AI Exploitation: A Mundane Economic Apocalypse

by Eric Franklin

I would like to begin this article with a simple hypothesis.

The hunt for the means of efficiency at the expense of human labor via Artificial Intelligence (AI) is the new, modern mode of capitalist exploitation, and as long as corporate lobbyists and lawyers push to maintain the unregulated status quo, workers will increasingly suffer over time.

The proof of this hypothesis is only beginning to reveal itself, but if left unchecked, the results will be catastrophic.  I believe that the apocalypse is economic in nature, and much more mundane than the science fiction concept of AI taking over as the future rulers of humanity (a theory that fundamentally misunderstands what AI is, and its present and future applications).

We have many examples of the formation and execution of such exploitation already playing out that I would like to make mention of before we touch on the economic theory that dives into what and why worker exploitation will occur on a mass scale.  Multiple careers and full-time employment opportunities are beginning to see disruption via AI taking over the jobs of human laborers.

A few that we can look to are:

•  Legal Analysts and Paralegals  - These jobs are slowly being designated to AI capable of sifting through a substantial amount of emails, articles, and case histories to find necessary information and discovery for specific types of cases.

•  Financial Analysts  - Some lower level analysts in the financial sector will be replaced by AI capable of researching historical trends and making future financial predictions based on current patterns.

•  Programmers, Engineers, and Code Reviewers  - Software companies are already researching AI capable of writing more efficient code for specific purposes, as well as reviewing code for mistakes, inefficiencies, etc.  AI is also being utilized to rewrite code in various other languages.

•  Writers in All Industries  - This has been a hot topic recently, but AI, while not capable of mimicking high art, can write half-decent drafts, story outlines, scripts, etc. that can then be cleaned up and fully written out by interns and lower-paid writers.  George R. R. Martin and other authors are suing to have their work removed from AI analysis as their actual characters and plot structures are being replicated for cheap e-books.

There are other examples that I could point out, but I feel that these examples suffice for our purposes.  I do want to make clear one very important point.  I do not think that Artificial Intelligence is inherently bad, or that it cannot serve society in great ways.

Most of the above examples show that tremendous things can be accomplished with AI, avoiding many of the human errors committed in those fields and accomplishing in mere seconds what might take humans weeks or even months.  The point of this article is not meant to bash AI.  It's meant to point to how corporations using AI in an unregulated way, driven only by profits, will greatly hurt workers over time.

Corporations are madly pursuing AI solutions to problems that have historically been solved by human labor, and we (at least in America) live in a society that largely hinders and demonizes unions and other means of worker representation.

Employers will gladly go through mass layoffs to replace workers with cheap overseas labor, or Artificial Intelligence, and workers have no recourse other than to find other jobs that will make them a living wage, or starve.

I studied finance and economics in college before I moved into the tech industry, and I can tell you that there is no invisible hand of the market, driven only by supply and demand.  There is a very visible hand, guided by (((lawmakers))) and (((billionaires))), that controls the market and the success and status of the wealthy.

Profit will guide those in power to replace any jobs that they can with cheaper AI solutions.  Workers who specialize in roles that are replaced by AI are not just going to pack up and switch careers; that isn't a feasible approach, with the cost of higher education and job training only increasing every year and a large number of workers being a few paychecks away from homelessness.  Profit drives all.  A worker's success only matters so long as that success is useful to a company.

So how do we solve this unusual problem?

If we can agree that AI is tremendously useful and should be pursued by society, but that it will have a very negative effect on workers over time, what solutions do we have?

I propose that corporations be held responsible for job displacement, specifically when workers are laid off and replaced by Artificial Intelligence.  I do not mean that they should only pay their workers severance and move on.  Severance packages are a temporary measure, but do not solve the future problem that these workers will face, which is that they will need to find new work.

I believe that those companies that replace human labor with AI should be required, by law, to pay for education and/or job training for those displaced workers, to allow for them to pursue new careers, which will give them options for future employment in fields that are not seeing dramatic cuts to the labor force.  This solution would require more research, and would certainly be an uphill battle, with companies lobbying against such a measure (God forbid corporations be charitable to the workers that help them succeed by spending mere pennies out of their total revenue to help them survive layoffs), but without helping workers find contingency plans for such a disruption to our labor force, good people will be made to suffer for the corporate bottom line.

Economic disruption at this scale will be catastrophic.  Sure, it will be an apocalypse that we will recover from, with new generations of workers pursuing newer educational paths and vocational studies, but why should the workers of the world have to suffer in the interim?

It's simple, really.  They shouldn't.