There is a great deal of material being written about AI and its potential for improving our lives. Many of the promoters of AI are the big corporations and governments: this of itself should make us think carefully about what might happen if the AI Revolution goes ahead at full force.
seems to me that AI is a form of advanced automation. affecting work processes, services and commerce. From a management post of view, the application of AI devices and processes will speed up production, and improve efficiency in services and profitability in production.
The investment will be costly, but the long-term ‘savings’ will be immense. Ho so? How will costs be reduced? The main \savings’. or ‘efficiencies’ will come about by reducing jobs.This is the worry, especially if the context fro this social and economic revolution is a privatised, free-market one, where ordinary people will be most affected. It raises many questions for us: how will the transition from work, albeit low paid and casualised, to mass unemployment be managed. How will people live their lives in a more automated world.
In managed and planned economies, such as found in the Scandinavian countries, the benefits from this revolution will be shared and people and communities supported. but, if we look at the other extreme, in countries like the US and the UK, no such planned and managed process is ideologically possible. There will be shocks and damage, as in the destruction and privatisations of our essential economic assets (steel and coal) and the counted profit-based offerings of the service sector.
It is inevitable that there will be widespread anger and unrest, and it is against that context that we can see processes of social control for many people now being put into place. The current wave of legislation aimed to prevent protests and gatherings begins to make sense. The control over expression of thought and opinion now being enforced all point to a bleak period of social existence. The brief libertarian period based on social media is coming to an end.
The least we can do is to try to open up a wider discussion about the nature and effects of AI on people’s lives.
Bits and bobs 