Is AI the Enemy? Maybe...

 Is AI the Enemy? Maybe.

If you can make it through one day without hearing the term AI, you're either living in a monastery or in prison. Modern commentators are considering that we are on the cusp of an AI "singularity", when artificial intelligence will become either sentient or at least powerful enough to challenge our ability to maintain control of the established order. With all the news regarding development of new AI platforms, it seems we might be close to this reality. Especially as, unlike other apparently important news info, the topic of artificial intelligence has real staying power in the news cycle.

I don't know if we're really on the brink of a new AI era of supremacy. History is hard to measure in the moment. However, two obvious concessions have to be made. First, AI is definitely disrupting our society (see the SAG-AFTRA strikes, where AI is quite a significant chunk of the ideological divide between movie studios and writers and actors and other movie and TV production workers). Second, AI and its apparent threat to humanity isn't remotely a new idea.

This first time I remember hearing about artificial intelligence was in 1984. In that year, a cyborg hunter from the future (in the shape of Arnold Schwarzenegger) time traveled back to downtown Los Angeles to kill the mother of the as yet unborn rebel leader who would destroy the machine-led power structure, called Skynet, in the future. That rebellion also sends back a human soldier who winds up inadvertently fathering the rebel leader. Anyone who is up on their American cinematic history will recognize that storyline. It's just a movie, folks. Terminator woke people up to the idea of a military program taking over the world, but even then, it wasn't a new idea. There was also HAL9000, from 2001, A Space Odyssey; and the computer from WarGames (shall we play a game?) and the robot servants from Isaac Asimov’s classic “I, Robot” novel.

Back then, the idea of machines taking over the world was far-fetched (albeit intensely entertaining) science fiction. No one really believed that machines would one day be a viable system able to take control of nuclear codes and launch all the warheads. Computers did help us launch rockets and make it to the moon, but those giant IBM machines couldn’t be run without humans to program them. Even as those computers became smaller and more efficient (see Moore’s Law) and required fewer people to run and program them, we didn’t consider that AI could displace the workforce, challenging the daily lives of working people in all professional arenas. No one really thought about the economic side of the discussion at all. In sci-fi, what really gets our attention is when there are aspects of war onscreen. Computer programs firing missiles at our enemies is exciting, at least for entertainment purposes. Class and wages, though, are—at least in terms of cinematic reality—rather dull for the silver screen.

And yet, humanity stands at a crossroad. More than at any other time, humans are living and earning at an incredible wage disparity. Workers in some places (see right-to-work states) are legally (for now) prevented from organizing in order to dispute their pay and benefits. CEOs of some companies are making more money than ever before, hundreds of percent more than their employees. The billionaire "class” have proven that the Rockefellers and Vanderbilts left keys to their monopolizing kingdoms, as they become the nouveau riche aristocracy in our country. Except in this current era, the trains and ships are now tech globalization, chip production and, of course, social media and AI.

Today's wages have barely kept up with the staggering inflation. In the last few years alone, more and more people are unable to afford even the most meager amenities that were once considered absolute necessities during our previous Golden Age of post World War II glory. With this financial disparity comes massive unrest, both civil and political. Something has to give, right? It already has.

The robot workforce that we have been hearing about is at hand now, but automation is not a new concept. Robots and computers have been driving industry for decades, but with smarter, more intuitive programs, the future is literally right now. These robots (from the Czech word for slave) can do the work of writers, of actors, of laborers, possibly of politicians, of teachers, maybe even of librarians. Right now, at the speed with which some companies are rolling out new AI features (looking at you, Chat GPT and Google Bard) it is almost impossible to gauge how long, let alone when artificial intelligence will become self-sustaining, but we can guess that in the next decade, it will take more jobs from many of us in the meantime.

Even this job theft isn't totally new. Failed presidential candidates and supporters for mechanization of labor have been warning for some time now that the robots are coming. The somewhat naïve response to this warning was that it might be imminent, but it hasn’t started yet. Based on their doom saying descriptions, within a few decades, robots would completely take over menial tasks in every corner of the service and machinery industries, including food prep, farming, construction, shipping and transportation. True perhaps, but it would be too slow to actually disrupt American economics except in the long term. There would be time to prepare.

