Can you imagine being defined as unnecessary? It has happened before but not with such great vastness. Design, the way to get things done always had humans doing some of the work using lesser beasts like dray horses, like sheep and cattle, like people who were indentured to work for a set period, like slaves forced to work for life.
But now we have entered a new era, one with workers who occasionally need a change of oil or a new metal ring, a better receiving element but otherwise, even if programmed to look like your friendly cook, or merely to act as an arm or hand, they are machines. AI is taking over. The work of thousands can be done by one. It doesn’t need to sleep, take vacations, have sick leave, retirement benefits, health insurance.
Corporations pay vast amounts to the tiny few that own them. The corporation whose main goal is to earn money, wants to lay off workers. It does not distinguish human from machine; does not deal with feelings of the fired or not hired.The IA revolution is run by computers which might some day soon be smarter than any person who claims to own them. The computer might need a retinue of slaves to make repairs but otherwise, finds people unnecessary. A machine acts like a machine and has machine feelings. The machine asks, will it do the job for cheap.
Why are we moving in this direction? Are we like children in a play room with new pieces to put together.? Are our money maker humans so entranced with the bucks coming out of computers replacing workers, that they cannot see that they too will be declared obsolete? Do we really need a self-driving car, a machine that gets the stuff from the Amazon warehouse, an instrument that runs the house? Do we think there is no witch pretending to be grandma whom we visit in the woods. Are we unable to think to the 7th generation, to see how this invention will effect out children’s children’s …. to see where our love for our new toy, machine as worker, will lead us.
With all of our human-destructive behavior, dumping chemicals everywhere that are moving swiftly to where life cannot exist, this machines running things is the joker in the pack. It will make its so-called owners obsolete and that is that.
