Behind the headlines about AI makers asking government to restrain them from destroying the world, their products are already doing it.
I get the existential risk that someday, some AI could be so powerful that it could for some reason decide to take over or annihilate humanity. I’ve seen the movie countless times.
But while the folks responsible for it tell us about their nightmares, this expert being one of the latest, AI and related technologies are putting tens of thousands of people out of work.
Every day we debate what could happen, we’re ignoring what’s already happening. The nightmare of a world transformed by AI is real.
Late last week, British telecom BT announced it would fire as many as 55,000 employees by the end of the decade and that 10,000 would be directly impacted by “digitization and automation.” It represents almost HALF of its entire workforce.
Also, it’s a disingenuous statement, since there’s no way the remaining workers will be able to assume the duties of those 55,000 former employees without some help from technology. And Red Bull.
Its competitor Vodafone announced earlier that week that it would fire 11,000 people. IBM plans to replace thousands of people with AI over the next few years. There are many, many other companies slashing or planning to axe staff.
Is it possible that these moves are proof that the world’s largest and many of the its most successful companies plan to contract in the future? Sell less? Walk away from markets? Embrace reduced profits and slowed growth?
Of course not. They will do more with less. More automation. Less people.
Here’s a short list of jobs that are disappearing right now. The World Economic Forum has pontificated on what work will be “safe” from AI, though the sentences are so convoluted and its agenda so sinister that I’d bet they’re all the jobs that will go first.
This AI guy has said the impact on jobs will be so bad that everyone will need a basic income government handout in order to survive.
AI is already blowing up how we work and live every day, yet its proponents want us to focus on all the bad things that could happen. Somehow. Somewhere. Someday.
I get that destruction on a global scale is a bad thing. But so is firing large swaths of otherwise productive human beings. Or never hiring them in the first place.
AI is already transforming the world, but we’re not supposed to see it.
[This essay was originally published at Spiritual Telegraph]