Artificial Intelligence

The underlying purpose of AI is to allow wealth to access skills
while removing from the skilled the ability to access wealth.
- Church of Jeff

My wife quoted me that one, and it really has stuck with me.

In my day job, I've launched multiple products that use AI, and so I've benefited from the technology, while simultaneously understanding that it is cheapening the value of my skills and experience in the job market. So the quote resonates with me.

There are some additions or modifications I want to make, but they're kind of pointless when I think about them.

For instance, I know that appropriating skills isn't the inherent purpose of AI, but rather it's prevailing application. Pragmatically speaking however, that's not a very useful distinction. We're still going to end up in the same place. 

Maybe I'd point out that the statement could be made about industrialization, automation, or virtually any other revolutionary technology. But so what. If anything, that supports the statement's implication that there are going to be a lot of victims of of AI.

The AI advocates say, "Well, you should make yourself an AI expert to ensure your place in the future." But as somebody who understands AI pretty well and has actually been doing that, I can say with confidence that it's a laughably naive and woefully inadequate suggestion. In the end, these technologies are about efficiency – they're intended to reduce the work required to do something. If it requires more workers to deal with the technology than workers to do the original job, then the technology failed. As was the case in the industrial revolution, there won't be enough new jobs to cover the displaced workers, by design. And the new jobs that are created will be so radically different from what the displaced know, the vast majority won't have the means to make the transition. People will have to change their entire careers dramatically, and most at an economic loss.

Once again, the middle class gets squeezed, enlarging the gulf between the haves and have-nots. "The American Dream" was the freedom and opportunity to attain a better life. But we are systematically eliminating the pathways to do that, and it is primarily for the benefit of the wealthy.

In this one instance I'm glad I'm of the age where I'm near the end of my career, rather than the beginning.