The Direction and Future of Automation

The Direction and Future of Automation

I once firmly believed that automation would ultimately represent the direction of human progress. As more and more automated technologies emerge, humanity could gradually free itself from the necessity of labor, and thus devote more energy to spiritual creation and elevation, eventually reaching some kind of ideal state.

That was until I came across a joke.

One day, the boss of Ford took the president of the American auto workers’ union on a tour of Ford’s newest automated factory. Pointing at the industrial robots filling the workshop, he teasingly asked the union leader, “Do you think you can still lead them on strike?” The union leader calmly shot back, “That depends on whether you can get them to buy Ford cars.”

If we continue to think this through, the joke is really a tragedy. The development of automation allows machines to replace human labor, and objectively this means that more people are freed from work—but as a result, they lose their jobs, their income, and gradually fall into poverty, losing their purchasing power. On the other hand, the massive quantity of goods produced by capital cannot possibly be consumed by capitalists alone. As a result, products go unsold and capital collapses. From this perspective, the development of automation almost looks like a fuse for economic crisis.

This conclusion is not baseless; there is data to support it. At least in some developed countries such as the United States, signs of this have become increasingly obvious. The reason it has not yet fully exploded is, to a great extent, thanks to rapid economic growth. The expansion of total wealth has, to some degree, slowed the process of capital imbalance. As Marx described it, the growth of wealth loosened the iron chains fastened around the neck of the proletariat.

However, if the next fundamental technological revolution does not arrive in time, the economy cannot continue growing at such a rapid pace forever. In other words, not far ahead on the wheels of human history, there stands a towering stone wall, silently waiting. If human technology cannot take off once again before we reach it, then we will have no choice but to crash into it. No government, no matter how it adjusts interest rates, will be able to avoid such an outcome. And whether humanity will produce, in time, a superhero capable of turning the tide and propelling productivity to new heights is entirely unpredictable.

But the development of automation is impossible to stop. In truth, it is not only automation that cannot be stopped. Ever since American imperialism, beginning in the era of the Great Depression, came up with the idea of devaluation and led the whole world down this road of drinking poison to quench thirst, no one has been able to stop it.

There is a film depicting a future world in which a tiny minority possessing immense wealth live inside strong and comfortable castles, while the larger mass of ordinary people, trapped in hardship, wander outside the walls. Guarding the gates are countless cold, emotionless robot sentries. Sometimes such a scene feels so real that it sends a chill down the spine. If this is the future of automation, would it not merely be helping evil do its work?

So what should be done? The advance of technology, like life itself, moves only forward. Returning to the age of agriculture is clearly neither desirable nor possible. I think that just as water can carry a boat or capsize it, the one who tied the knot must be the one to untie it. Even if technological progress has brought all kinds of problems and dilemmas, for now it seems that the only way to solve them is still through progress itself. Only by moving forward faster is there even a glimmer of hope.

So, to some extent, the direction and future of technology are also the direction and future of humanity.