The Narrative of Machines Replacing Humans: Is This Time Different? A Dedao Audio-Book Excerpt on Narrative Economics, with Robin’s Printing-Press Analogy

The Narrative of Machines Replacing Humans In Homo Deus, the Israeli historian Yuval Harari says that the most important economic question of the twenty-first century is how to create jobs for “useless people.” Future inequality, he suggests, may involve much more than the gap between rich and poor. Harari says that a tiny privileged elite may use biotechnology, genetic technology, nanotechnology, and so on to turn themselves into upgraded Homo sapiens—or “Homo deus.” Like the Elves in The Lord of the Rings, these “Homo deus” could not only extend their lives indefinitely and remain forever young, but also surpass ordinary humans in mental ability, physical ability, and even looks. This tiny group, together with the super-algorithms they control, could rule the entire planet. Meanwhile, with artificial intelligence (AI) and robotics highly advanced, both the material production and the intellectual and cultural production humans need could be handed over entirely to AI and robots. That would mean the great majority of ordinary people being relegated to a “useless class,” of no use economically, culturally, politically, or militarily—not even worth exploiting. But having absolutely nothing to do would be boring, and bored people tend to cause trouble. The easiest solution for “Homo deus” would therefore be to order AI to provide enough junk food, entertainment shows, online games, and even psychoactive drugs to keep most people penned in, eating and drinking until they die. “Homo deus” would view ordinary Homo sapiens much as we view zoo animals. Doesn’t Harari’s prediction sound terrifying? Strangely, it also feels very real. In fact, his apocalyptic prediction is the latest version of the “robots” narrative. Generations before him have told this story again and again. ---- As early as 350 BCE, Aristotle raised the possibility of machines replacing humans. If shuttles could spin automatically and strings could play themselves, he said, slaveholders would no longer need servants or slaves. Isn’t that simply saying that automation would strip servants and slaves of their value, turning them into “useless people”? In agrarian society, “machines replacing humans” remained a philosopher’s flight of imagination. Only with the Industrial Revolution did that imagination begin to become reality, and machines posed a tangible threat to people for the first time. In 1811, as Britain’s Industrial Revolution was in full swing, severely exploited British workers suddenly organized protests by smashing machines: the famous Luddite movement. The Luddite movement may have been the first large-scale human revolt against machines. More importantly, it also opened the way for nineteenth-century European labor movements. In this sense, the “robots” narrative indirectly triggered Europe’s proletarian movement. It also inspired modern society’s first science-fiction novel. ---- In 1818, a few years after the Luddite movement began, Frankenstein appeared. Its theme was reflection on technology. In the novel, a scientist creates life in an experiment—a hideously ugly giant, the “monster” referred to in the Chinese title. But while the scientist can create the monster, he cannot control it. The conflict between creator and creation intensifies. After a series of encounters mixing attachment and destruction, both ultimately perish. The novel took the “robots” narrative a step further. In a sense, all later stories of robots turning against humanity grow out of it. ---- During the Great Depression of 1929–1933, an angry public believed automated machines were causing mass unemployment. The media said, for instance: “In hat manufacturing, machines have increased productivity nearly ninefold, but clearly we cannot need nine times as many hats as before.” “If mechanization races ahead while purchasing power has reached its limit, unemployment is inevitable. In other words, from now on, the more productive we become, the worse off we will be.” This was not simply media exaggeration and fearmongering that only an uninformed public would believe. Even Einstein believed the theory and publicly said that technological progress had caused the Great Depression. Against this backdrop, something both absurd and exasperating happened in the U.S. Congress. Dial telephones were spreading rapidly, eliminating the need for switchboard operators. During the Great Depression, the U.S. Senate installed dial phones. After only three weeks, however, a senator objected, calling them abhorrent because they took away operators’ jobs. The proposal soon passed, and the dial phones were removed on the spot. This may be the best-known “Luddite movement” initiated by government officials. Combined with the “fashion for poverty” discussed earlier, it worsened the economic decline during the Great Depression. ---- During the Great Depression, a new term was coined: “technocracy.” It meant that the world of the future should be managed by people with scientific and technical expertise. They would design and run the machines, while everyone else could only obey orders. Aren’t these “technocrats” version 1.0 of Yuval Harari’s “Homo deus”? ---- Is This Time Different? The narrative of “machines replacing humans” is about using machine production to replace human labor. Isn’t freeing people from arduous work precisely what drives our pursuit of technological progress? And the Industrial Revolution shows that machines both destroy jobs and create them. Cars, for example, eliminated jobs for carriage drivers and horse keepers but created jobs for drivers and manufacturing workers. Experience shows that machines created far more new jobs than they destroyed. If so, why does AI still provoke fear this time? Perhaps the situation really may be different. Earlier machines could be called “physical machines”: they replaced human physical labor, allowing more people to do more meaningful mental work. Naturally, the more powerful those machines, the better. Future machines, however, are “intelligent machines,” intended to take over human mental work comprehensively. Will it be as Yuval Harari suggests: in the not-so-distant future, most humans entering a state of “ultimate unemployment”? The “robots” narrative is an exceptionally long-running one. From philosophers’ flights of fancy before the Common Era, through the Industrial Revolution and up to today, it spans the whole of modern economic history and stretches far into the future. #得到聽書敘事經濟學 (Dedao audio-book program: Narrative Economics) ---- Robin: “Once printing emerged and became widespread, all the copying people used to do by hand disappeared. But humanity moved on to another stage. So this time, are humans being replaced? Or are we on the eve of a new chapter?”