Imagine a nation of the perpetually unemployed or underemployed, with millions of Americans desperately clawing at each other to secure that coveted holy grail, a full-time job that actually pays a survivable wage and includes (gasp!) health benefits, only dimly aware of a tiny number of multi-billionaires staring down at them, tut-tutting through the windows of their gleaming, high-tech skyscrapers and gated-community mansions. <\/p>\n
Imagine Red-state Joe grimly driving his aging pickup truck to drop off his wife at those gates, as she\u2019s quietly ushered in once more by security guards wearing Kevlar and sunglasses, to perform whatever services the local billionaire and his flunkies in their endless whims have invented for her tonight. And then quietly picking her up four hours later, silent, bruised and shell-shocked, clutching a debit card that has been magically reauthorized. all to supplement the family\u2019s meager government ration.<\/p>\n
Imagine a constant, unrelenting bombardment of AI propaganda telling you how to vote and who to vote for, all warning you that if you\u2019re still not convinced you will end up like the thousands of people you see every day now, clustered in tents around the city\u2019s muddy, rain-soaked outskirts.<\/p>\n
Jasmine Sun interviewed the people who actually know what the future of Artificial Intelligence portends for the average American: the folks who work for the companies developing it. In an op-ed written for the New York Times<\/a>, she explains what she learned from them. It isn\u2019t pretty.<\/p>\n The title of the article is self-explanatory: \u201cSilicon Valley is Bracing for a Permanent Underclass:\u201d<\/p>\n Many are convinced that advanced A.I. will soon surpass human capabilities. This would produce tremendous growth and scientific achievement, but it would also displace millions of jobs as fewer humans are needed to make the economy run. The technology will depress economic mobility and exacerbate inequality, while ferrying power and wealth to the A.I. companies and the existing owners of capital.<\/p>\n That all sounds anodyne enough until you consider its real-world implications. <\/p>\n Some even believe that artificial general intelligence, or A.G.I., will create a permanent underclass. In the United States, the term \u201cunderclass\u201d gained currency in the 1960s to describe the factory workers left behind by the postwar automation boom. Today, it has become repopularized as a\u00a0viral term<\/a>\u00a0for a theory that posits that people have a limited window of time to build wealth before A.I. and robotics are advanced enough to fully replace human labor. At that point, we will get frozen in our current class positions: The rich will be able to deploy superintelligent machines to do their bidding, and everyone else will be rendered useless and unemployable, left to live off welfare scraps.<\/p>\n Sun dutifully notes that \u201c[m]ost economists and A.I. experts\u00a0do not expect<\/a>\u00a0this scenario,\u201d but she also links that assertion to a study which acknowledges a not-insignificant (14%) chance of that exact scenario developing. Of course in the face of such daunting odds, who could possibly be concerned? Well, in July 2015 CNN trumpeted the fact that Donald Trump had a 1% chance <\/a>of securing the Republican nomination, but really, who\u2019s counting? The reality, however, is that the economic assumptions she cites are tied to past performance of GDP growth, and, as one commenter to that study notes:<\/p>\n The disconnect is that economists are modeling AI as a productivity multiplier for existing workflows, but the real disruption comes from AI enabling entirely new operational architectures \u2014 autonomous robot fleets that don\u2019t just replace human labor but eliminate the need for the facility designs, shift schedules, and management layers built around human constraints.\u00a0<\/p>\n I, for one, find that comment persuasive, along with the fact that the very purpose of AI is to increase productivity while reducing the workforce, an irresistible enticement to corporations eager to pad their bottom lines without any care (or obligation) whatsoever to how that \u201cpadding\u201d influences the society at large.<\/p>\n Another disturbing takeaway from Sun\u2019s article is the \u201cdisconnect\u201d between what these AI developers are saying in public, and their private misgivings.<\/p>\n As Sun notes:<\/p>\n Many A.I. employees are ultimately motivated by visions of a\u00a0beautiful<\/a>\u00a0future<\/a>: a promised land where goods are cheap, diseases are cured, and abundant machine labor liberates humans to enjoy lives of infinite leisure. But increasingly, they also worry about triggering a jobs apocalypse along the way. \u201cThere are some people who care about jobs and inequality because they really care about people. There are others who think this is going to lead to instability, insurrection and revolution, and that\u2019s bad for business,\u201d said a researcher who has worked at two frontier A.I. labs, and who spoke on the condition of anonymity because of fear of professional retaliation. (In general, tech industry sources expressed more extreme concern about the labor market impacts of A.I. in private conversation \u2014 but suddenly became optimists once I turned on the mic.)<\/p>\n Whatever side one takes in this wholly unsolicited \u201crevolution\u201d that is seemingly upon us, the political implications are staggering, to say the least. A nation of unemployed or underemployed educated college graduates is probably not going to passively allow itself to be relegated to permanent serf status without exhibiting considerable anger and demand for equitable compensation. Sun\u2019s article discusses those ramifications and I\u2019ll just leave that for everyone to read themselves. But there is certainly no indication that the Trump administration or the Republican party are taking those concerns seriously, so that leaves the field almost completely to Democrats. <\/p>\n They should take that opportunity while they still can.<\/p>\n \tDaily Kos is free for everyone\u2014no paywall, no barriers. Help keep it that way<\/p>\n Daily Kos is committed to keeping all our content free. That’s why we don’t have a paywall, and never will. However, Daily Kos’ revenue is down, and we may not be able to continue producing the quality of work you have come to expect from us. Donations from our readers are our largest source of income. If you value independent, accessible, paywall-free journalism, please consider making a donation today.<\/p>\n \t\tPower matters.<\/p>\n