IMTU Robots and the Economy

The side note in my mega-professional package list became this…

Professions and Robots.

In TL10 Non-volitional Robots with IQ11
and 5cp cost around $53,000, Robots with IQ13 and 10cp cost around
$76,000. According to the UT, this kind of AI is almost fully
sapient, they can do low level and low skilled jobs. They are much
cheaper than any human as low skilled laborers.
Fully Volitional AI Robots at $76,000
has IQ11 and 10cp, or $570,000 for IQ13 and 20cp. At this level VAI can really replace humans in certain jobs. 
What happens to all the low skilled
humans?
They don’t exist (in
Terra), or if they did they migrated to the Imperium, if gov’t did
their job there are extensive retraining and job placement programs
and education is of the highest quality and free. If governments do
their job humans will never worry about technology making them
obsolete because all those resources everyone provided to gov’t goes
into advancing the quality, productivity and capability of their
population. Keeping a population, a Gov’t’s human resource,
up-to-date, cutting edge, highly productive may be the highest use of
a such an institution.
IMTU Terran gov’ts keep
the market free by allowing automation to take up all the low value
jobs, but invest heavily in keeping their people smarter and smarter
than the robots. Some gov’t go as far as subsidizing the cost of
augmentation, or at very least plot out a way for their people to
continually improve themselves and make it easier to get that
augmentation on their own.
Gov’t who spend a huge
amount of resource in education should have smarter population. Given
how the science of cognition has advanced in TL10, IQ should be very
very high compared to TL8 standards. The V.AI IQ13 and 20cp robot
that costs $570,000 is nothing compared to an IQ11 population with
about 100cp in skills and advantages.
Vilani and No-Robot Policy
Vilani don’t allow the
free market to remove jobs as technology advances. There are no
Volitional or N-Volitional Robots or AI in the Imperium. They have
intentionally perserved jobs and calcified these into castes. It
would be a very big deal for the vilani to know that their lower
castes can be replaced, or is replaced by robots in the Terran
Economy.
Low Skilled Terrans
migration to Vilani
.
Low skilled Terrans are
welcome to the Imperium to fill the ranks of their lowest castes. Its
similar to the labor migration experienced in the present TL8, there
are many poorer and lower skilled people who are willing to do
necessary but low value work in a much wealthier economy. That
economy benefits because of comparative economic advantage.
The Vilani Imperium
protects its jobs aka caste system, to the extent that prices are not as
competative to Terra’s. This trickles down to Imperial Vilani
education, Terra spends x3-x6 more than Vilani per individual in
their education and personal improvements. As technology advances and
automates certain tasks workers in Terra either retrain, move up the
value chain, or allow themselves to be made obsolete by robots. Given
the choices, there are some who quite agree with the Imperium’s View
on automation and migrate there.
A side effect of having
lower skilled and tier work is a very slow population growth. Vilani
would gladly accept Terran migrants, just to trade off the jobs they
don’t want to the terrans, like the disruptive life of shipping.
Unlike having to educate and raise children, fully grown and trained
Terran migrants cost very little to the state, and are willing to
accept the terms of the the Imperium. Terrans would love the high
valued Vilani tender and purchase more and more of the Microsoft and
Apple luxury products produced by the Vilani for their own markets.
Ubiquitous Robots
Robots are like Personal
Computers in TL8, their ubiquitous in TL10 and they can do amazing
things everyday. Everyone technical knows a little robotics, the same
way everyone knows enough of how to customize their computer tools in
their way of working or at least work within what they know about the
technology. A ships engineer knows how to reprogram and maintain his
robot crew in the same way he can fix and modify his own tools. Every
technician knows how to maintain robots essential in their
operations; administrators, merchants, entertainers,…etc. Everyone
knows how to use a robot the way almost everyone knows how to use a
computer.
Note that in in TL9 1
roboticist can maintain 5 robots per month, in TL10, 1 roboticist can
maintain up to 10 robots per month. The roboticist replace the TL8 IT
in terms of tech support; or you can say the IT evolved to
roboticists. Some technical professions don’t always need IT; some
professionals are able to maintain robots specifically used in their
own jobs, the way some people can be their own IT.
Volitional Robots and
Rights
.
Some Gov’t treat
(volitional AI) VAI as sapient individual and bestow them rights.
Although despite having rights, they are not human and cannot take
advantage of the special programs gov’t have to keep their human
population highly productive, educated and constantly employed. In a
way they are a second class citizen, and a lesser being because of
the very gross difference in capabilities. The best some gov’t do is
allow these VAI robots to migrate.
Some early VAI designs
have a problem learning without having to start from scratch and
maintain their naturally grown personalities. Humans are more
adaptable; the some of very cognitive biases that impede some of the
logic and rationality of humans also allow them to be more flexible.
In order to achieve some of the sapience of VAI with the limitations
of TL10 processing some processes are “hard-wired” into the
robot brain.
VAI Robots cannot be destroyed outside
their own free choice because of obsolescence, they have the right to
choose to be reprogrammed (many do) and upgraded, changing themselves
irrecoverably. Some are possessive of their identity and their flaws
and opt not to be recycled, these are instead shipped out farther and
farther out in the terran and vilani frontier to serve start up
colonies.
Terran Populations and Robots.
Obsolete and early VAI robots of late
TL9 and early TL10 find a new life in Terran colonies with the chance
to slowly earn their way for their own upgrades. In these sparsely
populated human colonies, you can find x3-x8 the human population in
VAI robots which have found another chance.     

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