Posted on 08/04/2017 9:41:47 AM PDT by 2ndDivisionVet
Antonio Garcia Martinez fears revolution and armed conflict will erupt in America in the coming decades
A former Facebook executive has quit his job and now lives as a recluse in the wilderness – because he is convinced that machines will take over the world.
Antonio Garcia Martinez worked as a project manager for the social media giant in Silicon Valley but became terrified by the relentless march of technology.
He reckons that machines will have taken half of humanity’s jobs within 30 years, sparking revolt and armed conflict.
So he quit his job, fled his home and now lives in woodland north of Seattle with a gun for protection.
He spoke to new two-part BBC2 documentary “Secrets of Silicon Valley”, which explores the growing influence of the tech hub on global development.
Mr Martinez said: “If the world really does end, there aren’t going to be many places to run.
“Within 30 years, half of humanity won’t have a job. It could get ugly. There could be a revolution.
“I’ve seen what the world will look like in five to 10 years.
"You may not believe it but it's coming, and it's coming in the form of a self-driving truck that's going to run you over.
"There are 300 million guns in this country, one for every man, woman and child, and they're mostly in the hands of those who are getting economically displaced. There could be a revolt.
"You don't realise it but we're in a race between technology and politics, and technologists are winning. They're way ahead.
"They will destroy jobs and disrupt economies before we even react to them and we really should be thinking about that."
He said other ex-Silicon Valley employees had also resigned and were living on land isolated from society because they were equally frightened of what the future held.
Programme host Jamie Bartlett, director of the Centre for the Analysis of Social Media, said: "The tech gods are selling us all a better future but Silicon Valley's promise to build a better world relies on tearing up the world as it is. They call it 'disruption'.
"The mantra of Silicon Valley is that disruption is always good, and through smartphones and digital technology we can create more efficient, more convenient, faster services and everyone wins from that.
"But behind that beautifully designed app or that slick platform there's a quite brutal form of capitalism unfolding and it's leaving some of the poorest people in society behind.
"There's a risk Silicon Valley's promise to build a better world could inflict a nightmare future on millions of us.
"The big secret in Silicon Valley is that the next wave of disruption could tear apart the way capitalism works, and as a result the way we live our lives could be utterly transformed. "
Artificial intelligence pioneer Jeremy Howard said: "People aren't scared enough. "They're saying 'Don't worry about it, there will always be more jobs'.
"And it's founded on this purely historical thing of there has been a revolution before, it was called the Industrial Revolution, and after it there were still enough jobs, therefore this new, totally different, totally unrelated revolution will also have enough jobs.
"It's a ludicrously short-sighted, meaningless argument which incredibly smart people are making."
He said if society did nothing, a "tiny class of society" would own "all of the capital and all of the data and everybody else adds no economic value, is despised by the class that has things because they're worthless" creating "massive social unrest".
Strangely, Karl Marx predicted this for capitalism. It never could have happened under his system, because capital couldn’t keep building under the weight of the redistribution.
Luddites
Cue the Butlerian jihad...
Robots will do the work that immigrants won’t?
Sounds like robot police and guards will be needed to keep order.
and I’m prolly gonna miss all the fun :(
Well, at the places I worked at, these robots don’t have a chance.
Unless they develop an ass-kissing program.
FReepers with teen children should be guiding their thinking long-range about where the jobs will be in the coming decades. It’s a very important parental discussion (among many others). My kids are in their late 20s and early 30s and we’ve had a lot of conversations about where the jobs will be and how to position themselves for success in the changing landscape.
The Luddites are back.
The good news... We won’t need to worry about that phony baloney global warming profit Al Bore wasting his breath and irritating people with his prophetic nonsense.
I like to point out that a society where robots do all the work is one where socialism might finally be viable. Except that its philosophy is rooted in envy, and that won’t go away, even if we each have an identical amount of things.
Smart people will always have jobs. The problem is that robots are taking the jobs stupid people used to be able to do. And that’s the problem. Idle hands are the Devil’s Workshop, and we already see this in the inner cities.
More work for me.
I’m a Blade Runner.
I’ll “retire” as many as they need.
I “retired” my robot vacuum cleaner the other day. Tripped me when I walked by. He got to meet my little friend Mr. Sledgehammer.
Countries will be forced to go to a “guaranteed income” for all citizens.
But this is if the Lord waits, which I don’t think He will do. JMO
Yes. $15 /hour for a job worth $8/hour buys a LOT of robots.
The good news... We won’t need to worry about that phony baloney global warming profit Al Bore wasting his breath and irritating people with his prophetic nonsense.
Haha...yeah “work politics”. Can robots do THAT?
a little millenial dipsh*t thinks that the mecha-zombies are coming. I’m terrified.
I’d love to replace Congress with robots.
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