Why AI?

AI will retire work

Yes, AI will kill jobs. That's the whole point. It's why we invented technology in the first place. Humanity's disdain for work goes back 6,000 years, when we rolled out the first wheel. We'd rather not break our backs for the man, thanks. AI will fulfill a multi-millennia dream to do less.

How AI-ify (and Ceobot) will deconstruct the oppressive working economy

Work makes us miserable and poor

Since 1980, company profits have increased 5.1% per year, while wages increased by 1.8% per year (Prof Steve Keen).

Those escalating profits push prices up faster than wages, so you end up working harder and harder to afford the very things you make. And not to belabor the point from before, but you don’t enjoy making those things in the first place. So tell me again, why would anyone want to work like this?

It’s all about the money, of course. Companies have it and people need it, even if it's not much. That’s why citizens keep signing up to produce more widgets for fewer wages year after demoralizing year.

And it’s why those same citizens jealously defend their shitty jobs against machines. But what if we told you that sweeping redundancies will actually re-balance the economic scales and move us away from the self-defeating work-for-money economy?

Pew’s 2023 workplace survey found just 42% of American under-50s find their work truly fulfilling. You can safely assume it's actually less than that, given most people don't like to admit they’re wasting their lives.

Those respondents who said they were satisfied with their jobs also happened to earn more, which suggests it’s the pay packet – not the job – that drives their satisfaction. And guess what’s happening to that one redeeming feature of work? Your pay per unit of output is shrinking dramatically.

Real wages are virtually unmoved between 1973 and 2013 despite worker output rising 74% over the same period (Wage stagnation in nine charts, Economic Policy Institute).

Why did those 40 annual salary reviews amount to an effective raise of nothing? Because when choosing between lifting wages or profits, employers always, always, always (x40) plum for profits.

A fairness revolution is here

Revolutions get a bad wrap. What, with all the bloodshed, chaos, and things getting set on fire. But in fact it's been too long since we had a proper one.

So-called capitalist 'revolutions' – like the industrial revolution – displaced rank-and-file workers, immiserated those who kept their jobs, and enriched the elite. That's not a revolution. That's status quo on steroids.

In the good old days, revolutions meant something. They toppled the rich ruling classes. Nowadays? Consider this: we just had a US election where the 'protest vote' was a vote for company tax cuts. Our revolution skills need some work.

AI is the answer. By commoditizing intellect, it'll finally disrupt the cosy knowledge economy and shake up the meritocracy that impoverishes everyday workers.

Tools like Ceobot will, for the first time, impose ‘efficiencies’ on the upper echelons of society. Business leaders who have historically driven workers out of jobs in favor of machines will finally face the same reckoning themselves.

We can expect this to create very different politics and a softer landing for tech-displaced workers. Governments will roll out the safety nets for rich plutocrats. They'll have to do the same for the rest, too.

Why AI can manage better

Within a generation, AI will eliminate management positions from the human job market. And it'll make great leadership material.

An executive is responsible for plotting a way to higher profits. Some humans are sufficiently calculating to do the job but if it's calculating you want, then you're better off hiring an actual calculator. AI is a cheap, talking calculator.

There’s a natural human reluctance to submit to an artificial CEO, no matter how awesome AI-ify makes it. Working for machines has a dystopian vibe.

That's just unfortunate paranoia. Algorithmic machines have earned our complete trust. Your reading, listening, viewing and shopping ‘choices’ are already laid out for you by a machine, much like a parent lays out clothes for their children.

Google mediates your information. Spotify picks your music. Netflix and YouTube curate the movies and documentaries you see. Amazon all but fills your shopping cart. Meta casts your vote.

These algorithms decide what gets read, heard, understood, and bought. And we’re mostly OK with that. In fact we’re so comfortable with algorithms that they've become invisible to us. We still think we're the ones making choices. So why wouldn’t we transition that trust to algorithmic bosses?

There will be minor adjustments to make. Consumption algorithms like the ones mentioned here are designed to be a chameleon. They learn what we like and assume that form, so we don’t notice they’re there. In the work setting, it’ll be different. Instead of being a clone of you, the algorithm will be a clone of your boss.

And there’s the rub. An AI-led business environment will be much like a human-led business environment. Ceobot is trained on human precedence. We’re merely asking it to keep doing what we already do to ourselves.

So if it starts to feel like you're working inside a machine, it's only because you were always working inside a machine. We're simply making it official.

Um, when do we get to stop work?

We'll only have to work for AI managers for a little while. Those AI bosses will figure out a way to relieve you of work. You can count on that because the shareholders will demand it.

So how long will you have to wait? It depends...

Tools like Ceobot will speed the onset of peak capitalism. And Capitalism can be represented as an evolution from inefficient quality creation (high input, high price) to efficient quantity creation (low input, low price).

If you're engaged in the pursuit of high-effort quality creation, your redundancy will come sooner. If your current job already facilitates scale, you may have to wait a while to be sacked. But you will be.

And once humans are eliminated from the supply side of the economy, costs of production will plummet and prices will drop to near zero. Consumers will, of course, be jobless and unable to pay even those modest prices.

But the simple solution to that is ERROR //
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