bad news: AI is not taking your job
Have you noticed lately that everyone is writing and talking about the polycrisis? Not just the tin-foil hat wearing preppers, but even minds I highly respect, like Harari, who draws attention to the possibility of human extinction.
It would be foolish to deny that there are problems, and in our wired-for-negativity brains, we pay much more attention to negative news and phenomena. It's no wonder gratitude needs to be practiced on a daily basis because it's natural that while walking in the forest, if a saber-toothed tiger jumps out from behind a blueberry bush, your first reaction won't be, "Oh, what beautifully ripe, smiling fruits I found!" - at least I hope not, because then you're in trouble.
In this big climate-catastrophic, warlike, overconsumption-unsustainable party, there's growing concern that AI will soon take our jobs, and we'll become redundant species on this planet.
I'd like to share a little reflection on this, which is both reassuring and disturbing - stay with me!
Let's start with this basic thesis: late-stage capitalism, in which we live, is all about endless and continuous growth.
"Higher, bigger, more, continuously increasing profits to infinity!" shout the already incomprehensibly wealthy capitalists and technofeudalist overlords.
As an economist, let me simplify the formula for making money! We can generate increasingly higher profits by increasing sales (revenue) on one side and reducing costs (manufacturing costs, employee wages, overheads, etc.) on the other.
The early-rising Silicon Valley disruptor geniuses are pushing artificial intelligence development like there's no tomorrow, laying off employees by the thousands because AI will do the job for them without complaint. They are very proud of themselves, and investors love the process because labor costs are decreasing, profits are increasing, and let the möet champagne pop!
Everyone is following this pattern now, in every industry: how can we replace problematic human labor with a smart little code? Those who act early strengthen financially, can grow significantly in the short term, but where does this process lead?
What about the laid-off workers? Will they find other jobs at a lame competitor who still employs people like in the Stone Age? That's good because then they'll have salaries and can still buy the products and services of the very smart AI-driven companies; profit can continue.
But what if there are no more companies left that want to employ people? How will the masses earn income? Who will buy? Whose money will fuel (over)consumption? Maybe the top 1% will buy the products manufactured by their own companies to generate revenue, while the impoverished 99% go back to the forests to gather berries? (Beware of the saber-toothed tiger!)
It's about time we started making some scenarios for this possibility. Legislators should play a significant role in this, too, but currently, they're in the pockets of the capitalists and only interested in preserving the elite's privileges and maintaining the current system.
We need to start talking about imposing heavy taxes on large corporations if everything is going to be produced by machines. This revenue could be distributed in the form of a universal basic income or allowance to the masses becoming "redundant."
Of course, the elite wouldn't like this because profits would decrease, consumer spending would decline, but what might be their biggest fear is that with the masses freed up, they would start getting involved in public affairs, politics, philosophy, and one day they might show up at the headquarters of the global corporations with pitchforks, saying enough is enough…
The current elite has no interest in changing the current system. Therefore, AI won't replace us in the medium to long term.
I have bad news: we won't lose our jobs; we'll have to work much more if this system remains. AI will be with us as an efficiency-enhancing tool, pushing the world in a direction where we can produce about five times as much in 40 hours a week - for roughly the same pay.
In this system, the more overloaded you are, the more you consume (restaurants, luxury, services, self-rewards, etc.) - everyone experienced during COVID how much less you actually need to consume, and the economy crashed, and company executives messed themselves up. Let me tell you, there won't be a four-day workweek or three-hour workdays; from all perspectives, the interest of the system is for you to overwork yourself.
Of course, this is just my opinion, but now that I've laid it out for you, I want to encourage ourselves to accept that there's a crisis, and use this opportunity to reorganize our lives, communities, systems, and society on a higher level.
Looking around the world, it's easy to think: what can we loose?
What do you think about this?
