Thread by @GonzaloLira1968

Re. ChatGPT and AI generally: Has anyone wondered about its effects on a “post-industrial” service-oriented society?

I think it’ll lead to Eloi and Morlocks in Western society: A tiny minority of well-off hedonists—and a vast underclass of wage-slaves barely surviving.

1/16

The idea of Globalization was to offshore heavy industry to low-wage countries—so that high-wage countries could improve GDP by concentrating on more high value-added industries.

This destroyed factories in the West—and the skilled and semi-skilled jobs at those factories.

2/

What were those blue-collar workers told do? “Learn to code!”

Education in the West was supposed to turn those blue-collar workers into white-collar workers.

It didn’t happen. The lower end of the middle-class became working poor, relying on government handouts.

3/

The big surprise of ChatGPT is that it can deliver written work—high value-added labor—as good as the most competent lawyer, programmer, academic.

It isn’t that AI further eats away at the lower-end of the middle-class—it’ll eat away at the UPPER end of the middle-class.

4/

This is already happening in law firms. No need for a $200-an-hour associate from Yale to write a brief when an AI can write it faster and for next to nothing.

I’m sure there are (or soon will be) AI that do the same for industrial design, architecture, research, etc.

5/

So where does that Yale Law School grad find a job?

Not the legal profession—he’s been replaced by AI.

Not in factory work—there are no factories, no jobs.

So menial service industries it is—Uber or Deliveroo or Starbucks—earning less than $20-an-hour.

Hey—he’s gotta eat.

6/

He expected a six-figure salary—now he’s working poor.

And he won’t be alone—with more AI taking over high value-added labor, every highly educated university graduate will find no work except in menial service jobs. Or in education itself.

You’re already kind of seeing it.

7/

He can’t retrain for a skilled and semi-skilled blue-collar job—those jobs have already been exported to lower-wage countries by Globalization.

The BEST the Yale Law grad can get is a menial or low-level service job that cannot (at this time) be done by robots.

8/

As to the fiction of becoming self-employed, an entrepreneur: Most people are NOT self-starters. Most wouldn't know where to begin.

Because most people are followers, even high-IQ people. They prefer a known safe career path, a predictable 9-to-5 job, and a steady paycheck.

9/

That’s why the smart ones went to graduate school and got the professional credential to begin with: They wanted a safe ticket to a predictable life. Actual entrepreneurs usually quit college to strike out on their own at an early age—witness Gates, Jobs, Zuckerberg.

10/

So that high-IQ, highly educated Yale Law grad will NEVER climb the socio-economic ladder. He might make a stab at some business—fail (because it’s just not his bag)—sink back to his menial service-job—rot.

Realistically, that Yale Law grad is now poor—with no prospects.

11/

THAT is the issue with ChatGPT and other high value-added AI: They are eating away at the upper-end of the middle-class, those souls who are hard-working and intelligent, but compliant and without the aptitude (or experience) to strike out on their own.

12/

This goes for all the other Ivy and mid-tier university graduates who aspire to lower-six-figure corporate lives: They will be replaced by AI, and relegated to the working poor.

Globalization destroyed the middle-class from below—AI will destroy the middle-class from above.

13/

So Western society will become divided between the Eloi and the Morlocks—because of AI.

The Eloi—those who inherited wealth or were lucky enough to come by it somehow—will live easy. The Morlocks—the vast majority of the work-force—will be their literal lackeys and slaves.

14/

Consider the resentment/social unrest this will bring. Smart, hard-working, educated people reduced to menial service jobs far below their aptitudes or aspirations.

Worst of all, with no hope of improvement.

These are the people who fill the ranks of revolutionaries.

15/

Even if the Revolution is suppressed—consider how impossible it will be for the State to support all those working-poor.

There will be too many—and not enough tax revenue.

So the society as a whole will paradoxically become poorer—because of AI.

Just some thoughts.

16/16

Good point: AI won’t affect the rest of the world as it will the West b/c they have heavy industry dependent on skilled and semi-skilled labor. These jobs cannot be replaced by robots, for the foreseeable future.

Industrially, the West is hollowed out.

https://twitter.com/freedomhunt3r/status/1627719789547225118?s=20