Automation doesn't have to be the best to replace humans, just better than the average.
At least in my observations, many people don't fully appreciate or even understand this. They think that an AI for instance that makes mistakes isn't good enough to replace humans who on average, make more mistakes. It is the same with robotics, where it doesn't have to be the best at a particular skill, but if on average it gets a better result than humans, it is good enough to start replacing from the worst up. And even if it is only average, a robot can work 24 hours a day, without sickness, mental problems, or complaining about working conditions.
At some point, it will be illegal for humans to do many tasks.
Take driving for example. While full self-driving has many issues currently and has a long way to close the gap to Max Verstappen or Lewis Hamilton, it is probably already better than many people driving on the roads today at the majority of basic things. And even though they malfunction from time to time, they are unlikely to be as inconsistent in the extremes as humans, meaning they won't be hooning around, street racing, showing-off for for friends, driving drunk or on drugs, excessively speeding and all the other things that will lead to driving failure, injury and death. At some point, it will become illegal for humans to drive on the roads, because they are just too dangerous in comparison. It will likely be the same in the air, especially after events like co-pilots stabbing their pilot and attempting to crash the plane.
It won't only be the professional jobs that disappear, as a lot of the normal things we do, like driving will be removed also. For many, that might not seem like a big loss as many dislike driving anyway, but the less we do, the less we learn. And a lot of the various daily tasks we keep replacing are teaching us vital core skills in how we use our minds, bodies and interact with each other - as well as how we process and react to our experience.
As individuals, we tend to only focus on ourselves, so when something is removed that we as an individual don't use or care about, we don't mind. But it is a bit like the famous poem written after World War Two, "First they came". We don't speak out when it doesn't concern us, but humans are going to lose a lot of capabilities across the board and since we are all connected, it will affect us all eventually. And this will be brutally apparent once skill underdevelopment becomes even more clear, because right now there are so many excuses covering for the reduction in human abilities, like social skills. Just imagine when we have little practical to do and we are socially inept.
But social aptitude will only be one of the many missing elements that will affect us, because we are also going to have across the board degradations in physical skills, mental skills, and our abilities to control our emotions and subsequent reactions. We are already seeing this happen based on the last thirty or forty years where digitalisation has impacted on our core abilities and emotional stability, which is on the back of a massive increase in physical degradation, like our weight and general motor skills. A couple million years of evolutionary improvements, reversing in a few short decades.
Due to the way we have evolved, set up the economy and how we have conditioned ourselves to chase the easiest path at any cost, there is no turning back automation which will continually improve to replace more and more of our skills. At this point, we are almost a lost cause as currently, we are doing very little to change the direction of what we value as a species. We are still focusing on economic growth as the goal, as if it translates into human growth also. It doesn't. At an individual level with money, we can buy more opportunity, but when we look at the macro view, we are in a pool of decreasing opportunity that will work its way up the wealth ranks until everyone is affected. The bottom will feel it first as always, but none will be left untouched.
To course correct, we need to start seeing humans as more valuable than money. Up until relatively recently, we didn't have to do this, because people were needed to make money, which has been a driver for education and healthcare systems, not to mention retirement funding. Increasingly though, generating money and human capital are decoupling and whether consciously or not, it is going to leave humans with no place in the economic supply chain, which means that there is no trickle down at al, not that it has ever worked well.
I don't expect any changes will be made until the pain and suffering is so great that it can't be ignored (another feature of humanity), so we will keep on heading down this path until it gets too painful to continue. By then, we will be even less capable of creating viable solutions, and have less resources to work with. We can then look back at all the little steps taken to keep removing ourselves from the equation, until the formula doesn't need us at all.
Empires take longer to build, than to fall.
Humanity will be no different.
Taraz
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