A contradictory policy

Am I the only one who thinks it a little contradictory that Swedish politicians, and almost certainly those in other countries, are agreed that the age at which one can become a pensioner is set to increase at the same time as these same politicians, if they don't actually encourage the development of artificial intelligence, AI, at least do nothing to minimise its effect on society?

We see daily reports of developments in AI, which have already taken over many jobs in manufacturing industry.  There are already driverless cars on our roads, which in an imminent future will make taxi drivers, bus drivers and delivery drivers irrelevant.  AI handles much of the sorting we experience when we ring a company and are asked to press 1 for one department, or 2 for another department.  In some instances something similar to Apple's Siri actually handles the customer's query.

At the moment it is what one can call manual service jobs which AI and robotics have the most problem with - serving in restaurants, for example, though not fast food places, where the customer is handed his meal or drink.  These will be the jobs we will be expected to do from leaving school until our delayed pension age ... except that it is only a matter of time before the robots improve to the level at which they can deliver our order to the table.

In Japan robots are already making an inroad into old age health care, and I have seen on local tv that AI is already better at identifying breast cancer than doctors.

I'd like to suggest that, instead of scaring us with the idea of having to work more years than at present, our politicians should be investigating the idea of us working fewer years.

© James Wilde 2015