Artificial Intelligence: Americas Uprising or Downfall

In the next fifteen years, 38% of American jobs will be taken over by artificial intelligence, and as time goes on that number will only continue to increase. Even today, artificial intelligence is taking American jobs everywhere. These technological advances will be a knife in the back to the American economy unless the government can come up with a plausible solution to the problem. Extreme poverty will likely consume America due to the future technology advancements. The period of time where transitions are being made to this new reality will lead to poverty, which will then be eliminated when adaptions have been made to this new world. The development of artificial intelligence may seem like a problem in the near future, but it could solve several of the problems within American society.

Revealed in 2016, Uber released its first self driving Uber car. The experiment (besides a few minor needs for adjustment) was successful and the expansion of self driving cars continues to expand. With the expansion of self driving cars leads to the decrease in the need for Uber drivers. The amount of Uber drivers in America is more than 1.5 million. If Uber were to replace all of its drivers with artificial intelligence, more than 1.5 million people will be out of a job. This is not the only job that is being taken over by artificial intelligence either. “The industry most affected by automation is manufacturing. For every robot per thousand workers, up to six workers lost their jobs and wages fell by as much as three-fourths of a percent, according to a new paper by the economists, Daron Acemoglu of M.I.T. and Pascual Restrepo of Boston University” (Miller). Manufacturing is not where the artificial intelligence take over stops either.

Additionally, jobs like fast food workers and lawn care businesses are being taken over today and the technology advancements to take other jobs is coming sooner than people think. Oxford Research studies show that the first jobs to go in the next twenty years will be jobs like: middle management, commodity salespeople, writers, announcers, accountants, bookkeepers, and doctors (Oxford Researchers). Kevin Drum, a CNN reporter, stated in his article You Will Lose Your Job to a Robot- and Sooner Than You Think that, “I don’t care what your job is. If you dig ditches, a robot will dig them better. If you’re a magazine writer, a robot will write your articles better. If you’re a doctor, IBM’s Watson will no longer “assist” you in finding the right diagnosis from its database of millions of case studies and journal articles. It will just be a better doctor than you”(Drum). What he means by this is that no matter what the job is, even if it seems like only a human can perform it, a robot will more than likely be able to perform it with way more precision and excellence than any human. Yes, it will take longer to invent the artificial intelligence that is able to perform tasks that seems like only humans are able to do, but it is very possible. It is also coming very soon. So soon that the government is not prepared for the changes that are going to be necessary if they want to avoid another great depression.

While the government is still coming up with solutions to help adapt to the new technological changes, more than half of America will be doomed to poverty. Kevin Drum stated, “Unfortunately, for those of us worried about robots taking away our jobs, these advances mean that mass unemployment is a lot closer than we feared—so close, in fact, that it may be starting already.”(Drum) It is projected that “47% of U.S. jobs could be automated within the next two decades,”(Oxford) and in just a few more years the number of jobs taken will be well over 50%. There is only so much the government can do at this time to try to decrease the unemployment rate.

For instance, one of the possible solutions to delay the overwhelming amount of poverty by giving a universal wage. “Everyone would qualify for a certain level of income from the state, but the level of guaranteed income would be fairly modest because we would still want people to work. Unemployment wouldn’t be as stigmatized as it is in today’s welfare state, but neither would widespread joblessness be truly accepted as a permanent fact of life.”(Drum) As the production in artificial intelligence continues on and the majority of jobs are taken over the universal wage amount will most likely increase. It will then get to a point where people can earn bonus wages for performing the little jobs that are left.

On the other hand, mass unemployment is not the only symptom of the takeover of artificial intelligence. The takeover does have benefits. For instance, national healthcare will be free. The service you will be receiving from the artificial intelligence will be far more convenient and better performed than any human worker you have had in the past. Big businesses will benefit from the cheap labor the robots will be able to provide. Also the unemployment insurance will be far more generous. Overall the most significant change this could have is an almost utopia. When the complete artificial intelligence comes, the segregation between the rich and poor would be completely eliminated. People's’ need stealing, prostituting, and killing for money will be eliminated; because, with the universal income everyone will be earning enough money to get whatever their heart desires.

In the meantime, the world needs to start preparing for this future now. Obama announced May 9, 2017 that, "Obama pointed to driverless cars as an example of the potential and challenges for a changing workforce. Autonomous vehicles will be safer and more convenient, he said, but in the U.S. there are 3 million or 4 million people who currently make a living driving who would be out of work. “We have to anticipate those things now,” he said. One of his goals as president—and where he said he admittedly was not entirely successful—was thinking about the sectors of the economy that would be eliminated by technology 20 or 30 years from now. Obama said that the solution would “require reorganization of the social compact” in which work gets spread around more, rather than having a small percentage of people working 80 to 90 hours a week and making huge incomes on one side and redundant workers who have a hard time supporting their families on the other. “That’s not a sustainable mechanism for democracy,” he said.”(Kowitt)

What Obama means is that we need to make adjustments and prepare for the upcoming technology now before it is too late. Obama predicts that if we do not get the word out there about the takeover that society will crumble. The segregation between rich and poor will grow, and millions of jobs will be lost if we do not prepare now. In 2016, Obama even went as far as to suggest that all citizens should get a government stipend. If this the government continues to do nothing about this upcoming issue America will not be prepared for the mass poverty.

The artificial intelligence takeover may seem like it can solve a lot of controversial issues in the future, but if we don’t act quick enough on the issue it could lead to the next great depression. No matter who’s job it is, all jobs have the potential to be taken by artificial intelligence. America will go through a transition time before an accommodation is made to the new upcoming world. The government will have to come up with a new laws to help save the American economy and when all the jobs are completely taken over by artificial intelligence America will finally reach its creed.