Technological progress will inevitably have three consequences: 1) the decline in consumption or general demand for goods and services due to the increase in unemployment and the reduction of the purchasing power of the working population; (2) the decline of the middle class with major implications of a political nature since it acts as an ally of the bourgeoisie; and (3) the weakening of the struggle of the unions for the benefit of the workers and of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the proletariat. The political consequences of the end of employment thanks to technological advances are quite serious because the population needs to work to survive. This may open the way for a social revolution with unpredictable consequences, unless a new model of society inspired by Scandinavian social democracy (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) is implemented.

1. 1
TECHNOLOGICAL ADVANCEMENT AND ITS IMPACTS ON THE WORLD
OF WORK AND SOCIETY
Fernando Alcoforado *
The article by John Naughton Os robôs realmente vão dominar o mundo (Robots will really
dominate the world) available on the website
<https://www.cartacapital.com.br/internacional/os-robos-realmente-vao-dominar-o-
mundo-298.html>, presents the information that David Grossman made an excellent
film for Newsnight's newscast about the threat of advanced robotics for employment. In
that film, he held the standard pilgrimage to MIT to interview Erik Brynjolfsson and
Andrew McAfee, who made many strides in this area by publishing several books, most
recently The Second Machine Age. Their argument, Grossman said, was that our society
has reached a "tipping point" that is a point on a curve in which the curvature or
concavity changes sign, from positive to negative (or vice versa).
In the book The Second Machine Age, its authors state that "the combination of massive
computing power with comprehensive networks, machine learning, digital mapping,
and the" Internet of Things "are producing a complete industrial revolution on the same
scale as the transformations caused by steam and electricity. But while these older
revolutions supplanted human (and equine) physical strength, the new one will supplant
much of human cognition, and the work that required employing people to do
information processing tasks will ultimately be done by computers. The implication is
that even people in many white collar jobs may find themselves unemployed".
Most people have no idea of the capabilities of these new technologies. There is the car
that that is driven without a driver from Google and Tesla that are safer than human-
controlled vehicles. Cars that do not need a driver carry a mental image of the blind
spots of all the other vehicles on the road, and may realize that one of them is slowing
down the greater distance a driver could. And if computers can safely drive cars in
crowded urban environments, they can certainly do many tasks today performed by
office workers. This time it's different. We are really on the verge of inflection point.
According to John Naughton, technology is the main - if not the only - force that is
moving history in the contemporary era. These new technologies came at a time when
neoliberal capitalism seems to have been built on purpose to intensify the extreme
rationalization of the work that new technologies allow.
It is likely that the capitalist world system that supports the massive transfer of jobs
from the central capitalist countries to low-wage peripheral countries would not fail to
seize the opportunity to replace expensive white-collar workers who cost about US$ 4
an hour to operate and who do not have unions and do not get sick or depressed.
According to Brynjolfsson and McAfee, we have technologies that are shaping the
world we are heading for. The turning point that David Grossman spoke could actually
be the edge of a precipice. The threat to current jobs is quite evident. Boston Consulting
Group predicts that by 2025, up to a quarter of jobs will be replaced by softwares or
robots, while a study by the University of Oxford in the UK points out that 35% of
current jobs in the country run the risk of being automated in the next two decades
[Wakefield, Jane. Quais profissões estão ameaçadas pelos robôs? (What professions
are threatened by robots?). Available on the website
<http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/09/150914_profissoes_robos_lgb>].

2. 2
What professions are threatened by robots? Wakefield informs that they are taxi drivers,
factory workers, journalists, doctors, lawyers, barman, etc. Taxi drivers around the
world are threatened because both Uber and vehicle manufacturers and even Google are
already looking to create a service that dispenses the presence of the driver. The British
government is updating the traffic signs to enable the operation of cars without a driver.
Factory workers are threatened because assembly lines are being increasingly automated
and in China robots are being built that will eventually replace human beings. The first
robot-only factory is being built in the city of Dongguan, China's famous labor pole.
Foxconn, for example, which manufactures electronics such as Apple iPhones, also
plans an army of robots replacing 30 percent of the current workforce over the next five
years.
The profession of journalist is threatened because in the near future, reports will no
longer be written by journalists. More and more companies are offering software
capable of collecting data and transforming it into minimally comprehensible texts.
