The Singularity Is Nearer: When We Merge with AI

by Ray Kurzweil

In the long term, the economic incentives for automation will push AI to take over an ever-expanding set of tasks. All else being equal, it is less expensive to buy machines or AI software than to pay ongoing labor costs.[86] When business owners are designing their operations, they often have some flexibility over the balance between capital and labor. In places where wages are relatively low, it makes more sense to use labor-intensive processes. Where wages are high, there’s more of an incentive to innovate and design machines that require less labor. This is likely one reason why Great Britain was the cradle of the Industrial Revolution—it had wages that were higher than almost anywhere else in the world as well as abundant cheap coal. This drove development of technologies that substituted inexpensive steam power for expensive human labor. In today’s developed economies there is a similar dynamic. While machines can be one-time purchases that become assets, employee wages are ongoing costs, and workers have a range of other needs that employers must meet. So where it’s possible to increase automation, businesses have an incentive to do so. As AI approaches human—and, shortly thereafter, superhuman—levels of competence, there will be ever fewer tasks that unenhanced humans will be needed to perform. Until we merge with our AI more fully, this portends major disruptions for workers.