I started to notice a intense automation and Artificial Intelligence Investments from companies and that made me wonder, what would happen or what should be done with the people who can’t be trained for a new job and can’t use his current skills to to get a job.
How would he live or what would he do in life? More importantly, what should be done with him to make him useful or at least neutral rather than being a negative on the society?
Ignoring the odd idea that this hypothetical person is somehow completely unemployable regardless of industry or upskilling, why do you assume that that immediately makes them a negative to society? Is a person’s entire value predicated on their ability to earn money?
Not OP, but it can be very detrimental to people’s mental health if they don’t have a role in society. Not a job, but a purpose where their labor provides a benefit to others, like being a caregiver or volunteer. Depression is commonly cited among those who are unemployed, on disability, or recently retired.
You are also going to see a lot of classism surrounding UBI. After all, I can see a lot of people who are able to work becoming bitter at a portion of society that don’t need to work.
The thing is, if working isn’t tied to capitalism, then it’s actually easier to find work because you don’t have to worry only about what provides enough money to survive. Someone “unemployable” may be perfectly suited to be a caregiver, artist, odd-jobber, or anything else that would not be able to financially sustain them because of low pay or a limitation on the hours they are able to work. I think UBI would lead to more societal engagement, not less, because people would be able to choose how they engage without worrying about whether it would pay the rent.
To your second point, I’m not sure I understand. If it’s a universal basic income, does that not mean that everyone has their basic needs met? Those who would like more than that and have the capacity to do so could still seek higher paying jobs in order to have the lifestyle they want above and beyond basic needs. Why would they be bitter about other people getting those same basic needs covered but not earning more money?
It’s not necessary about their “value” to society. People need to eat in order to survive. That means having a way of supporting themselves. Having no way of supporting themselves means a lot of people are going to die.
I’d say that’s a net negative to society.
And the problem runs deeper than “retraining” or “upskilling”. With the emergence of technologies that replace human workers…there will simply be a massive excess of unemployed workers hitting the market. Period. Skills or not. Where are they going to work, when there are now ten people applying for every available job?
Why do they need to work, though? If AI can replace so many people that there aren’t jobs for them all, wouldn’t that also mean AI is producing enough to sustain those people, jobs or not? At that point, why must society continue to expect everyone to support themselves if society’s developments as a whole make that unnecessary?
OP’s question seemingly indicated that they felt someone who couldn’t earn money was immediately a net negative to society. I don’t believe that’s true now (stay at home parents are a good, but far from only, example), and I can’t see me believing it’s any more true in a future where AI can replace large segments of the workforce.
Unfortunately, that isn’t what’s happening. AI isn’t “producing” anything that people need to survive. It’s just replacing people. We aren’t seeing any net gains to society that would be able to support so many people no longer being needed in the workforce.
If they were training AI to produce food, build housing or anything that people actually need more of right now, I would say you are absolutely correct to assume that people would be just fine with this transition. But that’s not what they’re using AI for.
Optimistically, AI could and definitely should be used for those things…and the logical conclusion would be to implement a form of UBI so that we can all benefit from this. But do you honestly see that happening?
I don’t. And I think that’s what OP is also seeing. We aren’t ready, as a species, to make that transition yet. There isn’t even the slightest intention on behalf of our current leadership, of providing for an entire population of jobless people. They will ultimately be left to fend for themselves. And as it stands right now, society isn’t equipped to function with that kind of excess population.
You’re so stuck in a capitalist mindset that you view people being “unemployable” as a personal failure on their part, rather than a success of society as a whole…
Were you out there screaming “think of the children” and “they can do anything they put their mind to” when people banded together to say maybe 7 year old children don’t have to work in the fucking coal mines anymore?