The Age of Unemployment & Future of Work

With technological advancement comes economic adaptation. This is one of the greatest lessons of the next 10 years which will show some pretty dramatic shifts. For the youth, this means preparing for a completely different reality and on-demand economy. 

Please recognize, your children will also live in a different world. A world where machine intelligence is everywhere. How this impacts employment on a global scale, is pretty profound. How skills we learn become outdated, will be nearly immediate. How to keep pace with the exponential technological advancement, will be one of the special challenges of Gen Z. 

What can save the world of our children? Universal basic income. While we go on with a business as usual approach, if we even project the consequences in 10, 20 or 30 years, the result is a very radical shift of the entire landscape of unemployment, work and the meaning of work in the future. What used to concern primarily think-tanks are now debates that are going mainstream. 

Imagine a world where the lives of people are not defined simply by what they do to get paycheck. STOP what you are doing, and really imagine it, can you? It will exist, it's called UBI and here's why it is coming into being. 

Age of Automation 

In the 2020s more algorithms, more robots, more machine-intelligence guided systems begin to displace the human workforce. This occurs naturally and inevitably as computer performance overtakes human performance and with the internet of things, there are more of these 'computers' around, sometimes embedded in infrastructure itself, sometimes as drones, droids, robots, humans that are really androids, and so forth. At that point, software as a service (SaaS) can learn from your customers and therefore can be automated. 

First come the virtual personal assistants (VPAs), like Siri, but called funny names: Cortana, Amelia, Viv and so forth, until our world is mediated via AI-human hybrid interfaces. 

Amelia is just one AI out there currently being beta-tested in companies right now. Created by IPsoft over the past 16 years, she’s learned how to perform the work of call center employees. She can learn in seconds what takes us months, and she can do it in 20 languages. Because she’s able to learn, she’s able to do more over time.

Self-Learning AI

Don't blame her (Amelia) for learning so fast, one day she'll put 250 million people out of a job. Whatever you think you know that AI cannot do, you are likely wrong. You will be surprised. In the 2030s there won't be many things AI can't do better than human beings, and that's just 15 years away. 

The very nature of what we once considered reality, that is, capitalism, will have to make way for another kind of society. It may take a few decades, but it will manifest. Competition and labor will no longer necessarily be, the tenants of modern day society. 

Should income itself remain coupled to employment, such that having a job is the only way to obtain income, when  jobs for many are entirely unobtainable? If machines are performing an increasing percentage of our jobs for us, and not getting paid to do them, where does that money go instead?

Meet Baxter, he pays for himself in 1 year and is free then for the next 20 years and can do more than a human. 

Universal Basic Income 

One day as society is more automated, human beings won't be asked to do whatever they can find just to put food on the table. No, that will seem barbaric. That is because in the future, income and work are decoupled, they no longer mean what they mean today. 

If machines will do many of the chores, human beings will have to find new value in their lives, and be empowered to find not just new forms of leisure, but new forms of challenge. 

The universal basic income (UBI) will be given to all citizens, unconditionally, yes. It's true, it will happen. Everyone will receive a monthly paycheck not for being a slave, or a martyr or even doing what they really love, they will get one because all people deserve their basic needs being met. They were born on this planet and deserve to have their share of its resources. 

It's been explained that by adopting UBI, we'll also be immunizing against the negative effects of automation, we’d also be decreasing the risks inherent in entrepreneurship, and the sizes of bureaucracies necessary to boost incomes. First places where we might see this? Norway, Switzerland, Finland, the Netherlands and Canada.

Unemployed Normalcy 

The future is friendly, you know, before  AI actually takes over the world in a literal sense, it will do so in a more figurative way. It's reasonable that UBI will be the last resort for some people, who are idle or simply not qualified to find creative work that fulfills them and contributes to society. 

• Just think of self-driving cars alone what that would do to all the truckers in the United States? It's nearly unimaginable what is coming, people just don't realize. 

That's why a universal basic income is a good idea, it will save lives. If humans want to avoid being an endangered species, they and we, will have to learn how to share wealth better. The alternative is we will see drastic population decreases. I'm not an economist, but I'm not entirely sure how Governments get enough money to make this happen. Canada announced with its new budget that it will run a 30 Billion deficit. You better hope those robots will be productive, I'll tell you, where there is a machine, there is a way. 

Post Industrial Search for Meaning 

Some experts believe even coders and doctors will be without a job by 2040, others believe it will be sooner. It's not just blue or white collar jobs the age of automation influences, it's everyone. Most of all, it's the lives of your children. 

A world with a universal basic income, means a fairer world. Where not necessity, but intelligence, creativity and the search for meaning drive human pursuits and beings to new heights. Will your children make it happen?

Prominent data scientist Jeremy Howard asked “Do you want half of people to starve because they literally can’t add economic value, or not?” before going on to suggest, ”If the answer is not, then the smartest way to distribute the wealth is by implementing a universal basic income.”

A basic income guaranteed means a measure of equality that capitalism failed to give to us. A post UBI world is something else. It's a technological utopia where the well-being of citizens is taken seriously. It's no surprise then we are finding the movement spear-headed in Scandinavia, who continually rank as some of the happiest countries in the world.