Unfortunately it just means those of us enslaved by student loan or credit card debt are going to prison for not having an income. Its going to be a disaster for millions of people.
I am burnt out, exhausted, depressed, and want freedom from the painful cycle of late stage capitalism like everyone else. But if my job goes away I don't get to just start a garden and buy some chickens and live off the land "free." I have $26,000 in debt I am figuring out how to pay off. My roommate has upwards of $40,000. My other close friend's husband lost his job due to AI. He went from making almost $100k a year to working a seasonal job at UPS. They live in Southern California and have 4 children. Her job is part time because of the little ones. When their savings run out they don't know what they are going to do to feed their family. They struggle to sleep most nights.
This is only a positive change for the rich or for those who don't have a shred of debt, or those that have the land and skills to be self sufficient. Not an easy thing in suburbia - where a shit ton of people live in some version of. Or apartment buildings.
You may have acknowledged the suffering that will take place and the need for therapy.
But this isn't just going to destroy people's mental health. Its going to starve them out. Kill them. Land them in prison for not being able to clear all their debt before the take over of "robots" taking their jobs.
I am NOT saying I want to be a slave to the man forever. I understand our way of life is built on lies, manipulation, and keeps us on a leash. I don't know what the solution is. But I don't like this one.
Fuck AI. Or at the very least - Fuck what AI has become.
It should assist, not replace.
But, as per usual, certain assholes in mankind cannot help themselves and go too fucking far.
This is just another reason to look at the future and ask myself what the point of being alive even is. Because if I lose my job they have backed me into a corner to where I might as well be dead.
@screwfascism: I think you must have missed the part about "universal income" and "universal basic services." This piece is about decoupling jobs from survival, which is exactly what you are talking about in your comment. It is not specifically about AI, but rather a paradigm shift based on concepts of individual freedom and mutual support.
The people who will really need therapy will be the holders of debt (I appreciate the shout-out to the late David Graeber, who wrote the book on debt), and the handful of wealthy whose obscene wealth (mostly based on debt) will need to be redistributed. In fact, abolishing debt, student and commercial loans, mortgages and rent, would go a long way toward redistributing wealth, but that's for another post.
I mean on paper I agree with the ideas laid out in the post.
Issue is I don't trust any leaders or government to actually go down a path with all of this that benefits everyone and works toward goals like this. Too much narcissism, greed, and lust for power from the people who get the positions to run things - or just simply buy them off. The average citizens struggling to make ends meet will end up being bulldozed over like always.
I think the powers tbst bd will opt for depopulation. Not universal harmony and freedom. I also think they have signaled that is what they would like, though expanding on that might cause a flame war I just dont have the energy to deal with.
Yes. We are in a weird spot eoconomo-culturally. I am sorry to hear about you and your friends' situation and debts. That sounds horrendous and unbelievably stressful. In warm solidarity, as I too live in constant debt, chasing dollars to survive. I have never been that comfortable financially, so am somewhat used to it. It takes its toll though. I think what this age of ai is asking us to do now, is to choose where we want to go. In tricky times and challenges there are always gifts and opportunities. To come together and decide. It is a time to focus on building community, skills of regulation, skills of friendship, forgetting about stupid, short-term thinking divide and conquer competitions, invest in shared joy, invest in community service, bolster creativity and innovation skillsets to prepare for and create our present-future. Community, conversation, choosing togetherness and sharing is what defeats fascism. Where is the real value in our lives? We choose with our daily micro-choices which way our species will head and give power to. We've been living greedily, uncritically and apathetically beyond our means for far too long. Now we and our children all pay the price. I agree, fuck ai. It's really just part of the idiocracy, soooo silly and short-sighted capitalist thinking. Can ai do our dishes and grocery shopping instead of all the fun parts of being human? Like thinking and being and arting. Such a scam people! Wishing you well and hope that you can expose yourself to as much art and communty as is possible to weather-proof your spirits during these man-made storms. Warmly, your local printmaker art-anarchist, Anna (WeeEeEeeeee ai-free typo-filled human written answers uh huhuhuhhhh! Long live imperfection)
Impressive piece. Spot on. Throughout a 40-plus year in international executive functions I now have the time to reflect. I say thank goodness for AI so we may become humans again. No longer ‘working’, my creativity has exploded, my gratitude for family has deepened, my self esteem has been found. No regrets. But great hope for humanity.
