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This Community Voice was submitted as an entry in Civil Beat’s Emerging Writers contest.

In the next 20 years, nearly half of all American jobs likely will be lost to machines, according to an Oxford University study. Inevitably, one day it’ll be all of the jobs. While that should be something to look forward to, we’ll also need to adapt to prevent the unprecedented income inequality we’re at risk of, if our laws don’t keep up with the advances that make human labor obsolete.

To minimize suffering, we’ll have to be ready to take drastic actions that may be unthinkable today when people are displaced by more productive machines. It likely will be necessary, for example, to tax the machines that took all the jobs so that welfare services can be provided indefinitely to those left permanently unemployed. Because when all the doctors and taxi drivers lose their jobs, we can’t just retrain doctors to become taxi drivers, or turn taxi drivers into doctors.

When all the doctors and taxi drivers lose their jobs, we can’t just retrain doctors to become taxi drivers, or turn taxi drivers into doctors.

Anyone that doubts that technology will eventually stop creating new jobs for people should consider how far we’ve already come. Watson, IBM’s Jeopardy-winning machine, reads faster than doctors and uses what it learns to recommend treatments for cancer patients. Another one of its many applications is reading through case law and other documents and then answering legal questions.

Machines are also doing basic science, and have found answers or proposed possibilities that people hadn’t thought of yet. The Associated Press uses machines to write articles about corporate earnings. An MIT creation analyzes software code and fixes bugs. They’re learning and building things, sometimes on their own. One read an instruction manual to get better at a video game about world domination.

This isn’t the fantastical world of tomorrow. It’s yesterday.

Today, we have to start thinking about what our values are and how they fit into an ideal future with machines that can completely replace us in the workforce. Do we value human life and effort beyond its ability to create wealth? Do we have a market system because we value efficiency, and a regulated market currently makes the most sense for determining what gets produced and who gets it? Or do we believe that power should always go to whoever can figure out how to beat other people at controlling the wealth, and a regulated market is just the best way to determine who wins and who loses?

Our desire to implement systems that work best for people should be valued more than preserving the opportunity for someone to be able to exploit and lord wealth over others. Otherwise, aside from being jerks, we’re going to have a problem when someone creates and controls a machine that can figure out how to beat everyone else every time.

We have to start thinking about what our values are and how they fit into an ideal future with machines that can completely replace us in the workforce.

We shouldn’t fear the advent of such a technology. We should be open to the radical changes it can bring and the good it can be used for.

Parents struggle to balance work and raising children. Soldiers are deployed onto dangerous battlefields and come home to poor health services. Schools face classroom and teacher shortages. Police officers have to make life-or-death decisions within a fraction of a second. Scientists and doctors struggle to understand all the variables that affect how drugs will interact with individuals as they develop treatments. Politicians write flawed bills. Laws are implemented poorly. Justice is applied unequally.

And as long as people are needed for labor, people will be exploited for labor.

In every case, machines will be the answer to human limitations. Artificial intelligences can be used by laboratories, classrooms, and governments around the world, and send information to anyone’s phone. Expendable drones that aren’t affected by fear or fatigue can patrol city streets and be sent into dangerous locations. The basic functionalities that make such things possible have already been demonstrated. Now it’s just a matter of making improvements and not getting in the way of progress.

We can start thinking about what else we want the future to look like, and what we’re willing to do to get there. If we don’t, then someone or something else will do that thinking for us.

We need to improve, too. The government is basically a decision-making machine with human parts. It can be tool for good if we’re willing to use it that way and make sure it’s equipped to serve our interests.

There are costs for everything. Our values will determine the prices we pay to use our political power to protect ourselves from moneyed power and other forces that threaten to widen the divide between the haves and the have-nots. This is true today. And today, electorate participation is low, along with trust in the government.

This year, the state Legislature set new renewable energy goals for Hawaii, with milestones up to 2045. (This is also when futurist Ray Kurzweil predicts the emergence of a machine capable of self-improvement, leading to the creation of an unpredictable superintelligence and an uncertain future.) If that priority can be set now, we can start thinking about what else we want the future to look like, and what we’re willing to do to get there. If we don’t, then someone or something else will do that thinking for us.

In the end, the best system will probably involve using the government, with the aid of an artificial intelligence, to provide for everyone’s needs and make informed decisions about how our limited resources are divided and used.

If that sounds like a bad idea to you, then you should start thinking about your ideal future and the steps necessary to get there.