Key Takeaways
- New technology can spark conversations about job loss, but it often leads to long-term benefits for society.
- Artificial intelligence has the potential to reshape society, human relationships, and the social landscape.
- Radical acceptance of new technologies warrants skepticism, but preventing their adoption to preserve jobs is shortsighted and detrimental to growth.
- The government should allow technological progress to take its course and assist those whose employment has been displaced in adapting to the new reality.
- Protectionism, favoring certain jobs over technological advancement, is not the proper answer.
Introduction to Technological Progress
New technology inevitably sparks a conversation about losing certain jobs as a result of progress, but time and time again, we have seen America, along with people en masse, benefit in the long run from technological advances. Artificial intelligence is the latest scary topic, with well-meaning concerns related to its adoption, such as how it could reshape society, human relationships, and the rest of America’s social landscape. However, some are against technological progress simply to be against it, and some elected representatives have even floated the idea that the government should regulate industries to prevent technological progress from eliminating jobs.
The Importance of Skepticism
Radical acceptance of new technologies warrants skepticism, as they have the potential to change our society and culture in ways that are difficult to predict at the outset. For example, the advent and rise of social media have had generally horrible effects on children, and could have been prevented had we taken a more cautious approach with age restriction laws from the outset. Artificial intelligence has the potential to completely change the way Americans research, communicate, learn, create, and much more. To this extent, it is understandable to have apprehension against the rapid adoption of new technologies, and the balance between technological progress and preventing revolutionary mistakes is a worthy pursuit.
Embracing Progress
However, there are far fewer compelling arguments against progress. Concerns over AI are fine, but we need to embrace progress and allow it to take its course. The argument that we need to halt progress because it might render certain jobs obsolete is not receptive. Regulations that require autonomous vehicles to still have a human overseer in the cabin would essentially neuter the economic benefit of technological progress. The government would have been unwise to ban automobiles to protect carriage drivers, stable masters, and other buggy-related employees, as automobiles rendered these jobs obsolete but created new ones, enhanced productivity in other industries, and made American life better.
The Benefits of Technological Advancement
For example, AI technology has the potential to prevent millions of crashes a year and save thousands of lives. Of the roughly 2 million vehicle crashes annually, human error is responsible for most of them. If such technology can make a significant dent in the roughly 40,000 lives lost in motor vehicle crashes every year, we should not be putting up roadblocks to its adoption for the sake of preserving certain jobs. This ignores the additional net cost savings of as much as $340 billion caused by traffic crashes each year. Such arguments are obviously ridiculous if you change the industry to that of medicine, where the government has no business outlawing medical breakthroughs that render certain specialty doctors obsolete, because clearly the benefit of improving lives is more important than the right of one to keep working the same job.
The Role of Government
Instead of preventing technological progress, the government should allow it to take its course and assist those whose employment has been displaced in adapting to the new reality. Protectionism, favoring these jobs over the advancement of revolutionary technology, is not the proper answer. The government should focus on providing support and training for those who lose their jobs due to technological advancement, rather than trying to prevent the advancement itself. By doing so, we can ensure that the benefits of technological progress are shared by all, and that we can continue to grow and prosper as a society. Ultimately, embracing progress and allowing technological advancement to take its course is the key to a better future for America.