AI and THE POTENTIAL FOR CIVILIZATIONAL DESTRUCTION
AI/Robotics Is Overwhelming Our Economy, Our Culture, and Our Nation
David Barnhizer
AI/Robotics is “quietly” overwhelming the fundamental institutions of Western society and we are unprepared for the social impact of the vast changes soon to be upon us. A significant part of the equation is the elimination of extreme numbers of human jobs across a wide swath of activity, but that is only one element in what is unfolding. McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University researchers have predicted massive job loss will occur with 47% to 50% of US jobs eliminated or significantly affected by 2030 and up to 800 million more jobs destroyed worldwide. Nor will the AI/robotics transformation produce large numbers of replacement jobs. The AI/robotics systems are already being designed to do those and the AI and robotics technologies are achieving incredible advances in their capabilities at an accelerating pace with breakthroughs announced in what seems almost monthly.
While many people like to talk about what is taking place as if is were another “Schumpeterian Creative Destruction and Rebirth of job opportunities” in a natural, predictable and controllable process, the reality is that there is little “light” at the end of the “job destruction tunnel” in the AI/Robotics context. As Elon Musk and others are predicting, AI/Robotics will take over much of human work opportunities, in the process leaving only a few crumbs for most of us. A very small number of incredibly wealthy recipients will evolve into a new “superclass” with all others being left in a vastly diminished state. This means that we need to design an intelligent and fair “New Populism” before the emerging stresses tear our political system and community apart.
Elon Musk Warns of ‘Potential for Civilizational Destruction’.
Elon Musk Warns of the ‘Potential for Civilizational Destruction’. During an interview with Fox News host Tucker Carlson that aired on April 17–18, Musk said that AI poses potential “risks to society and humanity.”
“AI is more dangerous than, say, mismanaged aircraft design or production maintenance, or bad car production in the sense that it has the potential—however small one may regard that probability, but it is non-trivial—it has the potential for civilizational destruction,” Musk [said].
Last month, the industrialist joined more than 1,100 individuals, including experts and industry executives such as Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak, Stability AI founder, and CEO Emad Mostaque, in signing an open letter calling on all AI labs to “immediately pause” training of systems more powerful than Chat GPT-4 for at least six months. In their letter, experts warned that contemporary AI systems are “now becoming human-competitive at general tasks” and questioned whether or not we should “automate away all the jobs, including the fulfilling ones.” “Should we develop nonhuman minds that might eventually outnumber, outsmart, obsolete, and replace us? Should we risk loss of control of our civilization? Such decisions must not be delegated to unelected tech leaders,” the letter stated. The March 22 letter has so far been signed by more than 26,000 individuals.
Threat to Humanity
“In truth, industry experts have not only been stunned but, in many cases, unnerved by recent advancements in the evolution of AI, fearing the ripple effects of such technology on society. “AI systems with human-competitive intelligence can pose profound risks to society and humanity, as shown by extensive research and acknowledged by top AI labs,” warns a March 22 letter that has more than 27,500 signatures, with dozens of AI experts among them.
Accusing AI creators of engaging in an “out-of-control race” to develop “ever more powerful digital minds that no one—not even their creators—can understand, predict, or reliably control,” the letter’s signatories called for an immediate six-month pause in the training of more advanced AI systems as society grapples with how to ensure their safety. One of those signatories was Tesla CEO Elon Musk, another tech tycoon who has been outspoken about his concerns regarding the capabilities of AI.”
No area of work is sacrosanct.
Work opportunities are being eliminated from the most "intellectual" activities down to the basic areas of services and labor, including a range of professional occupations heretofore thought of as distinctly human. These include cuts in middle management, finance, banking, insurance, medicine, high-tech, journalism, education, transportation, law, and even the arts.
Half the world's workers could be replaced by machines within the next 30 years. The McKinsey Global Institute and Oxford University researchers predict massive job loss with 47% to 50% of US jobs eliminated by 2030 and up to 800 million more jobs destroyed worldwide.
• Nor will the AI/robotics transformation produce large numbers of replacement jobs. The AI/robotics systems are already being designed to do those.
