Opinion: Artificial intelligence will take away farmers’ purpose
© matsiash/Adobe Stock The diplomat Claude Maxwell MacDonald once said: “If hard work is the key to success, most people would rather pick the lock.”
That was more than 100 years ago, and now Elon Musk is offering us the chance to never have to work again “unless we want to” in an earnest interview with Rishi Sunak about the future of artificial intelligence (AI).
See also: Opinion – SFI is appealing, but will it help nature?
About the author
Mr Musk seemed concerned about avoiding machines “smarter than the smartest humans” that could wipe us out, Terminator–style.
Mr Sunak appeared more worried about the unemployment statistics.
Although replacing workers with technology is not a new concept, Mr Musk predicts that AI will be “the most disruptive force in history”.
The prime minister’s recent conference to control it reminds me of someone running down the platform, trying to catch a train that’s already leaving the station.
If the robots decide to take over, I’m not sure they will need any weaponry.
Merely by removing our employment, humanity will surely dissolve into a narcissistic puddle, without having to be blasted with laser guns.
If we all become isolated and self-centred with too much time on our hands, and AI indulges our every whim, it gets quite difficult to spot a happy ending.
I cannot be alone in having encountered people with too little to do and too much time to do it in.
Mr Musk predicts a “universal high income”, so we should all be able to afford a privileged and sedentary existence.
My observations of the wealthy retired around here paint a less-than-jolly picture. Some seem to feel threatened all the time.
They get on social media and blow miniscule matters out of all proportion. If you help them out, they are so self-obsessed they forget to thank you.
With all that time on their hands, they start to panic about their health. And the bins being collected.
I know farmworkers who refused to retire at 65 because they saw the cessation of work ruin their contemporaries.
Without discipline, without a sense of purpose to every day and challenges to overcome, many of them hung up their flat caps, laid down and died, and that terrified their still-working peers.
If you’ve seen the film Avatar 2, among the spaceships and CGI was a very good quote, where the aliens are keen to teach a refugee tribe their ways in order to avoid their guests suffering “the shame of being useless”.
Nottingham University revealed some evidence that the furlough scheme during Covid (basically a trial of sitting around and being paid to do nothing) found those furloughed suffered from “a loss of meaningful activity, self-identity and social interaction”.
I’m probably wrong, but after countless hours in a tractor cab, I think I cracked the meaning of life a while ago.
I’m not sure how to make this succinct, but fundamentally, I think the point is that nothing is worth having without sacrifice.
Or effort. Or forcing yourself to do things when you’d really rather stay in bed.
You won’t gain much satisfaction from a nicely ploughed field, a yard of healthy livestock, or a crop of wheat waving in the sunlight if a robot did all the work while you were playing tennis, or having a “duvet day”. Or a “duvet life”, come to that.