The UK Office for National Statistics recently reported that about 1.5 million workers in Britain are threatened by automation; this is consistent with broader reports on how automation poses serious threats to traditional labor and indicative of growing anxiety about the future of low-skilled labor.
By and large, automation in the 21st century seeks to fundamentally alter modalities of work: it seeks to replace traditional jobs in factories, stores, and restaurants, which essentially means that the employment of significant proportions of the low-skilled working class is threatened. While those engaged in creative or high-skilled work are safe for now, developments in Artificial Intelligence potentially mean that a robot could also be writing news articles in the future.
The narrative that constantly premises the push towards automation is improvements in standards of living. Those in favor argue that automation will allow for better quality, better pricing, and more effectiveness in production, and thus will allow companies to better meet the needs of their consumers.
Many have hailed automation as a sign of progress and development: they see it as a representation of the world’s ability to innovate, and an indication that technology is nearing its true potential. Such arguments tend to ignore the crushing reality that automation, albeit welcome by profit-motivated companies, poses a significant challenge to the livelihood of a significant percentage of the world’s population.
At the very least, manual or low-skilled workers will see themselves degraded to lower-paying, less secure, and less satisfying jobs. Given that low-skilled workers are rarely provided any forms of training that builds capacity, the forms of technological change that automation embodies will not better lives; they will fundamentally expand inequality, allow for greater forms of exploitation, and, put simply, plunge millions of people into abject poverty.
Consider this: You are a low-skilled worker in an industry that is rapidly moving towards automation. You know that your employer is rapidly working towards creating a robot that replaces what you do. Not only does the robot not require any social security guarantees, but it is also much more efficient, effective, and precise than you. The industry now collectively decides to significantly reduce wages, slash down paid leave, reduce your breaks, and take away your health insurance.
What do you do? You are no longer essential to the company; its production can go on without you; the only way you are still needed is if you cost the company less than the robot does. Protesting, calling for a strike, or unionizing will be of no use now because your refusal to work no longer threatens losses to the company.
Why companies would prefer the shift to automation is a simple question of profits: robots do not need social security benefits, they cannot unionize and ask for better wages, they do not get ill, falter in productivity, change jobs, revolt and strike, or use the state to protect themselves against exploitation. This protects companies from a variety of different financial challenges that employing labor might pose, which inevitably make prospects for automation very attractive.
There is practically no way to stop automation; you cannot ask companies in a capitalist system to not automate, especially if it comes with profit motives. This does not, however, mean that individuals in low skilled jobs are perennially doomed. A variety of solutions are being suggested to ensure that automation does not marginalize large proportions of the labor force.
The first of these is skilling; many have called for companies to take greater responsibility to train their workers and to create more jobs that channel creative potentials. At the moment, prospects for AI are still distant, but automation and the replacement of low skilled workers are not. One potential solution, then, is to help low skilled workers develop more substantive and creative skills; those that allow for employment even after automation.
Other proposals are more radical, but perhaps more pertinent and long-lasting than asking companies to invest in training workers. These are also more long-term since they accommodate even the prospect of AI and the replacement of creative jobs. One such proposal is Universal Basic Income (UBI), which calls for states to give a lump-sum, unconditional cash handout to individuals regardless of income and wealth. This would mean that individuals would receive money from the government; enough to ensure a decent standard of living, regardless of whether they are employed. This is different from social UBI that has been piloted in a variety of countries, both developed and developing, and which has had a mixed bag of results. It is challenged with both practical and ethical questions.
The ethical questions are tough to answer: should individuals that choose not to work, despite having the ability to work, still be given unconditional cash handouts? Why should individuals who have the skills and ability to find meaningful employment despite automation be asked to give up their income for people who do not have the same skills?
The first is largely refuted by the fact that the rise of automation and AI will inevitably mean that most people do not have the ability to opportunity to work; with automated cars, call centers, restaurants, stores, airports, factories, universities (yes, robot teachers are a thing), there are large proportions of the population that will fundamentally be disadvantaged once automation matures. The second is grounded more in ancient left vs. right debates but find strong refutations in discrepancies in equal opportunity and structural inequalities.
There are also important practical questions that UBI has to answer: how will states fund UBI? What does this mean for productivity? Can UBI even work in a capitalist system; if so, will it work to exacerbate exploitation? Through what metrics can a figure for UBI be determined? One suggestion has been to tax robots; since companies are now employing robots instead of individuals, some argue that these robots should be subject to a special tax, a job ‘rent’ of sorts that is then used to provide an income to those that these robots make redundant. As a mainstream economic concept, UBI is still in its infancy. Given the speed at which the world is automating, however, I would wager that UBI will soon become a topic of extreme interest.
Should threats of automation matter to Pakistan? Yes; while indigenous industries in Pakistan are far from automating, Pakistani labor’s heavy reliance on outsourcing multinationals will come under great threat as multinationals begin to move towards automation.
One of the primary reasons why developing countries like Pakistan attract outsourcing is because the country has low wages and lax labor laws, both of which create profit incentives for international companies to outsource labor to Pakistan. When the benefits of automation outweigh the benefits of outsourcing to countries like Pakistan (which does not come without its fair share of challenges), there will be little incentive for multinationals to invest in the country. This, then, also poses great challenges for manual and low-skilled labor in Pakistan.
While automation in and of itself may not be a bad thing, its presence in a capitalist society dominated by profit motives is troublesome. There are scarce substantive steps that can be taken to stop this impulse; governments and international agencies must move towards responding to these in a way that does not plunge large portions of the workforce into poverty. Perhaps suggestions such as Fully Automated Luxury Communism may not be that outlandish after all.
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