Birth rates are plummeting below replacement levels in economically developed nations. People are living to ages well beyond historical averages.
At least fifty percent of Americans have little or nothing saved for retirement.
Poor and uneducated migrants are coming into Western nations at a time when the agricultural, construction and home care jobs migrants have traditionally filled are being increasingly replaced by robotic workers.
As of October 2024 the youth unemployment rate for ages 15-24 in the EU was 15.2 percent. The long term average is 19.1 percent. One key reason for the high rate is that there is “a mismatch between the skills the young people have and what employers require.” This is said to be worsened by educational systems that “do not align with the labor market’s needs.”
https://www.theepochtimes.com/artificial-intelligence-could-automate-two-thirds-of-all-american-occupations-goldman-sachs_5202670.html. Artificial Intelligence Could Automate Two-Thirds of All American Occupations: Goldman Sachs, Katabella Roberts, April 18, 2023.
Two-thirds of occupations across America could be partially automated by artificial intelligence (AI), Goldman Sachs economists have warned. In a report published on April 5, economists Joseph Briggs and Devesh Kodnani said that a new wave of AI systems, such as ChatGPT, could have a “major impact” on employment markets across the globe, while advances in such technology could trigger shifts in workflows that could “expose the equivalent of 300 million full-time jobs to automation.” As part of their report, the two economists analyzed databases detailing the type of tasks performed in over 900 different occupations and estimated that about two-thirds of U.S. occupations are exposed to “some degree” of automation by AI. In addition, they forecast that roughly a quarter to as much as half of the workload in the exposed occupations could be replaced by AI.
“Despite significant uncertainty around the potential for generative AI, its ability to generate content that is indistinguishable from human-created output and to break down communication barriers between humans and machines reflects a major advance with potentially large macroeconomic effect,” the economists wrote.
While they acknowledge concerns regarding advanced AI and possible job losses, Briggs and Kodnani note that not all automated work will definitely translate into layoffs.
“Although the impact of AI on the labor market is likely to be significant, most jobs and industries are only partially exposed to automation and are thus more likely to be complemented rather than substituted by AI,” the economists wrote.
The latest report comes after a March 27 research paper (pdf) by the University of Pennsylvania and OpenAI employees found that the majority of white-collar jobs in the United States can be completed more efficiently with the help of the artificial intelligence system ChatGPT. Specifically, that study found that roughly 80 percent of the U.S. workforce could have at least 10 percent of their work tasks affected by the introduction of large language models like ChatGPT, while approximately 19 percent of workers could see at least 50 percent of their tasks impacted.”
Google CEO Sundar Pichai warns that “every product of every company” will be impacted by the rapid development of AI, [and that] "We are developing technology which, for sure, one day will be far more capable
than anything we’ve ever seen before,"
“Amid the growing race to develop and deploy ever more powerful advanced AI systems, multiple industry experts are calling for increased caution, including Sundar Pichai, the CEO of Google and its parent Alphabet. While speaking in an interview with CBS’s “60 Minutes” … Pichai warned that “every product of every company” will be impacted by the rapid development of AI, adding that he was left “speechless” after reviewing test results from a number of Google’s AI projects such as “Bard.” “Google CEO admits he, experts 'don't fully understand' how AI works: Pichai says the development of AI is 'more profound' than the discovery of fire or electricity”, Kelsey Koberg, 4/17/23. https://www.foxnews.com/media/google-ceo-admits-experts-dont-fully-understand-ai-works.
“Sundar Pichai warned society may not be ready for the advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), and admits that neither he nor other experts fully understand how generative AI models like ChatGPT actually work.”
Pichai warned we may not be ready for the rapid advancement of artificial intelligence (AI), and that “neither he nor other experts fully understand how generative AI models like ChatGPT actually work.”
“AI models like ChatGPT and Google's Bard are capable of near-human like conversation, writing text, code, even poems and song lyrics in response to user queries. But the chatbots are also known to get things wrong, often referred to as "hallucinations." I find that ironic since Pichai also just announced the Quantum computing breakthrough Google achieved with its 105 qubit Willow system. When fully developed and commercialized, Quantum systems will—not “may” but will—be what in lay person’s” terms many, many “light years” beyond the best AI systems that are themselves already achieving an unprecedented evolution in capability.
