I try not to spend too much time worrying about the dystopian hell I fear is approaching: recession, mass unemployment, full-on economic collapse. I gave notice at my job just before Thanksgiving. About a week later Open AI released ChatGPT. In the few months since then, AI technology and the “intelligence” part of AI has advanced at an alarming rate. The two emerging schools of thought seem to be that this technology will replace lots of jobs or this technology will enhance lots of jobs. Given my distrust in capitalism’s willingness, let alone ability, to consider the human beings that drive capitalism (meaning that there’s a long and well-documented history of putting profits over people) I tend to fall into the camp that believes AI will replace a lot of work. Unfortunately, we don’t have a system in place in which everyday people are allowed to loaf around and not work – that privilege is reserved for the people who are able to put their money to work for them.
If AI doesn’t replace work, it will most certainly change the nature of work. I could see scenarios where instead of writing things like donation/thank you letters, advertising copy, computer code, or legal briefs, we’ll rely on AI to do the first draft and have a human check it, edit it, modify it… The same holds true for generating videos and images, scripts and jingles. Again, this is where my distrust of capitalism comes in. By its very nature, the goal of capitalism is to maximize profits by producing as much as we can, as quickly as we can, and as cheaply as we can. I suspect because we would be using AI for some of the generative process, our corporate overlords would require greater and faster output. And because the iron law of wages suggests that there is always a hungry and un/under employed workforce willing to step in and do the work, we will either have to adapt or get left behind. It would seem absurd to suggest that if a job now takes half as long to complete, businesses could pay the same wage and only require half as much time from the employee.
At almost every turn in American society, when we’ve had technological advances that could free up time and energy, we (society) have simply sucked up the extra time and energy with additional tasks and increased standards or expectations. Our always hustle culture almost demands that we fill every moment with productivity lest we fall behind. Because we’re saving time by not driving, the efficiencies of Zoom meetings has often led to more Zoom meetings… and if we have to drive, cell phones have made it possible to conduct business over the phone as we drive. This is a slightly different take on Parkinson’s Law which states: “work expands to fill the time available for its completion.” A good example of how this has played out in our everyday lives can be seen in the technological advances of the early to mid 1900s that helped shape the modern home (dishwashers, stoves, vacuum cleaners, etc.). Time freed up in the home was eventually replaced by additional work outside of the home (this coincides with an influx of “housewives” into the workforce). For a good read on this check out Why Americans Are Always Running Out of Time. Now, life in America almost requires two incomes. How did we get to this point, and what happens if there isn’t enough sustainable work to go around?
When I think about the current and coming disruptions, I get both angry and despondent. I don’t know enough about the technology to fully understand what it’s capable of and what may go away as a result of it’s implementation… but I do know enough about human nature and the all-too-predictable behavior of markets to know that we have a tendency to build first and worry about the ethical implications later. I can remember listening to a professor from Penn’s Wharton School of Business lamenting that the institution had graduated so many people in high finance who went on to develop and participate in the derivatives market that led to the housing crash of 2008. He said he thinks institutions like Penn need to take more responsibility for teaching students to think beyond profits. It was a nice sentiment after the fact, but countless lives were destroyed by the reckless pursuit of capital. It’s estimated that close to 10 million people were displaced by that recession… collateral damage in the name of “progress.” Now, we’re facing a new potential disruption… at a time in our history when our education system seems to be de-emphasizing the studies of ethics, philosophy, the arts, and humanities… at a time in our history when we are becoming increasingly isolated and individualistic… at a time when we seem to be losing our understanding of “the common good.”
I get frustrated by these developments because it feels like we should know better and that we should have a choice in how our future looks. Some of the potential consequences of unfettered AI development seem all too predictable, yet, we’ll wait until the aftermath to talk about the “unintended” consequences… Perhaps, after another 10 million lives are upended, a few tech gurus will lament that maybe we could have done it differently. Unfortunately, it also feels like “market forces” are so strong that we don’t have a choice but to go down this path. To me, this feels like other disruptive trends that have taken place over the past forty or fifty years: the disappearance of small businesses in favor of big box retailers, the gutting of news media at the hands of private equity, the consolidation of healthcare, the gig economy that didn’t quite deliver the freedom and riches it had promised, and the disappearance of pensions in favor of the roulette wheel that is our 401k system. In every one of these situations, we’ve seen a shift of wealth, time, choice, security, and control away from consumers and workers towards financiers, shareholders, and behemoth corporations. In many of these instances, non-participation is not an option – or at least, not a feasible option.
Quite often, I feel as though I’m not cut out for capitalism. The notion of “getting ahead” has never had much of an appeal to me. As I grow older and become more informed about how systems work, how everything is interconnected, and how our environment is in peril, I want to consume less, I want to participate less in destructive and extractive systems. I want all of us to consume less. I want to take less and give back more. This attitude all but ensures that I will finish near the back of the pack in this absurd race. At this stage in my life, there are fewer things I wish to own but more things I wish to experience. Limiting material desires fits well with my Buddhist approach to reducing both desire and suffering, but it also seems like the only weapon I have against our march towards oblivion. The current problem seems to be that being alive in America has become an increasingly expensive undertaking. Just treading water seems to take the same amount of effort as getting ahead used to take (perhaps this is why everyone has a side hustle). And now, we may be facing a disruption to our main hustle which, I fear, will only concentrate more wealth at the top of the ponzi scheme.
The thing is, I don’t necessarily want to be anti-capitalist. I do believe it’s unsustainable in its current form and leaves far too many people behind. I’d love to see a more thoughtful, slower, and compassionate form of capitalism emerge – one in which basic necessities such as housing and food are not commodities to be hoarded and traded to the highest bidders, one in which we think about consequences before we rush our latest product to market. I also don’t want to be all doom and gloom, but everything I’ve read seems to suggest that we may have opened Pandora’s box and will, once again, be playing catch up when it comes to regulation and mitigation. As much as I want to believe in humans and our capacity for kindness and good, in this one area, I don’t have a lot of faith in humanity or our ability to curtail our greed. It seems that the best I can do is close my eyes and hold on to the oh-shit handle as we drive towards dystopia.