If “work ennobles man,” as the saying goes, are we headed for a very ignoble future? If “cash is king” today, what will reign tomorrow? If an abundance of the material can bury the spiritual, are we headed for an ever-more intensified secularism?
These questions could and should be asked with a prediction billionaire industrialist Elon Musk recently made.
Our not-too-distant future is one, he says, in which cash will be worthless and work merely an option. Why, Musk adds, there may not even be a reason to save for retirement. How come?
Artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics will in a decade or two, he states, deliver a world of mechanical slaves that will satisfy every human need and want. In fact, the only limit to the abundance might be energy constraints and raw materials’ finiteness.
The Ant and The Grasshopper — Mr. Hopper’s Time Has Come?
Reporting on the story earlier this week, The Daily Overview wrote:
Musk has moved beyond warning that AI will disrupt jobs and is now arguing that it will underwrite a new baseline of prosperity. As Tesla CEO, he has said that advanced systems will create a kind of universal high income that makes traditional saving less important, because machines will be able to produce almost everything people need with minimal human labor. In his view, the combination of AI and robotics [AI-Bot] will eliminate poverty by driving the cost of goods and services toward zero….
He has gone further, arguing that as AI systems scale, money itself will soon be useless in the way people currently understand it. In one account, the argument is framed explicitly as “According to Elon Musk, Money Will Soon Be Useless, Why Does He Predict the End of Poverty,” with Musk contending that AI and robotics will become the backbone of a utopian society where scarcity is engineered away and financial incentives lose their central role. That framing captures his claim that the same technologies that threaten existing jobs could, if managed correctly, also dismantle material deprivation….
This may sound fanciful to some. But the only real question is whether we’ll destroy ourselves, or whether AI will, before or soon after this technology’s full flowering. What’s for certain is that if we don’t, AI-Bot will eventually be able to perform every or virtually every job. Why, need a plumber? A dexterous AI android may be repairing your pipes.
Hellbound and Down 