Replacing people with AI already doesn’t work on too many levels. Fixing AI-generated problems has become a small global sector overnight. The supposed efficiencies are being eaten up by the uncompromising realities. Yet jobs continue to be lost to AI, with more being shed regularly.
From a purely technological perspective, it’s somehow worse. This generation of AI is primitive. If full automation is a 10, this barely scrapes in as a 2/10.
The fallacies are piling up as AI exposes its own weaknesses daily. Anthropic, parent of Claude AI, has recently published an analysis of the labor market impacts of AI with indicative metrics.
This study is specifically based on displacement risk. The Key Findings section of the study is mercifully brief, but it’s extremely interesting. Critically, they found that a general profile of lower growth in occupations through to 2034. White-collar employees, notably older executive-level females, seem vulnerable.
Anthropic habitually doesn’t sing its own praises. They try to be objective. This is a very useful analysis, with backup from the BLS and includes performance parameters. The probability is that it’s on the money.
Overall exposure to AI across the economy is erratically applied. AI isn’t delivering much in terms of ROI, either. In areas like banking or finance, the AI number-crunching delivers value. In other sectors, not much is happening to the point of anybody reporting it or starting a cult, at least.
I’ve been watching this for some time, and the pattern is simple:
No clearly mapped-out roles and tasks are defined in the preamble
Costing is all over the shop.
Introduction and fanfare as jobs go out the window.
Trying to fit people, businesses, clients, markets, and ROI on the same page in real time.
A mess.
Now imagine this wholesome and tediously effervescent total lack of results applied to a whole global economy. The alarm bells are ringing, but they’re making more noise than sense. There are no visible Exit signs in the dunghill. When committed, you sink or swim.
The problem is a systemic lack of foresight. What’s the big vision?
A stunning tableaux of a smug and smarmy patrician world with everyone else consigned to appropriate levels of squalor as goods and services go comatose? A bit one-track-minded, isn’t it? Or is it just a traditional lack of ideas?
The economy crashes with assets bought up dirt cheap or simply repossessed? But now there’s no economy. Not even anyone to steal from. Oh, hang on. That’s already happening, isn’t it? Ask your helpful local organized criminals or other starry-eyed idealists for details.
No more pesky people doing the work and expecting to get paid for it? Replacing wage outlays with AI is even more naïve. AI, like all technologies, is high maintenance and highly cost intensive. Outlay at this level can be lethal. Obsolescence and innovation will destroy the first acquisitions until a plateau of standardized technologies is reached.
Put it this way – If the economy collapses, so does society and so does the population. A real economic meltdown could be much worse than World War 3. Imbecility incarnate.
The word “socioeconomic” isn’t a glued-together coincidence of terminology. The two are joined at the hip in the real world.
This is the current doomsday scenario, and half-baked as doomsday scenarios are, it’s already looking weird.
Specifically, it’s looking this weird. The UK is looking at Universal Basic Income as an option, according to the Financial Times. The UK is a big economy. It’d be a huge shift. From Thatcherism to a UBI is like America’s Republicans turning communist.
Such a drastic measure also reflects the current collapse of traditional capitalism and neoliberalism as the hopelessly out-of-control cost of living continues to rot away their structures. These two tired old sacred cattle of political self-righteousness aren’t famous for solving problems, just causing them.
The future never gets a word in. This same complete lack of planning has put three generations on the scrapheap. The Millennials, Zoomers, and Gen Alpha are already broke. Mass unemployment is hardly likely to help.
Take off the blindfolds and look where you’re going.
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Disclaimer
The opinions expressed in this Op-Ed are those of the author. They do not purport to reflect the opinions or views of the Digital Journal or its members.
