"We Are All Expendable Now"

Robert Tracinski, spot on:

The basic rule of economics after the Industrial Revolution is: if a task can be automated, it will be. Or to put it differently, if a worker can be replaced by a machine, he will be. Call it the principle of expendability. The only thing that has changed since the first power loom is the number and nature of the tasks that can be automated. The first thing the Industrial Revolution did was to automate physical tasks. But now we are beginning to automatemental tasks, and what we are just beginning to see is the scope of the mental work that can be automatized. It is much wider than you probably think. . . .

If you're not taking this seriously yet, let me give you one more example. I recently came across a story about a composer and music theorist who created a computer program that writes cantatas in the style of Johann Sebastian Bach. (A cantata is a short piece with a well-defined structure, which makes the task a little easier.) The climax of the story is a concert in which an orchestra played a mixture of the computer's compositions and actual Bach cantatas. An audience of music experts could not reliably determine which was which.

Comments

[Ted Craig]

Of course, first you need Bach to develop the style, so the highest level of thinking remains the realm of humans. But most of us aren't high thinkers.

[kyle8]

Maybe we could write a program for an honest politician who understands basic economic principles and basic human rights and then just replace the whole sorry lot we have now.

[John Henry]

I work with factory automation and automated factories and have since 1976.

I think it would be safe to say that there is nothing, in manufacturing at least, that can't be automated.

I can't think of any exceptions.

The question is whether it can be automated economically. There's that nasty word "economics" again.

I have downloaded the article for reading on my Kindle but have not gotten to it yet. Sounds interesting. But from the snippet, it sounds like he might be ignoring the economic feasibility part of the equation.

"An engineer is someone who can do for 10 shillings what any fool can do for a pound"
-Nevil Shute Norway in his autobiography "Slide Rule"

John Henry