Social Investment Stipend or UBI - One of Them Is Needed In The Age of AI

In his recent major article in the WSJ Review section by  Kai-Fu Lee:
The Human Promise of the AI Revolution - WSJ

We are informed that :

"Recent history has shown us just how fragile out political institutions and social fabric can be in the face of disruptive change.  If we allow AI economics to run their natural course, the geopolitical tumult of recent years will look like child's play"

He is referring here to the rise of reactionary, authoritative governments - not only here in the U.S. with the Trumpite Cabal, but in Hungary, Poland, and Italy as well as Germany.  For sure, no one in his or her right mind wants to see the ascendance of powerful and aggressive fascist dictators a la Mussolini and Hitler.   But as Jay Bookman aptly noted('The New World Disorder Evident Here, Abroad', in The Baltimore Sun, December 15, 1997):

"The global economy has been constructed on the premise that government guarantees of security and protection must be avoided at all costs, because they discourage personal initiative. In times of crisis, however, that premise cannot be sustained politically. In times of trouble it is human nature to seek security and protection and to be drawn toward those who promise to provide it. That is how men such as Adolf Hitler, and Vladimir Ilyich Lenin came to power, with disastrous consequences."

Those are tough words to process but they are invaluable as a lesson in not forgetting the past, or how certain catastrophes arose.  Lee and other authors, most notably Andrew Yang in his book 'The War On Normal People' make that case cogently and that the rise of AI in human job displacement would well and truly mark catastrophe . Or it might mark promise, if we get our economic heads screwed on straight.

Regarding the approaching  economic cataclysm, Lee writes (ibid.):

"In the coming years people will watch as algorithms and robots easily outmaneuver them at tasks they've spent a lifetime mastering. I fear that this will lead to a crushing feeling of futility and obsolescence. At worst, it will lead people to question their own worth and what it means to be human."

Lee is referring to the fact too many people, especially Americans - but also likely many Germans- see our personal worth tied to the pursuit of money and success. This is how a capitalist, consumption society has programmed us and admittedly it is difficult to break that programming.

Lee's thesis in effect, comports very much with Yang's and we already know the major inroads AI is making to displace humans even now.  Barely a year ago, for example, I cited a WSJ  report ('Firms Leave The Bean Counting To The Robots')  warning that AI -based robots would soon be taking over CFO and accounting work across the land. That would essentially displace all those humans currently holding such jobs and likely pulling down big bucks in salary.  The article noted:

"One of Statoil ASA's newest employees, Roberta, spends her days in the energy firm's treasury department searching for missing payment information and sending out reminders.  Her boss, Tor Stian Kjoolesdal, said  Roberta's heavy orkload would improve overall efficiency in the group."

We then learned "Roberta doesn't have a last name, a face or arms. She is the first piece of robotic software to work in the Norwegian company's treasury department - part of Statoil's push to automation, robotics and artificial intelligence."

The piece went on to note that finance execs at Nokia Corp., Royal Dutch Shell and Orange SA were developing their own Robertas. Also:

"Two thirds of large global companies  expect to automate some or all of their finance department tasks over the next two or three years, according to new research by Hackett Group Inc. Hacket's report is based on benchmark and performance studies at hundreds of  large global companies."

The reason offered for the changes  in the WSJ piece was straightforward , direct:
"The new technologies are designed to cut costs, liberate workers from time consuming repetitive tasks and - in many cases - reduce finance and treasury department employee numbers."

I cited Jim Hightower  in the same blog post, who provided more inisght:

"With corporations socking away massive profits and the labor market still tight why are worker's wages stuck at miserly levels? One big reason is that corporate boards and CEOs have their heads stuck in a dreamy future. Nearly every economic sector is spending vast sums of money on workers p just not on human workers.

While few Americans are aware of it, bosses are investing in hordes of sophisticated autonomous robots powered by a cognitive technology called artificial intelligence. Instead of paying a decent wage to you, corporations are buying millions of these cheap, human-esque thinking machines in order to take a shocking number of jobs away - well, from you!"

So at the very least we can agree the AI specter is real and happening now.  There are, of course, differences on what the scale of displacement will be. But on discussing the changes (during a 2016 visit to Barbados)   with Alan Emtage - creator of the Archie search engine, which preceded Google -  he made it clear that by 2032 there would be virtually no jobs left that were exclusively human -conducted.  "Possibly with the exception of plumbers!" he mused.

