In the Post COVID Era, it’s not a bad idea if we have to assign robots & machines to replace humans at some major jobs as we used to talk about in the past that 2020 after-era will be AI and RPA’s age.
It’s not absurd that some jobs aren’t good enough to protect as we are witnessing now in a pandemic. The pandemic presents an opportunity to negotiate better terms with those leading the AI revolution, such as Google, Amazon & IBM, etc.
If we as a human civilization worried that robots will render human workers obsolete, the coronavirus pandemic offers ample reason to worry more: Surely companies will take the prospect to exchange demanding, imperfect people with machines or artificial intelligence wherever possible.
I’m hoping the crisis also will create a chance to barter better terms with our algorithmic overlords.
The pandemic has made me reconsider the sanctity of labor. For example, you can check out things at America’s meat processing plants, where many mostly immigrant workers are becoming sick. Workers are brutally divided into two classes: those whose employers protect them from the virus, and people who lose their jobs or their unemployment insurance if they refuse to labor under dangerous conditions. If certain businesses — say, the subsequent generation of meat plants — can’t reopen safely and profitably with humans, they will and will do so with robots. Some jobs just aren’t good enough to protect & we have to admit it. Until now, among the most important obstacles was the transition cost of going from badly paid humans to machines. But if companies disrupt their workflow by actually shutting down production to save lots of lives (as they should), then they’re going to have paid much of the value on the other hand. They can train the robots using data gleaned by thoroughly surveilling some model workers and datasets that can imitate human brains upto some extent. It’s not just meatpacking plants. Robots travel by algorithms will do tons of jobs, replacing the human workers who in many cases will have trained them. People will probably welcome the brave new world & would love to live in such a world, particularly if it’s more hygienic to be fair. People will buy their groceries by simply taking them & leaving the shop (now available from Amazon currently), they’ll let robots vacuum their floors (already quite popular and quite useful) and deliver their purchases (not quite yet feasible). If it was up to me then that I’d prefer a self-cleaning, self-driving car so I don’t need to share space with a person’s driver, for both our sakes.
Accepting such a metamorphosis, however, means subjecting ourselves to the businesses that make the algorithms, like Amazon Google, etc? They will essentially hold all the info, control the availability chain, and have more direct power over our consumer and even political behavior than ever before. And plenty of individuals seem to be comfortable with that: Surveys suggest that they trust the tech companies quite the federally.
The question, then, is what is going to happen to the big jobless underclass that such an accelerated shift to automation will create. This is where I feel the sheer magnitude of the coronavirus crisis might actually help, for the major three reasons.
At First, when numerous people are suddenly & violently thrown out of labor at an equivalent time, it creates a way of solidarity that a slow, insidious process like offshoring does not.
Secondly, the jobless aren’t perceived and don’t perceive themselves, as guilty for his or her predicament. This is a natural disaster, beyond their control. They will be more likely to say a political voice because they’re going to feel entitled to at least one .
At third, and maybe most vital, real change will look newly possible in light of the unprecedented measures the govt has already taken to combat the crisis. Congress conjured trillions of dollars to bail out mostly businesses, which suggests it could do an equivalent for people. Granted, that’s not what happened within the 2008 financial crisis when the govt primarily rescued the banks — but that could even be invoked to demand a far better deal this time around.
So this pandemic brings with it a gap for collective action. How it will work remains to be seen. Pitchforks aren’t effective against social-media algorithms, and companies like Amazon won’t care if some large fraction of the population can’t buy its stuff, as long because the remainder keeps buying more. But if the winners & researchers of the AI revolution want to avoid the business disruption of an actual revolution, they ought to be prepared to barter a replacement and really different deal in post-covid future.
#covid19 #RPA #AI #artificialintelligence #corona #pandemic #outbreak #automation
