The founder of one of China’s leading e-commerce platforms has said that rapid advances in the field of artificial intelligence could soon make the implementation of true communism a real possibility, and result in the nationalisation of corporate concerns such as his own.
In a recent interview with Di Yi Caijing, Richard Liu (Liu Qiangdong,) founder and CEO of Chinese e-commerce giant JD.com, said that he was optimistic about the possibility of AI making true Communism a practical reality at some point in the near future.
“Following [developments in] our own technological situation over the past two to three years, I suddenly discovered that in actuality communism could truly be achieved in our generation,” said Liu.
“Because robots do all the work for you, you’ve already created immense wealth. The government can allocate it to everyone, and there will be neither rich nor poor people. All companies will be completely nationalised…people will no longer go to work for material ends.
“It will mostly be for spiritual or emotional [things] that they struggle.”
JD.com is one of the two biggest B2C online retailers in China in terms of both transaction volume and revenue, and with 236.5 million active customer accounts as of March 2017 is one of Alibaba’s chief competitors.
The company has pioneered key advances in product delivery that makes use of AI in combination with unmanned drones and robots.
According to Liu his blueprint for the future includes further shrinkage of the purchase time for products, and greater use of “smart” technology for product delivery.
JD.com plans to deploy fully driverless vehicles in China within the next 12 years, that make use of AI to deliver products to customers irrespective of their current location.
While Richard Liu believes on the one hand that artificial intelligence will make true communism a practical reality within our lifetimes by freeing humanity from the shackles of labour, during the same interview he sought to deliver the reassurance that none of JD.com’s delivery staff will be retrenched due to robot-induced obsolescence.
Liu is instead adamant that such staff will instead be reallocated to “comfortable” office environments to undertake other, unspecified work.