“Pichai said experts in the field have "some ideas" as to why chatbots make the statements they do, including hallucinations, but compared it to a "black box." "There is an aspect of this which we call, all of us in the field, call it a black box. You don’t fully tell why it said this, or why it got wrong. We have some ideas, and our ability to understand this gets better over time, but that’s where the state of the art is," he said. …. ”Things will go wrong," Pichai wrote in a memo to Google employees last month, adding that "user feedback is critical to improving the product and the underlying technology.” … Pichai said "every product of every company" would be affected by advancing AI capabilities and society needs to "adapt" to prepare. … Pichai also compared the development of AI to technological advancements in other areas, calling it "more profound" than the discovery of fire and electricity.”
Google’s Breakthrough Willow Chip Means We’ll Get Useful Quantum Computers Sooner Than Some People Thought.
“Google reveals quantum computing chip with ‘breakthrough’ achievements / Google says Willow is a quantum computing chip capable of performing a task in 5 minutes that would take a supercomputer 10 septillion years to complete.” Emma Roth, a news writer who covers the streaming wars, consumer tech, crypto, social media, and much more. 12/9/24. https://www.theverge.com/2024/12/9/24317382/google-willow-quantum-computing-chip-breakthrough
“Google’s quantum computing lab just achieved a major milestone. On Monday, the company revealed that its new quantum computing chip, Willow, is capable of performing a computing challenge in less than five minutes — a process Google says would take one of the world’s fastest supercomputers 10 septillion years, or longer than the age of the universe. That’s a big jump from 2019 when Google announced its quantum processor could complete a mathematical equation in three minutes, as opposed to 10,000 years on a supercomputer. IBM disputed the claim at the time.”
The Speed at Which Breakthroughs are Occurring Is Incredible
Researchers in 2016-2017 indicated that such entangled qubit-based systems will be capable of performing simultaneous computations at levels of processing information billions of times faster and more complex than the best existing computer. Once this is achieved, or even developed at intermediate steps, those incredible informational capabilities will take us to dimensions we neither understand nor control. If and when researchers are able to construct quantum systems, we will have entered uncharted territory.
Projections made only a very few years ago predicted that quantum computers would not become a commercially usable technology until at least 2050. Google’s Willow is described to have 105 qubits. Intel head of quantum research suggests commercialization could be achieved in another decade. Given that the addition of each qubit is estimated to increase processing capability exponentially, a 105 qubit quantum system possesses amazing potential for not only running incredibly complex simulations at unfathomable speed and scale but doing so simultaneously rather than linearly as occurs with today’s linked computer arrays.
Where humans ultimately fit in this rapidly developing scenario is extremely unclear. If scientists are successful in their quest for quantum computers the implications are far, far beyond anything that we can envision with the current digital designs. When fully developed, quantum computers will have data handling and processing capabilities far beyond those of current binary systems. When this occurs in the commercialized context, predictions about what will happen to humans and their societies are “off the board”. Such quantum mechanics based systems that “entangle” qubits in environments near absolute zero use informational quantum bits that manifest probabilistic capabilities beyond the 1 and zero, fixed identities, of the digital or binary systems now in use.
Experts Predictions of Human Job Loss Over the Next Several Decades
We need to gain a clear understanding of what we face. The various predictions and analysis offered below represent what a range of experts have said concerning what is expected to occur over the next few decades by way of an AI/robotics “revolution”. They also look at the current dynamics, trends, and structure of work in the private and public sectors, and the stunningly rapid developments in Artificial Intelligence and Robotics that are taking over critical sectors of human employment. These include manufacturing, government, and numerous other areas of work such as construction, teaching, and other areas on which unmans have depended.
The experts’ predictions include the following projections.
50% of US jobs will disappear by 2030. [Fast Forward 2030: The Future of Work and the Workplace] or 50% of US jobs will be gone by 2025. [2 Billion Jobs to Disappear (Globally) by 2030].
