Earth Will Become a ‘Meaningless Dystopia’ as Robots Rise, Scientist Warns
Many valid warnings are often seen or taken as fear mongering because people don’t seem to understand that the subject of the warnings don’t happen right away but rather, slowly over time, and that often causes people to become desensitized to the event taking place all around them but ever so slowly.
via Expresss UK:
Dr Subhash Kak, computing expert at Oklahoma University, said people will lose their self-worth as robots gradually steal their jobs.
He believes that the US opioid epidemic and the rise of terror groups mark the beginnings of a dystopian reality.
Dr Kak said: “There will be massive unemployment.
“People want to be useful and work provides meaning, so the world will sink into despair.”
Between 400 and 800 million workers across the world could be replaced by machines by 2030, according to a report published by management consultancy firm McKinsey last year.
Dr Kak said: “Policymakers have begun to speak of a minimum guaranteed income with everyone provided food, shelter and a smartphone, and that will not address the heart of the problem.
“In my view the current opioid and drug epidemic in the US is a manifestation of this despair.
“Likewise, phenomena such as ISIS are a response to the meaninglessness that people find in a world devoted only to the cult of the body.”
A report by the McKinsey Global Institute, a business and economics research organisation, found that occupations that require a lower level of education and experience have more potential to be automated.
Dr Kak told the Daily Star: “Some say that current phase of automation will create new kinds of jobs that we cannot think of.
“The current evolution is replacing the thinking human and so its impact on society will be enormous.”
Robots are threatening to take millions of jobs, a leading scientist has warned
The McKinsey report, called ‘Jobs lost, jobs gained: Workforce transitions in a time of automation’, also found there will be enough work for humans until 2030, but that in about 60 per cent of jobs at least one third of activities will be automated.
It said: “We estimate that between 400million and 800million individuals could be displaced by automation and need to find new jobs by 2030 around the world.
“Of the total displaced, 75 million to 375 million may need to switch occupational categories and learn new skills.”
The countries that will be most affected are the US, Germany and Japan, according to the report.
It said: “For advanced economies, the share of the workforce that may ned to learn new skills and find work in new occupations is much higher: up to one-third of the 2030 workforce in the United States and Germany, and nearly half in Japan.”
The McKinsey report also claimed people in China will be most affected by the switch to machines.
It said: “In absolute terms, China faces the largest number of workers needing to switch occupations – up to 100 million if automation is adopted rapidly, or 12 per cent of the 2030 workforce.
“While that may seem like a large number, it is relatively small compared with the tens of millions of Chinese who have moved out of agriculture in the past 25 years.”
The report stated that jobs in unpredictable environments such as gardening, plumbing and the care sector are least at risk.
TOM GILLESPIE
Express UK
Headline Image credit: The Evil Wiki – Dystopia