Kristian Hammond, chief scientist at Narrative Science, estimates that in 15 years 90%
of the news will be written by machine. 90% of journalists will lose their jobs. Doctors
are threatened because some medical procedures are done more quickly by robots that
are able to analyze data to discover possible treatments for diseases. Watson, an IBM
supercomputer, is working with dozens of hospitals in the United States to offer
recommendations on the best treatments for various cancers. Robots have also been
helping doctors perform surgeries. Speed is a crucial factor in the success of such
operations and machines are able, for example, to sew blood vessels much faster than
humans.
Beginning lawyers have been practically replaced by judicial search software, and
bartenders are threatened with the launch by the luxury cruise Anthem of the Seas of an
automated bar from a machine developed by MIT (Massachusetts Institute of
Technology, United) a few years ago. Drinks can be ordered through a tablet and users
are not limited to the menu they receive at the table - they can even create their own
cocktail. The robotic arm mixes the cocktail and puts it in a plastic cup (to avoid
accidents).
Financial Times published the article Robôs já substituem humanos fazendo ronda
policial e diagnóstico de câncer (Robots already replace humans doing police rounds
and diagnosis of cancer) (<http://www1.folha.uol.com.br/mercado/2014/05/1458003-
robos-avancam-das-fabricas-para-o-setor-de-servicos.shtml>). At 1.5 meters high and
full of sensors, the robot guard patrols an area, using data from optical and sound
sensors and car license plate recognition systems to transmit information to local
authorities or private security services. The robot can carry much more equipment than
a police officer could carry on his belt, and rid him of "monotonous, boring, and
routine" jobs. Machines can now diagnose breast cancer better than humans.
The Financial Times article also reports that the biggest advantage is that robots are
good for doing things that are dangerous or not appropriate for a human being, such as
pushing a cart with 120 kilos of clothes to wash, collecting infectious waste, transport
expensive chemotherapy drugs. carrying very "Blue Prism, a British company that
works in back office services for clients like Barclays and Co-operative Bank, sells a
robot that fills in forms and uses computer systems as a human would use, without the
need for Other changes in the technology platform.

3. 3
One fact is indisputable: while the first machine age, the 1st Industrial Revolution,
replaced the use of human muscles by the use of machines, the current scientific and
technological revolution will bring about the replacement of human cognitive tasks by
machines. "There will be some similarities to the first machine age - a tremendous
abundance - but also important differences", says Brynjolfsson. "When you replace
manual labor with machines, you still need human beings to make decisions about what
needs to be done, which makes human labor more valuable, but in the new wave it is
not clear whether machines will replace or complement human beings".
Another fact is obvious: robots often cost less than humans, work longer hours, and can
perform less secure tasks. Experts believe that the intelligence of machines will match
that of humans by 2050, thanks to a new era in their ability to learn. Computers are
already beginning to assimilate information from collected data, just as children learn
from the world around them. That means we are creating machines that can teach
themselves to play computer games - and be very good at them - and also to
communicate by simulating human speech, as with smartphones and their virtual
assistant systems. But what will humans do when their abilities are no longer useful?
For Martin Ford - author of the book Rise of the Robots, the world will face massive
unemployment and a financial meltdown unless radical changes such as the guarantee of
a minimum wage are implemented [Wakefield, Jane. Inteligência artificial: máquinas
que pensam devem surgir 'até 2050' (Artificial Intelligence: Thinking machines should
come 'up to 2050'). Available on the website
<http://www.bbc.com/portuguese/noticias/2015/09/150916_inteligencia_artificial_maq
uinas_rb>].
But more than a minimum wage for the unemployed, it is necessary to build a new
model of society that avoids an unprecedented crisis of humanity by replacing human
labor with machines. A society in which human beings are discarded from productive
activity is unsustainable socially and politically. All that has just been reported shows
that technological advancement is inevitable and its effects on society are catastrophic.
On the technological advance, it should be noted that Gordon Earl Moore, co-founder of
Intel Corporation, one of the world's largest processor companies, wrote in 1965 an
article for Electronic Magazine that was published on April 19 of that year in which he
conjectured about the fantastic evolution of technology from then on. And it was in
these reflections that he made one of the most accurate predictions about computing in
the last half century.