finds work to have a “perennial nobleness” and “idleness, a perpetual despair.” Max Weber’s “Protestant Work Ethic” built great capitalist nations in Europe (and America). In Clotaire Rapaille’s book “The Culture Code,” the author claims the “code” (subconscious meaning) for work for Americans is “who you are.” Generally speaking my students agreed with the ideas of the above authors. However when we read Bob Black’s “The Abolition of Work,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie5zO-mF31M
the real debate began. Black advocates for the replacement of work and jobs with a ludic revolution (Playtime for Everyone). How would it work? Make work into play. “Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.” Volunteering for a few hours here and there to maintain the commons, practicing arts and crafts, community gardening, and many other necessary tasks can be accomplished if made into a form of non-coercion done with other like-minded people. Black is thought of as a kook by some, and a visionary by others. I would end the thematic unit with a viewing of YouTuber CGPGrey’s “Humans Need Not Apply” (2014) https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=UqKWUA0mLiQYI50R
This video forecasts the elimination of most jobs by automation, smart robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices. Back when this video was released some of my students introduced the idea of Universal Basic Income, and we discussed it in class. Could it work? Would it be enough to maintain a middle class lifestyle? Would such dependence lead to profligacy? Would large companies and rich individuals accept massive tax increases to fund the rest of us? Most of my students left the debate with many questions about the future.
I think of them now as AI and LLMs appear to be destroying the job market with no end in sight. I would hope the future would be an optimistic “ludic revolution “ a la Bob Black. Yet, I fear that the elites that run our world may come to see most people as “useless eaters” and mark most of us for termination through the use of autonomous drones — the Black Mirror episode “Metalhead” comes to mind.
Whichever it may be, we stand at the cusp of a massive challenge for the human race. Outcome to be determined . . .
So interesting and agree. People so often talk about how AI will take over a lot of the ‘grunt work’ at junior levels but rarely talk about what it means for the undressing of professions that have for so long hidden behind the masks of process and corporate jargon.
Just an old hippy here with too much time on his hands. I am a retired wage slave. I have worked jobs I hated, I have worked jobs I loved. I have designed and built the automation that replaced workers who had to stand and repeat the same motions over and over for 8 hours. I have trained some of those workers to maintain and repair that automation. The jobs I have loved allowed me to use my mind and hands and be creative. The jobs I hated gave me a paycheck. The paycheck, how do we provide for income without jobs? Everybody requires income. Our current labor situation is unfair and getting worse. I've been laid off when a company moved production overseas. Unemployment benefits are insufficient and come with time constraints. The elites already have a fuck everybody attitude, how do we get them to support universal basic income? We can't even get them to support universal health care. Automation and AI are going to destroy lives no question. The path forward is unclear but what is clear is that we all have to participate in creating that path. I've got mine screw everybody else is a path to violence. When all of our truck drivers are replaced by self driving trucks and lose their income will they calmly accept that? When health insurance is tied to a job and suddenly disappears will people calmly accept that? When large numbers of good hard working people who believed in the system start receiving foreclosure notices on their mortgages will they calmly accept that? I don't have an answer but we need to find one and we don't have a lot of time to do so. The answer that I have received from my representatives that "people will get by, they always have" is insufficient. We are facing a major reshuffling of our way of life and I don't want our current crop of elites holding the deck when it happens.
We are not going to get (or have leverage to demand) universal income or healthcare or anything approaching a life that acknowledges our value as humans with national “leadership” as it stands right now.
Do you really think the people who own AI are going to going this to us? It is their new form of power over people. They don’t want a utopia, they want to control us.
