#151 - Will Automation Crash Democracy?

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Education, Society & Culture, News, Government, Politics

4.5 • 2.1K Ratings

🗓️ 25 May 2018

⏱️ 53 minutes

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Summary

MOTION: Automation Will Crash Democracy Around the world, technology is disrupting the workforce, with automation poised to displace humans in the fields of medicine, agriculture, and beyond. Will the rise of robots fuel a new wave of “us versus them” populism capable of undermining democracy? For some, the answer is yes. They argue that as people lose jobs to robots, the gap between the rich and poor widens, distrust in government and democratic institutions grows, and populist ideas become more attractive to those who feel left behind. The importance of work trumps the importance of democracy, leaving a clear path for authoritarians to rise under nationalist messages that pit groups of people against one another. But others paint a different picture: They argue that humans have adapted to – and benefited from – new innovations for centuries. From the advent of water and steam power to computers, work has changed, but never disappeared. And as automation drives higher productivity growth, humans can reach their full potential and pursue societal innovation, allowing more citizens to feel fulfilled and strengthening democracy on the whole. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Transcript

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0:00.0	One plus one equals two. That is not debatable, or at least it should not be, but ponder this
0:09.1	equation. A while back, we held a debate on whether automation will so disrupt the future
0:15.0	of work that we should all be getting a universal basic income. Then on another occasion, we
0:20.3	had a completely separate debate on a separate topic, looking at the swing toward populism
0:25.0	and authoritarianism in our politics with a debate called Western democracy is threatening
0:29.5	suicide. Now though, we want to see what happens when we add these two ideas together into
0:36.0	one resolution because we think that one plus one could add up to something surprisingly
0:40.8	insightful and have the makings of a debate. So let's have it. Yes or no to this statement.
0:47.2	Automation will crash democracy. I'm John Don Van and I stand between two teams of two
0:53.4	experts in this topic who will argue for and against the motion. As always, our debate
0:58.8	will go in three rounds and then our audience here at the K-Playhouse and Hunter College
1:02.9	in New York City will choose the winner. And as always, if all goes well, civil discourse
1:07.6	will also be a winner. Our resolution is this. Automation will crash democracy. Let's
1:14.1	meet first the team arguing for the motion. Ladies and gentlemen, please welcome Ian
1:18.2	Bremer. Ian, welcome back to Intelligent Squared. You are the president and founder of
1:25.5	your Razure Group. That's a leading global political risk research and consulting firm.
1:29.7	You are also very recently a best-selling author. Congratulations on that. Your most recent
1:34.9	book released just last month is titled Us Versus Them, The Failure of Globalism. You
1:41.0	are also president of G zero media. And that produces a video series called Puppet
1:45.3	regime. It features puppet versions of you, Donald Trump and Vladimir Putin and Kim
1:51.3	Jong Un and so on and so forth. So bringing this back to our debate tonight, are the puppets
1:56.6	coming for our jobs? Yes, the puppets thus far are actually creating
	...

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