Posted by Giovanni on 3.11.18 in Uncategorized

Ancient Roman Jobs and Artificial Intelligence

This brief blog post about ancient Roman jobs and Artificial Intelligence is a continuation of the article relating to ancient Roman jobs. It makes a first stab at considering the consequence of Robotics and Artificial Intelligence and using the perspective of ancient Rome to help us consider some of the possible ramifications

The comparison of jobs between the modern and ancient worlds, and in particular ancient Roman jobs is a subject of growing fascination:

• We can be surprised how so many of the ancient Roman job roles are in many ways very similar to our modern ones.
• Ancient Roman technology may not have been to the level we have reached nowadays but in some areas such as Roman building and construction, it wasn’t so far behind. Other factors such as the strength of the Roman economy, social structure, and relative stability over a long period of time enabled a great deal of job and work specialization. Much as we would see today.

A parameter of growing interest in assessing jobs in the ancient world is the very recent arrival of “Robotics” and “Artificial Intelligence” in our own modern era. The first stage of this was visible in the mechanisation which arrived during the Industrial Revolution. Undoubtedly a “good thing” when we look back, but a period of social change, recession and Dickensian poverty as massive sectors of society were displaced. New jobs were created but in highly impoverished areas such as cole-mining.  It is difficult to consider what could become the new job of the poor and illiterate when the age of Robotics arrives: A spade and bucket don’t make a Data Scientist!

From an ancient Roman lense, AI and mechanisation can be likened to the creation of a cheap labour source, very much like importing slaves during Roman times… which jobs will increasingly disappear in our own times? Will the modern day working and middle classes find themselves in the same predicament of their equivalents in ancient Roman society? Eventually literacy rates began to fall, people sell themselves into slavery for a better future, the class divide widened, not to mention the aspect of religion as people looked for new answers to the unfathomable social changes they were subjected to….there can be many aspects and debates to the reasons for the fall of the Roman empire. Are there lessons to be learned?

Please share your thoughts on ancient Roman jobs!