Introduction
In this article I want to explore what kind of technological innovation has the greatest potential to improve our lives. When we zoom out and look at the progress we humans have made over the last few thousand years, i.e. from hunting animals for weeks to going to the supermarket to get food (a), we see that a pattern persists, which I call the multiplier effect of innovation.
I’m going to get straight to the point in this next section and leave the rest of the article to address the most relevant concerns with the “technologically deterministic” view that automation is the holy grail of progress.
Straight to the Point
After we develop the first few robots that are smart and capable enough of building other robots, they could build any machines. Robots that build factories that build farming machines; robots that construct buildings and roads and self-driving vehicles. It always frustrates me to see how agonizingly slow construction is. Many buildings take around two years to be completed and are incredibly expensive. Imagine if robots did the job for us. Steal beams going up every second, click and clack, they’re all put together, and the windows straight after, and the welding done seconds later while another robot installs the wiring, and so on and so forth. The materials, which make up another big pile of the cost, are transported marginally for free by self-driving trucks (that could run on renewable and therefore marginally free energy) on roads that were pretty much free for the same reason, i.e. built by robots. The initial resources to make the steal, concrete, glass etc., were mined by machines that were also produced in factories at virtually zero cost, by machines that… You get the idea.
Apart from land prices being a big driver of housing prices, living could become much cheaper this way. Currently, people spend about 30% of their income on housing (1), so there is a big opportunity here. Apply the same logic to the food industry or to transport, both industries we spend about 20% of our income on together. These three sectors alone would therefore be worth roughly 50% of economies of developed countries and even more than half of the entire global economy, i.e. around $87.5tn (2). This is the big stuff, the stuff I prefer to think about rather than a new app that allows you to save some picture 10% faster etc. If we made these trillion dollar system changes happen it would a) be the best and fastest way to improve our lives and b) make all the other improvements much easier.
Delving into More Detail
Following my usual logic that I first described in the multiplier effect of innovation article, robots building robots means that input creates inputs.
So let’s start with the outputs again (described in more detail before), which are all the things we value in our economy. For example, food, transport, construction (housing) etc. Since the dawn of time the logic has been that we have to work in order to create all the goods and services, i.e. output, that we consume. Precisely because we’ve already automated and innovated so much of these production processes we’ve been able to create countless jobs in the service sector, which now create additional value for people.
Ultimately, most of our progress comes down to technologies that have enabled us to produce all these goods and services, which are, at least in monetary terms, worth a hundred times more than what our cavemen ancestors had. That is because, first, technologies have automated the input we humans (or animals) had to perform in order to get a certain output and secondly, because technology enables us to do things better, i.e. medicine, cars, robots etc.
We talk about all these technologies because in some form or another they improve our lives. That makes sense. However, I prefer to think about what has the biggest potential to improve our lives and then focus more on that specifically. As I’ve also explained before, we have to look at what can add the greatest possible increase to the ratio of input (work, resources etc.) and output (all the things we value). When you find the class of technology, or innovation, that can benefit us the most as well as understand the reasons why it does, all the thousands of examples of technologies become obvious.
In one word that class of technology is automation (e.g. robots, digitalization, artificial intelligence). It enables us more than anything to live the lives we want to live because it is the most effective way to get what we want, i.e. any goods or services, as well as do what we want. That includes for you to work in a job you want, because all the things you don’t want to do, like hunting, farming, energy production, manufacturing are outsourced not just to humans, but to machines that do it for free. Automation is the ultimate example of us humans getting more of what we want without having to do more, whether it’s more time for your loved ones, your hobbies etc. (b).
As long as our quality of life depends on human labor, it will not rise significantly. It can’t. Human labor is linear: You get one hour worth of wood when a human cuts wood for one hour. Many technologies like saws help us to cut more wood (produce more output), which is great, but human labor is still needed. Automation is what allows us to break out of this cycle, it’s what doesn’t just make our hamster wheel easier and more comfortable to run in, it allows us to leave our hamster wheel altogether.
I’ve written before in detail that it would have a tremendous benefit for all of us if we innovated the education system as well as the transport system and others. However, all of the great advances that we humans are capable of in this day and age are restricted by how much we humans can work. This makes automation the missing link in what I have so far argued would be the best paths to building a Utopia, in that it allows us to make progress even faster (yes, exponentially faster).
But What about People?
Of course, not everything should be automated. Many jobs give us value and joy and happiness – ideally people can choose whatever they want to do, whatever jobs. Other jobs we probably wouldn’t want to automate, like psychotherapy, child-care etc. We can also argue that if we automate more that human interactions will be lost, but I believe the trick is to automate jobs where human interactions matter less and work on creating more jobs where the human touch matters more.
This in turn requires better education for all, which I will address in the future. That also answers concerns about unemployment as new jobs are always created. It’s not like we cannot think of more things to do or jobs that we need humans for, so to fear unemployment is an illusion. This pattern has always occurred: Jobs were lost, because an innovation made the jobs (input) unnecessary, which improved the input-output ratio and thus grew the cake, which in turn created new jobs. Virtually no jobs that had to be done 1,000 years ago exist nowadays and only few from a hundred years ago. Hence, automation doesn’t take away jobs, it creates better ones. However, what I fear is inadequate education. While we are on the verge of having robots that can do high-value creative tasks better than people, like customer support, we are teaching kids skills and life lessons of the past generation.
Automation is the innovation with the biggest multiplier effect. It makes the cake, which we all want to eat from, the biggest. When the cake becomes bigger we are more likely to cure cancer, to build a world in which we all work in jobs we love or not have to work at all, and to alleviate extreme poverty. The issues that come with it like potential unemployment or inequality are also not very hard to solve, but we must not get distracted by them.
As always, progress (it’s speed and direction) depends on humans, our attitudes and ultimately actions. Too many of us are too scared of automation and block it too often. Therefore, I think getting the point across of what the actual potential of automation is in general, and not just discussing thousands of instances of “if we automate this, this person will lose their job” is a key to unlocking a brighter future. I think when people get this, society will become more of an enabler of automation instead of a barrier.
References:
- Peachey, K., Palumbo, D. (2017). How much of your salary is spent on rent? Available online at: https://www.bbc.com/news/business-42179119
- Statista (2018). Global GDP (gross domestic product) at current prices from 2010 to 2022 (in billion U.S. dollars). Available online at: https://www.statista.com/statistics/268750/global-gross-domestic-product-gdp/
Footnotes:
a) Of course, we still have to work for it, but we spend less than 10% of our income on food and it’s much tastier, less troublesome and we face no risk of starvation in the developed world.
b) If you don’t follow, read the multiplier effect of innovation article.
Generation Utopia 