We all deserve to loose our jobs to AI
There is growing concern among workers and experts that AI will take over jobs traditionally performed by humans, or that certain specialized skills, such as creative or technical abilities, will be considered obsolete as AI becomes more efficient and accurate.
The situation makes me think of the industrial revolutions in the 18th and 19th century. Industrialization (automation using machines) led to a large increase in efficiency per worker, a higher GDP growth, but also a higher unemployment rate in the short term.
The Luddites [1] had a solution for how to stop the immoral automation of their jobs – they smashed knitting machines and blamed the use of physical machines for their lack of employment (and income). The fight was pointless, some of the Luddites were executed and the automation continued.
In my mind, AI is just a continuation of the age of automation. It has the potential to largely automate knowledge based work. Bureaucracy, research, text analysis and software development are just a few areas that could gain a lot of efficiency through the use of AI. Fearing a higher employment rate in the short term makes sense.
Contrary to the Luddites, I consider automation a good thing, and I think we all should. Automation has the potential to greatly enhance our lives by freeing us from menial tasks and allowing us to pursue more meaningful activities. With automation, we have the potential to gain more control over our time and focus on tasks that are truly important, such as creative endeavors, learning new skills, or spending time with loved ones.
Some feel that automation could make their passion loose meaning, but I would like you to rethink that. Nobody forces you to stop writing software or designing a website just because an AI could do the job more efficiently. You could do programming as a creative or thought provoking activity, and what you produce will have a unique touch to it based on your person. Some of us still manually knit mittens, even though there is a factory that can knit 100,000 mittens per hour. Few would consider that a meaningless task. It can give joy, a sense of fulfillment and a great pair of mittens (but perhaps not as 'perfect' as the factory made ones).
Fearing that AI and automation will take our jobs is understandable, but the fear is misdirected. The fear of losing our jobs to AI may actually be a fear of losing our income to large corporations. The solution is as simple as it is boring; taxes and cooperatively owned businesses.
But why would we deserve the wealth when we don't work for it?
Who else deserves it? The people that own the corporation that owns the AI model? The people who created the training data? The AI definitely doesn't need what it creates, except for energy and hardware (at least for now).
In my opinion, we all deserve to use our time freely if we all have the possibility. We all deserve automation. On the other hand, keeping the 'unnecessary' (automated) jobs just to keep people employed doesn't make sense. It removes all the benefits that we could potentially gain from automation and AI. Creating new jobs just to motivate a person's right to a salary removes the opportunity for a person to do something self-chosen and fulfilling instead, and decreases the persons freedom.
We all deserve to loose our jobs to AI, both the freedom and the profit.