POTUS could one day be replaced by technology

POTUS could one day be replaced by technology, says Zoltan Istvan, author of The Transhumanist Wager, and a 2016 US Presidential candidate.

According to the futurist Istvan, the US Government which has been expanding in size and reach for decades might dramatically shrink in the near future—not because of demands by fiscally astute Americans, but because of radical technology.

It's, however not just about robots taking over millions of government jobs but also software programs and weird new tech that will do the replacing. For him, with companies making fireproof stuff from couches, furniture, and building materials that simply don’t burn well to intelligent robots—which he thinks will be in 50 percent of American households in next five years—with fire and carbon monoxide detectors, over a million firefighters under the government might just perish away.

In fact, twenty-five years into the future, people may have little reason to call any government service employee whatsoever with in-home robots loaded with all the security alert systems as well as a tool kit to fix any problem.

“The same idea goes for employees of the Internal Revenue Service, whose jobs crunching numbers can be done by even basic AI. Meanwhile, drones will replace building inspectors by flying around construction projects to determine safety and building requirements are being met. Even the tens of thousands of government highway workers will be replaced by driverless vehicles that automatically lay new roads down. Driverless construction equipment—just like a fully automated trucking industry—is the future. For that matter, even the White House may eventually turn to automated equipment such as driverless lawn mowers to cut its massive property lawns,” says Istvan.

The Presidential candidate says that transhumanism-where machines do most of the work could prove very crucial in military. American military is already witnessing a robot revolution in armed drones and because national defense is such a large part of the Federal budget, this could save many billions of dollars for Americans.

US prison system is another area where technology can significantly help reduce man-power. At the present it costs almost four times the amount of money to run America’s nearly 5,000 prisons and jails than it does to run the US education system. But in the near future, drones and robots could be used to monitor criminals, both in and out of jail.

For Istvan, this future smaller government will result in people paying less in taxes and government offering more social services—including a Universal Basic Income—from the government to the people.