“With machine learning on digital computers, nobody knows why it works. The only reason they know it works really well is because they’ve done experiments on digital computers. And it works.” - Peter Shor
The Rise of Optimus and Cheap Chinese Knock-Offs
The Tesla company is preparing to build millions of Optimus androids every quarter. By 2050 there could be three androids for every human on the planet. It is believed that those robots will be capable of doing 90% of the jobs that currently exist. Meaning, that for 90% of you, your job will be done by a robot and you will need some other way to get money. These robots will probably cost less than $25,000. They will be able to work all day and all night perhaps on a single charge. Let’s look at how jobs maybe done:
Medical
You're sick so you call the doctor. Within a few minutes, an autonomously driven van arrives and an android gets out and knocks on your door. You tell your house android to let the doctor droid in. The doctor droid is equipped with all these medical sensors. There is a full lab in the van as well as a pharmacy and after a little computing, the doctor droid is able to access hundreds of thousands of cases to determine what ails you and how to treat it. But how do you pay for this? Do you send the company who runs the droids money or is this part of a government medical program? Is it all for free so no money is necessary? Unfortunately, you have the flu. If it is a company you called then you will be advised to stay home so as to not infect others. If it is the government, you may be ordered to stay in your home under threat of punishment. People will certainly prefer private companies that they can choose from over true government communism.
Legal
There is a prisoner who is being considered for release. The judge must decide if the criminal has reformed and if he is likely to reoffend. The criminal will tell the judge how he has changed, and learned his lesson and will never do it again. However, studies show that AI can make better decisions than Judges. And so the judge is replaced with an android judge. Now the android judge will make a decision based on cold calculations and not on the criminal’s emotional demonstrations. The android judge reduces the money the government must spend and reduces the need for taxes in this area.
Farming
Farming is done almost completely by androids. Androids do an incredible amount of work day and night. They even have androids with little vacuum cleaners that spend all day and night looking for insects on the plants to suck up. This has resulted in almost all food being organic. Gone are all the farm workers. There is a central computer that creates the overall farm-plan and the tractor-bots are deployed at the correct given moment. Is the land owned by the farmer? Or is this a collective thing where all the food is given out to everyone for free. Based on the dislike of communism, the owners will retain the land.
Jobs Left for Us Humans
Even though we may have robots that can do 90% of the work we do today, there will still be scarcity and we still can all move to doing the jobs that robots can’t. We may all become athletes in sporting competitions, pole dancers or comedians. Sure, robots could do this work but who wants to watch robots complete, dance and tell jokes? How about bartenders, nurses and DJs? There are probably a lot of jobs that customers would be creeped out of if it was done by androids. It also could be that you will still have your job except you will be helped by your androids. This will allow you to charge less and get a lot more done. The owner of the pool cleaning company may replace all of his workers with androids but he still will have a job. Maybe in the future, we will all have robot possies. When companies hire us, they will hire us knowing that we will be working with our robots. But clearly there will be a huge number of people thrown out of work creating social instability.
Communism and Universal Basic Income
The communists who took over Russian in 1917 tried to get rid of money but it didn’t work. In fact it was a catastrophe. They had to take every bit of silver, gold and platinum they could find in the nation and turn it into coins to stave off a complete collapse. It is unlikely that people will want to turn to Communism where they are subjected to authoritarian ways. However, the UBI movement may become much more popular and a soft socialism could be demanded by people put out of work. But, there may be a much better way than UBI if people are so inclined to make demands for socialism. .
One Person One Robot.
We are forbidden by law to marry more than one person (at least in most modern civilizations). Why? To maintain social stability. At least that is what I’ve been told. If one man was able to marry thousands of women, it would cause social unrest as many men would be deprived of love, caring and respect causing them to want to .
Perhaps one-person, one-robot law would provide stability too. There could easily be a law that says all people are only allowed to own one or two robots. This would double or triple the productivity without causing mass displacement. If anyone wanted to have more than one or two robot workers, they would have to hire a person that owns them. If farmers need farm hands, they can hire a farm worker and his two androids. There could be some exceptions to this rule and perhaps companies would be required to have a certain amount of their workforce being human or that the law only applies to certain types of robots. This policy would probably beat socialism at staving off social unrest and actually creating productivity and efficiency.
Beer Barons
AI technology may cause the greatest surge in productivity in the history of mankind (or at least since the invention of beer back in ancient Egypt). Everytime there is a new technology, it usually results in the inverter of that technology becoming extremely rich. We can see this throughout American history
Oil: John D. Rockefeller
Steel: Andrew Carnegie
Automobile: Henry Ford
Operating System: Bill Gates
But what if an invention is so fundamentally economy changing that almost all money goes to that one person who invented it? This was likely the case when beer was invented thousands of years ago. Everyone needed to eat and have their grain crops last through the year. Beer solved there problems. But perhaps there was only one man who knew how to brew beer or who had the capital to create the equipment needed to brew beer.
If only one man has the tech, then everyone else must work for that tech. And what are their jobs? Building pyramids of course for one gallon of beer per day. The inverter of beer would be so rich that he could hire an army to overthrow what every other government there was at that time.
The Pharos of the Future
It seems very clear that this AI technology will concentrate money into the hands of a few. More so than we have seen before. A few people will become extremely rich. But what use is it to have money if you have no people to spend it on?
Let’s call these people the Functional Pharos. Most other people will have their lives disrupted to the point that they are out of work. Who will everyone get a job from? Most of them would have to get their jobs from either the Functional Pharos or vendors who cater to the Functiona Pharos. So what would the Functional Pharos want to buy? It could be something like Colonies on Mars. Imagine that you were hired to be a Mars Colonist. You could eat on Mars or starve on Earth. If the Functional Pharos care about the environment, maybe all the work would center around environmental issues. However, if the Phoros desire is to kill off millions of us, then the millions of robots created could suddenly become weaponized and take over the government just like in science fiction movies.
Do Robots Need Money?
If robots are in charge of buying and selling for people, then they certainly will need to use money. And the best money for them to use will be CloudCoin because they can keep CloudCoins in their memory. Of course CloudCoin is the best money for people too.
Will We Need Money in the Future?
In Star Trek, they have achieved a “post-scarcity” civilization and there is no money. If you’re hungry, just tell the replicator and bingo, dinner is served. The same thing can be found in our homes when we were kids. We show up at the dinner table at 6pm and bingo, dinner is served. Eitherway, it requires an authority to make it work and if that authority decides you don’t need to eat, you're going to starve to death unless the authority decides to feed you again.
I can imagine a world where food is so inexpensive that it is free. But I doubt that all food will be so cheap that billions of Africans can eat Caviar and Champagne. And, even if it is possible for us to all eat for free, we are still going to want to purchase palaces, yachts, helicopters and vacations to the Moon. There is no limit to our wants and scarcity will always exist.
Who knows, maybe in the future, everyone will own an acre of land that is farmed by a single robot that is able to produce enough food to feed a family of four and build your house at the same time using naturally occurring materials.
Money (and specifically cash) will always be needed to help us get what we want and avoid the tyranny of others. I have created CloudCoin and it is the only true digital cash we have at this point and is perfect enough to serve us for the next thousand years. I am very proud of how wonderfully this RAIDA-based currency works and I believe that the money of the future is CloudCoin.
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