Wren Handman at Vice writes—You Can’t Talk About Robots Without Talking About Basic Income:
Conversations about basic income, a government-funded salary given to every citizen, used to take place in the dingy offices of extremist left-wing politicians, or in the campus dorm rooms of idealistic students determined to fix the problems of the previous generation. The conversation was about social responsibility. It wasn’t an economic case, it was a moral one.
A sharp uptake in technology designed to automate jobs and replace human workers is bringing new voices to this old debate. Today’s society could be disastrously affected by artificial intelligence and growing automation, and scientists and technologists are looking for ways to stop that damage before it happens. The eyes of the tech industry are turning towards basic income, and the entire conversation is changing.
The Allen Institute for Artificial Intelligence conducts high-impact research on artificial intelligence. Their CEO, Oren Etzioni, believes AI could be the key to creating a true utopia - but that journey will come with challenges. “There will be very real disruption,” says Etzioni. “Jobs will be taken away and those people need to be taken care of. People have floated the idea of universal basic income, of negative income tax, of training programs. We have an obligation to figure out how to help people cope with the rapidly changing nature of technology.”
That changing nature is in large part the rise of artificial intelligence. We already know about the potential economic destabilization that will come from the automation of commercial trucks, which will remove 3 million jobs in the US, plus 6.8 million employed in other parts of the industry. Now consider the police, which brings in $6 billion US a year in revenue from speeding tickets—that’s a significant number of lost jobs on police forces. Add to that the lawyers and insurance companies who handle automotive accidents, the mechanics who fix dents and bangs, the physiotherapists and massage therapists who specialize in automotive accidents, and driving schools, and suddenly the number of potential lost jobs is staggering. And that’s just from automated cars.
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At Daily Kos on this date in 2007—Stepping up Pressure on Iraq:
The Feingold-Reid amendment, expected to come up tomorrow morning, will be for the Senate what the McGovern amendment was in last week's House vote on the Iraq supplemental--the baseline vote for how committed Democratic senators are to ending this war before the next election.
What's more, as noted in this AP story it:
...has the makings of a turning point in the Democratic presidential campaign, obliging Sens. Hillary Rodham Clinton and Barack Obama to take a fresh look at calls for cutting off war funds.
The vote will show the willingness of Clinton and Obama, and all the Democratic Senators, to exercise their most important Congressional power--the power of the purse--to check the executive.
Obama announced today that he will support Feingold-Reid, though in his statement he doesn't address the concept of ending the funding.
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