Being unable to work due to disability has meant I've had to learn that 'productivity' does not equal worth, even though society indoctrinates us with the opposite belief from the moment we are born.
I dream of a future with universal payment, strong communities, people choosing to 'work' as carers, librarians and teachers, safe in the knowledge that they have control over how and when they do their 'job' without losing their homes, the ability to pay bills. But I'm also very aware that the system has to crash first (and we are certainly seeing the cracks), and start affecting those currently in power, before systemic change happens. But in the meantime millions upon millions will lose their health, their safety, and their lives.
There still hasn't been a tipping point where AI is actually as competent as people. You can use it as a tool to assist in doing your work, but the idea that a significant portion of the workforce will become redundant by 2030 is pure fantasy.
Generative AI has reached a point of diminishing returns. They don't actually have any reasoning ability, so they cannot self correct. This is not something that you can work through with more training data, it is a systemic issue based on the architecture of AI as we know it. I challenge the contention that generative AI will ever be competent enough to replace office workers.
Robots will take over some menial labour, but they will also create more jobs, as every new technology does. The assembly line didn't put factory workers out of a job, it just made them more productive. Robotics faces the same issues as AI, without real-world reasoning capacity, they will make costly mistakes often without human intervention.
I am an entrepreneur and use ai to assist in all facets of running a business. I could not agree more about your points on AI. The issues are structural exactly as you point out. Bravo, Sam.
Btw to original authors point- I just identified with my “profession” haha
Unfortunately it just means those of us enslaved by student loan or credit card debt are going to prison for not having an income. Its going to be a disaster for millions of people.
I am burnt out, exhausted, depressed, and want freedom from the painful cycle of late stage capitalism like everyone else. But if my job goes away I don't get to just start a garden and buy some chickens and live off the land "free." I have $26,000 in debt I am figuring out how to pay off. My roommate has upwards of $40,000. My other close friend's husband lost his job due to AI. He went from making almost $100k a year to working a seasonal job at UPS. They live in Southern California and have 4 children. Her job is part time because of the little ones. When their savings run out they don't know what they are going to do to feed their family. They struggle to sleep most nights.
This is only a positive change for the rich or for those who don't have a shred of debt, or those that have the land and skills to be self sufficient. Not an easy thing in suburbia - where a shit ton of people live in some version of. Or apartment buildings.
You may have acknowledged the suffering that will take place and the need for therapy.
But this isn't just going to destroy people's mental health. Its going to starve them out. Kill them. Land them in prison for not being able to clear all their debt before the take over of "robots" taking their jobs.
I am NOT saying I want to be a slave to the man forever. I understand our way of life is built on lies, manipulation, and keeps us on a leash. I don't know what the solution is. But I don't like this one.
Fuck AI. Or at the very least - Fuck what AI has become.
It should assist, not replace.
But, as per usual, certain assholes in mankind cannot help themselves and go too fucking far.
This is just another reason to look at the future and ask myself what the point of being alive even is. Because if I lose my job they have backed me into a corner to where I might as well be dead.
@screwfascism: I think you must have missed the part about "universal income" and "universal basic services." This piece is about decoupling jobs from survival, which is exactly what you are talking about in your comment. It is not specifically about AI, but rather a paradigm shift based on concepts of individual freedom and mutual support.
The people who will really need therapy will be the holders of debt (I appreciate the shout-out to the late David Graeber, who wrote the book on debt), and the handful of wealthy whose obscene wealth (mostly based on debt) will need to be redistributed. In fact, abolishing debt, student and commercial loans, mortgages and rent, would go a long way toward redistributing wealth, but that's for another post.
Thanks for this work, Antonio.
I mean on paper I agree with the ideas laid out in the post.
Issue is I don't trust any leaders or government to actually go down a path with all of this that benefits everyone and works toward goals like this. Too much narcissism, greed, and lust for power from the people who get the positions to run things - or just simply buy them off. The average citizens struggling to make ends meet will end up being bulldozed over like always.
Its all a nice thought, though. Real freedom.
