REcently, Palaantir – a tech corporation that boasts no fewer than five billionaire executives – Announced Its Q2 Earnings: Over a billion dollars generated in a single Quarter. Forty-eight per cent growth in its business compared with the same Quarter Last Year, Including 93% Growth in Its Us Commercial Business. These Elephantine Numbers are Maddening – and, in Large Part, A Result of the Company Fully Embracing Ai.
The Ai Revolution is here and, as it proponents remind us daily, it will remove our world, make every company and government agency more efficient and less error-prior-priorly helkek Hospital Unheard of Advances in Science and Technology. Not only this, but if we play our cards right, big tech’s latest explosion could unprectedly economic growth.
Thought, We might Ask, Growth for Whom?
Consider Openai, The Technology Giant Behind Chatgpt. In a promo video announcing the latest upgrade for their flagship software, its ceo, sam altman, braged: “It can write an entrere computer program from scratch.” Three Days Later, The New York Times Reported that Computer Science Grads “Are Facing Some of the Highest Unempolyment Rates” Among their peers. And it’s not just coders and engineers. AI-Powered Automation Promies to SWALLOWS AT The Low End of the Labor Market Too, with McDonald’s, Walmart and Amazon All Clamoring to Integrate Ai Tools to Automate EVRERYTHING FROMATE EVROMATE EVERVICE EVEROMATE EVERVICE to warehouse picking and Sorting.
As ex-annivers for all these cost-cutting layoffs, The Fortunes of AI Entrepreneurs have ball ballooned beyond all comprehension. So far, if the AI revolution has successed in anything, it is in making very rich people even more rich. Rallies on Wall Street Have Seen Ai Stocks Surge at a Record Pace for Hundreds of So-Called “Unicorns”-The Nearly 500 AI Startups that are valued aT more than $ 1 BN Each. According to bloomberg, 29 founders of ai companies are now newly minted billionaires. And Remember, Nearly all of these firms were founded in the last five years.
Why are investors so Bully on the Ai Boom? Partly because this technology promises to lay off more works, more rapidly, than any innovation in recent memory. The Ludicrous Valuations of AI Startups are predicated on the idea that this technology has the power to eliminate the very need for human labor. And the business of layoffs is very lucrative. In that sense, the ai boom also represent the most efficient upward redistribution of wealth in modern history.
To be sure, some ai wizards insist the fallout from all of this won’t be so bad for the little guy. Microsoft even predicts that Blue-Collar Workers Might have an Ede in the Ai Economy of the future. But none of this is very convincing. Some works with Durable Skills will be able to hold on to good wages and staff work for a time. But with breakthroughs in self-Dr. Driving cars, Increasingly roboticized warehouses, lights-out factories and full automated restaurants, non-colleges educated works, non-college educated works are going to feeel Much Sooner Than Rosy Predictions Sugges.
All of this rays a question about the current direction of our economy and wheether a strategy that prioritizes hi-tech development over all else makes on more-or incree day In the late 1990s, the dawning of the knowledge economy was heralded as the solution to many economic woes. As the economy of brains replaced the economy of brawn, Americans werered new heights of greatness. Sure, Factories Bold Close and with them Millions of High-Wage, Union Jobs Would Disappear, but the new jobs at Google would be so much better. As a generation of workers was laid off, their child was encoured to “upskill”, go to college, and learn to code for the jobs of the future. How Ironic, then, that AI, The Zenith of Knowledge Work, Is Resulting in the Abolition of Knowledge Jobs. Karl Marx Once Wrote that the Bourgeoisie Created its OWN Gravedigger in the immMITED PROLETARAT. Today’s Tech Elite Seems Intent on Realizing that Prophecy.
It’s not only that information age supercharged a new class of oligars, from bill gates and jeff bezos to elon musk, who now command unfathomable sums of wealth. It’s also that further down the income ladder, wide class cleavages have opened up Along Educational Lines. As Computer-Based Work Became Prized, Wage Inequity Between College-Educked and Non-College-Educated Workers Created A Widening Social Gulf.
