Robots & AI In an Egalitarian versus Class Inequality Society

In an egalitarian society robots & AI would do only what egalitarians WANT them to do, and nothing else; unlike today. But WHAT do we WANT them to do?

One year ago I wrote on Substack, “Beware of the Universal Basic Income (UBI): Read here why the ruling class--both the liberal and conservative wing--are promoting UBI.”

If you haven’t read that earlier post about UBI yet, or just want to refresh your memory about what I said then, please give it a read now. What follows is best read after reading that earlier post about why we should beware of the UBI idea, an idea that is often presented as a solution to the supposedly inevitable replacement of more and more human labor and thinking by robots & AI.

Here I want to discuss my egalitarian take on the question of robots & AI doing more and more things that formerly only humans could do.

First of all, and most importantly, robots & AI (I’ll treat it as a singular something because they’re so connected) in an egalitarian society is something altogether different from robots & AI in a society like ours today based on class inequality. In an egalitarian society with genuine egalitarian democracy, robots & AI would do ONLY what egalitarians want it to do, and nothing else. This is in stark contrast to today in our class inequality society when robots & AI is used to make the rich richer at the expense and EXTREME ANNOYANCE of the have-nots. Today, for example, the have-nots fear being unemployed (a kind of social death in our current society) whenever robots & AI can be used to do their job. And the have-nots HATE the goddamned robots & AI that answer phone calls to corporations when we need to talk to a human being to solve the problem for which we are calling. Read my earlier post/rant about this here.

OK, robots & AI would only do what egalitarians want it to do in an egalitarian society. Bur what, exactly, do egalitarians want it to do?

Well, no doubt there would be disagreements among egalitarians. What one local community allows robots & AI to do, another one might not. But I will say here what I think about the fundamental role of robots & AI in an egalitarian society.

Robots & AI should be used to make life better, more enjoyable, less onerous than otherwise. For example, if we want to get raw materials from deep down in the earth and robots & AI can do the job, and for a human to do it would be dangerous and onerous and very unpleasant, then sure, probably use robots & AI. But—and this is very important!—in an egalitarian society miners who could—technologically speaking—be displaced by robots & AI would be members of their Local Assembly of Egalitarians and would also be democratically in control of the mining operation. Robots & AI would not replace miners unless the miners WANTED them to do so.

Miners in an egalitarian society might indeed want to be replaced by robots & AI because if that happened they would continue to enjoy the same standard of living as when they worked (i.e., when they contributed reasonably according to ability) in the mine. They would still have the right to take for free from the economy what they needed or reasonably desired and have scarce things that were equitably rationed according to need, as long as they were making a good faith effort to find another way of contributing reasonably according to ability. This is how an egalitarian economy works, as discussed further here.

At this point I want to emphasize that the egalitarian principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need” is a principle of reciprocity between people; it is about mutual aid. It is a principle about how people do things to help each other, to make it a better world for each other.

This principle is, of course, about fairness. It rejects freeloading, meaning taking the fruits of the labor of others without reciprocally contributing reasonably according to ability. The reason so many people don’t like the Universal Basic Income idea is precisely because it is a freeloader-friendly idea, which is the main point I made in my post about it last year.

But the “From each according,…” principle is also about more than fairness. It is also about the source of self-respect and dignity of people. Self-respect and dignity, I believe, come largely from knowing that one is doing something to help others and to make a better world for others.

This being the case, it would be a terrible world for us human beings if we set it up so that robots & AI did EVERYTHING and people had all their material needs and desires satisfied while doing absolutely nothing except consuming those material things. Some (I notice many who support UBI, for example) may call such a world a paradise—a “couch potato” paradise—but I believe it would soon be seen to be a nightmare if it ever came to pass. I would not be surprised if in such a world the suicide rate skyrocketed due to extreme depression and negative feelings (feelings the opposite of self-respect and dignity) about oneself.

I would argue that egalitarians should, no matter how much robots & AI did, continue to make it so that the principle of “From each according to reasonable ability, to each according to need or reasonable desire with scarce things equitably rationed according to need” be maintained. People would have to figure out ways of contributing reasonably according to ability in a world where robots & AI did a lot. I have no doubt that people would come up with zillions of ideas, because people are extraordinarily creative (unlike robots & AI); at least many if not all people are extraordinarily creative and some of the ideas they came up with would be about projects that would need others to help implement by contributing reasonably according to ability. Such ideas might be in the fields of entertainment, science, literature, sports, exploration, philosophy, and who knows what else. This would be a wonderful world (though NOT a Utopia, as I discuss here.)

What do YOU think?