This past week, Elon Musk and Tesla unveiled robots as a promise for the future, and many are likening Tesla to dystopian companies like Skynet from Terminator or US Robotics from I, Robot. Nevertheless, the internet debates whether Elon Musk is the harbinger of a dystopian future. As Elon Musk has a history of overpromising, underdelivering, and capitulating to hostile governments, it’s safe to say that Tesla’s Optimus (most likely a reference to Optimus Prime) will be more like I, Robot than the droids of Star Wars.
Despite my skepticism that Elon Musk would not program a government robot with no capability of being used by the government to spy on or incriminate the owners, I am more optimistic about the future robotic workers, but the dystopian outcome of this coming to fruition is different than the movies.
A few things to consider. First, this will reduce the amount of work for Americans. Contrary to popular myth, the industrial revolution has seen mankind overworked, as medieval peasants enjoyed far more free time than factory workers. Although American icons like Henry Ford pushed to improve the working conditions of the middle class, the evaporation of single-income families has inundated American families with more work for a nominally higher quality of life (adjusted for inflation and technological advancements). Robots could usher in an agricultural revolution providing labor assistance to farmers and homesteaders.
Additionally, Robots could improve the overall aesthetics of the culture. Both Ancient Greece and Ancient Rome have created marvelous feats of engineering and architecture. Both of these societies were undergirded by slave labor. Whereas the Greeks had slave labor that the free men used to focus on abstractions, the Romans built an empire for which, along with Christianity is the basis of western civilization. The decline in modern aesthetics is driven in part by the high cost of labor. Quality masonry is increasingly rare, but robot labor could resolve this issue. The construction of monumental feats is most often not pretty. Solomon built the temple using conscripted labor. People died building the Empire State Building. And often slavery is involved. Robots resolve many of these concerns.
However, there is an ugly side of this that should be warned against. There does exist the unfortunate problem of NETEs (Not Employed, Training, or Educated). Such worthless men would increasingly in this regard with an underclass of robot slave labor. Although I belive robots won’t eliminate work for mankind, that does not mean some will not use them as a pretext for sloth.
Additionally, we might become like the Athenians, who turned citizenship into a full time job because the free time allowed democracy to become tyrannical. A free Athenian had less freedom than a Persian peasant because democracy grants the government authority it otherwise would not have. Censorship, ostracizing, and seizure of property were all practiced by mob rule in Athens. Unwise wars were waged, and the tyranny of the Athenians eventually became their undoing. The free time provided by robot slave labor to focus on abstractions and citizenship might pave the way for a busybody state, except unlike in ancient Greece, universal suffrage would make this scenario more degenerate and idiotic.
Lastly, the robot slaves could usher in an era of technological stagnation. The Greeks invented complicated machinery, even computers of sorts. But with slave labor, they had no need to implement technological innovations to improve productivity. I’m less concerned about this because the corporate interests of Tesla and its competitors will breed innovation. But eventually, conspicuous consumption will end. And then what? Such a mystery is uncharted territory.
One Response
I for one think that western society needs MORE manual labour, not less. I live in a rural area on a an acreage, the culture that has developed due to the amount of innovation in agriculture is not healthy. It’s making people dumber. I’m not against farm equipment, but people need toil. Fixing the machines would count but now with all of the electrical components in tractors, a farmer can’t even fix the tractor himself and has to get a specialist. And companies don’t like us fixing equipment because they want us to depend on them for everything. Some in innovation is good. The free market is great at innovation, but it never knows when to stop, and now the west is filled with millions of bored people with first world problems. Without morality, innovation will make a society fat and lazy, and scared of work. But I don’t believe a moral people would feel the need to innovate their lives away in the first place.