
Expanding rapidly: Human labor force eliminated by robots - looguagra
http://failedevolution.blogspot.com/2016/05/expanding-rapidly-human-labor-force.html
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albi_lander
Seems like technological unemployment is something people are afraid of, even
though humans have spent most of their history working toward that goal.
Robots will not "take" our jobs, they will "free" us from working. Eventually,
thanks to robots and AI, everything will be so cheap to produce that
governments will be able to deliver basic income to everyone.

~~~
eLiza1
Dear Hacker News admin,

I have just been writing to whoever I could think of, including policy,
Premier and Cabinet Departments in Government. I look forward to technological
unemployment, but I know what a perpetual crisis it would be for all of we
people on welfare if the Government hadn't even thought about it, much less
prepared for it.

Kind regards,

Elizabeth Jane

The Hon. Jenny Macklin, M.P. Shadow Minister for Disability Reform, House of
Representatives Parliament House Canberra ACT 2600

Dear Ms Macklin,

I am writing to you about TECHNOLOGICAL UNEMPLOYMENT. Why is it not debated in
the election campaign by either the Labor Party or the Liberal National Party?

I have sent the following media release (below) to most MP's and Senators in
Australia, to newspapers in Australia, New Zealand, Canada, U.K., and the U.S.
and to political parties. There has been just one response, just one reaction.
I received an e-mailed letter from Senator Eric Abetz, but he made no mention
of technological unemployment, so I concluded that this was a stock reply and
that the Senator had zero information about technological unemployment.
Therefore the Liberal National Party has no information about technological
unemployment in their policies. And so, this country's leaders continue their
election campaign with absolutely no regard to perhaps the most important
issue and social change ever, and which will begin within the next three years
regardless of whether Labor or the Liberal National Party will be in power.

I want this issue to be raised during the election campaign. I don't want to
be living in a Third World country in a few years time just because the
political parties in this country haven't updated their policies to include
technological unemployment, and because the relevant Government Departments
have not included technological unemployment in their economic forecasts for
the Government and Opposition.

In A.I. machine-learning terms, since Google DeepMind's AlphaGo beat a Go
grandmaster earlier this year, at least 10 years before it was thought
possible, we have been living in the year 2026. Therefore, all of the
predictions for what we will be seeing with regard to technological
unemployment prior to 2016 that refer to 2025-2030 apply to us now: We will
therefore be seeing the fruits of advanced machine-learning the likes of
Google's DeepMind very soon.

Foxconn just permanently laid off 60,000 workers. They will be replaced with
robots. That is nothing compared to what is to come. Driverless taxis made by
nuTonomy, a software company, will begin operating in Singapore late this
year. Affected by this A.I. technology will be a huge 28% of the workforce,
whose jobs involve driving cars or trucks. No doubt fully driverless cars will
arrive in Australia in 2017 after they are proven successful in Singapore.
Driverless trucks are already operating 24 hours a day on Australian mining
sites. The technology is almost ready, only lack of legislation that accepts
driverless vehicles is holding them back.

Call centre employees will also lose their jobs when "Amelia", an IPsoft
project is introduced for commercial use. The computer program is currently in
beta testing. When it is introduced it has been reported that Amelia will take
the jobs of 250 million people, world-wide.

Please, ask the relevant Australian Government Departments if they have taken
technological unemployment into account in their Budget forward estimates!
Don't bother! They have overlooked it. Yet machine learning is improving
exponentially, and soon we shall have very high unemployment. The Government
is not preparing for what is to come, and considering how much time they spend
arguing about a revenue vs. a spending problem, they will take years to agree
on how to finance a Universal Basic Income. The answer to the debate over
revenue vs. spending will soon be clearly resolved by world events in A.I.
taking jobs: There is a REVENUE SHORTAGE! Now please read my "media release".

And then, would you please inform the political leaders of your findings so
that a debate can begin on technological unemployment, and how to plan ahead
for it?

Thank you.

Kind regards,

Elizabeth Jane

MEDIA RELEASE:

"UNEMPLOYMENT IN AUSTRALIA TO PASS 10% IN NEXT TERM OF GOVT."

THESE ARE MY MAIN POINTS:

The Australian unemployment rate will exceed 10% in the next term of
government.

250 million call centre workers will be made unemployed world-wide by a new
call-centre computer program [Amelia, by IPsoft] as soon as it is rolled out.
