UNEMPLOYMENT
The other chief threat from robot machines is against our economic life. Harry Domin, in R.U.R., you remember, prophesied: “All work will be done by living machines.” As an example, in the magazine Modern Industry for Feb. 15, 1947, appeared a picture of a machine for selling books, and under the picture were the words:
Another new product in robot salesmen—Latest in the parade of mechanical vending machines is this book salesman.... It is designed for use in hospitals, rail terminals, and stores. It offers 15 different titles, selected manually, and obtained by dropping quarter in slot. Cabinet stores 96 books.
Can you feel the breath of the robot salesman, workman, engineer,——, on the back of your neck?
At the moment when we combine automatic producing machinery and automatic controlling machinery, we get a vast saving in labor and a great increase in technological unemployment. In extreme cases, perhaps, the effect of robot machines will be the disappearance of men from a factory. Such a factory will be like a modern power plant that turns a waterfall into electricity: once the machinery is installed, only one watchman is ordinarily needed. But, in most cases, this will be the effect: in a great number of factories, mines, farms, etc., the labor force needed will be cut by a great proportion. The effect is not different in quality, because the new development is robot machinery; but the amount of technological unemployment coming from robot machines is likely to be considerably greater than previously.
The robot machine raises the two questions that hang like swords over a great many of us these days. The first one is for any employee: What shall I do when a robot machine renders worthless all the skill I have spent years in developing? The second question is for any businessman: How shall I sell what I make if half the people to whom I sell lose their jobs to robot machines?
SOCIAL CONTROL
AND ITS TWO SIDES
The two chief harmful effects upon humanity which are to be expected from robot machines are physical danger and unemployment. These are serious risks, and some degree of social control is needed to guard against them.
There will also be very great advantages from robot machines. The monster in Frankenstein is right when he says, “Do your duty towards me, and I will do mine towards you and the rest of mankind.” And Harry Domin in R.U.R. is right as to possibility when he says, “There will be no poverty.... Everybody will be free from worry.” Social control must also be concerned with how the advantages from robot machines are to be shared.
The problem of social control over men and their devices has always had two sides. The first side deals with what we might plan for control if men were reasonable and tolerant. This part of the problem seems relatively easy. The other side deals with what we must ordinarily arrange, since most men are often unreasonable and prejudiced and, as a result, often act in antisocial ways. This part of the problem is hard. Let us begin with the easier side first.
TYPES OF CONTROL—
IF MEN WERE REASONABLE
In seeking to fulfill wants and achieve safety, men have used hundreds of types of control. The main types are usually called political and economic systems, but there are always great quantities of exceptions. The more mature and freer the society, the greater the variety of types of control that can be found in it.
Probably the most widely used type of control in this country is private and public control working together, as private ownership and public regulation—for example, railroads, banks, airlines, life insurance companies, telephone systems, and many others. It would be reasonable to expect private ownership and public regulation of a great many classes of robot machines, to the end that they would never threaten the safety of people.
Another common type of control is public ownership and operation; examples are toll bridges, airports, city transit systems, and water-supply systems. Atomic energy was so clearly fraught with serious implications that in 1946 the Congress of the United States placed it entirely under public control expressed as the Atomic Energy Commission. There is a class of robot machinery which has already reached the stage of acute public concern: guided missiles and automatic fire-control. It would be reasonable that in this country all activity in this subdivision should be under close control by the Department of Defense.
In the international arena, again, the problem becomes soluble if we assume men to be reasonable. An international agency, such as an organ of the United Nations, would take over inspection and control of robot machine activities closely affecting the public safety anywhere in the world. Particularly, this agency would concern itself with guided missiles, robot pilots for planes, automatic gunfire control, etc. Much manufacturing skill is needed to make such products as these: the factories where they could be manufactured would thereby be determined. Also, a giant brain is a useful device for solving scientific problems about weapons of mass destruction. So the agency would need to inspect the problems being solved on such machines. This agency would be responsible to a legislature or an executive body representing all the people in the world—if men were reasonable.
In regard to the effects of robot machines on unemployment, again, if men were reasonable, the problem would be soluble. The problem is equivalent to the problem of abundance: how should men distribute the advantages of a vast increase in production among all the members of society in a fair and sensible way? A vast increase in production is not so impossible as it may seem. For example, in 1939, with 45 million employed, the United States index of industrial production was at 109, and, in 1943, with 52½ million employed, the index of production was at 239.
If men were reasonable, the net profits from robot machinery would be divided among (1) those who had most to do with devising the new machinery, and (2) all of society. A rule would be adopted (probably it could be less complicated than some existing tax rules) which would take into account various factors such as rewards to the inventors, incentives to continue inventing, adequate assistance to those made unemployed by the robot machines, reduction of prices to benefit consumers, and contributions to basic and applied scientific research.
In fact, under the assumption “if men were reasonable,” it would hardly be necessary to devote a chapter to the problem of social control over robot machines!