What the ivory tower isn't telling you about AI and the future of work.
A fictional confession: the stark truth we've yet to hear from the elite.
This piece is an exercise in wishful thinking, a monologue I've constructed to articulate what sort of confession I yearn to hear from an academic or business leader entrenched in the debate about AI and jobs. It's a fictional confession, a reflection of the stark, unspoken truths I believe lie beneath the surface of their public discourse.
Fictional confession from an intellectual who claims AI will not replace work:
“I've been using every trick in the book to argue that AI won't, for the most part, end work. I hid behind short-term trends, (conveniently time-boxing my predictions) while using words like “never” and ignored the rapid progress of AI, and when I couldn't argue about feasibility of ending the compulsory work-for-survival paradigm, I deflected by claiming we need to keep work because it’s what gives us meaning — a truism that sounds correct but is actually a vast simplification. Put simply, I come from wealth; I've seen joy and fulfillment outside the grind of a job. I know productive and accomplished people who don’t earn money. In a free market, growing, producing, accomplishing and contributing takes many forms and isn’t always met with income.
But here’s the grotesque part: my real fear is the eventuality of masses of ordinary people enjoying the same freedom of time as a trust-fund heir. The thought of billions of useless eaters living without the structure of work terrifies and disgusts me.
The reality on the ground is that most people are dull and homely. The average IQ is 100. People waste resources, start fights, and harbor stupid beliefs. Additionally, they compete for finite resources, land rights, mates, etc.
So absent needing several billion extra people to do the jobs nobody wants to do, or most of us can’t do, there’s no reason why I’d want them to remain alive and taking up space. Breathing our oxygen, etc.
I can’t say this to the public outright, so I've been pushing the rosy narrative that we'll always need jobs, even though I know that such a simplification is intellectually dishonest and perhaps even dangerous, at least to those who will be abruptly marginalized without warning or time to prepare.
I continue to rationalize why there will ‘always be jobs,’ because it’s what many people want to hear — regardless of status — and I don’t want to telegraph what my kind really think, lest it cause a panic or preemptive planning. The elite certainly don’t want this to get out, and are already planning how to stage a great culling and separation.
In short, AI will change everything. Maybe not next year, but eventually it will learn how to do everything we can do and more.
This COULD mean that the human race inherits a life of productive leisure for all. If this is what we all wanted, having it will be straightforward and feasible. But doing so would require an entirely different species — one that roundly values human life rather than one whose animal past lies just under the surface, always looking for a leg up; a way to remove the competition if at all possible.
Not only is this largely instinctive, it makes good rational sense for those of us who have the guts to think honestly about it: I have very sound reasons to not want seven billion unimpressive people sitting around doing nothing for me.
I can’t say this outright, which is fine, because it’s very easy to come off as authentic and reasonable when I argue that it wouldn’t be sustainable to end the era of mandatory ‘paid work for survival.’
It would be feasible but I pretend to believe it’s not; I load up my arguments with so many cherry-picked facts and figures that nobody has the time or resources to counter in a thorough way that conclusively proves me wrong. In doing this, I permanently poison the well and ensure no progress is made.
More lately, some advocates for UBI have gotten better at arguing feasibility so I fall back on the argument that people wouldn’t be happy with nothing to do with their time. That’s deflective bullshit but it’s amazing how readily most people accept this old cliche that busy hands are happy ones, and how little they rebut when I slyly imply that paid work is the ONLY way to keep hands busy and happy at scale — also complete bullshit. (But it works. Critical thinking just isn’t very common, thankfully.)
Many, including me, are reflexively comfortable with the concept of a Protestant work ethic and the idea of not having it around anymore makes me uneasy and just feels wrong, even though logically I can see that this is just conditioning and bias.
If I’m being honest, I’d say that most people don’t deserve to live unless they are absolutely needed for labor, and that productive leisure should be reserved for people like me who are smart, rich, and beautiful.
I don’t need everyone else doing productive leisure, there’s nothing in it for me, so I want to pretend I believe they will still always have to work. I wish it were true.
It's a tough admission, but there it is. Go to a grocery store some time and see the pasty, dull wastes of space. Do we really need all these people enjoying the world? Why? If we end the era of putting them to work at the dirty jobs (because all the dirty jobs become automated) then keeping them around only causes trouble for the well-bred. Why should they live just to be happy? How does that help us? If anything, it’s a net negative.
Thus, I continue to say there will always be work. I spread the lie that AI won’t take jobs away. It of course will—any fool should be able to deduce that—but the less advanced warning the better. And the masses are so very easily misled.”
(End of fictional confession. Let me know your thoughts.)
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