Should we fear the robot age?

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Fear of machines taking jobs dates back at least as far as the Luddites. Two centuries on, many of us could face the same predicament. In 2013 Carl Frey and Michael Osborne of the Oxford Martin Programme on the Impacts of Future Technology at the University of Oxford looked at 702 types of work and ranked them according to how easy it would be to automate them. They found that just under half of all jobs in the US could feasibly be done by machines within two decades.

The list included jobs such as telemarketers and library technicians. Not far behind were less obviously susceptible jobs, including models, cooks and construction workers, threatened respectively by digital avatars, robochefs and prefabricated buildings made in robot factories. The least vulnerable included mental health workers, teachers of young children, clergy and choreographers. In general, jobs that fared better required strong social interaction, original thinking and creative ability, or very specific fine skills of the sort demonstrated by dentists and surgeons.  The Pew Research Center, asked 1896 experts whether they thought that by 2025, technology would have destroyed more jobs than it creates. The optimists outnumbered the pessimists.  But I was recently talking to a lawyer who expects the legal profession to be disrupted; ROSS, an AI assistant built on IBM’s Watson computer, is already undertaking legal research. At the least AI could will cause short-term turbulence in the labour market, as if it isn’t already being disrupted by other factors.

On the other hand, an OECD paper concluded that AI will not be able to do all the tasks that require human interaction – and only about 9 per cent of jobs are fully automatible. The successful robots will be designed to work alongside people, making their work safer and easier, not replacing them.

The fear is that the so-called gig economy will grow ever larger, with self-employed people taking casual jobs whenever and wherever they can find them.  It’s really tough to have a family and a mortgage and to continue working like that, unless you are a total non- worrier.  A recent study of 1 million people who bank with JP Morgan Chase suggested that the number of people getting some of their income from the gig economy has increased tenfold in two years.  Under this system companies have no obligation to keep supplying work, to provide benefits like holiday pay or pensions, or to offer any loyalty or human compassion whatsoever.

The optimists think there will be inequities and disruptions, but that’s been going on for hundreds of years. The question is: is this trend the human-centred? Will it exascerbate the gap between rich and poor?  I would add:  what is the point of it all?  Are you doing it simply because you can do it, or are you consciously aiming to make life on Earth better and more fulfilling?  It’s all very well for scientists with secure, cushy jobs to tell us that all will be benign, but the real worlds of Brexit and Trump suggest deep disillusionment  already.  (provoked by an article by Jon White, New Scientist)

Will English decline as an international language?

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Some commentators think that British exit from the EU portends the beginning of the end of English as an international language. They see British influence declining precipitately, and even think that this is the moment when Esperanto will begin to grow as a preferred language. They point out that English is mainly a second language to most people, that people will stop learning it and rely increasingly on advanced computer translation and speech recognition. Already, in SriLanka and Tanzania nationalists have insisted on local languages and stopped children learning English at all. Alternatively, some think that English will evolve into new languages or dialects.

I personally think that Brexit and the UK are irrelevant in this matter. Too much credence is given to British influence. While the US has the most powerful economy on Earth, English will remain the most generally spoken foreign tongue. It is the language of research, of science, the media, engineering and big business. It isn’t easy to learn, but it’s easier than Chinese. Were China to throw off its control-freaky regime and become the No. 1 economy, this could all change. Meanwhile, in India for instance, English is recognised by Indians as one important reason that keeps the country together, so many are the Indian tongues.

As for Esperanto, it might be easier to learn and has no exceptions and complications, but it has been in existence for nearly two centuries and is still spoken by a tiny percentage of the people on the planet. Establishing new lingua franca is a long and difficult process and depends a lot on trade. Hope dwells eternal, but in the case of Esperanto I think seeing it spread around the world is wishful thinking.

Oligarchy

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MSNBC, for the benefit on non-Americans, is a news and comment broadcasting channel, which for years has given a progressive and liberal interpretation of events, in contrast to Fox News channel.  

As a result of Bill Clinton signing the Telecommunications Act of 1996 the fifty or so telecom/cable/news providers in the United States have, owing to a whole string of mergers, been reduced to only 4. Yes,you read that correctly. One of the four mega-corporations left is Comcast, a cable network and arguably the worst run and most shambolic big company in the country (no customer has a kind word to say about them). 

