Robots Will Take Over – If We Let Them

As early as next year, leading technology companies, such as Tesla, plan to launch their human-like robots that can handle tasks both in industry and in our homes.

Human civilization has experienced several epoch-making technological changes throughout history. Domesticating livestock, creating agriculture, and metallurgy were the biggest changes during the first 95 percent of our existence. Then it took thousands of years before we reached industrialization. After that, things have moved at breakneck speed. In just a few hundred years, the age of electricity arrived, radio and television gave us new media and cultural changes. Then came digitalization and the internet, and we have subsequently experienced a greatly increased production capacity in the last 50 years, while the proportion of physical jobs has decreased. Throughout history, these major stages of development have come at times and been absorbed by a gradual social change so that society at large has been able to adapt. That is no longer the case.

Two gigantic social upheavals

We are currently facing two gigantic changes that together could completely overturn everything we currently take for granted. They could change how we work, how our economy functions and how we live our lives. One factor is the explosive development and implementation of AI, artificial intelligence, which has not yet achieved “self-awareness” but is at risk of reaching this point within months to a few years and which we have often warned about.

The second factor is one that has not yet occurred, but will soon. What has been science fiction for decades will become reality – perhaps as early as next year. Advanced humanoid robots are already in advanced stages of production and several companies are aiming to launch them in the near future. The development of these humanoid robots is also taking place in parallel with the increasingly advanced AI development that is progressing at a furious pace. The goal, according to the companies themselves, is for the robots to initially be sold as industrial tools and then as luxury goods to the wealthiest, and eventually become a product in most workplaces – and in all homes.

Within a decade or so, experts believe there will be a billion such humanoid robots and that the market will be gigantic. But this development also leads to worrying questions about what will happen to the labor market and us humans.

Robots instead of workers

As AI programs take over more and more professional categories, there will soon be few bastions of the labor market reserved for humans other than those that require physical presence. Sometimes things have to be moved and controlled manually. But when humanoid robots are designed to be able to perform all the work tasks that humans currently perform, a situation arises whose consequences we cannot currently foresee.

When humanoid robots, controlled by the same increasingly advanced AI programs, also become capable of not only learning new tasks but performing them flawlessly without human intervention – why would an employer choose a human to do a job? The robots come without wage or health and safety requirements, and the unit prices are expected to quickly fall below the average worker’s annual salary – so what is stopping employers from replacing their human workers with machines? There are no laws requiring humans to make up a proportion of the workforce. Nor are there any preparations whatsoever for a labor market or economy where market forces have a strong interest in replacing us with the ultimate “low-wage workers.”

Politicians unprepared

Humanoid robots are still a political “non-issue.” The establishment has already done everything it can to maximize mass immigration to the West. Regardless of whether politicians are on the “left” or “right,” their decisions have made it possible for some companies to dump wages and replace workers with cheaper labor from other countries. Which political forces will then want to say no to the entry of humanoid robots into the labor market?

No right-wing or liberal parties, anyway. Profit-maximizing humanoid robots will receive the blessing of the market and thus of the right-wing parties as soon as they come off the production line. Liberals will welcome them as natural elements of a free market and either defend the free will of the buyer – or the “rights” of future potentially “self-aware” artificial intelligences.

Left-wing parties will likely be more critical of such a development because humanoid robots make the kind of immigration they have long advocated even harder to justify. Arguments like “who will take care of you when you get old?” simply lose their force when there are humanoid robots tailored to that role – without welfare dependency, criminality or rape tendencies.

One of the most powerful arguments for humanoid robots will be that they supposedly have the potential to generate “increased prosperity for all” – by taking the strain off us. It is an argument that can even cross party lines. The working class could be transformed into a middle class and the middle class into an upper class where no one needs to work and where you don’t even have to clean your own home. A mechanical servant will be able to do it for you. That is how the arguments will go.

But how will you deal with the fact that most people will not have a job? Will you introduce a citizen’s salary? And what power will those who manufacture, update and service the robots have?

Conservatives may resist

But this is where we come into a factor that could be decisive and in any case has the potential to turn morally conservative forces, such as religious groups or nationalists, against humanoid robots. Companies are planning for them to take over not only the labor market, but also the homes. It could be a death blow to the traditional division of labor between men and women, but also our social interactions when robots in the future become objects of friendship and romantic relationships – and much “better” ones at that.

Already, more and more people are becoming romantically interested in AI programs, designed to be experts in manipulation. The steps from a domestic helper to a friend you can talk to to a specially designed and physically attractive sex partner are shorter than you might think, at least according to companies that are already making billions on advanced sex dolls with AI programming. That such a development threatens to reduce the birth rate but also the cultural norms we have today can be considered likely, which studies from Japan support – and thus it could also be something that arouses a certain political resistance among those groups who do not want to see the nuclear family wiped out.

There are few studies on what it does to a society and cultures when there will be virtually no more regular jobs. Just as few on how it will affect our lives when not only jobs but also personal contacts and sex are offered by artificial creations. This is uncharted territory we will soon be facing.

On the whole, we are truly unprepared for a future that marches closer with rhythmic and metallic steps. Eagerly encouraged by forces that have everything to gain from the rest of us losing – a future where we are replaced.