Malthus, Marx & Machine Learning.

We know that we do not know all the laws yet, therefore things must be learned only to be unlearned again. ~ Richard Feynman (Lectures on Physics)

Thomas Robert Malthus everyone knows wrote the book "An essay on the principle of population", Malthus father was friend of French Philosopher Jean-Jacques Rouseau whose underlying view of human psychology was that "man is naturally good and only by institutions he is bad" this view is in stark contrast to the prevailing Christian doctrine but was highly influential in the late 18th century and later on Karl Marx.

William Godwin followed Jean-Jacques Rouseau and Godein's work in 1794 influenced Malthus father Daniel Malthus but Malthus Jr was against it and wrote his first paper in which Malthus theodicy "formation of the mind" this seems to be the important constituent in complexity of ideas from which Darwin's theory of evolution and Marx’s Das Kapital descends.

In an autobiographical essay (Published after Darwin's death) Darwin has mentioned Malthus influence.

There is much of influence of Darwin's work on Marx. 

Artificial intelligence combined with Machine learning and Deep learning is built to mimic nature so Darwin's theory is not only applicable to the best of people, but also to the source codes. Researchers are using Darwin’s theories to evolve AI,Ml and DI, so only the strongest algorithms survives, eventually only creative & intelligent people will complement AI or AI will complement them.

Now coming to the Paradox of productivity,

"Production of too many useful things results in too many useless people"- Karl Marx

with AI, Malthus constant value of lobor might be possible.

Simply put " continues reduction in labor required to produce a given level of economic output leads to stark choice between growth and unemployment" As we are into market economy today & looking back at economics of the last 300 years, the market would simply move towards higher productivity. What AI does is it increases productivity many fold, so no force can stop this from happening, now the policy makers should engage the labor getting freed from productive work otherwise we will have to face a highly productive economy with high unemployment and the law of unintended consequences.

A Few Questions?

If there is mass unemployment then will the state be able to provide uniform unemployment allowance?

Will Malthus and Marx make a Re-entry at the height of Labor Productivity ?

How will the equation of Least Labor>Most Productivity> High unemployment look?

Time for the policy makers to become more realistic, Artificial Intelligence combined with machine learning and deep learning is certainly going to increase the productivity in all aspects of known work today and profits as a consequence, markets would love it, stocks will move up, and market economy would win, This is inevitable in current day economics, But will the men and women loose ?

Interesting point is for the last 100000 years up to 1800 and it was a era which was called "Malthusian Trap" & human being as spices worked on an average for 6 hours during this long period, Switch from leisure towards work in modern societies happened during the era between 1600-1800 which was the era of Industrious revolution, where the average work hour shifted to 9 hours. Even in 2018 people across economies including advanced economies people work for over 9 hours, for Americans its 13.5 hours as per Hbr survey and for the sr management people especially from the ivy league schools its even more, its like 15 hours if international/national travel is included.

AI revolution combined with Machine learning and deep learning is going to give more time for leisure to most of the people, we will go back to the average we had for 100000 years that is 6 hours and for some CEO'S it might be 4, Leisure will be back, From point of view of economics leisure is just another goods like mobile or automobile. Better option will be just a simple transfer of wealth from the state to its citizens and people would spend on leisure, they would love to travel and reinvent themselves.

As a global society in the last 200 years we have forgotten that life is multi dimensional and there are colourful aspects to it, work is only one dimension of life. We have been working like machines for the last 200 years and now we have got the real machines which will do a better job. Thanks to AI revolution both men and women will have time to think and evolve with better intelligence and as better human beings, Time to unlearn work as we see it today and learn leisure.

"Its better to travel than to arrive".