I think the powers tbst bd will opt for depopulation. Not universal harmony and freedom. I also think they have signaled that is what they would like, though expanding on that might cause a flame war I just dont have the energy to deal with.
Yes. We are in a weird spot eoconomo-culturally. I am sorry to hear about you and your friends' situation and debts. That sounds horrendous and unbelievably stressful. In warm solidarity, as I too live in constant debt, chasing dollars to survive. I have never been that comfortable financially, so am somewhat used to it. It takes its toll though. I think what this age of ai is asking us to do now, is to choose where we want to go. In tricky times and challenges there are always gifts and opportunities. To come together and decide. It is a time to focus on building community, skills of regulation, skills of friendship, forgetting about stupid, short-term thinking divide and conquer competitions, invest in shared joy, invest in community service, bolster creativity and innovation skillsets to prepare for and create our present-future. Community, conversation, choosing togetherness and sharing is what defeats fascism. Where is the real value in our lives? We choose with our daily micro-choices which way our species will head and give power to. We've been living greedily, uncritically and apathetically beyond our means for far too long. Now we and our children all pay the price. I agree, fuck ai. It's really just part of the idiocracy, soooo silly and short-sighted capitalist thinking. Can ai do our dishes and grocery shopping instead of all the fun parts of being human? Like thinking and being and arting. Such a scam people! Wishing you well and hope that you can expose yourself to as much art and communty as is possible to weather-proof your spirits during these man-made storms. Warmly, your local printmaker art-anarchist, Anna (WeeEeEeeeee ai-free typo-filled human written answers uh huhuhuhhhh! Long live imperfection)
Thank you for this! It’s the perspective on AI that is needed & missing from so many conversations
Impressive piece. Spot on. Throughout a 40-plus year in international executive functions I now have the time to reflect. I say thank goodness for AI so we may become humans again. No longer ‘working’, my creativity has exploded, my gratitude for family has deepened, my self esteem has been found. No regrets. But great hope for humanity.
So right bro...
What a lovely change of perspective from “ain’t it awful!”
So thoughtful Antonio. And this isn’t a radical idea it’s how things should be.
Before I retired from my “job” as a high school English teacher, I would have my students do several readings on the theme of Work/Jobs. Thomas Carlyle on “Labour” - https://www.online-literature.com/thomas-carlyle/past-and-present/34/#:~:text=Blessed%20is%20he%20who%20has,Doubt%2C%20of%20whatever
finds work to have a “perennial nobleness” and “idleness, a perpetual despair.” Max Weber’s “Protestant Work Ethic” built great capitalist nations in Europe (and America). In Clotaire Rapaille’s book “The Culture Code,” the author claims the “code” (subconscious meaning) for work for Americans is “who you are.” Generally speaking my students agreed with the ideas of the above authors. However when we read Bob Black’s “The Abolition of Work,” https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Ie5zO-mF31M
the real debate began. Black advocates for the replacement of work and jobs with a ludic revolution (Playtime for Everyone). How would it work? Make work into play. “Play isn’t passive. Doubtless we all need a lot more time for sheer sloth and slack than we ever enjoy now, regardless of income or occupation, but once recovered from employment-induced exhaustion nearly all of us want to act.” Volunteering for a few hours here and there to maintain the commons, practicing arts and crafts, community gardening, and many other necessary tasks can be accomplished if made into a form of non-coercion done with other like-minded people. Black is thought of as a kook by some, and a visionary by others. I would end the thematic unit with a viewing of YouTuber CGPGrey’s “Humans Need Not Apply” (2014) https://youtu.be/7Pq-S557XQU?si=UqKWUA0mLiQYI50R
This video forecasts the elimination of most jobs by automation, smart robots, autonomous vehicles and other devices. Back when this video was released some of my students introduced the idea of Universal Basic Income, and we discussed it in class. Could it work? Would it be enough to maintain a middle class lifestyle? Would such dependence lead to profligacy? Would large companies and rich individuals accept massive tax increases to fund the rest of us? Most of my students left the debate with many questions about the future.
