Work for robots, humanity for humans. Robotization: Threat or Chance?
Fears that robots would take over the world and enslave humans are only features of our perception. What is being created is a portrait of the creator. Machines and algorithms have no psyche, which means they have no desires of their own. Both the ability to love and the malice of mechanisms can only be a consequence of our - human - love or hostility, respectively. And as long as we do not know ourselves, the internal threat persists and can really hit us through our own creations …
The fact that robots will soon oust a person from the labor market is not even a question - it is a fact. All new industries, services, finance, medicine are being automated. In the near future, the economy will be completely digitalized. The speed of technological progress is such that the fourth industrial revolution is on the heels of the third.
Robots produce, grow, write. Soon they will carry, teach and treat. Do not get tired, do not get sick, do not sleep. They don't require a salary. In the near future, robots will also be producing, servicing and training robots. What should a person do?
What are we afraid of?
If we consider that the word robot comes from the Czech robota, which means "forced labor", then everything goes according to plan. Robots free us from routine, dangerous and harmful work.
Despite the fact that robotization was predicted by Aristotle, we are afraid. Some - to be left without soup, others - without pearls, and still others - simply to be unnecessary. And not only. Together with countless works about the uprisings of machines, curiosities like a public marriage to a sex doll and a film fantasy about love between a person and an algorithm are added to the fire.
Fears that robots would take over the world and enslave humans are only features of our perception. What is being created is a portrait of the creator. Machines and algorithms have no psyche, which means they have no desires of their own. Both the ability to love and the malice of mechanisms can only be a consequence of our - human - love or hostility, respectively. And as long as we do not know ourselves, the inner threat persists and can really hit us through our own creations.
What will I eat?
The efficiency of the most ordinary industrial robot, working at the same speed as a human, is 40% higher than that of a human. And this is only due to the absence of fatigue and stops. With the abolition of human conditions such as vacations, transport, heating and canteens, the efficiency of machines is 2-3 times higher. Robotization is more than beneficial, and the coverage of all spheres, including medicine and education, is only a matter of the speed of technology development. Its exponential growth leaves no illusion: soon our work will not be needed.
The first to suffer, as usual, are the most vulnerable: women, people without education, developing countries. If robotization in the country adds the number of jobs, then this is due to the increase in unemployment in the country from which the production was taken out. According to the Bloomberg news agency, the coefficient of job loss when moving automated production from developing countries to developed countries can be as high as 10 to 1.
More recently, in 2016, Nobel Prize Winner in Economics Christopher Pissarides predicted a shift of jobs to the service sector, citing the example of a retail outlet where people cannot do without. In developing countries, the service sector is not growing, and in developed countries, fully automated stores are already opening, and robots are actively learning to determine a person's preferences by their appearance in order to offer him fashionable novelties.
The modern economy is also called the knowledge economy. The implication is that intelligent professions are more likely to survive. And at the same time, authoritative publications like the Guardian are already publishing articles written by algorithms, and robots brilliantly diagnose diseases of infants, focusing, like a human pediatrician, on all types of medical data: patient complaints, medical records, blood tests, etc.
According to various sources, by 2030, from one to two thirds of jobs will be ousted in the countries of the world. Fortunately, society is humanized, no one will be left hungry and naked. Today there are means to solve the problem of poverty at the global level. Utopian proposals to distribute money to people are becoming a reality. Unemployment benefits have been around for a long time, nowadays the idea of an unconditional basic income has been developed and tested. The Worldwide Basic Income Network, which has existed since 1986, today includes organizations from 37 countries.
Contrary to fears, recipients of the money are not spending it on cigarettes and alcohol, according to the World Bank. The funds received are used to maintain the standard of living, are invested in children, education and medical care. People feel better and are more actively involved in social activities.
The big headlines about the failed basic income experiment in Finland stem from the fact that its unemployed recipients never got a job. If this tool is viewed not as a means of reducing unemployment, but as a way of distributing money against the background of rapidly growing technological unemployment, there is no failure.
