Automation and its impact on the planet

There is a great deal of noise regarding automation these days. Automation is happening in all the sectors from agriculture to aviation. Apart from automation in industrial machines there is also automation in our day to day life activities. We drive through the toll gate without interacting with anyone. We can board a flight bypassing the check-in.

Why should we do this at all ? The industry argues that we need automation to increase efficiency and thereby reduce costs. This will in-turn enable the company to provide low cost services that could be enjoyed by everyone. That is a pretty valid explanation for doing automation because what they are saying is that , they are doing automation to serve us better. Whether they use automation to serve us better or use it to increase their profits is a whole other issue.

Unlike what the industry says , efficiency is not always a good thing for a society. I will try to explain this by answering a seemingly unrelated question of “why we are doing anything and everything?”.

We have to remember that economic activities are the way a society enables everyone to survive. When we started off as a civilisation each one can find food and survive on their own. As we progressed and increased our food production we were able to delegate food production to a select few in the society. We then started to diversify and created other associated activities to engage our ever growing population.

As new people were born, they had to find their place in society and do something to earn a living. Since a few people can provide food for the entire population , the rest had to find some other role in the society. The role of the other people were initially associated as support activities of agriculture. For example , people were blacksmiths , traders etc. A little later , with the invention of money we diversified further and started doing a variety of stuff from painting art to dancing.

What I am trying to say is that right from day one, the purpose of any activity apart from food is always a way to engage people in order to provide them livelihood.

We literally created a very inefficient way of staying alive. But we would rather tell ourselves that we are not just staying alive , we are “living a better life”.

Reagardless of whatever we say ourselves, the fact remains that , whatever we do is for the sake of providing livelihood to ourselves. So what sense does it make to create processes that eliminate us altogether ? What sense is there in creating a machine which can do 10 people’s job when 10 people are jobless ?

The propaganda machine of industries will always point to the consumer side and highlight the benefits but aren’t the consumers themselves employees due to be displaced by automation ?

The link is quite simple , providing a livelihood is the primary stand taken by all governments when they destroy the natural world for the sake of industries. Since Industries provide jobs , they have become indispensable and thus given priority over the natural world. Should a mining project be approved ? All you have to do is say that it creates thousand jobs.

Now with automation , thousand jobs are not created rather a fraction of that is created. The profits from reduced labor cost are bagged by a few people and then the bandwagon goes on to a different location saying the same reason -creation of jobs. In simple terms , a factory which provided jobs for a 100 people now does the same job but employs only 10. For the remaining 90 few more factories are needed , which in real world means more destruction of the natural world.

If there are no people available for work then we can do automation but with crores of people jobless who will this automation benefit ? The rich are getting richer while more of the planet needs to be consumed to provide jobs/livelihood for the same number of people. Where is the sense in this ?

A single biscuit factory with automated machine supplies for millions of people. Just imagine catering the same number of people by baking in the traditional manner. Crores of servings meant that lakhs of people will have to be bakers. Now with industrial automation , a handful run the factories which bakes millions of biscuits. I am amazed by what a machine can do but I am also amazed by how we have lost the reason for doing things in the first place.

The planet is already in tatters but rather than using natural resources to engage the maximum number of people , we are being inefficient in engaging manpower.

Take the case of Amazon, which takes pride in automation. They are automating jobs like carrying boxes, sorting items etc. Is this in the best interest of Jeff bezos or for the community where unemployment is rampant ? They will even automate door delivery with the use of drones. It makes sense for bezos as more deliveries means more money but where is the livelihood creation ?

If the purpose of economic activity is providing for the people, are we not inefficient in doing it ?

Is efficiency of a process more important than the efficiency of serving people ?

Automation also means the consumption of the planet is done more efficiently. With humans removed , a machine can remove the time limitation and work 24/7. An automated mining process can run for 24/7 whereas any human worker will have to take a break. The planet can now be stripped down endlessly with just a push of a button and we can sit and watch it on a screen.

Even what little remorse we had while levelling a forest can now be gone as we do not even have to be physically there while killing the planet. One can kill millions of birds in industrial farming without even having blood on his hands. All you need to do is push a button. From killing the planet with our own hands , we have moved to use machines as proxies.

With the new found “Artificial intelligence” we do not even have to think whether we have to kill a forest, a computer programme can advice and act on behalf of us. With decision making automated , the last remaining touch we have with the natural world is being removed.

Automation and profits

The industry is engaged in automation only because it wants more profits.

In such a scenario the planet is the ultimate loser as it means incremental wasteful consumption to support the population.

The economists will always argue that increase in productivity will ultimately benefit everyone as more profits for an industry meant they will invest more and create new jobs. These money minded urban educated elite will never look at the planet as a living thing and have never included the state of the planet as a factor in their policies. Their equations and statistics always aim for more money to be generated.

In their never ending quest for money generation , automation is just one more step.

To be quite frank, I am quietly watching how through automation people lives are getting screwed. With all low skill jobs bound to be automated , all people are now breaking their heads to get a higher education to upgrade their skills. Believe me, all of us cannot be robotic engineers. Already to survive a knowledge based economy we are literally spending 25 years trying to ready ourselves and if we are going to be pushed more , most of us will not be able to bear it. I can bet for sure while the process might have become simple , holding on to a job has become stressful. Automation will make sure of it.

This brings us to a very important link between automation and the planet. As we are brought under increasingly stressful conditions we care more about our immediate survival than about the well being of the planet. With our clouded vision , we can no longer see the fact that a healthy planet is a must for our future generations. Our short term priorities in securing a livelihood overtakes everything.

This is an important strategy in the hands of people in power.

With everyone looking for their own backs , the planet killers can continue feeding on the planet unabated.

The real fact is, as we progressed with industrialization, machines started doing more than any human can do. In that instance itself more of the planet was being consumed to sustain us. Of late the industrialization is just reaching a whole new level and nothing more. There is no climax to this scenario as our greed will never stop. The rich will pursue this strategy regardless of whatever that happens to the planet and also its humans.