For economic superiority, they find that advances in AI could result in a new industrial revolution.

Former U.S. Treasury Secretary Larry Summers has predicted that advances in AI and related technologies will lead to a dramatic decline in demand for labor such that the United States “may have a third of men between the ages of 25 and 54 not working by the end of this half century.”

Like the first industrial revolution, this will reshape the relationship between capital and labor in economies around the world. Growing levels of labor automation might lead developed countries to experience a scenario similar to the “resource curse.”

Also like the first industrial revolution, population size will become less important for national power. Small countries that develop a significant edge in AI technology will punch far above their weight.

Source: https://robotenomics.com/2017/07/24/artificial-intelligence-and-national-security/

By Flemming​ Funch from his FB.

About FB.

“For a new platform to replace Facebook, it is not enough for it to be a slightly better Facebook. It needs to do some things we need many times better than Facebook, and maybe do some things we didn’t previously realize that we need. It might, for example, be a platform that helped us take action together, including an economic system. Rather than a platform (FB) that makes us addicted to reading and writing fairly random stuff, it could be a platform that actually helps us be aware of exactly what we need to know, and to get together with the people we could be most effective with, and to move together in a viable manner. Facebook is a Bulletin Board system, just like we had in the 1980s. Technology could now allow us to instead have the nervous system of a global collective intelligence, making us all super human together.”

An intriguing idea.

This is the source of the article: https://www.quora.com/Is-the-United-States-on-the-brink-of-a-political-revolution/answer/Sam-Harris-90?share=86c2532c&srid=Ozn

When I was an officer in the Air Force, I was a data scientist and at one point we were tasked with determining what level of violence in Iraq could be considered “normal” so that we could declare victory and leave with dignity. Obviously, the base level of violence in Iraq would be higher than in Sweden, but precisely how much higher and why? These were the questions.

We did analysis on hundreds of factors across centuries worth of data from hundreds of countries to determine what drove the levels of violence in a society. The worst violence levels are obviously during civil wars and government collapse. We looked at wealth inequality, famine, disease, number of children per woman, infant mortality, median GDP, average GDP… literally hundreds of factors and their cross-dependencies that numbered in the quadrillions—think average GDP combined with median life expectancy combined with infant mortality combined with…you get the idea.

What we found was that the most significant factor was the number of individuals aged 13–19 relative to the number of individuals aged over 35. If the teenage group ever exceeded the over 35 group, violence increased to the point there was a very high chance of civil war. Furthermore, the opposite was true. If the 35+ yr olds outnumbered the teenagers, there was no chance of civil war.

Look at Democratic Republic of the Congo:

They have LOTS of teenagers relative to 35+ yr olds.

Now look at the United States:

Teenagers are drastically outnumbered by the 35+ yr olds in 2016. This was not the case in 1860, by the way. The US population pyramid looked a lot more like DRC at the start of our civil war.

These steep pyramids are caused by a combination of factors: high infant mortality, low life expectancy, and low female education. These factors combine to prevent women from using birth control and they “hedge” their losses of children by having a lot of them (too many actually even accounting for early deaths). These numerous children then receive less attention, less affection, and less education. They don’t have productive means of employment, and when they get hit with the wave of hormones we all experienced during our teenage years, they aren’t in school, don’t have a job, and don’t have a mother to give them the love they need. All it takes is some charismatic leader to rally them behind a populist cause and boom the powder keg explodes.

The craziest part of my story was that we did this research in 2007. At the time, there were several countries that had the same population pyramid with tons of teenagers but low violence and no civil war: Egypt, Syria, Libya, Yemen, and Iran (Tunisia wasn’t as bad, actually). The “bosses” said this was a real problem with our theory, and we tried to explain it away by saying maybe in the 21st century where dictators have access to fighter jets and tanks that they can hold the teenagers back from starting a civil war. Little did we know we had accidentally predicted the Arab Spring by nearly three years!

I love data. It lends measurability to beliefs. And the data says there is no way we are overthrowing our government in the United States through violence. There just aren’t enough teenagers.