Unconditional basic income today has only one drawback. It helps maintain an even standard of living within a given country, but provokes surges in immigration from less prosperous countries. At the transitional stage, the ideologists of the UBD see the solution in extending payments to groups of neighboring states. If the principle of protecting the weak is extended to the whole world, this problem will be removed automatically. In a single world, the absence of borders and common laws will smooth out the level of consumption throughout the planet.
Hunger of the hungry and satiety of the well-fed
According to statistics from the Food and Agriculture Organization of the United Nations (FAO UN), 4 times more food is wasted in the world than the hungry people lack. Hunger as such might not have happened. Modern advances in the food industry are marvelous. According to the United States Department of Agriculture (USDA), global wheat yields have tripled since 1960. We have already learned how to grow meat in a test tube.
Hunger and poverty are a problem of distribution and social imbalance, and therefore a problem of relationships.
Photos with thousands of unsold brand new cars are circulating on the net in parking lots lost in the deserts. Journalists from time to time catch companies spoiling and destroying their own products for marketing reasons. This has been reported at various times by the New York Times and the BBC.
Why is this happening? There are too many goods produced for the rich and not enough for everyone. As soon as production begins to cover all the needs of mankind, without exception, there will be no need for marketing, and for money itself - they will simply become worthless.
Money is already depreciating. Banks in Switzerland (and not only) have been issuing loans at negative interest rates for several years. With the change in relations between people, their regulator will also change. Cryptocurrencies herald the abolition of state borders.
Man for the economy or the economy for man?
Economists in different ways state the dead end of the existing commodity-money relations. The unsolvable contradictions - between the concentration of wealth and unsecured demand, between productivity growth and a decrease in purchasing power, rational use of resources and artificial accelerated obsolescence - unequivocally indicate an imminent change of formation.
Experts see the way out in the communist "from each according to his ability, to each according to his needs." This principle was scientifically substantiated by Marx, in practice he tested the early Soviet Union. We are only one step away from the implementation of this principle on a human scale.
A dollar for each? No, thanks
Some stakeholders figured that if right now all the wealth of the planet is divided equally, then everyone will receive a minimum - sufficient to survive, but not nearly equal to the ambitions of a successful consumer. There is not enough Mercedes for a villa.
The desire to consume more and better - to drive the latest car model, to live on a fashionable street, to dress in brands - is the value, above all, of the skin vector. Since we live in the skin phase of development, this applies to a greater or lesser extent to every modern person. However, even for a dermal person there are higher values than status and success, and hence a higher realization in the event of the abolition of consumer values.
The skin vector counts resources better than others. But in the above case, a mistake was made. The wealth created is great and really sufficient to ensure survival, but the productivity of robots, the rationality of algorithms and the speed of processes provided by the Internet of Things will lead to an increase in the economy by orders of magnitude. In this case, the surplus will be enough not for 10, but for 100 percent of the population. If you multiply the benefits by at least 10 before distribution to everyone, even fans of pearls and Mercedes will be satisfied.
At the same time, the desired treasure is different for everyone. Not everyone wants to own a car or a house. Someone needs knowledge, love, or the meaning of life.
By the way, Mercedes and Lamborghinis are loved not only by people with a skin vector. Luxurious cars and other attributes of power are natural satellites of natural leaders - urethral people. It is thanks to the desire to approach the same high status that the leather workers, climbing the steps of the hierarchy, acquire status things.
At the top, they will need something else: understanding that the leader is above everyone else only because he is infinitely bestowing. And that changes everything. Like skin values in the modern era, in the near future, natural altruism can and will be extended to all of humanity. We have reached the point where the benefits and effectiveness of charity and justice in the form of returns on scarcity are becoming more evident.
Economic world processes are a manifestation of the collective unconscious. Wars and robberies are the consequences of our innate greed, trade and consumption are its peaceful sublimation. We cannot cancel or change our nature. We can follow the lead, try to fill - by consuming more and more benefits in proportion to the growing desire, or we can - to realize the realm of the root causes, the unconscious.
If the filling will be provided by machines, creating for us everything that is desirable and necessary, then awareness is already something that only a person can do. If he wants to make a mental effort to know himself.
