Oh! White Population, stop being gullible to Tech Industry Politics!

 Across developed countries there is a new found passion to attack migrants and blame them for disappearing livelihood options, crime and increasing cost of living. But this is a simplistic analysis of a complex reality that is dynamic. There is an overriding false assumption that migrants are taking away jobs that white population yearn or compete for.

It is not possible for migrants to enter a country a) without the direct or in direct collusion of the government or institutions and people in power, especially when migration is reality year after year and surplus labour is a way for cheap labour b) migrants cannot enter a country unless there is a need for them, the only exception at a miniscule level would be extreme fear of prosecution at home c) If migrants see a country as a way for improving the standard of living, then that country needs migrants.

Yes, the times they are changing, but not because suddenly a white population have woken up to the threat of migrants. Disappearance of migrants will not create jobs that the white population access or the ones they crave for.

The shift in migration policy is crucial for the survival of tech industry and governments that have planned for national growth based on success of the tech industry and not development of the nation or its people.

People are thrilled about the scope for AI products that can facilitate development of apps without any software knowledge, to write without have to go through the grind, to make strategies without any effort at strategizing, to sort emails, messages, collate a week’s work, synthesize and create a write up and in the standardized version of thinking for all to relax and augment the self. The last is what is unclear to many, it is not just about absent resources but how do people manage time in abundance with nothing to do or any money to spend on alternate activities? Tech experts talk about people growing their own food and relaxing, it seems just like data silos they want to create control living spots for most of the ordinary people to reside and the world will be taken care of by Tech experts the select few.

The sudden hatred for migrants is in line with the needs of tech world, it has many innovations in the pipeline, be it diverse forms of robotics, virtual assistants, or AI to manage diverse tasks till date carried out by humans. Tech innovations will change the functioning of different industries, especially where migrants are often employed; industries that focus on food, agriculture, health and care, education, entertainment, financial, hotel, real estate, delivery system and even governance.

Tech industry cannot afford to keep their innovations in the pipeline without implementation, especially as China has gone way ahead exposing their market to tech innovation and in the process would have additional raw data for fine tunning their innovation and making it competitive in export market. China does not have a major migrant issue like the developed countries, and it also has an energy self sufficiency issue, so how the increased demand through tech innovation will be addressed is unclear.

White population instead of repeating the facts perpetuated by tech industry and your government there are certain questions you need to ask for getting a better picture of your reality:

a) If migrants’ jobs were sought after by the white population why are those industries in US facing total disruption,

b) Would the amount of paid to migrants for their work be adequate for white population employees to survive on, and if not, will the industries continue to be as viable for the owners if cost of managing the activities increases? This especially as tariffs have made the international market very competitive.

c) If tech industry products took over jobs left behind by migrants, the number of brown coloured, light brown and yellow faces you encounter on your streets would come down, this may be source of relief for you but remember human faces will be replaced by empty spaces and machine products.

d) In case the human angle is not an issue of concern for you, the issues of energy cannot be ignored by you as it is critical for your country. There is no country that is self-sufficient on renewables except maybe Norway and Iceland, even they would find a total digital shift a heavy burden in the long run. Norway has goal of being carbon neutral by 2030 and for which it plans to purchase carbon offsets from other countries, but this balancing may become difficult with shift to digitization.

When human beings carry out various tasks, they are not consuming energy from outside but generating their own. Hence the activities done by Human would be energy neutral but when the tasks are taken over by AI innovation products then based on type of AI the energy needed would increase drastically. Take for example the robotics that could be used in the health sector, according data available online the energy consumption of humanoid robot varies between 0.5kW to 3.75 kW. This would mean in a year 32,850 kW when calculated at 90kW daily, some of the robots would be used 24x7 and in case of others, even when in standby mode energy is consumed. Energy need does not end there, it would include data collection, storing of data and ensuring its continuous accessibility through cloud. All of these activities add on energy needed.

The data centres in spite of limited digitization are cause for concern with regard to energy consumption and their need for continuous bath to keep the temperature cool. With a shift to large scale digitisation what would be implication for energy and who would be paying for this additional usage, it is not just electricity water will also need to be diverted for the functioning of data centres.

It is not just industries mentioned earlier, it is possible local law order or policing can also be in for major changes as seen in case of US. This may be the probable reason for the deployment of federal forces in different states under the pretext of addressing major violence concerns. To strengthen digitization beyond surveillance there is need for raw data and being out on the streets is one of the easiest ways to document the work carried out and its dynamics.

What Trump and his government is not looking at is the huge energy and water cost of such extensive digitization. Besides, peace process within a State or at international level calls for human skills that are not part of current AI and may never be. In the absence of human perspective, law and order would be a mechanical task that is energy intensive and water hungry.

e) Last but not least, in every field there is an evolved human collective knowledge which is shared and transferred and the process is dynamic. This is built through intuition, observation, communication through non-formal ways, risk assessment process that may be dynamic and not often captured in black and white, these aspects and others go on to build organisational knowledge and also knowledge regarding specific fields. When the entire process is digitized, the process becomes largely mechanical, selective, narrow and rarely dynamic. For no matter how advanced AI becomes, for it to be dynamically involved in process of knowledge creation or related aspects would be limited as AI would never have access to innate knowledge that exists within humans, is transferred within humans or even have the capacity to relate and be humanly limited and selective as it interacts with reality and humanity.

If you consider the issue relevant, then think of the impact of such a disconnect through machine rule, could be, on the human mind, consciousness and awareness after generations of handing over everything to AI. And in case there is energy crisis or major environmental disaster, what happen to humans born generation ahead?

As humans it is important to look at the bigger picture and understand the value of the human mind beyond AI.

Molly Charles