did eat the shewbread, which is not lawful to eat but for the priests, and gave also to them which were with him?

27 And he said unto them, The sabbath was made for man, and not man for the sabbath:

28 Therefore the Son of man is Lord also of the sabbath."

King James Bible

(2)

Immanuel Kant: "An end-in-itself"

An explanation of Kant's concept of "an end-in-itself", often put more informally as the idea that we should not "use" other people.

The word "end" in this phrase has the same meaning as in the phrase "means to an end".

The philosopher Immanuel Kant said that rational human beings should be treated as an end in themselves and not as a means to something else. The fact that we are human has value in itself.

If a person is an end-in-themself it means their inherent value doesn't depend on anything else - it doesn't depend on whether the person is enjoying their life, or making other people's lives better. We exist, so we have value.

Most of us agree with that - though we don't put it so formally. We say that we don't think that we should use other people, which is a plain English way of saying that we shouldn't treat other people as a means to our own ends.

This idea applies to us too. We shouldn't treat ourselves as a means to our own ends; instead we should respect our inherent worth. This can be used as an argument against euthanasia, suicide and other behaviours that damage ourselves.

The idea also shows up in discussions of animal rights, with the idea that if they have rights, animals must be treated as ends in themselves."  (Source)

To which I would add Robbie Burns' fine poem: A Man’s a Man for a’ That