So the question, as Lee frames it, is: What can be done?   He cites the "founders of the AI age" and how they feel "a mix of genuine social responsibility and fear of being targeted when the pitchforks come out."   Also, that many have seized on the idea of UBI or a universal basic income.   Andrew Yang agrees these techies for a UBI solution and that it is a sensible solution to mass joblessness.

However, Lee doesn't necessarily buy it nor does Edward Glaeser who reviewed Yang's book ('The Cure For Poverty?' July 10, p. A13).  Glaeser takes the  über  'Debbie Downer' position  that UBI will be no great "catalyst to human creativity" as Yang claims.   He offers this bit of history instead as a cautionary note and a pessimistic check on any rank optimists:

"50 years of evidence about labor supply in the U.S. suggests that giving people money will lead them to work less."

To which I would reply, 'So what?'    If that's what they choose to do with their time, work less or not at all, that is their choice. The purpose of UBI ultimately is not to produce a next generations of Picassos or Einsteins, but for people permanently displaced from their work to keep body and soul (figuratively speaking) together.  To keep food and shelter available.  Thus, all the labor reduction citations Glaeser makes are really irrelevant because they dodge the central pout.  He also appears to forget - or maybe he never learned - the famous words of FDR:

"Necessitous men cannot be free men"

In other words, it is NEED or want (for shelter, clothing, food etc.) that defines limits to liberty not work per se. UBI then addresses the issue of need first and foremost, so as to prevent the multiplication of men who perceive they are not free - and so reach for the nearest strongman who promise them that.  Give them UBI - say the usually cited stipend of $12,000 per annum, and they won't resort to strongman,  fascist populists. Doh!

Kai-Fu Lee's Review article is much more practical in terms of solutions, offering the annual stipend - but with the small  volitional aspect ("participation requirements wouldn't dictate the lives of citizens") to actively engage in assorted civic contributions.   So instead of "UBI" he calls it a Social Investment Stipend.

In terms of citizen contributions, he defines three general areas: care work community service and education.  Adding:

"These activities would form the pillars of a new social contract, rewarding socially beneficial activities just as we now reward economically productive activities."

Indeed, the former are clearly more important now in a world that can hardly tolerate further growth which translates into more pollution, more resource depletion (including of water) and more global warming.

In terms of the details for each:

"Care work would include parenting or home schooling of young children, assisting aging parents or helping a friend with mental or physical disabilities.  Service work would focus on much of the nonprofit and volunteer groups - leading after school activities, guiding tours at parks or collecting oral histories from elders in their communities,

Education activities could range from professional training for the jobs of the AI age to giving classes that turn a hobby into a career."

The beauty of Lee's solution is that there is no pretense of generating an explosion in. creativity in the displaced populace. Rather, the same old service skills that have always been used (and needed in human society)  will also be in the age of AI. 

More cogently, Lee's solution puts  the kibosh on Glaeser's Neoliberalish- ranting about how such UBI-type stipends would trigger a "dystopian jobless future", i.e. of millions of wastrels, alcoholics and layabouts.

Whichever way we roll, we need to seriously consider implementing one of these solutions, and probably  before 2025 - if not sooner.

Now It's Electric Vehicles Driving Out Jobs

When Alan Emtage, the father of the modern search engine ("Archie") told me during a conversation in Barbados in April, 2017 that most jobs that required driving would be gone by 2025, I didn't believe him.

"How is this going to happen?" I asked. Of course, I knew about the advent of self-driven vehicles but truth be told, these were nowhere near ready to be taking the highways en masse anytime soon. There were still too many technical details to work out.

But he didn't budge.

"Those issues will all mostly be solved by 2020. Then that will pave the way for long haul self-driven trucks carrying cargo, so humans won't be needed on such drives any longer. Also, bus drivers as well as taxi drivers stand to be replaced. Already, Uber is considering self-driving vehicles, removing most of the problems they've had with driver - passenger negative interactions."

He also assured me that was the tip of the proverbial iceberg, and very soon electric vehicles would be rendering redundant most jobs that depend on maintaining internal combustion engines.  I knew Emtage was also something of a futurist, but believed at the time even this might be too big a stretch even for his seer powers.

That was before I read the December 17, 2017 Denver Post article, 'Electric Vehicles Driving Jobs Out',  by Peter Holley.  We learn therein:

"As a wave of electric vehicles quickly approaches, experts say, it could wash away a large portion of a skilled labor group that has been around for decades: the automobile mechanic."

And why?

"The reason is simple: Unlike gas-powered engines, electric engines don't require oil changes, have far fewer moving parts and rarely break down, eliminating much of the maintenance repair shops rely on. The latest electric vehicles can be services using parts purchased online or fixed remotely through over-the -air updates."

