Labor freed from necessity. Deep innovation
Ray Kurzweil, 70 from an Austrian Jewish refugee family in Queens, is one of the most unique personalities of our time. Singular is the right word because Ray, with his law of accelerated return, is one of the noble fathers of singularism. Singularism is the theory that asserts, by the middle of the XNUMXst century, the conjunction between biological and artificial intelligence in a meta-organic and bio-machine intelligence thanks to which man will become a hybrid being.
To explore this theme Kurzweil founded the Singularity University in 2009 and wrote various books. Two of these, The singularity is close e How to create a mind they are also available in Italian (ed. Apogeo, 2010 and 2013).
Inventor, thinker, but above all man of action and entrepreneur: many will know the Kurzweil synthesizer or the pioneering optical character recognition device, the Kurweil Reading Machine, which dates back to 1974. Ray is today one of the most prolific innovation activists profound, that is, of that innovation that goes beyond Likes, 140 characters and social bullshit, to impact people's material living conditions such as health, nutrition, education, work.
150 immortality pills
Kurzweil's brilliance is paired with eccentricity. Among the many bizarre things he has personally experienced (in a way not unlike Timothy Leary, but more controlled) is the challenge of immortality, which he is very positive about attaining.
In a long 2010 interview with the "New York Times" he declared that he takes about 150 natural pills a day (average cost 20 dollars) which, combined with a consistent diet and a daily intravenous infusion, will preserve him from biological decay. He is assisted in this challenge by his personal physician, friend and co-author Terry Grossman. Anyone interested in imitating him can read his books on the subject. Between these: The 10% Solution for a Healthy Life (1993), Fantastic Voyage: Live Long Enough to Live Forever (2004, with Gossman), Transcend: Nine Steps to Living Well Forever (2010, again with Grossman).
In the end, the matter is not so extravagant since Kurzweil has convinced the two big guys from Google, Sergey Brin and Larry Page who, as Montessori disciples, throw themselves into everything that smells impossible, to launch the very secret Calico project which aims to exile human mortality from planet Earth.
The prophecies of Short
Kurzweil's predictions about the near future generally prove to be accurate. According to the eclectic futurist, 87% of his 147 predictions made since 1990 have come true. The remaining 23%, as Kurzweil himself says, is on the waiting list to come true.
It is therefore no wonder that Kurzweil's thought was and is also a magnet for fierce criticism. Among these, those of Jaron Lanier who sees in them the prodromes of a cybernetic totalitarianism or of Douglas Hofstadter (Godel, Escher, Bach — An eternal brilliant garland) who considers it a toxic cocktail of rubbish and good ideas, the latter completely inextricable from the former. Among the critics there is also the singularist narrator Bruce Sterling who considers Kurzweil's singularity a "black hole".
But Kurzweil's admirers are much more than his detractors and the pentastellato Gianroberto Casaleggio also owes a great deal to his ideas, as shown in his video-testament, Singularity: the tipping point of human evolution.
Work as liberation from necessity
Today Kurzweil is chief futurist at Google and does not fail to intervene on the hottest times of the moment such as the destiny of work in the era of transition to the singularity. The latest prediction is that by the end of 2030 there will be a basic income everywhere, an indispensable social measure in the transition phase to singularism.
The development of technology will determine a new economic model, compared to the one known up to now, in which the concept of work will radically change, undermining the component of necessity characteristic of the pre-singularist era. The final outcome of this process could be the disappearance of work and perhaps even the end of the economy as the goods needed by man will be universally accessible outside a specific economic relationship, as in an open source scheme.
The matrices of change
There are already forces at work that are pushing in this direction. 3D printing is creating personalized goods with a very low investment, the sharing economy is putting uselessly dormant resources back into circulation, the artificial intelligence ecosystem is lowering the entry barriers to strategic sectors of human development and smart city experiences they are reshaping the relationship between citizens and institutions.
