Sunday 22 July 2012

Growing Mainstream Acceptance of Human Displacement by Tech

A great article from the Economist Magazine -- it's unusual to see this magazine question the standard market ideology.
Difference Engine: Luddite Legacy

From the article:
'[I]f the pace of technological progress is accelerating faster than ever, as all the evidence indicates it is, why has unemployment remained so stubbornly high—despite the rebound in business profits to record levels? Two-and-a-half years after the Great Recession officially ended, unemployment has remained above 9% in America. That is only one percentage point better than the country's joblessness three years ago at the depths of the recession.'
[...]
'[There] is the disturbing thought that, sluggish business cycles aside, America's current employment woes stem from a precipitous and permanent change caused by not too little technological progress, but too much. The evidence is irrefutable that computerised automation, networks and artificial intelligence (AI)—including machine-learning, language-translation, and speech- and pattern-recognition software—are beginning to render many jobs simply obsolete.'

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