Most of the forecasts for the future are similar. Everything is either good - we will get a lot of available goods and services and a lot of time for recreation and travel, or, for example, artificial intelligence will seize power on the planet and this will become the end of humanity - that is, worse than ever. But several…
Biological inequality
Technological progress has given us something that our parents could not even dream of. The boom in electronics and information technology has made computers, smartphones, the Internet, and satellite navigation available to the general public. Self-driving electric cars and smart things are on the way. Someone is more expensive, someone is cheaper. Some do not yet, but for sure all this will be. And next in line is a revolution in biotechnology and medicine.
But the benefits of the coming biotechnology revolution will be different. These are health, longevity, beauty and physical capabilities of the body. What a person previously received at birth and then only corrected as far as possible, including financial.
But it's one thing when you have an inexpensive but fairly functional smartphone from an unknown Asian manufacturer in your pocket, while someone has a promoted and elite one with a price tag 10 times higher than yours, and another thing is when someone lives a hundred years longer than you. And without disease and other hardships of life. People will differ not in what they have, but in who, or even "what" they are biologically.
Yuval Noah Harari, author of Sapiens. A Brief History of Humanity”and professor of history at the Hebrew University of Jerusalem, believes that by the end of this century, humanity will split into biological castes. Harari is a historian. And, in his opinion, throughout the history of mankind, inequality between people only intensified. But all this time, the achievements of human thought - humanism, liberalism, socialism - as far as possible, corrected the unfair distribution of benefits in society. At the same time, the human masses have been the main productive force since the construction of the pyramids. The elite had to take care of people, about their education, health and well-being. But this comes to an end.
Automation and robots push people out of the productive sphere, and therefore deprive him of a permanent income. Moreover, the income is sufficient to enjoy all the benefits of modern technology. In the next century, inequality in society will reach historic highs, Harari said. At the same time, the rich will only increase their capital.
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Economic inequality will give rise to biological inequality. Some will be able to improve the capabilities of their body: develop physical and cognitive abilities, while others will be inaccessible. Thus, one part of humanity with the help of biotechnologies and bioengineering available only to it will be able to improve their bodies. These people will be able to improve themselves, becoming smarter, healthier and, accordingly, will live longer. The other part of humanity will only have to watch this.
Useless class
Once upon a time, industrialization gave birth to a working class. Now Industrialization 2.0 threatens to destroy him. But the people themselves are not going anywhere. However, fears of mass unemployment caused by the development of technology (“technological unemployment,” as it is often called) have never been justified. Some professions were always replaced by others - new ones. But it is not a fact that it will always be so.
Each time at a new technological stage, the requirements for qualifications for engaging in new professions increased. And at one decisive moment, most people simply will not be able to take a step forward, will not be able to finish their studies, retrain, understand the updated requirements - new vacancies that have appeared will not be available to them. Too high a contrast between what the person did at work before and what needs to be done now. As an example, the same Yuval Noah Harari cites a new promising profession of a designer of virtual worlds. Will a taxi driver with 20 years of experience or an insurance agent be able to take it?
Usually young people master new promising professions. And this is a gradual process. The elderly work towards retirement in their old jobs, while the young take on new ones. This time, everything can happen within one generation. Significant masses of workers will find themselves outside the walls of their enterprises and offices, by historical standards, at once.
According to Harari, by the middle of the century a new class of people will be formed - the "useless class". These will not only be unemployed, they will be people who, in principle, are not able to fill the few remaining vacancies and those who will appear in new industries.
Technological progress, in his opinion, will not make them poor - they will be able to live off an unconditional basic income. But the problem, according to the historian, will be different - without work and specific goals, people begin to go crazy. A person needs to experience emotions, a sense of satisfaction, to achieve any goals. The exit could be in virtual reality.
& copy; The Guardian
According to Harari, people who have not found application in the economy - in the real world, will find their goals for life in the virtual worlds. It is not in vain that he speaks of the profession of a designer of virtual worlds as one of the most popular professions of the future. Virtual reality compensates the useless class for emotions that its members will not receive in the real world. Video games will become the raison d'être of the "useless class".
Man is an appendage of machines
Almost everyone is already convinced that robots and automation will lead to technological unemployment. It would seem that the trend is obvious - progress in robotics leads to the emergence of machines that work better and faster than humans. There is only one "but". Whether we stay where we are or not, it will not be the engineers who create the first-class robots, and even less the robots themselves. This is the task of economists. And they are guided only by the principles of economic efficiency. And if the use of human labor is more profitable than the use of robots, then, most likely, it is the person who will be preferred.
But if earlier a person was smarter than a robot, now in the system of division of labor he will have another advantage, not very honorable, though, after so many years of civilizational development. Albert Wenger, managing partner of Union Square Ventures, believes that humans will maintain a competitive advantage over robots, but only by costing the employer less than machines.
The guardian
Wegner cites a London taxi as an example. To drive the famous black cab through the streets of the British capital, it took four years to study and remember the location of all 25,000 London streets. The exam required to plot a route from memory and at the same time name all the streets that will meet on the way. Seven out of ten students dropped out. Now there is no need to keep all this information in memory. The program does it all. Even the final destination of the route is entered by the user in an app like Uber. Driver qualification requirements are being reduced. He only needs to take the passenger to the destination. Learning to be a simple driver is easier. And there are more applicants for less complex work. This means that the level of wages will fall.
In general, if a machine takes over some of a person's work, Wenger says, the employee will be paid less. And this can be much more economical than giving up human labor entirely.