That has serious implications when one considers the U.S. auto repair industry currently employs some 750,000 workers - or almost four times the number employed in the coal industry.   The worst aspect? None of these workers is remotely prepared for the end of the era of gas powered transportation.  Thus, they will likely remain on their soon to be extinct jobs until informed they aren't needed any longer.

According to one long time auto mechanic, Craig Van Batenburg, quoted in the piece:

"People are freaking out. Ninety percent of our industry has done nothing - absolutely nothing - to prepare. They just turn the hybrids and EVs away and say 'We don't work on those cars, take them back  to Ford or Toyota."

This is a sad commentary given there are 160,000 independent auto shops in the U.S. which may all be going out of business very soon.  They are literal dinosaurs given that EVs - unlike gas powered cars- require no traditional oil changes, fuel filters, spark plug replacement or emission checks.  You can also basically say goodbye to changing timing belts, differential and transmission fluid.

This elicits the question of what all these auto mechanics will do once displaced?  Well, it seems clear the same provision of UBI (universal basic income) as needed by the other 300 million in the world about to be displaced by automation. According to one recent WSJ  report ('Firms Leave The Bean Counting To The Robots') in the Business and Investing section (p, B5, Oct. 23) .AI -based robots will soon be taking over CFO and accounting work across the land.  And this is but a fraction of all the workers that will be displaced globally.

The same applies to the realm of manual labor, and  in an October column Jim Hightower cites the example of "SAM" a robotic bricklayer that "lays three times as many bricks in a day as a human can". Hence, it has the potential to displace three times the number of human workers.

Hightower then sizes things up with crystal clarity:

"It's not robots that are taking our jobs, but corporate profiteers. They're creating a robot economy in order to displace you and me with inexpensive machines that don't demand higher wages or health care, don't take sick days or vacations and don't organize unions, file lawsuits or vote for pro-worker politicians. It's to be a plutocratic utopia designed by and for the corporate elite "

His words ought to sound resonant chords in any sentient worker, especially if your job is of a repetitive nature even if not manual labor.   As Hightower notes:

"Also, the jobs of librarians, pharmacists, lawyers, air traffic controllers, doctors, teachers, hospital administrators, bartenders — and so many more — are targeted for massive displacement."

As I warned in earlier posts, now is the time for our vaunted leaders to get serious about implementing the UBI solution.  The alternative is not something any of us will wish to see.

Why Stephen Hawking's "Insane" Predictions From Last Year Are Still Valid (Part 2)

"Hmmm....I don't trust this guy with nuclear weapons any more than I'd trust Hitler!"

In Stephen Hawking's words, from the new BBC documentary: "Although the chance of a disaster on planet Earth in a given year may be quite low, it adds up over time, becoming a near certainty in the next thousand or ten thousand years,”

Note here that Hawking isn't referring to the "law of large numbers", i.e. where one finds an evening out of probability - say for ten thousands coin tosses reaching a ratio of 1 to 1 for heads to tails. He is rather referencing the probability that as time goes on the chance of a natural or man-made cluster fuck will occur.  The asteroids are going to keep coming , for example, for the next hundred, thousand or more years. It's only a matter of time before one with our name on it impacts, as it intersects our orbit.  By the same token as nuclear proliferation continues, it's only a matter of time before some nation with nukes feels threatened enough to use them, or pushes the "button" on entering a fray with a neighbor.

With that in mind, we now consider the other major extinction threats Hawking has proposed:


3) Nuclear Holocaust:

This extinction event is considered 3rd  in order but it is actually much more probable than a killer (Torino  9) asteroid strike, and certainly quicker than climate change as a major species snuffer.  Some latter day wonks have tried to put the spin on such a cataclysm that "only 300 to 500 million" will perish, but that's assuming no all out nuclear war. If the latter occurs, more than 10,000 nuclear warheads in the 500 kt to double megaton range will be released and even if 500 million survive the first strikes and blasts, the rest of us will be done in by the radiation.  And no, you won't survive living in an underground bunker unless you plan to stay there hundreds of years.   For all intents the planet will be a radioactive wasteland.

How will it start, or why? I already referenced in my previous post (Trump's grade for 2017) the words of 'Art of the Deal' ghost writer Michael T. Schwarz in the anthology 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump':

"His amygdala is repeatedly triggered...and his prefrontal cortex - the part of the brain that makes us capable of rationality and reflection - shuts down. He reacts rather than reflects - and damn the consequences.  This is what makes his access to the nuclear codes so dangerous and frightening."