5,000,000 US manufacturing jobs have already been lost since 2000.
12,000,000 US jobs will disappear by 2026. [Robots Set to Disrupt White-Collar Work, 2016].
500 million jobs in the world’s 25 richest economies will be lost to AI/robotics.
50 percent of today’s work activities will be automated by 2050—give or take 20 years. Robots will take over most of the world’s jobs by 2045.
4.1 million US driver compensated jobs (taxis, semi-trucks, delivery vehicles, busses) will be lost to self-driving vehicles.
Imposing a $15 minimum hourly wage in the US could eliminate between three to five million jobs. [Earned Income Tax Credit Is Better Tool to Raise Income than $15 Minimum Wage, 2016].
Black males in the US have an unemployment rate of 17.5% and Black teenagers an unemployment rate of 41%. Youth unemployment is also threatening the future of millions of young Europeans.
The unemployment rate in the Eurozone reached 10% in 2009, “and has been stuck in double digits ever since. On average, more than one out of five young people in the labour force are unemployed, but in the worst hit crisis countries, almost half of people looking for work can’t find jobs.” (From Nobel Laureate in Economics, Joseph Stiglitz).
The McKinsey Global Institute has warned that if the “slow growth” conditions of the past decade continue, up to 80 percent of people in developed economies could see flat or falling incomes. MIT researchers report a large-scale “hollowing out” of the US middle class with many sliding down on the socio-economic ladder. While working hours are at an all-time high human productivity has collapsed and earnings are flat or declining for most workers even as the cost of goods and services continues to increase.
REFORM REPORT: “90% of British civil service workers have jobs so pointless, they could easily be replaced by robots”. I wonder if the same analysis applies to the US government jobs?
The job support by public sector institutions goes far beyond the federal government. State and local governments provide an extensive number of jobs, not the least of which are the millions of elementary, high school and college teachers and other staff employed by public educational institutions. Whether government employment on the massive scale that now exists survives the AI/robotics shift is open to question although it is a matter of politics and money rather than risk, return, efficiency and productivity.
Tyler Durden, a “composite” journalist representative of several writers on the website ZeroHedge, concentrates on developments in the AI/robotics world, and recently wrote that:
A study by a British think tank, Reform, says that 90% of British civil service workers have jobs so pointless, they could easily be replaced by robots, saving the government around $8 billion per year. The study… says that robots are “more efficient” at collecting data, processing paperwork, and doing the routine tasks that now fall to low-level government employees. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-08/most-government-workers-could-be-replaced-robots-new-study-finds. “Most Government Workers Could Be Replaced By Robots, New Study Finds,” Tyler Durden, 2/8/17.
When we think through what cutting hundreds of thousands of governmental employees would mean, and the claim that it would save $8 billion per year, it can be seen that “clever” math sometimes has its problems. Assume the Brits cut 250,000 people, and assume there are no jobs for many of them once they are lopped off because the private sector will be experiencing job loss at least as severe as in the public sphere. They and their families would then presumably be forced to seek assistance from the very government that cut them loose. By the way, if there are large budget cuts in the American federal government system of employment the same dynamic would apply.
While the analysis is simplistic, it is not unrealistic to think that the annual cost of assistance for food, housing and other essential needs is above $20,000 per person, and to remember that the 250,000 are only the employees themselves and the figure does not include their family members whose futures depend on family resources. Another report done by Oxford University researchers and the financial services company Deloitte, indicated the potential cuts in government jobs in the UK to AI/robotics could be even more than 250,000, with as many as 1 million governmental jobs at risk or vulnerable to being replaced by AI/robotic systems.
Cutting jobs in government at a time when other jobs are being eliminated is not cost free. The effects are well beyond apparent financial savings or fiscal costs shifted from the budgets of government agencies to those of welfare support systems. At a minimum, this means that the Brits “saving” $8 billion would generate billions of dollars in other costs immediately, along with future losses and denied opportunities for the eliminated employees and their families. In an economy where massive numbers of private sector jobs are disappearing, a very large percentage of the displaced workers and their family members would be “on the dole”, or fall lower on the socio-economic scale if they did find work. They could also be expected to become resentful and hostile at their fate.