The example of taxi drivers is not unique. Robots are already trading on the exchange. IBM Watson suggests diagnoses and the most optimal courses of treatment, the doctor can only agree with the computer or not. Bridgewater Associates, the world's largest hedge fund, is coming under the control of artificial intelligence, and it is planned that in five years, three out of four management decisions in the company will be made by a supercomputer. In such a scenario, everything may end up with super-powerful artificial intelligence being transferred to control the world. And a person will only serve machines and carry out the commands of artificial intelligence. The power of artificial intelligence over the world is a popular forecast of the future world order. It is even possible that the supercomputer will be kind and fair to us. He doesn't need to kill us.
A future without private property
The material expression of the "American Dream" - the well-known ideal of well-being - for many decades has been its own private house and car for every adult family member. To some extent, it was a reference point for the rest of the world. But, apparently, this standard of a prosperous life is becoming a thing of the past, along with the possibility for the majority to have private property as such.
If we talk about the United States, then modern research suggests that more and more citizens of this country under the age of 35 are refusing to purchase real estate and their own car. This age group has already been nicknamed the "tenant generation". They do not buy houses, even with a mortgage, but rent apartments, do not buy their cars, but use taxis. An entire IT industry has already grown to help them, led by services such as Uber and Airbnb. All this is called "sharing economy". And this is just the beginning.
The Guardian journalist Ben Tarnoff paints a vision of the future that at first glance may seem fantastic. In his vision of the near future of the sharing economy, people do without their own things at all. That is, we are not talking about houses, apartments or cars. With this, everything is already clear. We are talking about a winter coat that is returned to the landlord in the summer, about a bed that you change to a large one if you are not sleeping alone, and about other things that you only own when you need them. Provided, of course, that you have the money to pay the rent.
However, these concerns are not new. In the past, the famous American science fiction writer Philip Dick described the idea with less enthusiasm in his novel Ubik, which was published in 1969. The main character lives surrounded by things, for the use of which you have to pay every time. The front door, coffee maker and refrigerator have a coin slot. If you want to open the door, you need to put 5 cents in it - otherwise it won't open.
The book was written more than half a century ago. The technological solutions described in it look quite funny. But the twenty-first century is already in the yard, and the technologies that have developed allow us to implement all this at a fairly advanced level.
Toyota, through its finance division, is developing an interesting solution based on blockchain and smart contract technology. It applies to those who buy cars on credit, but can also be extended to renters. If you have not made the next payment on time, then you will not be able to use your car - it simply will not start. "Smart" contract in action - penalties prescribed in it will be imposed on you instantly, remotely and without the mediation of government services - courts, bailiffs and so on.
The same can be done for leases. Ethereum Computer - a project of the German company Slock.it - allows you to install "smart" locks on anything, from front doors, rented apartments to your washing machine, which you let your neighbors use, for money, of course. The washing machine will work exactly as long as it is paid for, and the door will not let the borrowed tenant into the apartment. By the way, in the future, Slock.it solutions will allow smart devices to rent out things on their own, the owner will not even have to communicate with tenants - everything will happen automatically.
& copy; slock.it
Everything goes to the fact that it is very expensive to own property. If you have something, you should share it. If you don't have anything, it’s even convenient: everything you need can be rented. Again, if you have money. And if there is work. Technologies will allow you to manage your assets even more efficiently. It is very convenient. But Tarnoff himself invites us to imagine what would happen if, at some point, almost one hundred percent of the wealth of society ends up in the hands of a handful of billionaires.
Personality without privacy
We all already perfectly understand that information is collected about us every day. Collected in many ways. Our search queries, data from smartphones, video cameras from the streets where we walk, payments by bank cards. Technology already allows us to track our every step.
Soon, in small streams, information about us will flow into large databases and then be analyzed. Imagine that you bought a medicine at a regular pharmacy, the course of which is taken for two weeks. We paid with a bank card. A few days before the end of the drug intake, contextual advertising services will show you advertisements for competing drugs on all sites. Your card purchases are associated with you as an Internet user. Already, not only your behavior on the Internet, but also your actions in real life will tell you what kind of advertising you need to show.
On the one hand, this makes life convenient, on the other, it is fraught with serious problems. Simson Garfinkel is the author of Everything Under Control. Who and how is watching you "- believes that in the future we should be afraid not of Orwell's" Big Brother "- the state watching over us - but hundreds of" little brothers "spying on us from everywhere. These are companies that collect information about our every step, every event in our life: purchases, illnesses and injuries, social circle, problems with the law, and so on. Today, more than ever, technological advances have made this possible.
Moreover, personal information has become a commodity, and a hot commodity. In his book, Garfinkel gives an interesting example. Information about the financial condition of one American family was sold to 187 credit bureaus. But the essence of this story is not even the very fact of the sale. Due to an error by the tax authorities, this information was unreliable. As a result, banks refused to issue loans to spouses for seven years. In fact, the family has been limited in rights for a long time.
Governments are concerned with security issues, and businesses are looking for ways to increase their income. What should a person do in this situation? Microsoft's global survey The Consumer Data Value Exchange found that 99.6% of Internet users don't mind selling personal information about themselves for a fee. San Diego-based Luth Research is ready to buy your data to resell to their customers. So maybe in the future the sale of personal information will become an additional source of income, for example, simultaneously with the unconditional basic income? And maybe it's not that bad? New technologies and new lifestyles will solve many problems, for example, to cope with the lack of resources for a growing humanity. And you just need to adapt? What if our children still like this future?
Sergey Sobol