Will I be needed?
If robots can do everything, then why should I? A person accustomed to work is naturally not ready to be lazy and mess around. At first we study for a long time, then we get a profession, then we gain experience and constantly improve our qualifications. Even if we do not devote all one hundred percent of the time and energy to the profession and work, many do not think of themselves outside of work.
There are those who cannot wait to be freed from economic slavery. Someone already works symbolic two or three days a week or a couple of hours a day, devoting most of their time to self-development, self-discovery, creativity, hobbies, children or volunteering.
The history of human development is the history of liberation.
We made the first breakthrough by starting to eat cooked meat instead of raw, freeing 4.5 hours a day from chewing and spending them on more interesting things. At the same time, the tortuosity of the human brain began to increase.
By cultivating nutritious plants and domesticating animals, we have freed ourselves a whole day off. Exploitation - of animals, the forces of nature and other people - freed up time and resources for development. What for?
In every religion, one day a week was invariably freed from worries about their daily bread and devoted to caring for the soul. There were already two days off in the Soviet Union. Today, the state level is considering the possibility of reducing the working week to four days. And the British government, against the backdrop of the coronavirus pandemic, even offered a one-day work week.
What to do in their free time, not only the ancient Greeks knew. In Russia, the noble minority, exploiting 90 percent of the population, engaged in art, charity, raising children, and creating cultural values. Thanks to the development of the exploiters, the Golden Age of Russian culture took place. The ideas of refusing to exploit some people by others were born and spread.
The evolution is in full swing. Science and technology free us from animal limitations. Each of us is about to become the exploiter of dozens or even hundreds of robots - without sacrificing humanity. Thanks to microbots, we will stop getting sick and aging. The work of all body systems will be controlled and maintained in perfect balance. Free time, free hands, free head, long life. For what?
The development of science and technology is an evolutionary process. So it has a purpose.
Evolution is the evolution of the observer, that is, of perception. At the human level, these are consciousness and feelings. Our natural task is to develop in this direction. Expand consciousness, develop sensuality. And this work can only be done by ourselves.
What to do - consumption of goods or self-development - we can choose consciously only if we really understand what we live. Freedom of choice appears with our awareness of the psyche.
Human life is soul life
Did labor make a man? Man is made and is made connections.
Our psyche has been forming for thousands of years - step by step, mutation after mutation.
The breakaway began when the animal instinct in the bottleneck of the great man was supplanted by an additional desire for sex and murder. The emergence of the law prohibiting the preservation of oneself at the expense of one's neighbor gave birth to a powerful disconnecting force that animals do not have: hostility. All further connections were formed as compensation for this basic human emotion.
Eight steps across the bridge from animal to human are eight mutations. Each one pulled us away from the animal world, reinforcing desires and abilities for a special type of interaction. As the additional desire grew, the connections grew and grew stronger.
Animal tribes, consisting of 50 individuals afraid to die alone, learned to observe the law, speak, pass on experience from generation to generation and believe in spirits, turning into ever larger and stronger communities. Over the past tens of thousands of years, mutations have occurred in the psyche, turning us into humans.
With the development of communications, they were developed and opened to the limit. We have come a long way from the primitive hierarchy and the connection of generations to the connections of the sensual and spiritual.
We know very well what sensual connections are. This is what makes us happy today. Emotions, empathy, compassion, love. All culture and art are like them. Hierarchical connections, connections between generations have already passed into automatic mode and are of little interest to us. Our present and future are spiritual and spiritual connections.
Not all types of connections inherent in nature have been disclosed. The enormous desire of modern man to love and be loved is unable to block the desire to receive, which continues to grow, which is the basis of hostility. The law - even in the rational West - fails too. Before our eyes, riots caused by hostility and greed broke out in the stronghold of civilization and clashes between citizens and defenders of the law - this accumulated dissatisfaction. And it's time to activate the next level.