There are a number of considerations that should be taken into account, economic and otherwise, in figuring out what to do with public and private jobs. In the face of more efficient AI/robotics systems, coupled with a narrow application of principles of efficiency and balance sheet savings within a narrow interpretation of the system being looked at, it is more expensive than assumed by “bean counters” to slash the jobs as well as destructive of the human elements and spirit of our social system. Durden’s ZeroHedge analysis continues.
There are “few complex roles” in civil service … that require a human being to handle. “Twenty percent of public-sector workers hold strategic, ‘cognitive’ roles,” Reform’s press release on the study says. “They will use data analytics to identify patterns—improving decision-making and allocating workers most efficiently. … The problem, Reform says, is that public sector employee unions have bloated the civil service ranks, forcing government agencies to keep on older employees, and mandating hiring quotas for new ones. The organizational chart looks like a circuit board—and there’s no incentive to streamline anything. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-08/most-government-workers-could-be-replaced-robots-new-study-finds. “Most Government Workers Could Be Replaced By Robots, New Study Finds,” Tyler Durden, 2/8/17.
All those criticisms are valid, not only in the UK but in the US and Western Europe. Wholesale “gutting” of the government workforce is, however, not an intelligent option. Nonetheless, the efficiency and cost advantages of AI systems are undeniable, and AI capabilities are improving rapidly and dramatically. Changes must be made, but they need to be intelligent ones that improve what exists rather than destroys a system that serves critical social purposes beyond the often inhuman mantra of economic efficiency. Whether the AI/robotics transformation can be slowed, controlled, shaped or muted, however, is open to question. Based on based on separate studies by Oxford University and Deloitte, the Reform report remarks that:
Oxford University and financial services provider Deloitte, both of whom commissioned their own studies concur with Reform‘s conclusions. The Oxford University study said that more than 850,000 public sector jobs could fall to robots over the course of the next decade. Reform suggests that government employees should probably look into opportunities presented by the “sharing economy,” like driving for Uber – at least until robots replace those, too. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2017-02-08/most-government-workers-could-be-replaced-robots-new-study-finds. “Most Government Workers Could Be Replaced By Robots, New Study Finds,” Tyler Durden, 2/8/17.
Cutting the Public Sector Down to a Financially Manageable Size
An already bankrupt US government is projected to experience annual deficits above $1 trillion for at least the next ten years. The US national debt is officially admitted to be $36 trillion, but is actually far higher according to a 2015 warning by former US Comptroller-General David Walker who testified that the $18.5 Trillion debt at that point was closer to $65 Trillion when all the promised but unfunded legal commitments needed to be paid out in future decades are taken into account.
It gets even worse. Boston University Economist Laurence Kotlikoff testified to Congress about what he described as the “infinite-horizon fiscal gap” in challenging the Congressional Budget Office’s far lower estimate. In 2013 Kotlikoff stated he projected that “gap” to be $210 Trillion. The “gap” is due, as the Brookings Institute states, to the CBO’s failure to take into account the full range of financial obligations to which the federal government is legally committed. Even this catastrophic situation is not the complete story because of the unfunded obligations of state, local, and corporate actors, particularly in education and grossly underfunded pension plans. See, “Closing America’s Enormous Fiscal Gap: Who Will Pay?” Laurence J. Kotlikoff and Adam N. Michel, June 2015, MERCATUS WORKING PAPER, George Mason University. https://forschungsnetzwerk.ams.at/dam/jcr:52153c8a-ff40-4361-bba7-371352abedf9/Kotlikoff-Closing-Fiscal-Gap.pdf.
As AI/robotics eliminates jobs across the spectrum, governmental revenues will plummet while the debt dramatically increases. This represents a crisis of limited and declining resources on all levels—including underfunded or non-existent pensions as federal, state and local pension plans fall far short of expectations, and corporate plans fail due to inadequate revenues, health problems and medical costs explode, people’s limited savings are used up in only a few years, and job destruction continues at a calamitous pace. As we are already experiencing, this will drive many millions into homelessness and produce a dramatic rise in violence.
