Take a look at the GPT chat marketplace (called GPT store). You’ll be amazed at the number of complex tasks that can be performed by writing just a few scripts. What impresses most is the possibilities offered by the tool. Anyone who works in front of a computer screen should take a look at what’s there to see how they can boost their performance.
The Marketplace Is The Mirror Image Of The People Left Behind
This kind of tool heralds a radical change in our relationship with work. Clearly, this means that productivity will increase exponentially, so to speak, and this will have the effect of putting millions of people out of work, who are far too expensive compared to the cost of using AI.
You’re Going To Lose Your Job, And That May Not Be The Worst Of It!
In such circumstances, the most appalling thing is not so much that a wave of redundancies or non-recruitment will occur, but above all that we’ll be moving to a new political and social paradigm. What used to give an individual political power was economic power. A job gives access to political power. That’s why individualism is so strong in industrialized countries, because it rhymes with freedom. With the disappearance of human labor, we’re going to see a return to the power of capital owners. This income disparity will give power back to the masses, to the detriment of the individual.
A New Revolution Of Proletarians Without Work
A proletarian without work is something of an oxymoron. Indeed, proletarians in the Marxist sense of the term are defined first and foremost by their capacity to work, as opposed to people who live off their rents or capital gains. What AI augurs is the era of a society in which there will be a huge disparity between those who own capital and those who don’t have access to it. Given that wealth will be concentrated in the hands of those who own AIs, and that a large part of humanity will be sidelined from work, there will be resentment to deal with.
A Generation Of Useless
If we’re all going to become useless sooner or later, we’re going to have to rediscover meaning and status in a society deprived of work. Money will not be as important as it is today. We’ll find ourselves in a kind of communist society, with the difference that people won’t really be working any more, and will have an infinite source of distractions at their disposal.
Meaning And Status
If everyone is rich, then no one is rich. The corollary of this statement is that if everyone is poor, no one is poor. A workless society is bound to put pre-industrial values back at its heart: family, religion and idleness. We’ve forgotten that pre-industrial societies often only worked part of the day and part of the year. There was a kind of cycle that followed the rhythm of nature. By eliminating modern work, we may well be getting back in step with our biology and nature.
The Return Of The Communist Chimera
With the victory of the capitalist bloc, there was no real debate as to which was the best socio-economic system. The problem is that today, the conditions are perhaps ripe for this debate to re-emerge. Indeed, what AI will undoubtedly engender is a world where a few players will have financial power and almost total control over the population. We already have a foretaste of this when we observe the current stranglehold of tech giants (GAFAM, BATX etc.) on people’s lives. This creates the ideal conditions desired by communist regimes: control and dependence of the population, extreme centralization of power, general impoverishment and so on. This bad omen is already echoed in the political sensitivity of young people in the countries affected by these changes. Young people in countries such as the USA, for example, are showing a renewed enthusiasm for socialist ideas. Is it a lack of future prospects that is driving young people to embrace ideologies that their parents and grandparents fought so hard against? There are several possible explanations. Technological upheaval and the inequalities it creates is one of them.
Ai Is A Revolution In Itself
Every disruptive innovation in history has provoked a political or social paradigm shift. The invention of the printing press challenged the Vatican and triggered the Protestant Reformation. The invention of the caravel by the Portuguese enabled the exploration of the globe, and gave the Europeans the upper hand in the new territories they discovered. The invention by the Dutch (later copied by the English) of the trading company system enabled expeditions to Asia, which in turn led to the domination of vast territories. So it’s not hard to see how a disruptive innovation can be lethal for all those who don’t have access to it. AI could be a factor in a far greater upheaval in the 21st century.
