Technology is changing everything.
This is something that I preached about for a long time. Many years ago, I start my age of abundance posts/videos. It was done to bring light to the fact that technology was going to alter everything. We are on the cusp of a massive economic explosion, one that hasn't been seen in over 150 years.
Since we are at the onset of this, it is easy to deny it is happening. We have people telling us stuff like "technology always creates more jobs than it destroys" and "nothing in my daily life is really that different".
Unfortunately, these do not take into account the fact we are going to see massive convergence over the next couple decades. Advancements in both AI and robotics are going to dwarf anything we have seen over the last 50 years, including the personal computer.
For this reason, lets run through a few scenarios.
Massive Job Destruction
We are likely seeing peak employment. While economists wrestling with their forecasts of whether we will have a soft landing or enter recession, the likelihood that unemployment goes up is a foregone conclusion. We will never see the numbers we do now simply because things are moving ahead at an incredible rate.
Robotics is starting to see massive progress. Ironically, whereas many thought the AI would be the delay, it is actually the mechanical components that are lagging. This is something that will be addressed over the next couple years.
What this means is we are going to see humanoid robots starts to emerge as legitimate replacements for humans. The last year introduced the world to LLMs. My guess is that, by the end of 2024, most will be aware of LBMs (large behavioral models). These are to robots what LLMs are to chatbots.
One of the key features in this was discovered by Tesla last year. The ability to train simply based upon video was an enormous breakthrough. This caused Tesla to scrap most of its code for its Full Self Driving software and go strictly to video training. After the initial step back, we are starting to see the results. This, of course, is not only being employed by Tesla.
Get ready for massive advancement. The difference with LBMs is that, once the system learns a skills, it is instantly employed in however many robots are made. This means one new skill could go to 100 or 100 million bots. Plus, we have a system that never goes backwards or "loses" a skill.
How can humans match up with that? We will see the number of tasks growing through the next couple years. Google is already contracting with many of the Fortune 50 companies to train the system on those companies data. This means the bots will already come packaged with the ability to performs the jobs required by those entities.
Calls For Government Sustenance
Whether we call it universal basic income or some other name, we are going to see calls over the next 10 years for governments to do something. Of course, we are already to the point where discussions should be taking place. Alas, humans being how they are will wait until it is a crisis.
Ideology and a host of other viewpoints will enter the conversation. While we cannot forecast how this will turn out, based upon history, we can surmise that governments will be:
A) too late
B) do too little
That means we are going to see some medium term pain in many areas. The futurists will cling to the notion that technology is going to create more jobs while millions are being put out of work.
Again, few are ready for the scale of a shift that could be taking place. When these systems are trained, the only question is how quickly the production scales. With advancements in manufacturing, we can bet there will be many companies that are rolling out the bots by the thousands. It was just reported that Tesla's auto factory in China pops out a car every 39 seconds. Imagine a humanoid robot being created at a similar pace. Then multiply that by a number of facilities (and companies) across the world.
By the way, manufacturing a robot is likely a more streamlined process than an automobile meaning the rate will probably be quicker.
Massive Economic Output
This might take 5 years from the start of scaling of production but we can expect economic output to skyrocket.
How much more productive is the world with 1 million humanoid robots? How about 10 million? 100 million?
Consider the fact the automotive industry can produce more than 90 million new vehicles in a year. In 2018, smartphone production hit 1.5 billion. I would say a robot is somewhere between a car and a smartphone.
Let us put this number at around 300 million. After a few years, you are talking 1 billion robots. How does that alter the workforce? Ultimately, it is going to bring abundance to much of the world.
Of course, jobs are going to be eliminated at a rapid rate hence the calls for UBI. Within a decade, we could see billions of robots in operation. The key is that each of these is able to feed more information back to the system. When one bot "learns" something, they all do.
Ultimately, this is the bridge from the digital to physical world. This means we are operating, at least in part, under the laws of information technology. In layman's terms that equates to things happening very quickly.
Do not buy into the notion that things will not change rapidly. The next half decade is going to be very telling.