Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says labor should not fear automation
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez says labor should not fear
automation
It’s impossible to discuss the seismic shift toward
automation without a conversation about job loss. Opponents of these
technologies criticize a displacement that could someday result in wide-scale
unemployment among what is often considered “unskilled” roles. Advocates,
meanwhile, tend to suggest that reports of that nature tend to be overstated.
Workforces shift, as they have done for time immemorial.
Brian Heater, Jonathan Shieber March 10, 2019
During a conversation at SXSW this week, New York congresswoman
Alexandria Ocasio-Cortez offered another take entirely.
“We should not be haunted by the specter of being
automated out of work,” she said in an answer reported by The Verge. “We should
be excited by that. But the reason we’re not excited by it is because we live
in a society where if you don’t have a job, you are left to die. And that is,
at its core, our problem.”
The response to an audience member’s question is a take
that doesn’t too often get repeated in broader conversations about automation.
Oftentimes industry spokespeople will discuss technology’s potential to replace
jobs that are deemed “dull, dirty and dangerous” — menial tasks that many
roboticists will suggest no one really wants in the first place.
Ocasio-Cortez’s answer, on the other hand, speaks to a
viewpoint more in line with her own Democratic Socialist views. It’s a
suggestion that, if harnessed correctly, such technologies could one day
liberate workers from a capitalist system where being a worker is inexorably
tied to one’s identity and livelihood.
The newly elected congresswoman elaborated on her
position by pointing out the benefits that automation could bring to a society.
“We should be excited about automation, because what it
could potentially mean is more time educating ourselves, more time creating
art, more time investing in and investigating the sciences, more time focused
on invention, more time going to space, more time enjoying the world that we
live in,” The Verge quoted Ocasio-Cortez as saying. “Because not all creativity
needs to be bonded by wage.”
And Ocasio-Cortez cited Bill Gates’ suggestion (first
floated in a presentation on Quartz) that a robot tax might be a way to make
that vision real. “What [Gates is] really talking about is taxing
corporations,” she reportedly said. “But it’s easier to say: ‘tax a robot.’ ”
Her response to the automation question has met with
applause from some writers who have been notably prescient about the future.
“This [is] just such a shockingly intelligent thing for
any politician to say,” novelist William Gibson said via tweet. It is, at the
very least, a fresh perspective on a well-trod topic and the kind of outlook
that could breathe some life into a vital conversation about our collective
technological future.
Automation will have an unquestionably profound impact on
jobs in the coming decades — we’ve already seen much of that already, for roles
in places like warehouses. Every study on the subject acknowledges this, with
jobs “destroyed” numbering in the tens of millions and above, while jobs
“created” are often a fraction of that massive number.
The congresswoman’s comments, however, suggest that,
independent of those numbers, perhaps we’ve been asking the wrong question all
along.
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