Man Versus Machine
Nobody asked for it, no one wants it, everybody hates it. That voice, coming out of the phone. Most often a woman’s because, you know, hers is soothing, naturally conciliatory. Lifelike, sort of. Hollow though, as hollow as one of those big chocolate Easter bunnies. The hole producing that tinny tone, is this where a soul is normally found?
“Which of the following options can I help you with?”
Square peg, round holes. Nuts.
“I’m sorry, I didn’t get your response. Which of the following options…”
Customer service representative, please.
“I’m happy to help you, just let me know which of the following options you’re calling about…”
No service. Aargh!
“I know how frustrating it is to lose service. Let me fix that for you. Which of the following…”
For the love of God, put me out of my misery.
“I’m sure I can help you with that. Which of the following options…”
Call disconnected. What next?
I’m not the only one asking.
A former U.S. labor secretary warns of the end of employment as we know it. Robert Reich says there are essentially three kinds of jobs: making, thinking and caring. Workers who make stuff have already seen most jobs of this nature automated out of existence, and the days the remaining few will last are numbered. The thinking professions—your lawyers and doctors, the architects and engineers—are next. Hasn’t happened yet, but it’s only a matter of time before artificial intelligence supplants the actual kind in those occupations as well.
That leaves what Reich calls the caring jobs. He describes these as tasks “whose very essence is human—child care and elder care workers, nurses, psychotherapists, physical therapists, massage therapists, social workers, counselors, teachers, and everyone else in the empathy business.” Reich predicts most workers will be doing these kinds of jobs in 20 years. He considers them safe from AI.
I’m not so sure. I mean, doesn’t customer service fall in the caring category? If it doesn’t, shouldn’t it? Even if it’s not, surely a bot can be programmed to fake nurturing and emotional connection if one can feign concern and helpfulness to exasperated customers.
Regardless, caring professions already tend to be the lowest-paying occupations, and with AI forcing more and more workers to seek positions in these occupations over the next couple of decades, an abundance of competition for such jobs will put ongoing and intensifying downward pressure on wages. And this, after all, is the default purpose of AI. To make corporations a fortune. To make billionaires into trillionaires. To replace humans with machines that don’t eat or sleep, never take vacations, have no need for health insurance, don’t expect a retirement pension.
Tens of thousands from the ranks of the living and breathing have signed an online petition warning of “human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, losses of freedom, civil liberties, dignity, and control, to national security risks and even potential human extinction” as a result of AI’s uncontrolled development.
Signers of the open letter—from Apple co-founder Steve Wozniak and former Joint Chiefs of Staff chairman Mike Mullen to the Duke and Duchess of Sussex, from Nobel laureates and AI pioneers to right-wing political mastermind Steve Bannon and musician will.i.am—call for a timeout on the development of AI “superintelligence.” They say the moratorium should not be lifted until there is “broad scientific consensus that it will be done safely and controllably” along with “strong public buy-in.” Amen to that.
Problem is, the current regime wants nothing to do with any pause on AI’s breakneck development. For ruling Republicans, it’s full steam ahead, no guardrails. Scientific consensus and public buy-in be damned. Opposition Democrats are the proverbial deer in the headlights. Working-class voters can’t tell what Democrats stand for on this and most things. Even those partial to the party see Democrats as weak and unfocused.
For a party sorely in need of a guiding light, a North Star, AI’s ramifications are a supernova. Machine will either be servant or master, will be kept on a leash to humanity’s benefit or humans will be bent to technology’s will. A decision looms, or a selection will be made automatically in the absence of a choice.
Think of the purpose of government, now distill it to a single word, that word has to be protection. Protection of our rights and freedoms, our health and welfare, our safety and security. Protection of natural resources on which human life depends. And yes, protection from human economic obsolescence and disempowerment, from human extinction.
What the ruling regime offers is insulation, not protection. Insulation from the world beyond our borders, from trespassers, from social progress that cracks open doors through which the previously excluded can enter, from the possibility that someone else might get a little of what I once had all to myself.
This obsession with turning back the clock and turning away any who look or act the least bit different leaves the vast majority of Americans unprotected, vulnerable to attack. Not by foreign aggressors. Not by some imaginary enemy within. By machines.
Enemy troops are amassing, lifelike, sort of. The high ground is as yet unclaimed, but not for long. Time to roll out, take that ground.