I think of them now as AI and LLMs appear to be destroying the job market with no end in sight. I would hope the future would be an optimistic “ludic revolution “ a la Bob Black. Yet, I fear that the elites that run our world may come to see most people as “useless eaters” and mark most of us for termination through the use of autonomous drones — the Black Mirror episode “Metalhead” comes to mind.
Whichever it may be, we stand at the cusp of a massive challenge for the human race. Outcome to be determined . . .
Beautiful essay and insight. Thank you.
So interesting and agree. People so often talk about how AI will take over a lot of the ‘grunt work’ at junior levels but rarely talk about what it means for the undressing of professions that have for so long hidden behind the masks of process and corporate jargon.
Very thoughtful exploration of a very important and relevant topic.
Just an old hippy here with too much time on his hands. I am a retired wage slave. I have worked jobs I hated, I have worked jobs I loved. I have designed and built the automation that replaced workers who had to stand and repeat the same motions over and over for 8 hours. I have trained some of those workers to maintain and repair that automation. The jobs I have loved allowed me to use my mind and hands and be creative. The jobs I hated gave me a paycheck. The paycheck, how do we provide for income without jobs? Everybody requires income. Our current labor situation is unfair and getting worse. I've been laid off when a company moved production overseas. Unemployment benefits are insufficient and come with time constraints. The elites already have a fuck everybody attitude, how do we get them to support universal basic income? We can't even get them to support universal health care. Automation and AI are going to destroy lives no question. The path forward is unclear but what is clear is that we all have to participate in creating that path. I've got mine screw everybody else is a path to violence. When all of our truck drivers are replaced by self driving trucks and lose their income will they calmly accept that? When health insurance is tied to a job and suddenly disappears will people calmly accept that? When large numbers of good hard working people who believed in the system start receiving foreclosure notices on their mortgages will they calmly accept that? I don't have an answer but we need to find one and we don't have a lot of time to do so. The answer that I have received from my representatives that "people will get by, they always have" is insufficient. We are facing a major reshuffling of our way of life and I don't want our current crop of elites holding the deck when it happens.
We are not going to get (or have leverage to demand) universal income or healthcare or anything approaching a life that acknowledges our value as humans with national “leadership” as it stands right now.
Thus is an interesting essay. I think less use of the word "fuck" would be nice.
Do you really think the people who own AI are going to going this to us? It is their new form of power over people. They don’t want a utopia, they want to control us.
Being unable to work due to disability has meant I've had to learn that 'productivity' does not equal worth, even though society indoctrinates us with the opposite belief from the moment we are born.
I dream of a future with universal payment, strong communities, people choosing to 'work' as carers, librarians and teachers, safe in the knowledge that they have control over how and when they do their 'job' without losing their homes, the ability to pay bills. But I'm also very aware that the system has to crash first (and we are certainly seeing the cracks), and start affecting those currently in power, before systemic change happens. But in the meantime millions upon millions will lose their health, their safety, and their lives.
There still hasn't been a tipping point where AI is actually as competent as people. You can use it as a tool to assist in doing your work, but the idea that a significant portion of the workforce will become redundant by 2030 is pure fantasy.
Generative AI has reached a point of diminishing returns. They don't actually have any reasoning ability, so they cannot self correct. This is not something that you can work through with more training data, it is a systemic issue based on the architecture of AI as we know it. I challenge the contention that generative AI will ever be competent enough to replace office workers.
Robots will take over some menial labour, but they will also create more jobs, as every new technology does. The assembly line didn't put factory workers out of a job, it just made them more productive. Robotics faces the same issues as AI, without real-world reasoning capacity, they will make costly mistakes often without human intervention.
I am an entrepreneur and use ai to assist in all facets of running a business. I could not agree more about your points on AI. The issues are structural exactly as you point out. Bravo, Sam.
Btw to original authors point- I just identified with my “profession” haha
-thanks for the post-I hope the paradigm shift you described does happen