U.S. Congress Discusses AI, Automation, Robotics and Basic Income

Machine learning and robots are going to create a lot of wealth, but they will also replace a lot of human labor. We saw many types of jobs disappear in the Industrial Revolution, but we also saw jobs created that had never existed before. In this new wave of technological disruption, the pace of job automation will outstrip job creation in the short term and cause a lot of unemployment and underemployment. In the Industrial Revolution you could jump off of any unskilled labor job, take some courses, learn some new skills, and find a new, likely higher paying job. What's different this time is that we now have AIs and machine learning algorithms that can replicate many of the cognitive skills these individuals would be pursuing, and they can do it much faster.