Written by George C. Glasser   

In writing this article, it was strange how I started out researching one subject and found myself off into another area connected with that subject, but with much broader negative implications to the global societal structure as a whole.

I began looking into investment banking fraud and High Frequency Trading where super fast computers do trades at up to a million times a second and skim billions of pennies a day off billions of near speed of light transactions a day without risking a penny.

Frankly, I was fairly astounded by the fact that upwards to 73% of the trading done on the stock markets is by artificial intelligence – algorithmic programs. Now, every investment bank in the world is investing into High Frequency Trading technology and hiring mathematicians and engineers instead of people with classic business/economics degrees.

It was like a science fiction story because there is little or no human involvement in High Frequency Trading other than the mathematicians who write the algorithmic programs based on predictable group behaviours.

I came across one article which stated that by 2015 almost 90% of the human faces in investment banking, stock markets, and the financial industry as a whole would be replaced by computer technology. The more conservative estimates were that 30 - 50% of the financial industry workers would be replaced by intelligent algorithmic machines.

Even the mathematicians are committing employment suicide because they are teaching computers to learn that will teach other more technologically advanced computers thus eliminating the need for their services.

The new breeds of computers outperform humans, and even if cyborg (Transhuman) technology such as microchip implants which allow humans to directly interface with the speed of light processes came into being, humans still will never outperform the computers at their given tasks tasks.

At that point, it dawned on me that artificial intelligence was encroaching on the service sector work force and human faces were being displaced at an alarming rate – that is, from my humble perspective.

My first thought was an observation - cashiers at my grocery store were disappearing and serendipitously replaced by computerised checkouts.

Over the past year, I’ve seen the number of computerised checkout counters in my grocery store go from four to ten with one person overseeing the operation so that everything went smoothly.

The computerised checkouts also require less space; ten customers are serviced in the same space as three conventional human operated checkouts thus allowing more space to stock merchandise aside from eliminating employees.

The machines are also designed to rush the customer: if you don’t bag your item fast enough, you can bet the emotionless voice will tell you to bag your item within five seconds of scanning it. Of course, every canned, computerised statement is prefixed with the word “Please.” However, just the rapidity and repetition of the commands instils a sense of urgency in the customer.

I also observed that the store has cut back on human cashiers during rush hours thus driving more and more people to their computerised counterparts in order to avoid long waiting lines.

One computerised check out probably handles at least two customers to every one its human counterpart services, and the machine doesn’t take a few seconds to engage with the customer. Consequently, not only has the store displaced possibly twenty or more human cashiers, they’ve also increased efficiency and doubled the rate of customers serviced, but also increased shelf space to sell more products.

Presently, the algorithmic programmers are developing interactive avatars to make customers feel like they are actually communicating with a person. Supposedly, these systems are also capable of learning how to deal with customers better with each encounter.

All this means greater profitability for the corporation and its shareholders. It’s a classic capitalistic philosophy at its most logical and fundamental level. The formula being, increase profitability by increasing efficiency equates to eliminating most all human faces, human personality traits, and human frailties from workplaces in areas where artificial Intelligence can do the job more efficiently and cheaper.

We are not slowly being led into this new reality, but pushed into it with ever-greater rapidity.

Today, there is a recession and many people are out of work; however, as the economy recovers, many of the jobs people had will have been replaced by artificial intelligence or robotics. Essentially, there are no jobs for many of those displaced people who worked in all sectors of the workplace where a computer or robot can do the job more efficiently and cost effectively.

As time goes on, in not the too distant future, jobs that people take for granted like office workers, call centres, chain store clerks, and even the over self confident investment bankers will find Artificial Intelligence encroaching on their territory. It’s like the invasive ’Weed optimization algorithm’ that finds a suitable place for growth and reproduction and rapidly displaces the previous inhabitants.

Subsequently, not only are more and more traditional service industry jobs lost to Artificial Intelligence, but also many of future high-end jobs that many young people are investing money and time studying for in universities will not be there when the graduate because of rapidly developing technology.

The ‘experts’ estimate that in the global workplace, somewhere between 50% - 75% of human faces will be displaced by robots and Artificial Intelligence within the next ten years.

Even in food production area, engineers are developing robots with sensors that detect the plants’ needs, tend them, and know to harvest the product at the right time.

While corporations are rapidly embracing Artificial Intelligence and robotics as a means to increase productivity, reliability, and efficiency thus increasing profitability, they are simultaneously displacing jobs for human faces at an alarming rate.

The above scenario is pretty much a foregone conclusion among the ‘visionary experts,’ and they say there will be the ultra-rich and the people servicing their needs and desires. However, for the general population, their utopian vision is quite different and will be quite bleak, especially if they are ambitious and want more out of life than being a personal shopper or nanny.

The’ visionaries’ see a population that is basically unemployed and warehoused much in the same way as welfare benefits serve to keep a subsection of the population out of the workforce by offering subsistence level incomes to keep them placated.

In the future, the ‘behavioural experts’ envision, turning people’s attention to “creative pursuits,” and if people are unhappy or dissatisfied with that, you can offer the poor souls “cheap prescriptions drugs” to maintain their emotionless and ambitionless state of mind.

They also suggest that parents should start instilling in their children that they should not expect too much out of life because there will be little or no chance for social or economic advancements above the social strata in which they were born.

The ‘visionaries’ also realise that there are subsets of the population that will never fit into the group consciousness, but they say those people have always been around as can be witnessed by people living in slums a ghettos. The malcontents, fringe elements, and misfits will always find a substandard location to survive, but are no real threat to their overall vision of the future.

Unfortunately for the ‘industry visionaries,’ the algorithmic programs have several fatal flaws, and the first being that corporations are sociopathic in nature; consequently, there is no thought of the human condition that comes into any boardroom decision. Their only concern is about profitability, growth, expansion, and satiating the shareholders apatite for dividends, thus like a voracious species of fish that consume everything in the pond and finally start consuming each other, corporations will consume the very people that support their livelihoods until there’s not enough consumers with enough money to support the industries.

The second fatal flaw is that governments are slow to act and most often, do the bidding of corporations, which the programmers never really factored into in their “Evolutionary algorithms.”

The third fatal flaw is that essentially, they are cannibalising the very market base that procures services and goods from them.

In order for their Orwellian vision to come to fruition within the next ten to twenty years as speculated, governments and corporations would have to be setting aside funds and segueing populations into the new reality. However, at this point, even at the industry’s optimistic estimates of workforce displacement by Artificial Intelligence and robotics of about 75% by 2020, the results could well be economically catastrophic in nature because capitalism is based on supply and demand. There will be an overabundance of supply, but not enough people with expendable income to create a profitable market base.

The rapid introduction of Artificial Intelligence and robotics as replacements for human faces robs people of income (purchasing power), thus all the products produced and services performed by machines become meaningless, profitless activities unless there is a mass market that can afford to buy them.

There will come, in the near future, a point of diminishing returns and eventually losses on investments into replacing people with machines as corporations’ insatiable quest for profits leads to more and more corporate cannibalisation of the very source of their profits – the workforce.

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