And I think you might be too.
AI is going to cut the value of what you do.
It doesn't matter if you work on the tools, or work from home.
When I look at the young people I care for in this world, I worry about what kind of world they will grow up in.
Need persuading?
I worry about me too, despite having more than a decade of experience in a trade.
AI might not take your job, but it will take the job of someone you know. Many someones.
When it takes that job, it won't provide a replacement.
If you work in an office or from home, I'm sure you can see how efficiency may turn into redundancy. Even where no one's been let go, a lot fewer people are being hired.
Much of a tradesperson's skill is knowledge, and smart glasses guiding a labourer will become the norm. The technology already exists. It might even become required by building inspectors and insurance companies. If that doesn't happen, apps that guide you through fixing things around the home will take work from the trades that service households.
Even if your workplace isn't looking to make redundancies, big companies often struggle to adapt to new technology. Blockbuster had the stores and the customers, and Netflix took them anyway. New players enter the market and displace jobs, whether it's a start-up, the apprentice who gets qualified and hires his mates with smart glasses, or an AI company starting a bank to shore up its share price.
An example of skilled workers training AI.
Watch “Humanoid robots trained for Australian workplaces | 7NEWS” on YouTube
This video is over a decade old, but by golly does it explain it well.
The devaluing of what we do will mean those with power will devalue our opinion.
(CGP Grey doesn't endorse me, I just think he's right.)
The Goal
The future is uncertain, so I'm preparing now. As AI shrinks the value of our work, we need to tax what can't be automated or moved offshore: our land and our resources. Victorians own those resources, and we should get a fair price for them.
AI will make the slide into a surveillance state almost inevitable, and honestly, I'm not a fan of that.
Would you like to know more?
It's not easy to show how bad this can be, but I'll try.
Sometimes you might not share your views because it may start an argument. You have them, but you keep them to yourself. Your beliefs are hidden in your data on the internet: what you click, what you watch, and for how long. The bottleneck has always been the time it takes to work it out. Now AI can do that. It can track your movements across the city through facial recognition, cameras at intersections that read number plates, and your bank card that records where you shop.
It is possible to work out what you believe right now.
It all goes wrong when someone gains power who doesn't like you, because the tools are already there waiting.
Faceless corporations won't leave our faces alone. Bunnings won the right to use facial recognition on shoppers, and now Coles and Woolworths are looking at it too.
The Goal
A ban on facial recognition and other mass surveillance as well as significantly restricting the collection of personal data.
I too am worried that it might kill us all.
The literal experts on the matter keep saying it.
I don't understand why everyone keeps acting like they are joking.
A prepper's guide
Modern medicine is amazing, and I'm not giving up on the gains we've made. My guidance is: defend what we have and build on it.
Bioengineered viruses are a very real and well-documented concern. We had one COVID, we don't need another one.
A Terminator situation isn't likely. Warfare is still limited by logistics, and nuclear powers are as wary of handing their nukes to a robot as to an enemy.
The Goal
Heavy regulation of DNA synthesisers, and making sure AI can't engineer viruses.