...Eric Fry on the coming of the AI age and serious ramifications for the workforce and society.
...AI is simply going to widen the inequality, it is going to make businesses and the rich richer and drive workers into welfare. Society would likely be disrupted in ways previously unseen when adoption ramps up.
...and this AI force is not the making of any political party, and no Govt can do anything except place restrictions on it.
...and workers have no idea what's about to hit them and yet contemplating supporting the party of business that would simply give AI a free hand.
This Is All Happening at Warp-Speed.Remember, ChatGPT is already being adopted 42 times faster than the internet.
In fact, Elon Musk said…
This new technology will drastically increase the wealth gap in ways you don’t even think are possible.
I believe millions of unprepared Americans will fall into poverty…
And have to depend on a government welfare program known as Universal Basic Income.
In other words, even though this tech is about to trigger a massive boom…
It Could Also Help Usher in a New Wave of Socialism in America.You see, most people think that breakthrough technologies always lead to prosperity for everyone.
But that’s not true.
History suggests that the elite and capital owners see immediate benefits from this kind of tech breakthrough…
But the workers don’t always experience the benefits right away.
For example, after the Industrial Revolution got started in Britain in 1760…
GDP and corporate profits soared because of technologies like the steam engine.
But it took an estimated 50 years for real wages to rise.
This Phenomenon Where Wages Don’t Rise With New Technologies Is Known as “Engels’ Pause”It’s named after the German philosopher Friedrich Engels who originally noted this delay.
And it happens when a new tech replaces workers…
Pushing millions of people into the job market.
With so many more people competing for available jobs…
The workers have little bargaining power.
As a result, wages remain low.
It happened during the Industrial Revolution…
And it’s happening again.
Many experts actually believe the U.S. has been stuck in an Engels’ Pause for the last few decades.
According to economists from MIT…
And that’s a big reason why income inequality has gotten so bad in the U.S.
Take a look...
While wages for college-educated, white-collar professionals kept increasing…
The wages for blue-collar workers barely moved.
In fact, when you adjust it for inflation..
Blue-collar wages are actually 15% lower than they were in 1980.
In other words, they’re making less money now than what they were making more than 40 years ago.
No wonder a recent report shows that 57% of Americans can’t afford a $1,000 emergency.
Meanwhile, just in recent years billionaires added $5 trillion to their wealth.
But it’s about to get much worse because…
AI Will Soon Explode This Wealth Gap.According to the Brookings Institution, 50 out of every 100 blue-collar jobs will be replaced by AI.
That includes jobs like fast food preparation, office administration and even transportation jobs like truck drivers.
An AI truck can drive from the Port of Long Beach near Los Angeles to Chicago…
Without stopping for a meal…
Without taking sleep breaks…
And without requiring health insurance or a pension.
Do you think companies will think twice before replacing their drivers with these trucks?
They will not.
So think about that...
As a truck driver, you can earn about $80,000 per year in the U.S.…
Enough to support a family in most small to midtier cities even with today’s inflation.
Well, AI is about to push that salary down to a big fat zero.
Think about what that means for the 3.5 million truck drivers in the U.S.
It’s the same story for warehouse and manufacturing workers.
Amazon already has more than 100,000 AI-powered robots in their warehouses.
Soon, I believe there will virtually be no humans there.
Walmart, the largest private employer in the U.S., said recently that in the next 3 years it will use AI to automate a large number of its stores.
They said 65% of stores and 55% of their fulfillment centers will be fully automated.
And listen to what the president of tech firm Infosys told
The New York Times:
In other words, many companies are already planning to get rid of their workers and replace them with AI.
And It Gets Worse...Because this time not even white-collar jobs will be safe.
For example, let me tell you about a study published by LawGeex, a leading AI contract review platform.
It pitted 20 attorneys against the AI to identify errors in various contracts.
The result?
The lawyers were able to identify mistakes with 85% accuracy in roughly 92 minutes…
But get this…
The AI managed to find errors in the contracts with 94% accuracy... and in 26 seconds.
That’s roughly 200 times faster than the 20 lawyers.
And the craziest part is, this happened in 2018!
The technology is
much better now…
In fact, ChatGPT just passed the Uniform Bar Exam with a score higher than 90% of lawyers.
ChatGPT also passed the U.S. Medical Licensing Exam without any clinician input.
That’s why I believe services like ChatGPT will soon start putting writers…
Journalists, paralegals, software developers, and digital marketers out of a job.
That’s exactly why Goldman Sachs is already warning that 300 million people around the world could soon lose their jobs to AI.
Think about how insane that is.
And here’s the big problem…
In the past, most of these people who got displaced by a new technology could just learn a new skill.
But that won’t be easy this time…
Because they’ll need to learn a new skill that AI can’t do.
As AI continues to develop more and more, that will be almost impossible.
And that’s why I believe that…
Millions of Americans Will Have No Choice but to Go on Welfare.Maybe you’ve heard some folks in Congress floating around a radical socialist idea called Universal Basic Income.
It’s basically the idea that the government should provide a guaranteed income of about $1,000 per month for all adult citizens…
Whether or not they work.
Not surprisingly, politicians on the left like AOC, Elizabeth Warren and Bernie Sanders have all defended the idea.
But what
is surprising is that...
Many of the tech investors and billionaires who are developing AI believe Universal Basic Income is inevitable.
Elon Musk for example has said that thanks to AI “there will need to be a universal basic income.”
The founder of OpenAI has also been promoting this idea because he knows what’s coming.
And virtually all the Big Tech founders defend the idea, including Mark Zuckerberg, Jeff Bezos, Bill Gates, and Larry Page.
Right now, the idea of Universal Basic Income is still radical for most Americans.
But what happens when 300 million people lose their jobs to AI and automation?
I believe more and more people will begin supporting that idea…
And millions of Americans will have no choice but to get on welfare.
That’s the bad news. And it’s bad.
