Some would say “it’s better late than never.” A more accurate characterization would be ‘It’s too late forever.”
In yet another example of establishing a group to study the obvious, the U.S. Chamber has decided to set up an Artificial Intelligence Commission to examine “the advancement and challenges of AI adoption in communities throughout the U.S.”
Really? The Chamber is going to spend … what, a thousand hours or more studying what they could find in five minutes with a simple browser search.
AI is going to impact every aspect of human life, from the way we live and recreate to the way we learn and work. In fact, a Google search of AI’s influence on just a single aspect of society – “how AI will impact employment” – produces 168,000,000 references!
For example, in March of 2021, Forbes published an article which stated, “In reality, AI is already at work all around us, impacting everything from our search results, to our online dating prospects, to the way we shop. Data shows that the use of AI in many sectors of business has grown by 270% over the last four years.”
And in July of 2020, IOT for All published this statement:
“A two-year study from McKinsey Global Institute suggests that by 2030, intelligent agents and robots could replace as much as 30 percent of the world’s current human labor. McKinsey suggests that, in terms of scale, the automation revolution could rival the move away from agricultural labor during the 1900s in the United States and Europe, and more recently, the explosion of the Chinese labor economy.
McKinsey reckons that, depending upon various adoption scenarios, automation will displace between 400 and 800 million jobs by 2030, requiring as many as 375 million people to switch job categories entirely. How could such a shift not cause fear and concern, especially for the world’s vulnerable countries and populations?”
As I write in The Neonaissance, the time for studying is over. We already know what the problem is. Artificial intelligence will be more beneficial to our lives than any other invention in the history of humankind … and it will also create near universal unemployment. It will terminate the jobs and careers of almost every working man and woman.
Sure, we can learn new skills. There’s just one drawback: AI development is moving so fast that by the time we’ve acquired one set of new skills, another will be necessary. At least if we want a job. It’s an endless cycle of human obsolescence that ends with employers discarding humans as out-of-date and irrelevant. The white and blue collar workforce will be replaced by byte-collar workers – machines that don’t takes breaks, don’t ask for raises, and don’t come down with the Monday-after Super Bowl flu.
That’s the problem, and it’s already happening. What we need to do now is act. The time has come to identify and implement solutions with the scope and scale to preserve the American Dream.
Food for Thought,
Peter
America stands on the cusp of a new and extraordinary age, but one that we will have to earn with our individual and collective efforts. Download my free book – The Neonaissance: the New Birth of a Noble Democracy in America & the Two Mega-Crises We Must Overcome for It to Happen – to get the whole picture. Or, if you’re busy, just read the free excerpt posted here.
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