Substack hosts a semi-regular series of live debate events, where I had the pleasure of participating in a live debate with fellow substacker
on the topic of “Should robots take our jobs?”. I officially won the debate, but in the end, I think Brian and I agreed on more than we disagreed on.We agreed that it’s unlikely that robots actually do take all our jobs; in other words, we’re arguing about a fairly sci-fi future instead of a likely scenario. And our basic stance is that society needs to develop institutions to make sure that the wealth from automation is widely distributed throughout society. In the Industrial Age, those institutions were things like welfare states, taxes, unions, labor regulations, minimum wage laws, and so on. It’s not clear what new redistributive institutions would be necessary in an age of pervasive automation — Sovereign wealth funds? UBI? Resources set aside for human consumption? — but it seems likely that we would need some new ones.
Where Brian and I disagree is on the likelihood of these institutions being developed, and on the pain and suffering that will be required in order to build them. Brian thinks that as long as rich guys like Sam Altman are in charge of the development of AI, it will be hard to change society to “redistribute the robots”. I’m far more optimistic; I don’t think the Sam Altmans of the world will ultimately have that much power over our institutions.
It’s also a question of whether you take the long view or the short view in terms of how this all shakes out. In the case of the Industrial Revolution, it took centuries of social and political struggle to wrestle the new productive system into something egalitarian, and along the way there were some very horrific failures such as communism. Whole lifetimes and whole generations were swallowed up by the struggle to tame industrial technology.
But in the end, we succeeded. Our societies are immeasurably better than if we had simply shied away from inventing power looms, or machine tools, or harvesters, or any of the other labor-saving automation that took most of our ancestors’ jobs. Stopping a new technological revolution in its tracks, or significantly slowing it down, is very hard. In general, the only way out is through — the best world comes not from resisting new technology, but from accelerating the development of sociopolitical institutions that make sure new technology’s benefits are widely shared.
I think the audience at the debate agreed with my more optimistic, long-term perspective.
Anyway, big thanks to
, , , , and for producing the event, and especially to for getting the event together in the first place. It was very fun, and I’m looking forward to the next one!