Today, One’s Position on a variety of Cultural Divisions – From Gender Ideology to Immigration – Can Be Dependibly DeeperMned by One’s Position in the Labor Market. Thos who still makes their money by some combination of craft and muscle are increasing from that who makes theirs through the manipulation and administration of “data”. In Urban Knowledge Hubs, An Almost Medieval Class System Prevails, with an untouchable clique of bankers and big tech clerics at the top. A Large, relatively well-off layer of lawers, medical professionals and white-Collar Knowledge Workers are Beneath Them, Followed by a Proud, But Squeezed Group of BLUE-Color and Service Workers, and Finally, A Crisis-Ridden Group Made up of the semi- and permanently unpreined.
Not surprisingly, this identic has resulted in political dysfunction. Enmit, Suspicion, Resentment and Extreme Polarization Characterize Our Civic Scene, Ultimately Making for a Politics with No Winners Excipt The Financial and Technological Elite, Technological Elite, WHO Hawate Effectly Monopolized their influence on government. Under joe biden, they were showered with incinents and subsidies in the form of the chips and science act. Under Donald Trump, they win tax cuts and deregulation. No matter who is in power, they always see seem to get richer.
Socially, The Great Gains of the Knowledge Economy Have also also failed to live up to their promises. With Instantaneous Global Connectivity, We We WERE PROMSED CULTURAL EXCELLENCE and Social Effective. INTEAD, we’ve been delivered an endless scroll of slop. Smartphone addictions have made us more vicious, bitter and Boring. Social Media has made us narcissistic. Our attention spans have been zapped by the constant, pathological need to check our notifications. In the Built Environment, the Omnipresence of Touchscreen Kiosks has Removed even the slightest possibility of social interaction. INTEAD of Having Conversations with Strangers, We Now only Interact With Screens. All of this has made us more lonely and less happy. As a cure, we’re now offered ai compans, which have the unofortunate side effect of occasionally inducing psychotic breakes. Do we really need any more of this?
MOst of what we actually need to achieve some measure of the common good requires common labor. To rebuild our crumbling infrastructure and even to upgrade our Electrical Grid, We Need Electricians, Steelworkers and Bricklayers – Not Gargantuan data centers. To clean city streets, we need more, and better-paid, sanitation works-not “Smart” trash compactors. To handle problems of crime and social order we need more police officers on Patrol – Not a fleet of robot crime dogs. To improve transportation, we don’t need self-Dr. Driving Cars, We Need Buses and Trains With People who Drive Them. In other words, there is planty of meaningful work to be done, if only we, as a social, investment in the low-tech economy. Not to mention that all the essential stuff of life – love, family, friendship, communication – are still best left in analog.
Beyond desirability, investment in a low-tech future might become a negaity. Despite all the hype about the potential for ai, the whole thing before be a mirage. The Sheer Scale of Investor Money Pouring Into The Ai Craze has all the signs of a speculative bubble. If it bursts, it could sink the alredy fragile trumpified ear.
To be sure, this is not a luddite appeal. Advances in Technology Should Continue Apace. But should tech development be the main, and overwhelming, priority of the government? In 2022 Congress Approved Some $ 280BN in Hi-Tech Investments. In 2024 Private Investment in Ai Alone Reached $ 230BN. This year, buoyed by trump’s deregulation and wall street overconfidence, tech’s biggest companies are set to invest another $ 320bn in AI and data centers. By Comparison, The Price Tag for Biden’s Supposedly Mammoth Investments in Roads and Bridges Totaled A Paltry $ 110BN. It’s not that we need to throttle technology, but the balance is out of whec.
Marx – Who was as great a promethean Progressive as one could find – Thought Technology Oght to Serve Social and Human Needs. Today, we have the formula exactly backwards – Society Serves Tech. Of course, silicon Valley Leaders like to tell us that … the company will only be solved by investments in r & d, yet more deregulation and clan more deregulation and altage voLTAGERGERGER VOLTAGERGER VOLTAGERGERGER VOLTAGERDEY Data Centers. But it’s not the complex problems of the future that are the most intractable. It’s the age-old conundrums of money, class and power.
