So...this is, in a sense, yet another "battle of the cringe." in one corner, we got college grads indoctrinated into wanting to work after college, and who likely have tons of student loan debt, and in the other, we have out of touch tech CEOs giving speeches about how AI is amazing at commencement ceremonies.
People might think I'm punching down on the college grads, and in a way I am, but as someone who was in that situation, and still technically is despite graduating over a decade ago, here's how I see it. We shouldnt want to work. We want to work, because we've been conditioned to work. We're told that's how life is and if you wanna survive, you need to work. We tell people to go to college so they dont end up in a dead end job, and when people leave school, they kinda hope not to end up in a dead end job.
But then the tech bros are taking their jobs. And they're pissed off at the tech bros waxing quasi religious about how amazing AI is and blah blah blah when it's making their lives miserable. You can't blame the kids to some degree for wanting the existing social contract to...you know...work.
But that's the thing. it doesn't. It quite frankly never did. It's always been a sham, and we should've wanted to change it for a while now. But we never do. We just end up talking about creating more jobs, while we're all indoctrinated to want more jobs, and rather than use technology to free us from labor, we cheer on our own enslavement by calling for the creation of more jobs, to fulfill a social contract that sucks and is increasingly unnecessary in the first place.
Which is why I cringe at the whole jobist sentiments we see where people are anti AI because it "steals jobs." This is just luddism. I cant blame people for being pissed, but I feel like people are pissed at the wrong thing. The tech bros are right in a way, these technologies have the potential to revolutionize society. HOWEVER, for those changes to benefit the masses, that underlying social contract has to change.
Will those tech bro CEOs advocate for the right changes? I dont think so. Like, a decade ago, I thought Elon Musk was one of the more sensible billionaires...because he talked about wanting UBI. But even then the cracks were obvious in his worldview. For example, he had a batcrap insane work ethic, wanted his employees to have a batcrap insane work ethic, and honestly, if UBI existed, he'd have no power over his employees to force his batcrap insane work ethic on them. Then the guy got involved with the Trump administration, outed himself as a nazi, made up nonsense about mass welfare fraud at doge to justify undermining social safety nets, and we saw the guy's true colors. This google CEO...I'd imagine he's cut from a similar cloth. Most of them are after all. They talk a big game about AI this and AI that, but i dont think they fully recognize what AI actually means for the labor force and our social contract. I mean....AI is all well and good, doing away with labor is all well and good. HOWEVER, if you aren't gonna advocate for proper solutions to the problems AI creates for our existing social systems, please STFU about it. Because yeah....we need to make those changes. And dont get me wrong, I'm PRO those changes. I DONT want a world where we all have to work for a living in an era where it's nowhere near as necessary as it was in the past. I've long since known we're literally just creating jobs to fulfill a social contract that shouldnt even exist any more, which is why im so blase on the subject. Like...we shouldnt want to work. We should want machines to do work. We should want to liberate people from work. But until we start establishing ways to take care of people outside of the work force, like a UBI, universal healthcare, etc., all we're doing by imposing these technologies on the masses is ruining their futures, just like my future was ruined.
Idk, the reason I think the students are cringe is because I feel like the last thing we should want is to preserve this system of work and jobs, and yet people turn into massive luddites and rage against the machines in order to do so. it's nonsensical to me. Again, we shouldnt want to work. And if technology creates a jobless future, that's fine, as long as we take care of people outside of jobs.
But again, the billionaires dont want that. They think "oh goody I save on labor costs", without realizing they're destroying their own work force. And then they oppose any changes to make the world better. Which is the real problem here. The real problem with AI and the tech is the billionaire class. It's the fact that they wield the tech, they use it to ruin peoples' lives, and then they oppose the changes necessary to make such a system work.
Again, if you're pro AI, you should also be pro UBI. If you arent pro UBI and you're pro AI, you're part of the problem. With that said, I guess the billionaires are the cringier faction. After all, the students are just victims of a social system that forced them to make certain life choices while then screwing them out of the upside that justified said choices in the first place. Their worst crime is...wanting the existing social contract to work after spending their whole lives doing everything right to get the best deal they can within it. The billionaires are ruining the economic system for the rest of us while opposing any positive change to fix things. So I'll always side with the workers over the billionaires on that one.
Still. I do feel like the whole "I want to work thing" is cringe luddism. Do we really wanna work? Or were we forced to work in a system that told us if we dont our lives are gonna be miserable? Because im gonna be honest, as someone who graduated college and quickly found the system of work not...working...I deprogrammed myself from that where I honestly checked out of that system mentally. And I kinda just see that system for what it is: slavery without calling it such. Idk. I just encourage others to think the same way, rather than going in a direction of hating on labor saving technology in the name of preserving jobs we shouldnt want to do any more.
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