On Friday, I wrote on the developing issue of H-1B and how this debate has effectively taken over the political conversation on the right. Both sides make good arguments, and there are solutions to solving the problem that Donald Trump must enact in government, and the American people must embrace culturally, if we're to get over this hump.
I encourage you to read that piece before continuing on with this one.
(READ: Yes, the H-1B System Is Fixable, but It Will Require a Lot of Reforms)
The issue is that an imported workforce is nothing compared to the fight we have coming in the labor market, and that issue is artificial intelligence. In terms of replacing an American workforce, this is the final boss.
Many people think the biggest threat AI will pose is some kind of "Skynet" entity that will go to war with humanity. It's not. That's a Hollywood trope that doesn't actually have a lot of basis in reality.
The biggest threat it poses is replacing humans through corporations and government work. AI can, and will, make humans obsolete and it's humans who will push humans out in order to employ AI.
(READ: Let's Get Real About What AI Is, and the Dangers It Actually Poses)
Like foreign-born workers, AI is even cheaper. It doesn't require visa sponsorships, it doesn't involve a lot of red tape, it doesn't need vacations, it doesn't call out sick, it doesn't require healthcare, and one AI program can do a multitude of jobs, decreasing the tax burden on a business.
This is already starting to happen, and it has been for some time. Automating the workforce was popularly done by McDonald's as far back as 2014. As I've written recently, humanoid robots from Figure AI are currently being deployed in a BMW factory in South Carolina.
(READ: The Robots Are Coming and Everything Is About to Change)
Clone Robotics is developing robots that have liquid motion, making their robots move just like humans.
I show you this because I want to impart that there's no industry where a robot can't be utilized. Construction workers and programmers alike will find themselves competing against machines. I imagine most human-based jobs will involve oversight of programs and robots doing the task at hand than doing the task directly.
I think some of the lessons we're going to learn from the fight over H-1B could be applied to this problem we're going to have with AI very, very soon.
For one, I think corporations should have a cap on how many AI they can deploy in any given workforce. While this is going to be harder to apply to AI programs that run software programs, as one could run many, at least in terms of robotics, there will be a hard cap on how many they can use to replace people.
Secondly, corporations should invest in retraining programs that help workers gain new skills when AI is a part of the equation. BMW is doing this now, investing in its human workforce by putting millions of dollars every year into adding skill sets for its workers, helping them to readjust and reprioritize their labor skills to help them stay employed.
By the way, this should also tell you where many a corporation's head is at in terms of AI, making it pretty clear that they're not going to back away from deploying machines to replace humans in many a task.
The government could also provide tax incentives for companies that employ humans, and relegate AI to augmentation roles instead of primary working roles. This will help keep humans at the center of the American labor force, which is going to be key going forward. The temptation by corporations will be to flip that around, and that's what has to be curbed from the word "go."
We're also going to need to readjust our education systems. AI is going to become a huge part of our civilization, and as such, we need to train children in understanding and utilization. There needs to be a strong emphasis on STEM, in which AI and robotics are a large part, and pushing this into our children early in their education will help them navigate these issues far better down the line.
As I said earlier, this fight is the bigger one. AI will make foreign-born workers obsolete as much as it will domestic workers. Since we're not going to stop the oncoming AI storm, we should start developing solutions to work around and with these programs now.
This will require both a governmental, corporate, and cultural shift in how we approach these ideas, but we're still early enough in the AI inclusion process that we can prevent a lot of problems before they happen. All it requires is for you to make it a big deal so that politicians make it a big deal.
