Manna

Plot

AI started to slowly replace human labor and eventually humans could not find jobs. In the US, they were then sent to settlements where they were provided the bare minimum for subsistence. Only very few humans managed to stay "free" and enjoy the riches brought by the technological development.

The main character eventually gets invited to project Australia, which is a more egalitarian society, where everyone benefits from the surpluses.

The author of the book is Marshall Brain, who created the site HowStuffWorks.com. He ends the book with a question on which country would you rather be, and how can we make sure we end up more like Project Australia.

Efficiency and Humanism

As more and more people went out of jobs, employers could demand more and more efficiency from the employees, since there were so many to take their place. So people need to work ever more flawlessly and consistently, removing any trace of individualism and humanity, morphing into biological robots.

As someone who tries to improve myself and value discipline, restraint, consistency, efficiency, etc. this association makes me question them as absolute virtues. I don’t think we should all be hedonic animals either, but a balance is more desirable than either extreme.

White Collar vs. Blue Collar

It was the manager (white collar) of the burger chain that was replaced first, before the people doing the physical work (blue collar). Much like we’re seeing today with AI eating the lunch of software engineers, lawyers, but not much is heard of mechanics, hairdressers.

Small Tasks

Manna, the AI software giving orders to employees, breaks the task down into small well-defined orders that most humans can accomplish without much variation. This reminds me of one of the expectations senior engineers have, which is to split ambiguous projects into concrete well-defined tasks that junior engineers can work on. There have been talks about AI soon replacing junior engineers if it can handle those well specified tasks.

Utopia?

I’m skeptical about a few aspects of the utopia that is Project Australia.

Privacy. There’s a high degree of transparency in there: people know the whereabouts of anyone and can reach out to anyone remotely. I don’t think most people will like that.

Population increase. If everyone receives an equal share of the pie, what happens if the population increases? If everyone has enough surplus to not worry about supporting kids, would they have more? In that case, would the slice of the pie shrink over time?

Meaningful Life. One of the examples of a meaningful life is being an inventor or scientist that could in turn bring improvements back to society. But I wonder if we get to the level of sophistication described in the book, AI wouldn’t surpass humans in most intellectual endeavours and renders these professions obsolete.

History. The average person seems to be much better off today than the vast majority of people 1,000 years ago, so in theory we could have everyone be better off by dividing things equally, but it doesn’t work in practice.

I think the only way for things to be different would be to delegate complete control and enforcement of rules to AI, which would be incorruptible and consistent. The question would then be: who programs the AI?