So far we have managed to “love your neighbor as yourself” only occasionally, in places and only with selected neighbors. At the first conflict of interest, we are ready to start a war, or at least start a small uprising. Conscientious conscious efforts do not work - the conscious superstructure over the boundless omnipotent unconscious is too thin. Even a conflict is not needed - personal dissatisfaction is enough to throw a rude word or stone at a person.
And this dangerous state is common for all of us, since we remain a single species with a single unconscious. The problem is that perceptually individualistic consciousness hides from us the truth about ourselves. As long as each of us perceives himself as a separate person, the threat of self-destruction of the species persists and grows in proportion to the growing desire to receive and consume.
It is possible to overcome this contradiction only by reconciling the two realities of perception.
Comprehensive system-vector psychoanalysis allows one to correlate consciousness with the unconscious, and this is the first step towards spiritual connections, towards the realization of the neighbor - the most dissimilar, alien and distant - as a part of oneself.
Such a perception of unity makes it impossible to harm one's neighbor - such desires do not arise, as there is no desire to harm oneself.
Nature has endowed us with the ability to love - to justify - ourselves with all our heart. This self-justification is necessary to preserve yourself. As long as we perceive ourselves and each other as separate, self-justification is inevitably accompanied by blaming the other. To justify one's neighbor as oneself is hard and unwanted work that requires tremendous effort and energy expenditure.
The sound work of realizing the unity of the species is perhaps the most difficult of all works familiar to man. It is impossible without great desire and resources.
The need is already ripe. The desire of the striving for the impossible has grown - the massive distribution of drugs and the epidemic of suicide testify to the colossal shortages in the sound vector. Achievements of robotics and artificial intelligence technologies finally finally free us from the animal need to get bread and from material household chores.
Everything is ready for us to begin to know ourselves - and to reveal all of humanity in ourselves. Everything is ready to create spiritual connections that are our future. We will deal with them in our free time. This is not yet a connection with the Primary Source. This is a closer step that will make us human. And this level is called spiritual because it is really the most sublime that we are now capable of.
The perfection of a robot is its ability to be useful to humans. Human perfection is still a dream, it is the perfection of connections between us, more and more attainable.
Difficulties in transition
The transition period is a high degree of uncertainty, at the same time, new opportunities. Everything useful is fixed - such is nature. Robotization, cyborgization, hybrid thinking will certainly bring our capabilities to the level of fantasy. And at the same time, evolution is primarily the evolution of the observer. And the observer is the psyche and consciousness. Full disclosure of the psychic and the expansion of consciousness from the individual to the collective, equal to the psyche, is our immediate prospect.
Someone calls the next stage posthumanism, but it's too early to talk about a posthuman. We are just becoming human. Without false illusions, the state of consciousness of modern people was described by Jacques Fresco and Kenneth S. Keyes in "Looking into the future." From the point of view of the main characters, people of the future, we are today - selfish and bloodthirsty savages. Roughly the same as for us - man-eating tribes.
Humanity is going through puberty. We are ripening. What is maturity? This is the ability to live among other people and giving. If we look at developed and realized people, we will see that they are passionately devoted to the cause and people. It seems to us that they forget about themselves. But in fact, they forget about petty selfishness and self-focus, expanding their I to the size of a group or society. Mark Zuckerberg has united the entire planet in one network, and most of the proceeds donates to charity. Soviet heroes voluntarily sacrificed their lives in order to save the lives of their colleagues and to defeat fascism.
How the innate fear of death in the visual vector turns into love for all living things. As an irresistible child's skin "give" in favorable conditions, it develops into a service to the good of society. How extreme sound egocentrism develops into the ability to feel the whole of humanity in oneself. So, in general, our natural intention to receive at maximum development is transformed into a desire to bestow. It would only be experience! If it is there, it is impossible to stop, it is so pleasant. In a mature society, it is the bestowal that will regulate relations.
Reality does not exist apart from us. World processes are a reflection of our collective mind, which lives by us so far without our conscious participation. The problem of accepting change can be compared to the difficulty of becoming aware of the unconscious.
And here there are two ways: you can passively follow what is happening, trying to adapt innovations as much as possible. And you can take an active position and reconcile these two realities - conscious and unconscious, thereby forestalling the onset of the future.