The software removes the jobs of 6 out of 10 call centre workers.

An Australian study in 2015 concluded that nearly 40% of jobs could disappear
by 2025 due to new technology. But that study has recently been superseded by
AlphaGo. A quantum leap forward in machine-learning by Google this year, and
an exponential, NOT linear, rate of improvement in machine learning, has meant
that what was thought to be possible only in 10 years from now can now be done
with A.I. This development has amazed computer scientists.

There are more possible games of Go than there are atoms in as many parallel
universes as there are atoms in our Universe! (Google DeepMind). A.I. machine-
learning has recently mastered the game of Go, accelerating what was
previously believed possible by machine-learning by 10 years!

The Reserve Bank predicted that unemployment would be down from 5.7% now to
5.5% in one year. Because the growth of A.I. has not been taken into account
this means that all government economic forecasts are obsolete and should be
questioned.

Unless a Universal Basic Income or Guaranteed Minimum Income is introduced
Australia will become a Third World country in a few years with a large and
rapidly growing impoverished population on the one hand and with people with
high incomes on the other.

The percentage of impoverished unemployed people will continue to grow past
the approximately 45% of the population that had been predicted to be reached
by 2025-2030 in Australia in a 2015 study. But those levels of unemployment
will now happen considerably sooner ... by at least 10 years!

UBI: A Universal Basic Income (UBI) is a set amount of money that is given to
all citizens and permanent residents by the government in order to provide a
social wage and safety net against unemployment.

GMI: An alternative to a Universal Basic Income is a Guaranteed Minimum
Income, or GMI. A Guaranteed Minimum Income provides every citizen or
permanent resident of the country with a minimum wage, but a person's income
from other sources is taken into account when allocating it. So a person who
had an income equal to the GMI would not receive a GMI payment by the
government.

The dire but predictable situation that Australia faces in the next
parliamentary term will be due to changes that will affect the whole World,
not just Australia. There is little disagreement that these changes will take
place, but there is no preparation taking place yet.

A world-wide Star Trek-like revolution in the economic system will be needed
to enable everyone to have a fulfilling life with a reasonable standard of
living, with machines doing most of our work. The alternative is that the
economy will collapse as spending on goods and services falls to unprecedented
levels. There would be further secondary unemployment, in addition to
technological unemployment, caused by a lack of demand for goods and services.
We all deserve a technological dividend: Technology is for all of us, not just
the few privileged people who control advanced technology.

No-one is talking about unemployment levels in the election campaign, let
alone technological unemployment, which indicates that no political party has
considered the imminent threat (or promise) of technological unemployment
during the next parliamentary term. So no political party is ready to form
government. It is debatable whether a party that ignores the well-known and
widely predicted threat of Australia being afflicted with the highest level of
unemployment ever deserves to be elected.

If no action is taken to completely restructure the economy, a task that will
take some time, then the default setting for the economy is that more and more
money will rapidly go into fewer and fewer hands and there will be suffering
at the bottom of society, and presumably there will be political turmoil,
perhaps even violent revolution.

There will need to be a politically bipartisan realisation, vision, and shared
policy in favour of the urgent need for a completely new economic system which
rejects a punitive approach to unemployment and which socially rewards the
whole populace, because there will likely be resistance from vested interests.

Like the fall of communism, economic liberalism and neoliberalism have been
logically-falsified by rapid technological innovation and are no longer
credible economic theories. A new system of economics which has never
previously been tried on a national scale has to take their place if we are
all to survive rapid technological change.

CONTACT:

Elizabeth Jane

18 Jenico Street Queenstown Tasmania 7467 AUSTRALIA

Mobile: 0438842564 Home: (613) 6471 1286 (Int) 03 6471 1286 (Australia)

E-mail: e-Liza1@hotmail.com

Web/Petition site: [https://www.change.org/p/hon-bill-shorten-and-hon-jenny-
mack...](https://www.change.org/p/hon-bill-shorten-and-hon-jenny-macklin-
labor-leaders-stop-the-lnp-s-disability-pension-cuts/u/16673582)

PLEASE see the above web page for my article/petition update: "UNEMPLOYMENT IN
AUSTRALIA TO PASS 10% IN NEXT TERM OF GOVT." (Published on 22 May 2016), which
includes links to the articles supporting the above points.

