ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE

There’s been much talk in the media lately about artificial intelligence (AI) and its potential impact on employment and as we’re in the process of getting a new computer system at work then AI has been a hot topic of conversation. 

“We’ll all be out of a job” bemoaned one colleague at the thought of robots storming the workplace, doing our jobs in a nanosecond and making us all look like lazy, good-for-nothing tea-swilling numpties. 

 

Marvin - the paranoid android

Robots are programmed to do what they’re told, humans are not.  Robots can work 24 hours a day, humans won’t.  Robots don’t go on strike, let’s not even go there….   Robots don’t have genders, use pro-nouns, worry about which loo to use, get sick, get offended at non-PC work place banter, drink tea, ask to work from home or for pay rises and don’t retire.  Let’s face it, robots are model employees so who wouldn’t prefer to manage them as opposed to a bunch of unruly humans? 

Personally, I think my colleague is completely missing the point.  The question is not ‘what are people going to do with their day?’ if their jobs are fully automated but more like ‘who is going to pay taxes or NI?’  Last time I looked, robots didn’t have any money.  They’re not paid a wage.   They don’t have bank accounts bursting with cryptocurrency.  They certainly don’t pay income tax. 

No earnings, no taxes or NI contributions so just how are the Government going to re-coup all that lost revenue to pay for benefits, pensions, health services, etc?  From the robot using employers?  I doubt it!  

More importantly if the Government doesn’t have the money to pay for things such as state pensions or health services does that mean that these things will cease to exist in the future?  Or that we’ll have to pay for them directly out of our own pocket? 

I’ve always felt that auto-enrolment of workers into pension schemes is the thin end of the wedge towards the scrapping of state pensions.  The more we save for our retirement, the less the state will eventually give us.  Now that threshold salary for automatic enrolment into a workplace pension is being scrapped then watch this space, state pensions will go the way of the dodo and become nothing but a wistful reminiscence - “Remember when we used to get a state pension?”  Come on, no waffling off on a pensions tangent …. 

Artificial Intelligence is the breeding ground for ‘AS’ or Actual Stupidity as I like to call it.  Human brains are being stealthily manipulated by the rich and powerful into extinction.  Slowly but surely our capacity to figure things out or execute simple tasks such as map reading or tying shoelaces will diminish thanks to technology or products designed for convenience.  We’ll lack the capacity to plan revolutions or bring about change through collective protest because we’ll be glued to a screen somewhere having cute kittens intravenously fed into our cerebrums or being continually sub-divided into factions that can’t bear the sight of each other. 

Anyhow, in our office I think AI is a long way off.  We can’t even get our laptops or VOIP phones to function without major dramas and in answer to my colleagues point about being out of jobs, then no we won’t be because we’ll be employed to switch the robots off then back on again every time they malfunction.  

Chris Madden sums it up perfectly

What will happen to those robotic workers if the internet goes down is anyone’s guess but I won’t care because I’ll be gossiping/tea-drinking in the office canteen instead of doing my job or growing petunias as I’ll be unemployed. 

However, as much as the thought of robots stealing our livelihoods makes me a little annoyed (only a little?) the thought of having an automated housekeeper that will take care of all the cleaning, cooking and clearing out of stinky cat turds is most definitely appealing.  Put my name down for one of those, please!

Robo Maid - please can I have one?