It is truly frightening!  It means his brain is more wired to react on the reptile than the reflective level and it puts us all in peril. This is a character, literally, who believes HE is more important than all of humanity.

Political media specialist Ezra Klein, in an appearance on MSNBC last Friday night warned, in the context of why an urgent impeachment may be needed:

"We are in this strange position where we are running a nuclear hyper power. The President of the United States is the most dangerous job in the world. The president who is the wrong person....the extent of what can go wrong there....goes all the way over to nuclear holocaust - which could be launched more or less before breakfast. And this is the only job we can think of where incredibly poor performance cannot get you fired. There is something wrong in that.?"

Of course, Klein is absolutely correct because the lives of billions now hang in the balance, waiting to be snuffed out over one reckless decision by an unqualified loon with 7500 nuclear warheads at his disposal.

In the book, 'The Dangerous Case of Donald Trump' clinical psychologist  Michael J. Tansey informs us (p. 121):

"Although there are several areas in which DT's particular version of personality disorder is vital to understand, none is more compelling or terrifying than his control of the nuclear codes.  Surpassing the devastation of climate, health care, education, diplomacy, social services, freedom of speech, and liberty and justice for all, nothing is more incomprehensible than the now plausible prospect of an all -out nuclear war.

For all but the few remaining survivors who witnessed the atomic bombing of Japan and its aftermath we simply have nothing in our own experiences to imagine the instantaneous annihilation. Quite literally we are here one second and vaporized the next along with everyone and everything."

Let me pause here to interject that although none of us except the Japanese survivors have experienced an atomic attack, you can get a very good inkling of what happens to humans by watching it in this clip from the movie 'Threads', e.g.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MrHoMSRZOS4

Tansey again (ibid.):

"Because of this very real existential threat, it is absolutely urgent that we comprehend the titanic differences between a president who is merely 'crazy like a fox' versus one I have termed crazy like crazy (possessing core grandiose and paranoid delusions disconnected from factual reality."

In Tansey's take Trump is "crazy like crazy".   A nuclear holocaust under Trump? This is likely to happen if the Dotard's minders are unable to control his worst, most degenerate impulses after he loses it - maybe in a twitter war with Kim Jong Un ("My nuclear button is bigger than yours, Kim!") Who knows?  Stephen Hawking, no fan of Trump's,  is also worried about this scenario and clearly the reason the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists has advanced the nuclear holocaust clock by 30 seconds closer to midnight, i.e. because Trump is in control of the nuclear football.  Most ominously,  as recently as three months ago, Sen. Bob Corker warned that Trump’s rhetoric and threats, especially toward North Korea, could set the nation “on the path to World War III”.  

According to sources in the WH cited by journalist Gabe Sherman at the time, Trump grew so on edge he was  "just itching to launch World War III"  to burn all his critics one time as well as the putative enemy Kim Jong Un who he belittled as "little rocket man".

But this is the nature of an unhinged asshole who has no business running a dog pound or landfill much less run a country.   As conservative columnist George Will  ("Last Word", Dec, 29th) put it, "Donald Trump is incapable of sequential thought which in itself is very disturbing".

By "sequential thought" Will meant a person is capable of following a logical thread, of cause and effect, e.g. A -> B -> C etc.   By contrast to rigorous sequential thought, Dotard's mind wanders all over the place, "like a little drunken tweety bird scavenging in all directions for  crumbs" in the words of MSNBC anchor Joy Reid. 

As if to put an exclamation point on the whole issue, former Chair of the Joint Chiefs of Staff,  Admiral Michael Mullen, said over the weekend:

 "We are actually closer to a nuclear war with North Korea, in my view,  than we've ever been and I just don't see the opportunity to solve this diplomatically."

No nonsense words from a guy who ought to know.

4) Pandemic that kills most humans:

This may be a lot closer to realization than many believe thanks to the Trumpies recently allowing Bird flu research toward higher contagion. This thrust began in 2011 with a Dutch virologist -  Ron Fouchier  -accused of engineering a dangerous superflu . In 2011, Fouchier and his team at Erasmus Medical Center took the H5N1 flu virus and made it more contagious.

Back in April  the team published another study with more details on the exact genetic changes needed to do the trick. The H5N1 bird flu is known to have sickened 650 people worldwide, and of those, 386 died. 

Fouchier's work, plus some similar research from another lab, showed for the first time that the virus had the potential to change in a way that would make it a real pandemic threat. Only a few mutations were necessary to make the H5N1 bird flu spread through the air between ferrets, the lab stand-in for people.