Moore said that "the complexity for components with minimal costs has increased at a
rate of approximately a factor of two per year". Certainly, in the short term, one can
expect this rate to hold, if not increase. "In the long run, the rate of increase is a little
more uncertain, although there is no reason to believe that it will not remain nearly
constant for at least 10 years. I believe large circuits like this could be built in a single
component". That's how Moore's Law came about, which says that the processing
power of computers would double every 18 months. It's been 50 years since Moore
created his "law". And even half a century later she remains strong and strong. It's an
impressive brand, especially when it comes to hardware evolution.
In summary, Moore predicted, based on his industry observations, that the number of
transistors in a processor would double on average every two years and maintain the
same (or lower) cost and space. In 1975 there was a revision of this "law" where Moore
redefined the period in which the number of transistors would double from two years to

4. 4
18 months. And she has been right to this day. Supercomputers very well represent the
evolution of Moore's Law processors. It's worth noting that Moore's Law does not only
encompass the home processors we use on our computers. It holds for all types of
processors in use, from calculators and digital cameras to supercomputers. The
semiconductor industry, seeing that they could achieve the goal that Moore had spoken
of in their article, went on to invest heavily in research and development, so that in fact
they managed to double the number of transistors in the processors every 18 months.
Technological progress will inevitably have three consequences: 1) the decline in
consumption or general demand for goods and services due to the increase in
unemployment and the reduction of the purchasing power of the working population;
(2) the decline of the middle class with major implications of a political nature since it
acts as an ally of the bourgeoisie; and (3) the weakening of the struggle of the unions for
the benefit of the workers and of the class struggle between the bourgeoisie and the
proletariat. The political consequences of the end of employment thanks to
technological advances are quite serious because the population needs to work to
survive. This may open the way for a social revolution with unpredictable
consequences, unless a new model of society inspired by Scandinavian social
democracy (Sweden, Denmark, Norway, Finland and Iceland) is implemented.
The Nordic or Scandinavian model of social democracy could best be described as a
kind of middle ground between capitalism and socialism [Wikipedia. Modelo Nórdico
(Nordic model). Available at
<http://pt.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Modelo_n%C3%B3rdico>]. It is neither wholly
capitalist nor wholly socialist, being the attempt to fuse the most desirable elements of
both into a "hybrid" system. In 2013, The Economist magazine stated that the Nordic
countries are probably the most well-governed in the world. The UN World Happiness
Report 2013 shows that the happiest nations are concentrated in Northern Europe, with
Denmark at the top of the list. The Nordics have the highest ranking in real GDP per
capita, the highest healthy life expectancy, the greater freedom to make choices in life
and the greatest generosity. Without changing the model of society prevailing today in
the world, the neoliberalism, will not be overcome the problems of unemployment.
* Fernando Alcoforado, member of the Bahia Academy of Education, engineer and doctor of Territorial
Planning and Regional Development from the University of Barcelona, a university professor and
consultant in strategic planning, business planning, regional planning and planning of energy systems, is
the author of Globalização (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1997), De Collor a FHC- O Brasil e a Nova
(Des)ordem Mundial (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 1998), Um Projeto para o Brasil (Editora Nobel, São
Paulo, 2000), Os condicionantes do desenvolvimento do Estado da Bahia (Tese de doutorado.
Universidade de Barcelona, http://www.tesisenred.net/handle/10803/1944, 2003), Globalização e
Desenvolvimento (Editora Nobel, São Paulo, 2006), Bahia- Desenvolvimento do Século XVI ao Século XX
e Objetivos Estratégicos na Era Contemporânea (EGBA, Salvador, 2008), The Necessary Conditions of
the Economic and Social Development-The Case of the State of Bahia (VDM Verlag Dr. Muller
Aktiengesellschaft & Co. KG, Saarbrücken, Germany, 2010), Aquecimento Global e Catástrofe
Planetária (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2010), Amazônia Sustentável-
Para o progresso do Brasil e combate ao aquecimento global (Viena- Editora e Gráfica, Santa Cruz do
Rio Pardo, São Paulo, 2011), Os Fatores Condicionantes do Desenvolvimento Econômico e Social
(Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2012), Energia no Mundo e no Brasil- Energia e Mudança Climática
Catastrófica no Século XXI (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2015) and As Grandes Revoluções Científicas,
Econômicas e Sociais que Mudaram o Mundo (Editora CRV, Curitiba, 2016).