Even as detractors waved their hands dismissively at the idea of robot overlords, they failed to consider a very solid truth: a robot will mop and clean restrooms for free. From there, it's only a matter of time before electronic workers are selling cars, doing your taxes, planning your estate, watering your garden and walking your pooches. It's not in the distant future. It is happening right now. The infrastructure is in place. The robots have already assumed the tasks. The take-over is happening now.

The problem with this way of describing things is that we tend to think of this reality in sci-fi terms. We imagine (as cinema has taught us) armies of robots piling to work in our stead with no warning. But this isn’t how the takeover is happening. First of all, this new workforce doesn’t look like the robots we’re familiar with from sci-fi books and movies. They aren’t metal humans with computer brains wandering around beeping and booping incoherently. We already use this workforce every day and we do so without even realizing it. If you don't believe me, go to your local grocery market or big box store. Those self-checkout machines require one employee to watch over and help with several stations. Where each cash register had one cashier and likely an entire staff to cover them over a work day just a few years ago, now only a handful of cashiers are available to actually check you out if you still want human interaction.

In this brave new world, the revenue gained from computerized unpaid workers, we assume, goes right to the bottom line. The cost to turn on and run a self-checkout station is far less, overall, than for one employee. Machines are cheaper, they don't require insurance. They don't call in sick. They don't go on vacations, have babies, get diseases or need to be reprimanded or fired for insubordination. They don't get hurt on the job or retire. Businesses can stop contributing to 401-Ks or accident protection and legal formalities. There’s no need for a pesky work schedule because the workforce is there all day, every day. Machines don’t unionize, go on strike or need to go to the bathroom. They are the ideal replacement to humans who are, if we take the business worldview, deeply annoying as employees.

If the local grocery market doesn’t have to post jobs for cashiers, it can actually work to hire more skilled, educated laborers for more complex tasks, even open up new stores and expand franchise markets. When all the cashiers have been replaced, (a contingency that is even now happening) what happens to the workers?

Those who need jobs must now have much more specialized skills and therefore more training and schooling in order to take over other positions (many new jobs in programming and machine maintenance are popping up). That training costs money and without jobs to earn those wages, or without reasonable wages to even survive, those workers are essentially stuck. 

Economics professors, in response to this unpleasant future, suggested that, in order for people to survive in an automated world, they would require a universal basic income (UBI). UBI would come from money culled from the taxes paid by the fantastically wealthy. Feasibly, it would be given to people as wages not earned, but deserved. In other words, a handout. If there are no jobs, but you still need to buy food and shelter, where does that money come from if not a government subsidy in this new automated world?

The world's billionaires all gasped and clenched in unison when that term arose. The wide and thick capitalist vein in American culture cannot and maybe will not ever be able to reconcile a person getting money without doing a job to earn it (unless they're a billionaire Bond Villain). Even people who benefit from disability and Medicare checks in America tend to frown at ‘handouts’. That’s a problem for another essay. The collective cry of agony from the monied interests in control of this country's financial destinies fainted in unison at this suggestion of subsidizing former workers replaced by artificial intelligence systems. “How are we going to afford that”, ask the insanely wealthy people who don’t like to pay their taxes as they squeamishly push away the smelling salts.

Nevertheless, it’s a really good question. With more efficient mechanized workforces doing the hard labor, revenue will increase. Higher revenue means more money for the top earners. More money (at least right now) for top earners, means more deregulation to keep politics working as a smooth pump generating legislation meant to solidify the power structures of big tech corporations. If cash means that corporations can vote and those companies keep putting their pet politicians in power, it won't be long before laborers and unskilled workers form a dystopian proletariat, wandering around hopelessly, unable to work, unable to get educations in order to get better jobs, unable to fulfill any kind of meaning to their lives. Then, it is only required that the Proles be kept docile enough with booze and entertainment so they don’t rebel. This reeks of Orwell’s Airstrip One.

So what happens to the rest of us? A lowly machinist, truck driver, fast-food burger jockey—even a gas station attendant—can stay home. Their job is being done by a machine. Will the American people yank their country’s destiny back from the precipice of corporate fascism in time to work out a system for UBI to protect and educate and help laborers fulfill their own personal destinies? It’s not even a question that AI can answer. At least not yet.