Comcast bought MSNBC and set about “correcting” the left-wing bias. They were also at the table while TTP, the so-called “trade” agreement”* was being negotiated, along with many other corporations (but no Congressmen). Part of the cultural coup conducted by Comcast as owners of MSNBC has been total omerta when it comes to any mention of TTP.  Even the outspoken Rachel Maddow, although still employed, hasn’t mentioned the TTP once, even though, as discussed on this blog several times, it threatens American jobs and and is a  threat to democracy.

The man who actually has talked about TTP frequently is Ed Shultz, a fearless critic of all things right wing.  Ed Shultz has been fired for his assaults on the treaty.  There is now no mouthpiece among the major news organisations for the progressive cause. Pat Buchanan is now a sort of top mouthpiece for MSNBC. Buchanan is arguably amongst the most reactionary people in the United  States, accused of racism into the bargain.  Thus it is that free speech is crushed and the rule of the corporate oligarchy is cemented – and, nota bene, just before a general election.  It is so blatant it makes you gasp.

And the relevance to Epicureanism?  Well, it stands for free speech. It stands for a nation where companies serve the people, the people don’t serve companies.  It stands for democracy, not oligarchy, for everyone paying a fair share of taxes for the benefit of all.  That is what the framers of the Constitution intended.

Dealing with CO2

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A small pilot project in Iceland has shown that carbon dioxide can be safely stored in basalt rocks. The finding could be used to help tackle climate change, especially in countries such as India that have lots of basalt rock.

The team found that when CO2, dissolved in water, is injected into hot basalt deep underground, it rapidly reacts with the rock to form carbonates. For permanent storage, this is the ultimate in safety. Carbonates are really stable.

Injecting CO2 into basalt is slightly more expensive than other storage methods, such as pumping it into depleted oil and gas reservoirs. It also requires a lot of water. But on the plus side, once it turns to stone, there will be no need to keep checking it has stayed put.
(New Scientist)(Science, doi.org/bjwq).

Methods like this could increase public support for carbon capture and storage. However, capturing the CO2 costs far more than storing it. If you made the electricity generators do it, electricity prices would have to rise significantly. And at the moment governments have no appetite for imposing carbon taxes on industry for storage or for paying for it themselves. Ordinary citizens should try to change the present attitude in any way they can.

Administrators are now lords of their universes

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I am re-visiting the issue of universities and their governance, because it is so very important to our futures and to civilised life. What is said about British universities applies equally to Their American counterparts.

Over a year ago, in an article in the London Review of Books, Marina Warner wrote: ” A university is a place where ideas are meant to be freely explored, where independence of thought and Western ideals of democratic liberty are enshrined. Yet at the same time as we congratulate ourselves on our freedom of expression, we have a situation in which a lecturer cannot speak her mind, universities bring in the policeto deal with campus protests, and graduate students cannot write publicly about what is happening.  Gagging orders may not even be necessary.  Silence issues from different causes: from fear, insecurity,precarious social conditions and shame…..the managers count on the fact that academics are generally in their profession “for the satisfaction, not the money”.

“…university life has depended on the willingness of colleagues to undertake all manner of tasks above and beyond the ordinary job, reading one another’s work, writing recommendations, making nominations, translating, assessing and examining and sitting on councils and external bodies. etc, without every every act being quantified and calculated.  Not everything can be measured…..the new managers want to pack ’em in and pile ’em high – and then neglect their interests by maltreating their teachers”. She goes on to say that the biggest losers in all this are the students.  (adapted from an article in the LRB 19 March 2015)

I blame the business schools that preach maximum personal efficiency, columns, boxes, reports on hour-by-hour productivity and peddle the idea that administration is superior to management.  Thus, in the UK, there are more hospital administrators than nurses and doctors, all paid king’s ransoms; they have replicated this system now in universities.  Moreover, the power in universities is held by a small clique; the junior support staff are treated as expendable, and made to sign one year contracts.  When those contracts finish they make the employees “market” themselves around the institution in the hope of finding a new one-year contract.