Secondo Vivek Wadhwa, della Singularity, eliminano nel breve termine più di quanto creino. Secondo altri non sarà un problema. I tecno-tecnici della Singularity possono pensare che l’abbondanza digitale sostituisca il bisogno di lavorare. Ma gli “umanisti” della Singularity si preoccupano.
An inconvenient truth that the technology industry doesn’t want to face is that automation always eliminates more jobs than it creates. Technology provides tremendous benefit and can uplift humanity, but for the workers who are impacted, it causes unemployment and despair. The changes that are happening today will surely transform humanity. But these will also eliminate the majority of human jobs and create big problems.
People who I hold in the highest regard, such as Ray Kurzweil and Peter Diamandis, are extremely optimistic that we will solve these problems with a combination of abundance and reeducation. But I am not too sure.
About three years ago, I exchanged a series of emails with Ray Kurzweil about my increasing concerns. He made some strong, plausible, arguments and I more or less conceded to him…because he is Ray Kurzweil. Since then, I have come to the conclusion that he is being too optimistic about the short-term impact. Even though humanity may evolve in the long term, the transition period is going to be really painful.
Washington Post published my exchange with Ray (with his permission) and it is copied below. And last year, I wrote a piece challenging former Treasury Secretary Larry Summers’ assertions, in a Wall Street Journal oped, that government could create the jobs. I said we’re heading into a jobless future, no matter what the government does. My article created huge controversy and angered the people who have the greatest financial gain. Marc Andreessen tweeted that it was a “Luddite fallacy all the way through. Failure of imagination, lack of understanding of how economy evolves”.
The problem with brushing this important issue off, or just being too optimistic, is that we won’t be ready for what is inevitable. This is the subject of my new Washington Post column. I am planning a follow up article that discusses the commonly proposed solutions.
Fellow, Arthur & Toni Rembe Rock Center for Corporate Governance, Stanford University
Director of Research, CERC, Pratt School of Engineering, Duke University
Distinguished Fellow, Singularity University
Syndicated columnist Washington Post, Contributor: Wall Street Journal, Huffington Post, Forbes, LinkedIn Influencers, ASEE Prism Magazine
Website: www.wadhwa.com , Research: http://ssrn.com/author=738704 Twitter: @wadhwa
Author: The Immigrant Exodus—an Economist Book of the Year, 2012 and Innovating Women
http://www.washingtonpost.com/blogs/innovations/wp/2015/07/07/sorry-but-the-jobless-future-isnt-a-luddite-fallacy/
caro Luca, non resta che dire: meglio tardi che mai. Le leggi scoperte da Marx su come funziona il capitalismo non sono aggirabili. Dal ponte di comando della politica occidentale si rifiuta questa verità: la produttività (ossia la graduale superfluità della forza lavoro) è il tallone d’Achille del sistema. Prenderne atto richiede cambiare paradigma. Ecco un ottimo Manifesto.