Requiem for the downward-mobile
by Tom Sullivan
An Aspen Institute report on the human impacts of the next wave of automation adds to the anxieties already roiling these dis-United States. The Aspen Institute (AI) warns that artificial intelligence (also AI) will have a far more disruptive effect than the last wave of automation from which displaced workers never really recovered.
Against the backdrop of continued jobs growth, this threat is all but invisible. Yet, Axios reports:
Already, Aspen's Alastair Fitzpayne tells Axios, workers displaced in prior technological cycles "have experienced profound downward mobility" in new jobs at much lower pay and benefits.
Job retraining and other federal supports for displaced workers were so much cold comfort to people retraining for work that paid less and left them worse off than before. The report's executive summary warns, "Artificial intelligence and other new technologies may lead to deeper, faster, broader, and more disruptive automation" that retraining programs may mitigate even less.
Aspen warns that the next wave may not follow the historical script. Fewer jobs may be created than destroyed:
- In an interview, Fitzpayne, a co-author of the Aspen report, said no one knows how many new jobs will be produced, where they will be created, or how much they will pay.
- The points are important because most studies play down the real possibility that the automation age could go very wrong, for an extended period, for large swaths of workers and their communities.
- Workers who lost their jobs in the wave of manufacturing layoffs in the early 1980s, for instance, were still earning 15%-20% less in their new work 20 years later, according to the Aspen report.
But "technology is not destiny," Aspen cheerfully offers. With the right policy choices, we can choose to create an economy that works for everybody, etc., etc. For example, by encouraging employers to adopt a more "human-centric approach" to delivering the bottom line. And by supporting displaced workers through "retraining, reemployment services, and Unemployment Insurance to help displaced workers transition to new jobs and careers." It's in employers' best interest "to grow and retain the best workers," Adam Roston, CEO of BlueCrew staffing tells Axios.
Forgive my skepticism.
Progressive rock star Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez suggests new technology might be liberating, but with a caveat:
“We should be excited about automation, because what it could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we live in,” Ocasio-Cortez said, putting the anti-1-percenter firmly on the side of the optimistic 52 percent of technologists.
But something else she said got less attention, and spoke more to the pressing issue: The “reason we’re not excited by it is because we live in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is, at its core, our problem.”
A more durable one than our devices, sadly. The question in the adoption of any new technology, including the legal technology underlying shareholder capitalism is, as Humpty Dumpty said of words, “which is to be master—that's all.” We are just too busy buying the newest shiny thing to ask it or to consider the human costs.
The cultural stigma attached to job loss is also profound, and change-resistant. Conservatives are not about to celebrate jobless people having more time to create art and enjoy the world we live in.
The yawning wealth gap between the Haves and the Have-nots is not healthy for any society. That we must adopt new technology or die is not a human-centric impulse, but an economic one reflective of homo corporatus not homo sapiens.
The merciless logic of shareholder capitalism and acceptance of the inevitability of technological change means — for all the bluster about free markets and freedom — humans are just along for the ride and no longer in control. Not really. Efficiency is more important. Like freedom reduced to an abstraction, it's not efficiency in service to human beings, just efficiency for efficiency's sake.
Comedian John Mulaney's “Horse Loose In A Hospital” bit dropped into my lap this week about two years late. A commentary on how out of control the Trump era feels to normal people, it is a comedic triumph.
One joke reflects how people unconsciously value efficiency in the abstract:
Sometimes, if you make fun of the horse, people will get upset. These are the people that open the door for the horse ... I go, "Hey, how come you open the door for the horse?" And they go, "Well, the hospital was inefficient!"
It's Friday. After that, you'll need a good laugh:
Update: [h/t Tarkloon for corrected obvious typo]