EDIT:

Wow! My first answer on Quora and it’s going viral. Thank you everyone for the upvotes and comments!

Based on all the awesome questions I’ve noticed some themes and I’d like to add to my response:

(1) Things really aren’t that bad in the US.

I would like to add an anecdote about how we tend to respond to people we disagree with: Right now, most people say nothing and just go about their day. A large minority go to the trouble of writing things on Facebook or Twitter in ALL CAPS. Still fewer actually go to the trouble of standing outside and holding a sign. And fewer still get into screaming matches. Even less than that will go so far as to physically hit someone they disagree with, and even less than that will actually kill those they disagree with.

In order to reach the levels of violence we saw during the US Civil War, at current population levels, there would have to be over 4,000 politically-motivated killings per day. And in order to reach the levels of violence seen during the DRC Civil War, at current US population levels, it would have to be nearly 25,000 politically-motivated deaths per day. So “there is no way we are overthrowing our government in the United States through violence.”

(2) I didn’t really answer the question.

BUT… to be fair… I didn’t really answer the OP’s question. The question was “Is the United States on the brink of a political revolution?” I talked about violence, how violence can be high during political revolution, and how violence is correlated to the teenagers-to-over-35 ratio. But that doesn’t address the possibility of a political revolution without violence or a civil war that doesn’t kill a huge amount of people.

Thank you, Kareem Elashmawy for pointing out all of these peaceful revolutions:

1968 Prague Spring
1989 Velvet Revolution
1989 Peaceful Revolution (Germany)
1989 Bulgaria
1991 Soviet Coup D’état 
1974 Carnation Revolution
1979 Iranian Revolution
1986 Yellow Revolution 
1990 Mongolian Revolution 
2000 Bulldozer Revolution
2003 Rose Revolution
2004 Orange Revolution
2005 Cedar Revolution
2001 EDSA Revolution 
2005 Ecuador Revolution

Lots of people are asking me about Ukraine’s civil war with a population pyramid that doesn’t have a lot of teenagers:

My response would be that the death toll is about 4,000 out of 45 million which is around 0.009%. For comparison, 2% of Americans died in our Civil War and 12% died in DRC. Ukraine is not having a very violent civil war by comparison, and many commenters from Ukraine have told me it is not really a civil war at all but rather an invasion made to look like a civil war. I don’t know enough about Ukrainian/Russian politics to have an opinion on the subject. However, the correlation between violence and teenagers still holds true for this example.

The most fascinating counter-example was actually Iran in 2005. They had a HUGE bulge in teenage population at that time but a very low murder rate. Their teenage population has since stabilized, and was already significantly lower when the Arab Spring began in 2011.

(3) Knowing what you don’t know is knowledge.

The question I actually answered was: What causes huge levels of violence? My answer was: Having too many teenagers.

Source:  Adam Grant on Linkedin

​When considering a new job, instead of asking people whether there is a culture of creativity or innovation, ask them how they go about making suggestions.

Bad: “Why bother”

Good: Tell your boss”

Great: “ Tell someone a few levels up”

Ideal: Gather some colleagues and start testing the idea”.

“If you want to teach people a new way of thinking, don’t bother trying to teach them. Instead, give them a tool, the use of which will lead to new ways of thinking.” ― Richard Buckminster Fuller

From “Tools of Titans: The Tactics, Routines, and Habits of Billionaires, Icons, and World-Class Performers” by Timothy Ferriss –

““It is no measure of health to be well adjusted to a profoundly sick society.”—J. Krishnamurti”

None of this is easy. No business is. But as Paul Hawken once wrote, “Every business has problems. The difference between a good business and a bad business is that a good business has interesting problems.”

Tim O’Reilly 

Try, fail, analyse, adjust, try again.

 http://a.co/08Lqoqd

Technology empowers both the powerful and the powerless, and if we want a world with more liberty and less control, we’re going to have to fight for it.
-Edward Snowden