Kurzweil is working on a book on these issues and blogged on May 1 (Labor Day), in support of universal basic income. Below we report Kurzweil's considerations in Italian translation.
To quickly understand the basic income, we also take the liberty of suggesting the reading of a recently published book by Sandro Gobetti and Luca Santini, entitled Basic income — The whole world is talking about it Experiences, proposals and experiments. Happy dive into the future with Ray Kurzweil.
Correct profiling of the basic income
A universal basic income (UBI) is a form of citizens' social security in which all residents of a country receive an unconditional and regular amount of money from the government or a public institution. This grant is added to any other income.
I give my support to such a project. However, we must implement it in a way that does not destroy other incentives useful for the development of society. So the main question is how we do it. We already have a fuzzy approximation to basic income in the forms of ration cards, Social Security, health care, aged care, unemployment benefits, and other programs.
A large part of livelihoods can be obtained through these means, with the important exception of housing. There are shelters but they are gloomy and dangerous.
We must move towards a situation where everyone can live comfortably thanks to the support that society can provide. The fantastic cost-performance improvement we have seen in information technology can transfer to physical goods, food, energy and other industries that are benefiting from technological innovation such as 3D printing, vertical farming and solar energy.
I plan to cover these topics and how they will impact, and ultimately improve, our civilization in my next book. We are entering an era of abundance as advances in technology and science are making the world a better place for all of us.
11 reasons in favor of a basic income
1 Basic income will help people rethink the how and why of work.
Basic Income can help people change jobs and reconsider their choices. It will help them re-form into the belief that they will have sufficient resources to maintain a decent lifestyle in the repositioning phase. It will thus be possible for people to be able to decide what they actually want to do.
2 The basic income will help improve working conditions.
With the certainty of having the safety net of an income, workers will be able to ask their employers to improve their working conditions if they find them unfair and degrading.
3 Basic income will cut red tape.
Given that a basic income requires one of the simplest taxation models, the complexity of the tax procedures built around the welfare state can be simplified while making them more agile, cheaper and more just and emancipatory.
4 Basic income will make tax fraud obsolete.
Tax fraud will vanish as an option because there will no longer be a need for it: it will automatically be guaranteed. Furthermore, an automatic basic income will protect against the effects of the poverty trap.
5 Basic income will help reduce inequality.
The basic income is a means of distributing the wealth produced by society to all, reducing the growing inequalities in the world.
6 Basic income will provide a more reliable and effective safety net for everyone.
Most current anti-poverty programs are not fully inclusive due to their complexity or because the beneficiary does not know how to access or qualify for them. With the basic income, people currently excluded will automatically be able to have their rights guaranteed.
7 The basic income will help to reduce working hours and improve the distribution of work.
With a basic income, people will be able to choose whether to reduce their working hours without sacrificing pay. They will then be able to spend more time doing things that are more rewarding for them. At the macroeconomic level, this will lead to a better distribution of work. Because a reduction in hours will increase the chances of finding a job for those who are currently excluded.
8 The basic income will reward unpaid activity.
A wide range of unpaid activities are not currently considered to contribute to the economy. Our economy actually relies on these voluntary activities — think Wikipedia or the work of parents or grandparents. A basic income will recognize and reward these activities.
9 Basic income will strengthen democracy.
With a minimum level of security guaranteed to all citizens - and less time spent working or worrying about it - engagement in political, social, economic and civil life will become an integral part of people's daily lives.
10 Basic income is a fair redistribution of technological achievements.
Thanks to the massive advances in our technological and manufacturing capabilities, the world of work is changing. But the great part of our wealth and well-being rests on the shoulders of giants. We are richer thanks to our ancestors. Basic Income is a way to civilize and redistribute the benefits of current advances.
11 Basic income will end extreme financial poverty.
Since we live in a world where we have the means and the will to end the suffering of society, the basic income is a means to combine these means and this will.
Will the prophecy that basic income will be among us in 2030 enter the 87% of predictions guessed by the Queens prophet?