Critics argued that the scientists had created a dangerous new superflu and they pushed for the recipe not to be openly published. They feared that others would repeat the work and either not adequately safeguard the virus or would deliberately release it. After a long debate about security versus scientific openness, the research findings did finally appear in a journal.

In April, in the journal Cell, Fouchier and his colleagues expand on that initial work. They identified five mutations that are sufficient to make H5N1 spread through the air between ferrets. Fouchier  wrote in one email:

"Two mutations enable improved binding of the H5N1 bird flu virus to cells in the upper respiratory tract of mammals. Another mutation increases the stability of the virus. The two remaining mutations enable the virus to replicate more efficiently."

Before Fouchier and his colleagues published the current work, it underwent multiple layers of review to assess the level of danger it might pose to the public. The team had to get an export license from the Dutch government that normally applies to technology that can be weaponized. The paper was also reviewed by the U.S. National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, which funded the research.

Fouchier's justification is straight out of the sci-fi horror flicks where a deadly virus escapes a gov't lab and reduces humanity by the billions - as in one Outer Limits series of episodes from the 90s. According to him, the research is needed to see how a pandemic which spreads airborne mammal to mammal might be stopped. So, if we know how to spread it airborne we will know how to stop it. Amplifying further Fouchier wrote back in April:

"That does not mean that we have reached general consensus about the need to do this type of work, and how to do it safely.  But general consensus will be impossible to reach on any topic. We will keep the dialogues going with everyone, but at the same time need to continue this important line of work."

Not everyone agrees with that. "I still don't understand why such a risky approach must be taken," says microbiologist David Relman of Stanford University. "I'm discouraged."

Relman served on a government advisory committee that considered whether this research should be openly published. He questions whether these studies really will help give public health officials advance warning of the next emerging flu pandemic.

What's more recently distressing is the Trump administration has recently lifted a ban on making the flu more deadly. See e.g.

http://www.smirkingchimp.com/thread/kali-holloway/76827/u-s-government-lifts-ban-on-making-viruses-more-deadly-and-transmissible


Excerpt:

"The new National Institutes of Health policy reverses a 2014 Obama administration funding ban on gain-of-function research projects specifically involving all forms of the influenza virus, Middle East respiratory syndrome (MERS), and severe acute respiratory syndrome (SARS). The new rules would extend beyond those viruses, “apply[ing] to any pathogen that could potentially cause a pandemic,” according to the New York Times. “For example, they would apply to a request to create an Ebola virus transmissible through the air.”

The preceding information - which has been in the relevant journals (and some news sources) for at least the past 6 years- leave little doubt that we are at risk of a major superflu pandemic if things go south. And that can indeed happen because, well, mistakes can happen.  As occurred several years ago when CDC workers were exposed to anthrax and other viruses by accident.( In 2014, a laboratory mistake at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in Atlanta potentially exposed a technician to the deadly Ebola virus. The technician was subsequently  monitored for signs of infection for 21 days, the incubation period of the disease. Fortunately, he was cleared, but things might not have worked out and may indeed, not work out if a jazzed up Avian flu virus is accidentally released.  Word of the  accident at CDC later provoked concern and disbelief from some safety experts. Dangerous samples of anthrax and flu were similarly mishandled at the C.D.C.)

If partial or total human extinction by way of viral pandemic does occur, you may be sure it will be because of lab mishandling or creation of a weaponized variation.

5) Artificial intelligence replacing humans altogether. 

This one is based on a comment Hawking made to WIRED magazine, e.g.:

"I fear that AI may replace humans altogether. If people design computer viruses, someone will design AI that improves and replicates itself."

But, on discussing this with Alan Emtage (the creator of the original search engine, "Archie") in Barbados last April, he pooh-poohed it.  He said the vastly greater threat of AI is to human employment, and cited AI systems now displacing financial workers, and taking over most repetitive jobs. He asserted it's just a matter of time, "maybe ten years", before most retail human jobs are gone, as well as taxi drivers, bus drivers and other driving jobs - replaced by driverless, AI-directed vehicles.   The danger then isn't AI per se, but all those millions of idle humans with nothing to do and no paychecks coming in.  Look at the current violent riots in Iran over food prices and multiply that by about 1000 times in frequency and intensity on a global scale to see what we may be in for. 

"It's the perfect recipe for terror, civil unrest and even wars." according to Emtage.  His solution is to set up the UBI (universal basic income)  financial structure from now, and not wait until after the crisis erupts.

See also:

http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/american-scientists-controversially-recreate-deadly-spanish-flu-virus-9529707.html