Famous Indian film producer BR Chopra in yet another box-office success in Naya Daur (1957 – “Modern Challenge”) has a low-level labourer at a rural factory appealing to the proprietor of the industry.
“Boss, we workers realise machines are now going to take our jobs. And we all know what great hardships will ultimately ensue for everybody around the world. May I please appeal that the industrial engineers and business corporates of the world sit down together and design a method where there is progress in both these areas – machines that assist production but do not make us poor humans redundant?”
That appeal was made almost 7O years ago. Since then, man-made machines have been producing everything in abundance. Everything but the one thing most needed – jobs!
Any machine that instructs workers to leave the premises and go home is being slyly named by the fancy term “robot”.
One can understand such systems that are specifically designed to venture into areas that could be hazardous to human beings, such as venturing into the unknown, deep inner space of mining. And the yet uncertain black holes of outer space exploration. Or to improve efficiency in a medical situation where human reflexes may not be fast enough to perform delicate surgery.
Unfortunately, few areas of that nature have become the reason for pushing for robotics and artificial intelligence to do our jobs. A traffic officer was once a human guiding motor vehicles at intersections during peak periods. Since being replaced by “robots” (strangely, a South African term for traffic lights), we all are aware of the chaos, even without load shedding, when the timing goes awry because sensors are “stuffed”.
Of course, many machines cannot be dispensed with, such as elevators or “lifts”.
Motorcars are also a form of robots. Cars that do not need humans behind the steering wheel will, however, push humanly manned taxis and e-hailing drivers into the potholes of oblivion.
Online teaching by electronic gizmos will be next. University lecturers and security guards will be employed to only sweep the corridors during load shedding when automatic machines may fail. Ultra-modern farming machinery will cause poverty-stricken peasants to commit suicide and become automatic organic fertiliser for the wicked industrialists disguised as “farmers”.
Finance houses will close banking halls to save on rental and send their floor staff to the basement to lock themselves in safety deposit lockers before vanishing from the surface of the earth.
While a handful of slick shareholders rub their hands with glee in a penthouse 200 floors high … untouchable by lowly rabble. There are millions of examples.They are not all that funny.
* Ebrahim Essa, Durban.
** The views expressed here are not necessarily those of Independent Media.
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