Chosen Few

 The naked ape can't run fast on land, is a poor swimmer, neither can it see well in the dark, nor has it got strong limbs and yet it dominates the planet. Blessed with a big brain the naked ape has outpaced the fastest animals on land, can fly higher than an eagle and defeated the most carnivorous predator. Yet paradoxically, the greatest threat the naked ape faces now is himself. His greed and laziness threatens his very own existence.

Humans used to hunt or gather to survive but because they are smart and lazy they invented tools to make work easy, the first tool was probably a stick, then ploughs and tractors. So we went from nearly everyone making food to nobody needing to make food and yet there was an abundance. Then we spent thousands of years building mechanical muscles, which were more reliable and more tireless than human muscles could ever be. These were positive advances, since everyone was better off, even those doing physical labour, additionally this is how economies grew and standards of living rose. People then specialised, productivity rose and standards of living kept improving.

But what happened when mechanical engineers and computer programmers pushed the boundaries of technology to build mechanical minds?

Just as the mechanical muscle has made human labour less in demand mechanical minds are now making human brain labour less in demand. I am not referring to the automated robots used for mas-production with robots performing repetitive tasks in a narrow framework. The generation of robots that now exist have vision, they can learn to perform a task by watching someone do it and they cost less than the average salary of a human worker. The main difference with this generation of robots is that they are not programmed to perform one specific job. They can do multiple tasks. This type of robot can do whatever work is in reach of their mechanical arms. These robots are general purpose, it could be a waiter, cook, butler. Although this robot is slow, its hourly cost of labour is pennies compared with his meat based competition, it is a fraction of the cost of the minimum wage. In supermarkets what use to be thirty humans performing a task we now have 30 robots being overseen by one human.

Today mechanical minds are capable of decision making and out competing humans for jobs in the way that no mechanical muscle could do.

Think about the role of horses before the harnessing of steam power and subsequent internal combustion. They were used for transport, delivered the mail, ploughed fields and rode into battle. Technology has changed all that. Did technology provide horses with new roles? The answer is no. Sure, there are still working horses but nothing like before. The horse population peeked in 1915, from then onwards it was nothing but downhill for the use of horses and their population.

There is no rule of economics that says better technology makes better jobs for horses. So if we swap horses for humans, why should we think that the rule is right?

So just like mechanical muscles pushed humans out of the economy mechanical minds will do the same. As technology gets cheaper, better faster biology cannot match, pushing millions of humans out of work. The automobile was the begining of the end for the horse and it might be an indication of what is about to come. Take self driving cars, the transport industry employs 70 million people worldwide, these jobs are at risk. If you think the Unions will protect these jobs, its unlikely. Look at history, the workers always lose and the economy wins.

The plan of pushing 100 million people through higher college eduction is no safe haven either because white collar work is also at risk. The software robots will soon be able to do your work too. The world's smartest software engineers are probably right now working on a robot to do your job. The cutting edge of programming today isn't about super smart programmers writing programs for robots, it's super smart programmers writing programs for robots that teach themselves how to do things that even its author could not do. Robots are now traders, NYSE is now largely a TV set with robots trading. Robots have learnt the financial markets and taught themselves to write. So demand for human brain labour even in these types of job is on the way down.

Professions are safe from robots?

The bulk of legal work is paper work, drafting contracts, sifting through information at a fraction of the time. Robots don't get sleepy reading through a million emails. IBM has developed a robot called Watson, which is now capable of processes information more like a human. The challenge is to make it the best medical doctor in the world. Teachers are also being replaced by technology.

Even creative robots are being created to compose music, paint... and write...

I am wandering where this is all going to leads us. What is going to happen to the hundreds of millions of unemployed workers, how are they going to survive?

Are we going to end-up with just a chosen few, already in the past 40 years there has been an enormous growth in inequality of wealth. The wealthiest 400 people in the United States had their combined net worth grow thirteen percent to 2.29 trillion USD this year, according to Forbes rich list. This is about the same as the gross domestic product of Brazil, a country of 200 million people.