Former Facebook executive says society will COLLAPSE within 30 years as robots put half of humans out of work
ROBOT WARS Former Facebook executive says society will
COLLAPSE within 30 years as robots put half of humans out of work
Antonio Garcia Martinez fears revolution and armed
conflict will erupt in America in the coming decades
By Jasper Hamill 4th August 2017, 12:33 pm Updated: 4th August 2017, 4:46 pm
A former Facebook executive has quit his job and now
lives as a recluse in the wilderness – because he is convinced that machines
will take over the world.
Antonio Garcia Martinez worked as a project manager for
the social media giant in Silicon Valley but became terrified by the relentless
march of technology.
He reckons that machines will have taken half of
humanity’s jobs within 30 years, sparking revolt and armed conflict.
So he quit his job, fled his home and now lives in
woodland north of Seattle with a gun for protection.
He spoke to new two-part BBC2 documentary “Secrets of
Silicon Valley”, which explores the growing influence of the tech hub on global
development.
Mr Martinez said: “If the world really does end, there
aren’t going to be many places to run.
“Within 30 years, half of humanity won’t have a job. It
could get ugly. There could be a revolution.
“I’ve seen what the world will look like in five to 10
years.
"You may not believe it but it's coming, and it's
coming in the form of a self-driving truck that's going to run you over.
"There are 300 million guns in this country, one for
every man, woman and child, and they're mostly in the hands of those who are
getting economically displaced. There could be a revolt.
"You don't realise it but we're in a race between
technology and politics, and technologists are winning. They're way ahead.
"They will destroy jobs and disrupt economies before
we even react to them and we really should be thinking about that."
He said other ex-Silicon Valley employees had also
resigned and were living on land isolated from society because they were
equally frightened of what the future held.
Billionaire Mark Zuckerberg is unlikely to suffer much
during the robot revolution
Programme host Jamie Bartlett, director of the Centre for
the Analysis of Social Media, said: "The tech gods are selling us all a
better future but Silicon Valley's promise to build a better world relies on
tearing up the world as it is. They call it 'disruption'.
"The mantra of Silicon Valley is that disruption is
always good, and through smartphones and digital technology we can create more
efficient, more convenient, faster services and everyone wins from that.
"But behind that beautifully designed app or that slick
platform there's a quite brutal form of capitalism unfolding and it's leaving
some of the poorest people in society behind.
"There's a risk Silicon Valley's promise to build a
better world could inflict a nightmare future on millions of us.
"The big secret in Silicon Valley is that the next
wave of disruption could tear apart the way capitalism works, and as a result
the way we live our lives could be utterly transformed. "
Artificial intelligence pioneer Jeremy Howard said:
"People aren't scared enough.
"They're saying 'Don't worry about it, there will
always be more jobs'.
"And it's founded on this purely historical thing of
there has been a revolution before, it was called the Industrial Revolution,
and after it there were still enough jobs, therefore this new, totally
different, totally unrelated revolution will also have enough jobs.
"It's a ludicrously short-sighted, meaningless
argument which incredibly smart people are making."
He said if society did nothing, a "tiny class of
society" would own "all of the capital and all of the data and
everybody else adds no economic value, is despised by the class that has things
because they're worthless" creating "massive social unrest".
Secrets of Silicon Valley is on BBC2 at 8pm on Sunday,
August 6.
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