-
Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of World Wide Technology, told CNBC that people are “too smart” to accept artificial intelligence won’t alter their work environment.
-
Business leaders shouldn’t “BS” employees about the impact of AI on jobs, Kavanaugh said, adding that they should be as transparent and honest as possible.
-
Kavanaugh, who has a net worth of $7 billion, stressed that overall he’s an optimist when it comes to AI and its ability to improve productivity.
You’re missing the point.
There are never, for all practical purposes, jobs that get recovered by disruptive technology. This is why Luddites existed for the industrial revolution and why neo-Luddites exist today. Those lost jobs? They’re lost for good. And if you let typical western “dog-eat-dog” capitalism continue the damage from this will only mount.
Those manufacturing, farming, etc. jobs that gutted working class America? They didn’t get replaced by “learn to code” jobs. The same will happen when AI replaces workers (even with inferior copies). The Luddites had a point (and it’s not the one that people seem to think it was).
That specific field is lost. “There aren’t enough jobs” has never been more than a short term issue, while the technological progress idiots complain about is constantly moving the standard of living massively forward.
This iteration of “AI” won’t replace workers long term because it doesn’t work. But when we get to the point where it actually can, the standard of living will, once again, be massively better across the board as a direct result of the ability to do more work with less effort.
It’s a “short term issue” … but the people without jobs? Living in desperate poverty?
THEY. ARE. PEOPLE. NOT. STATISTICS.
If you’re going to introduce disruptive technology that renders a huge fraction of the populace unemployable, or even that just relegates a huge fraction of the population into low-paid, low-quality jobs plan for them as well, not just the fucking billionaire bank accounts!
That means perhaps making the billionaires pay more tax, say, to provide a buffer for the disrupted people. They can buy their next superyacht a year or two later.
There are other jobs. Adapting and changing is part of life.
Every technologically advancement throughout history has resulted in the floor, ceiling, and median quality of life significantly advancing in short order. There isn’t a group who isn’t better off very quickly as a result of the change that was always inevitable.
Change isn’t bad.
Spoken like a true techbrodude that.
Change isn’t bad, absolutely. As long as you view people as statistics, not as human beings.
But when you’ve had the job that kept you and your family fed and comfortably housed for decades suddenly vanish on you, that’s a change that’s bad. When that change guts your finances so you have to move your family into a shithole tenement that squeezes you for rent while your food turns into cheap, mass-processed, nutritionally dubious pap.
This is doubly so if it happens on the tail end of your life so you’re not realistically able to be retrained and re-employed.
But those are just statistics. Just numbers that flow on a screen. While in reality there’s human misery you carefully look away from so that you can point to comforting numbers.
But here’s a question for you: if things are always better off after a change, why are the people who cheerlead for such change so super-against any attempts to mitigate the impacts with a small sliver of their benefits!?