Robot economics

An article about the dilemmas faced by managers as the service robotics industry grows.  This is the standard narrative around robotics and employment, and to large extent I think it's true that robotics can complement existing workforces and make work safer, more productive and less stressful.

Automating previously manual processes, such that workers become managers or teleoperators of robots, is just the first stage though.  Over time the supervisory jobs can also be subject to automation as more data about the details of supervision is collected, mined and modelled, so ultimately there is really no escape from the rising tide.

Some jobs which are primarily about human contact and the human condition will probably remain largely immune from automation, and here I'm thinking of things such as artistic pursuits.  This is not to say that AI systems cannot also do creative work, but much of the value of art seems to originate from a fascination with the humanity of the artist and their individual story.

Going beyond the standard narrative in the sort term, by which I mean the next few decades, I expect current trends to continue.  As more systems are automated this concentrates wealth, and hence political power, into fewer and fewer hands.  Initially robotics complements the existing workforce, but as time goes on it becomes increasingly obvious that jobs are being lost in the drive for ever greater efficiencies.  The middle classes shrink and become less affluent, cronyism becomes more apparent in daily life and the fraction of the population who are in one way or another defined to be "economically inactive" continues to enlarge.

My guess is that the number of jobs which are immune from the effects of technological unemployment is not going to be sufficient to keep the system stable in the form that we know it now, and that as inequality increases the resulting stresses will bring about a higher degree of localised production with less reliance upon money as a representation of value and determinant of wealth.  The kind of phenomena I'm expecting is to see people getting paid less and finding it much harder to obtain money via their own labour, but still having an acceptable standard of living from a surplus of goods and services produced via automation in a decentralised way.  In a world where automation technology is more advanced, factories may lose their competitive advantage in terms of economies of scale and it may be possible to produce single items on demand at the same unit cost that a factory could produce a thousand or a million identical widgets.  Raw materials will still need to be moved around, bought and sold and recycled, so I still expect a monetary economy to play a part in that regard, but eventually perhaps the majority of the economy may be a gift or post-scarcity system similar to that of our distant tribal ancestors, or similar to the economy of open source software which exists now.

Sandwiched between the current monetary system and a gift economy is an intermediate stage of the citizen's income.  To an extent we already have this, although often imperfectly implemented, in terms of social security systems.  As inequality rises but automation is not yet fully downwardly mobile it may be possible for the fortresses of wealth to effectively "buy off" the rest of the population by issuing a minimum income guarantee as a right of citizenship, keeping most people at least sufficiently comfortable that they don't revolt against the status quo.  This strategy might temporarily bolster a primarily money based economy for a while, in order to ensure that the purchase power of those in its possession is not depleted too greatly.

Although I think that money will become less important it seems unlikely that its fall from favour will be entirely catastrophic.  In many ways money is a convenient indicator of value, and direct electronic exchange via cryptocurrencies or other electronic tokens would be quite efficient and keep any unproductive rent seeking activities to the minimum.