All this will take place in an environment of increased AI-facilitated surveillance by governments, aggressive militarization using AI systems and autonomous weapons, and the degradation of of the world’s economic and political order. The final five chapters of The Artificial Intelligence Contagion: Can Democracy Withstand the Imminent Transformation of Work, Wealth and the Social Order? (Clarity 2019), offer some potential solutions.
Some Data on Federal, State and Local Governmental Employment
To gain a fuller sense of the employment dynamics and contributions of the US government and the relationship between the public and private sectors as of 2015, some useful jobs “trivia” include the following data.
Federal, state and local governments combined employed 21,995,000 workers as of August 2014. 12,329,000 workers were employed in the manufacturing sector.
In November 2024 there were 20.5 million state and local government employees. Three-fourths were local government and the other one-quarter were state workers. In 2023, 15.2 million were full time workers and 4.4 million were part time. Since February 2020 the state and local employment increased by 473,000 jobs. In March 2023 the BLS indicated there were 19.6 state and local government employees. In 2024 there are an estimated 8.1 million teachers and administrators in America’s K-12 schools. In May 2020 the figure was 7.3 million.
Between 1989 and 2014 government employment increased by 4,006,000 workers and manufacturing employment declined by 5,635,000 workers.
According to the Bureau of Labor Statistics (BLS), seasonally adjusted manufacturing employment in the United States was highest in June 1979 at 19,553,000 workers while seasonally adjusted government employment was at its highest level in May 2010 with 22,996,000 workers.
In August 1941 the 12,532,000 people employed in manufacturing equaled 1 manufacturing worker for each 10.6 person in the overall population. The 12,329,000 employed in manufacturing in August 2015 equaled only 1 manufacturing worker for each 26.1 people in the overall population, a 250% difference.
Of the 21,995,000 employed by government in August 2014, 2,738,000 worked for the federal government. This included 596,500 who worked for the Postal Service. Another 5,092,000 people worked for state governments and 14,165,000 worked for local governments.
Governmental subsidization of education represents a critical “driver” of employment and social mobility. More than 50% of state and local government employees are employed in educational positions. The BLS reports: “Of the 5,092,000 who worked for state governments in August 2014, 2,446,300 (or 48 percent) worked in education. Of the 14,165,000 who worked for local governments, 7,852,500 (or 55.4 percent) worked in education.” Terence P. Jeffrey, “21,995,000 to 12,329,000: Government Employees Outnumber Manufacturing Employees 1.8 to 1”, September 8, 2015. http://cnsnews.com/news/article/terence-p-jeffrey/21955000-12329000-government-employees-outnumber-manufacturing. This means that 10,298,800 people were working in public educational activities supported by state and local governments.
The federal government employs 2,711,000 people (excluding non-civilian military). Among the economy’s largest job sectors, it was the only one to shrink in 2015.
Local government employment has grown from 4 million employees in the 1950s to over 14 million today. State governments employ nearly twice as many people as the federal government, and state and local governments combined have close to a 7:1 edge over the federal government in numbers of employees.
15.7% of all American workers are employed by federal, state or local governments.
Official government employment statistics can be misleading. Between 2000 and 2012 federal government spending on civilian contractors, who are not counted as government employees, grew rapidly. The fastest-growing category in dollars was contracts for professional, administrative and management services. The top-expanding category was medical services. Charles S. Clark, “Even CBO Is Stumped on the Size of the Contractor Workforce”, 3/12/15, http://www.govexec.com/contracting/2015/03/even-cbo-stumped-size-contractor-workforce/107436/.
Another reason government spending as a share of GDP remains high, even though the official federal government workforce has shrunk slightly, “is that government contractors — who may work primarily or entirely on projects for the federal government — are not counted as federal employees.” http://blogs.wsj.com/economics/2014/11/07/the-federal-government-now-employs-the-fewest-people-since-1966/. Ironically, they also cost significantly more to do the same work that often could have been done by government employees.