The cutaneous phase of development is coming to an end. The phase of integration, individualization, humanism. The world has become global, the value of life and pleasure has reached unprecedented heights. But the welfare society has not yet taken place.
Technological unemployment, the risks of social explosions, environmental problems are the consequences of our thinking, which means our ability to change our own actions. From the recipients to the givers, from consumption to creation, from separation to consolidation.
There will be no degradation. We are not made that way. Desires lead us, and they lead to development. The degradation of individual unfortunates is the result of society's problems. Individualization, inconsistency, educational mistakes are only sad consequences of our ignorance of ourselves. Society's problems are mental problems. Therefore, the prevention of degradation will be the psychological improvement of society. It starts with psychological literacy.
It is in our power to raise a healthy generation. A generation of developed people who will find how to fulfill their human potential to the limit. It is in our power to become the society in which there are all opportunities - both for development and for self-realization.
Evolution accelerator
With the coronavirus pandemic, the world hasn't just paused. It became especially contrasted. The existing problems have become aggravated, and at the same time the ways of their solution have been highlighted. And these paths will not only lead us out of the difficult episode of early 2020 - they are our step into the new world.
We realized that we cannot live without people, we cannot sit back. We went online en masse - not only for business, but also for communication. Dates, parties, poetry evenings after meetings migrated to the Internet. Zoom's user base has grown from 10 million to 200 million daily. Thanks to digital technology, we were able to maintain human connections while being physically isolated.
Naturally, we started buying less. During the pandemic in Russia, sales of footwear fell by 70 percent, and clothing - by 80. This is understandable - shopping malls closed, shopping moved online. Mass fashion leader H&M saw sales through its own online store increase by 30 percent. True, they do not cover losses from the closure of offline stores. Contrary to expectations, with the lifting of quarantine, people did not rush to shopping centers to catch up. Giant Inditex is closing stores worldwide. Experts talk about the strengthening trend for conscious consumption and the decline of the era of fast fashion.
Businesses needed to maintain safety and health and businesses that operate online were the least affected. Some received the support of states, others - users. The demand for online training has skyrocketed, mostly for short courses that allow you to quickly change professions or master online business skills. According to the GetCourse platform, the number of authors of their own courses has grown by almost a third.
In Britain, drones began to deliver food, and in China, they began to monitor people's quarantine. In Moscow, compliance with the self-isolation regime was monitored using cameras and special applications. They seriously thought about it, but in China they have already tested the examination of patients with robots. Australian inventors have created a "pandemic drone".
People massively receive financial support from the state in the form of payments for children, tax holidays, tax refunds, and somewhere, direct payments to the adult population. Volunteering flourished. For two months in Russia, thousands of companies and tens of thousands of people helped those in need with time, money, and transport.
And most importantly, the pandemic has taught us to think about our neighbors and voluntarily limit our own freedom for the sake of other people. We deliberately sat at home and observed the respiratory regimen in order not to inadvertently infect someone's grandmother or someone's child and not cause another's illness or even his death.
Utopia doesn't mean untrue
Do what the soul wants. Be young, healthy and active up to 120 years old. To love and to be loved. Understand and be understood. Feel everything in the world and know everything in the world. Have a connection with any person not after six or even four handshakes, but directly. Cure not 100 children, but a million. Write not 100 books, but one hundred thousand. Or even not write - but transmit valuable thoughts and discoveries through hybrid memory to all of humanity at once. Safe one world. Unlimited movement. Freedom from hunger and money. The ability to maximize and fully realize your nature. For every person on earth!
Robotization and artificial intelligence technologies are completely changing the world. This is a different future. Everything will change. Already changing. In general, this is the embodiment of our collective dream of human life, the opportunity to engage in self-development, self-knowledge, spiritual work. We can facilitate and accelerate the onset of this bright future by focusing on humanity now.
Utopia? Yes, since the root of our soul is utopian, ideal. The principles of altruism, mercy, justice, unity, pleasure are inherent in us by nature. They control our development, and we reveal them for ourselves, making mistakes, realizing them and correcting them.
