The world is abuzz with the latest technological advancements, and the rise of robotics is no exception. While some worry about the potential job losses and economic decline associated with automation, others see it as an opportunity to revolutionize the way we live and work. Japan's aviation industry is a prime example of this dichotomy, as it grapples with labor shortages and seeks to implement humanoid robots to unload cargo containers and operate ground crew equipment. This development raises important questions about the future of work and the role of automation in society.
One of the key concerns surrounding automation is the potential for it to discipline and punish workers, diminishing their bargaining power and relative strategic position with management. This could lead to lower wages, poorer working conditions, and layoffs, which could have a devastating impact on the economy. However, in Japan's case, the goal of automation seems to be more about meeting urgent operational needs and keeping essential systems running, rather than cowing workers.
The deployment of robots in Japan also highlights the importance of thinking about automation in a broader context. The country faces labor challenges arising from low birth rates and an aging population, and the airline industry has been under pressure from a shrinking labor pool alongside growing demand. Automation could help to address these challenges by keeping essential systems running and preventing overwork.
However, the risks of automation begin to resemble those associated with its deployment elsewhere. The deployment of humanoid robots in Japan recalls Karl Marx's vision of a postcapitalist society, where automation would free workers from the drudgery of labor. However, this model is premised on a postcapitalist society, and outside such a model, it's hard to see the robots as a friend.
In the twenty-first century, we face two major threats of automation. The first is the deployment of machines by industries hoping to replace workers, reducing labor costs while increasing the efficiency and scale of outputs. The second threat comes from artificial intelligence, which is increasingly automating creative and cognitive tasks, fundamentally dehumanizing the process. The dominant impulse in elite circles is to lean further into the capitalist mode of "creative destruction" and profit maximization, rather than changing the economic systems in which these technologies are being deployed.
This raises a deeper question: what happens to the community when it doesn't own the robots, and thus can't collectively decide to put them to good use for public ends? The machines are typically deployed to constrain or eliminate labor and any related activity that can be monetized, whether unloading cargo or creating an image of a sunset. With the rise of AI systems geared toward creative tasks, we risk alienating ourselves from the very tasks that connect us with the world around us.
However, the problem is not with technology itself, but with the social order governing its development and use. The Left should be technologically audacious and optimistic, embracing the record of governments around the world in responding to COVID-19. It should make the case that all major technological and scientific advancements are best delivered by governments, and that we should embrace faith in technological progress that is rooted in public investment.
A left posture that embraces technology for shared ends, both in deployment and control, is essential to navigating a future that will, like it or not, become increasingly automated. The Left's response to machines should be, "Yes, that's what we want the robots to do." Automation has yielded incalculable benefits for health, wealth, and leisure in fields ranging from medicine to agriculture and entertainment. Our lives are, in many instances, better off because of technology.
The neo-Luddism or doomerism in some left circles today risks missing the procedurally generated forest for the trees. We ought to ask ourselves a series of questions while preparing to pass judgment: Who controls and benefits from these changes, and could the public put such technologies to good use? Are these developments aimed at supporting or enhancing our individual and shared humanity, or do they diminish it? Do we need this or that change, and can we responsibly plan for and control these developments in a way that maintains social, political, and cultural standards, expectations, and needs?
With technological development, the details matter. The Left should not be reflexively anti-technology, but rather skeptical of how technologies are developed, deployed, and controlled, and for whose benefit. An automated society in which states and worker-owned enterprises harness the marvels and wonders of technology to serve public ends while meeting individual needs is entirely consistent with the good life. Indeed, carefully constructed, this society could be far closer to utopia than dystopia, and far better than the world we inhabit today.
However, getting there requires structural changes in how we organize the economy, which requires the hard work of organizing, mobilizing, setting political priorities, reforming institutions, and winning political power. That work, machines will never be able to do. That work is, and will remain, ours.
