Luddites at the gates. AI, renewable energy, robotics, 3D printing & genomics plus sharing economy will change our lives forever. Again.

In Soviet times one of the most hated subjects to study used to be political economy of socialism. That was something artificial and ultimately proven wrong by collapse of USSR 25 years ago. Interestingly though, one of the laws of communist economy recently started ringing true. This is the famous “Each one contributes whatever he can and consumes whatever he needs”. Difficult to comprehend how it can work in a real world we live in, huh? Not so much.

It became a bad habit to say that the world is rapidly changing. But it does. And crucially important are changes happening in the five areas highlighted above. We seem to be on the verge of complete reshuffle of international trade and world order and not in the way Mr. Trump foresees.

Renewables and clean energy solutions are already viable and they will effectively kill “coal, oil and gas as a fuel” industry not only during our lifetime, but within not more than 20 years from now. Decreasing initial investment, low fixed costs and improving reliability will do the trick first for households and then for industry. Households will move off the grid and will consume as much energy as needed upon investing into initial installations without paying hefty monthly bills. What will traditional energy companies do then? I ask myself the same question. Probably just die out or reinvent themselves by moving to renewable generation and supplying large industrial enterprises if there is still a market for that.

3D printing and robotics will make offshoring manufacturing models obsolete – no third-world worker will be able to compete with robots who do not rest, eat, go on strike or need to be educated (software update will substitute it) and produce personalized goods on site on demand. That limits international trade to raw materials that do not exist or are expensive to obtain in the place of actual manufacturing, which is a dramatic decrease in physical volume and money, and to intellectual property. Know-how and technology will be in the focus of international trade tomorrow, not running shoes sewn in Bangladesh and packaged in China to be shipped to Australia. But beyond tomorrow even that kind of trade will dry out together with the modern concept of trade. Can you imagine an impact on logistics? A lot of scrap metal out of ships no one longer needs… 

Genomics will allow to produce any quantity of food necessary within the available space, most probably without any living and breathing creature ever needed to be slaughtered again, as well as to cure most or all known diseases. AI will completely overhaul the healthcare, being able to add new data on-the-fly and diagnose any patient anywhere in the world. At last, proper healthcare to everyone. Doctors, where have you all gone? Difficult to compete with Watson? Understand…

Same AI algorithms will be overseeing M2M interaction and machine learning, tirelessly building an efficient “neural network” in charge of all mundane tasks that humans currently address themselves. And sharing economy (very different from what we see now) will uproot automotive, hotel and number ofother industries, first one finally brought to extinction – who needs to own a car if electric self-driving taxis or buses are readily available except maybe one for pleasure? By some estimates, 3 to 5 percent of the quantity of cars we own now will be sufficient – I believe it’s too aggressive an estimate not considering peak demand, but 15 to 20% will certainly do.

All that will lead, amidst all things, to a situation, when human labor is not needed any longer. Blue collar jobs will be wiped out first, then white collar ones will follow. This is a tectonic shift, which significance is difficult to underestimate. First and foremost, what all these people will do in their spare time and how will they earn their living?

Those are the new Luddites mentioned in the title and their concern is legitimate – if robots take their work, they have no real option to reeducate and find another job while they have families to feed. Isn’t it better to burn all that fancy stuff to the ground and keep on living the good old way? Could be, but there is a better solution if we have a little patience and a road map how to return to paradise long lost without dying from hunger in the process.

Looks like we are fast approaching a kind of a new Roman empire arrangement when to keep people calm and happy somebody needs to provide bread and entertainment. And who can it be? Only fully autonomous machines, tirelessly working to satisfy our needs, at the same time replicating and improving themselves. And key thing is that when everything is in abundance, the whole concept of property, trade and money loses relevance. These machines will belong to no one with their output freely available to any member of community. There is another huge question if this is viable with people living longer, reproducing without any concern if they can support children (yes, they can) and no real responsibilities to bear. But this is an issue to address separately when we get there.

Thank you, Karl Marx, you knew somehow what was coming. And you, humble humans, say hi to Skynet and hope that it will tolerate us better than the one from the movie. Good thing is that we are no direct threat or even an inconvenience – laying low we can continue this way indefinitely together, who cares about antelope or even lion in savanna minding their own business?

We seem to be the final link in the chain of biological evolution with pure intellect free from physical body coming next. Not a bad goal for humanity to achieve, by the way.