This article is excerpted from - Wen Bei Dao's "Material Freedom"
Manpower is one of the important input factors for material supply. Generally speaking, to improve the material supply capacity, the more factors will be input. To produce more substances, more natural resource energy is required, and more time is required. Under a certain level of scientific and technological management, more and more material supplies are needed, and more and more manpower needs to be invested. But we must continue to improve the material supply capacity and achieve material freedom, just can not endless investment of manpower, on the one hand, because material freedom itself means that people need to get rid of the shackles of material production and gradually withdraw from material production, if in order to improve material supply capacity must increase human input, it will also run counter to the connotation of material freedom; On the other hand, the input of manpower itself is limited, which will restrict the improvement of material supply capacity from another angle.
As analyzed earlier, material freedom not only means that the output of material supply will be large, but also means that the output interval is very wide, and can make the theoretical upper and actual limits of the material supply curve exceed the upper limit of material demand, and the lower limit of material supply is almost 0. The more developed the science and technology, the higher the upper limit of the output range, the lower the lower boundary, and the wider the output range; The wider the output range, it means that under the same time and the same human input, the wider the range of material output of society, and the stronger the material supply capacity. To expand the output range, it is necessary to expand the distance between the break-even point and the upper limit of production capacity. From the perspective of the whole society, the upper limit of production capacity is mainly subject to the current level of science and technology and management, and the break-even point or actual lower limit is mainly subject to medium-term fixed operating costs such as manpower salary expenditure and consumables. If one day, machines replace manpower, when all substances are produced by machines, the fixed operating costs of manpower will all be converted into sunk costs of economic units. At this time, the break-even point will shift infinitely to the left, the distance from the lower limit of production capacity to the upper limit will be the widest, and the output range will be the widest.
Therefore, if the replacement of manpower by machine can maximize the output range, material freedom may be achieved. Of course, in addition to manpower investment, in practice, there will be fixed operating costs such as electricity, consumables and other fixed operating costs required for equipment operation and maintenance as other medium-term input factors M', because such maintenance expenditures are always present, it is of little significance to discuss it, what we can do is to continuously reduce such costs and reduce the consumption of resources in this regard. It should be noted in particular: as mentioned above, the input of science and technology and management input elements is sometimes reflected through human input as a carrier, such as in the R & D and design process, human resources will be used as an important input carrier of science and technology. At this time, in the research and development process, the human input element as the carrier of scientific and technological investment will never be replaced by the machine. In other supply links, even if the current investment of scientific and technological elements is carried by manpower, the level of scientific and technological investment can be maintained through the replacement of manpower by machines.
The input of manpower as a management factor will gradually decrease with the realization of material freedom. On the one hand, in the process of realizing material freedom, the number of enterprises in the whole society has decreased sharply due to mergers and integration, and the number of employers in the whole society as enterprise managers will naturally decrease; On the other hand, in the process of realizing material freedom, the large system can realize the replacement of the management functions of employers and various management personnel outside the R&D and design process, and in the R&D and design process, because human investment is still necessary, the management of human beings by natural persons is also indispensable. In short, in the process of realizing material freedom, in addition to the R&D and design links, the human input in the supply link must strive to be replaced by machines or artificial intelligence systems.
To realize the strong industrial material supply capacity required for material freedom, we must first vigorously promote the replacement of human labor by artificial intelligence. Even if human repetitive work will be replaced by machines, the process can be tortuous and complex. As analyzed above, artificial intelligence completely replaces repetitive work, human science and technology level first need to reach a certain level and height, if the level of science and technology can not reach, artificial intelligence can not replace human work, therefore, the realization of scientific and technological level is a necessary condition. But it does not mean that once this level of technology is reached, the whole society will naturally realize the replacement of artificial intelligence for human repetitive work.
In fact, under the market economy, even if the level of technology can already be reached, artificial intelligence will not even completely replace the repetitive work of humans without human active intervention. This is because people are not always making rational, correct decisions. For example, although artificial intelligence is more reliable and lower cost than human labor, some companies may still choose human resources, which will breed false employment. In addition, the replacement of artificial intelligence for manpower, if not matched with effective social welfare policies in time, may bring more serious social problems in the short term, such as high unemployment and the problem of difficult life of some people, and even force enterprises to abandon artificial intelligence, re-hire labor, turn back in history, and turn back. This means that even from a purely technical point of view, artificial intelligence can replace human labor, but relying only on market forces, it may be difficult to achieve this goal efficiently in the whole society.
Therefore, only when the whole society reaches a consensus on promoting artificial intelligence to replace manpower and forms a joint force, can we overcome all difficulties and gradually promote the replacement of artificial intelligence for manpower. In general, in order to realize the material freedom of the whole society, it is necessary to realize the materialization of services, the industrialization of materials, and the intelligence of industry. That is, all services that originally required manpower are changed to be provided by equipment, machinery, etc.; For all materials that have not achieved industrial production, it is necessary to promote the realization of industrial production; The materials that have been industrialized should be further promoted to achieve artificial intelligence production based on accurately meeting customized needs.
It should be emphasized here that in the future, if artificial intelligence can replace manpower, it will definitely bring serious unemployment. Some people may say, no, then humanity will create new needs and new jobs on its own, as it has done in previous technological advances, and there will be no excessive unemployment. There have been several technological advances in the history of human society, each time technological progress not only did not bring unemployment, but created new needs and new jobs through technological progress, but this technological progress of artificial intelligence instead of human power is completely different. The development of artificial intelligence will make all repetitive human tasks quickly replaced by machines. This means that even if human beings have new inventions and new service models to improve the quality of human life, as long as these inventions or new models are mass-produced, that is repetitive work, as long as repetitive work can be quickly mastered by artificial intelligence, these new production and service models will not accommodate a lot of employment.
In the future, there may still be some professions that cannot be replaced, such as designers, artists, actors, thinkers, and so on. These professions require constant innovation to remain dynamic, and as a result, their jobs will be difficult to replace. But the problem is that society's demand for these jobs is limited, and only a small percentage of society is successful artists and philosophers who make a living through creative work. So what about most of the rest except for these few designers, artists, and scientists? Only unemployment. Therefore, if artificial intelligence can replace manpower, it will definitely bring serious unemployment problems, and the employment space of human beings will be very narrow. This also requires society to provide financial welfare policies to support and support, so that people can live without work, which is exactly the goal that human development needs to achieve.
This article is excerpted from - Wen Bei Dao's "Material Freedom" "Link"
https://kdocs.cn/l/cpm7iEGmHBG4