The Future and The Future and The Future: How A.I. Will Define Our Era

The Future of the Future of the Future

!THIS ARTICLE WAS WRITTEN WITH AI FOR EXPERIMENTAL PURPOSES. IS NOT INTENDED FOR COMMERCIAL USE AND SHOULD NOT BE CONSIDERED ACCURATE!

The pace of technological development is ever-increasing. 

This exponential progress is most evident in the rise of Artificial Intelligence in the form of Large Language Models, which have already begun to transform the workplace through tools like ChatGPT and Bard, and countless others. 

While the stock market has instantly created an investment bubble, many workers are rightfully concerned about the ramifications of this technology on their employment and quality of life. 

If all that we have to extrapolate upon for a vision of the future are dystopian wastelands and robot overlords, it's easy to assume that the Executive’s constant focus on the bottom line will lead to disaster at the hands of A.I.

However, the history of technological advancement paints a more complex and less abridgeable future with A.I., and that future may be coming much faster than we can anticipate. 

Looking back

Looking at the industrial revolution can give us insight into how a paradigm-shifting technology affects society. 

The rise of factory work led to societal changes beyond the workplace

Workers began regimenting time in new ways. Factory-based work replaced home-based work, leading to new definitions of what it means to work. The ‘commute’ immerged, since traveling to and from work was now a major factor in the feasibility of maintaining employment. Home and work became separated. 

Work and “free time” became differentiated as hourly wages became the primary method of collecting payment. 

The segmentation of work and home life, coupled with the massive influx of industrially produced goods created a new type of consumerist thinking. The goal of earning became the freedom to purchase. Accumulation of wealth, and by extension the time and purchasing power that came with it, became the economic driver for most people, and therefore the economy at large. 

These changes led to the economy we recognize today, and the same changes came with new struggles for workers. 

THE THREAT

Factory models of production include human labor as an equally valued (often undervalued) facet of the production machine.

Including humanity in a brutalist capital equation lead to reduced pay under inhumane working conditions, child labor, and abysmal workplace safety. 

In response to a new lack of consideration, workers developed unions and governments developed regulations to protect human rights within the industrial system, but those regulations came at the cost of lives and livelihoods throughout decades of political and social struggle.

The rise of A.I. poses similar threats and offers similar advantages but at a scale and speed hitherto unimagined. 

A.I. has a similar (if not greater) disruptive power to that of the industrial revolution. 

A.I. is already replacing jobs and will continue to do so. From writers to coders, the labor that once necessitated a human touch is increasingly and unsettlingly easy for a computer to replicate. The immediate response to this shift, in accordance with the capital equation, is to remove human labor wherever possible. As A.I. becomes more capable, its capacity to displace human labor will only grow. 

This is leading to -and will continue to lead to- backlash from workers. In similarity to the “Luddites” of the industrial revolution, critiques of the A.I. revolution highlight the damage that machine labor does to human social structures built around that labor. As people lose jobs, communities suffer just as much as individuals. No more neighborhood bakers, cobblers, and now coders, means more power in the hands of those who can afford access to the machines that produce, and takes it away from the people who once created those products, and those who need those products to survive. Naturally, this shift will be heavily resisted by workers, and that backlash is only just beginning to materialize in the wake of A.I. Just as labor unions and government regulation was key to protecting workers during the I.R., A.I. will doubtlessly require similar measures to keep the working population from being eradicated during the sweeping industrial change. 

Societal Shifts

Along with the tumult of change and regulation, ideas about work, labor, and consumerism are likely going to change as well. 

The COVID 19 pandemic has already had a profound impact on how work is treated across the world. Essential workers feel their value even more but have also been made painfully aware that the economy undervalues their labor and the risk it puts them in. Office workers question the necessity of the office environment as the Internet makes geographic location less and less impactful to job performance. The A.I. revolution has only progressed that shift in perspective even further. The convenience offered by A.I. tools are changing the idea of what is required of a worker, and which labor necessitates the “human touch.” As leaders declare there will be ‘No more coders in the next 5 years’ specialized laborers are finding themselves becoming obsolete. The rise in unemployment and a decrease in the quality of working conditions have already begun and will likely become even more drastic in the coming years. With that change, there will be a reevaluation of what workers owe to their employers and vice versa. There will be a reevaluation of what is considered labor, and who most deserves to benefit from the automation of that labor. Ideas of ownership, human rights, and of societal expectations of care will all be called into question. But several factors of the A.I Revolution make it different from the revolutions of the past. 

Access is everything

During the industrial revolution, wealth and the ability to produce at a competitive scale were removed from the working populace, and consolidated among those that were able to create and maintain factories. A factory, while more efficient than anything before, was still prohibitable expensive for 99% of people. Therefore, those unable to own a factory became a cog in someone else's factory. The resources necessary to utilize A.I. are at a considerably lower access point for most citizens, meaning that the same disruptive technology that can destroy workers' livelihoods can just as likely become a tool for new ventures that were hitherto impossible for the average worker to undertake. A worker on a human team can easily become a manager of their own A.I. workforce accomplishing their own goals and contributing to their own individual success instead of an employer. However, this utopian outcome hinges on a few important factors. 

A.I. must remain open access. Putting A.I. behind a paywall and restricting access to its tools will only serve to further disenfranchise the people whose livelihoods are poised to be usurped by that technology. Additionally, the functions of generative A.I. tools are already causing turmoil for copyright law and the common legal understanding of property.  Who owns what an A.I. creates? Who owns the data an A.I. uses to create? What even COUNTS as a product of A.I.? These are questions that society as a whole still needs to wrestle with, and Government Regulation play a massive role in how the A.I. Revolution affects the average worker. The most consequential factor in all of this will be the speed at which our government and our society are able to adapt.  A.I. is growing faster than any technology humanity has created. In 5 years, the A.I. environment will be nearly unrecognizable compared to today. We don’t have as much time as we think to react, but looking to the past can give us invaluable insight on how to shape our own future.