Technological Unemployment as a Test of the Added Value of Being Human

Abstract

The classical political economists generally believed that free markets are the ideal setting to release previously untapped human creative potential, ultimately resulting in prosperity for all. However, David Ricardo added an ironic twist to this article of faith by observing that much—if not most—of our creative potential has been dedicated to the replacement of human by non-human labour, first by animals and then by machines. Marx was among the first to realize that one long-term consequence of this tendency is that under capitalism humans are always under the threat of redundancy. More to the point, humans will continue to need to justify their existence—the ‘added value’ of their labour. The past 50 years have arguably witnessed an acceleration in this tendency, especially with the roughly simultaneous rise of artificial intelligence and decline of socialism. This chapter explores the serious prospect that humanity might become an ‘ontologically endangered species’, unless it is continually prepared to redefine its ‘nature’. In particular, doubts are cast on claims nowadays associated with followers of Hubert Dreyfus that humanity has a fixed essence associated with powers that a ‘superintelligent’ machine could never match. Indeed, much of this anti-AI thinking overlooks the increasing significance that cyborgs are likely to play in defining what it means to be human.