Corporate powers are telling us not to worry our little heads about the humanoid robotics they’re increasingly employing in America’s workplaces.
Yes, they concede, AI’s new generation of “thinking robots” will transform many jobs, but – like magic – they’ll also create better career opportunities for “the human element.” Really… like what? Well, like taking care of all those machines! But wait – can’t a robot do that, too?
What’s playing out here is corporate hide-and-seek from the public. Having poured hundreds of billions into developing the technology for their dream of a workerless workforce, CEOs and tech investors are now desperate to deflect workers’ fury over the joblessness that awaits them. Thus, moneyed elites have mounted a soothing PR campaign, asserting that the AI bots will only replace repetitive, drudge jobs, “liberating” those human employees to do higher-value work.
That bubble of lies, however, is already being popped by reality. Many renegade CEOs and profiteers brag that their advanced bots are taking over sophisticated thinking jobs and doing top-level creative tasks. For example, the New York Times reports that Klarna, a multibillion-dollar company, says it’s replacing more than half of its 5,000 employees with new robotics. Its CEO is not coy about the future of work, declaring “AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do.”
The designers of this Brave New World bluntly say their AI creatures are fast-coming for a wide variety of our jobs – and big investors are betting billions on them. Yet, politicians and the media blithely accept the corporate deception that there is no need to talk about it – much less consider what to do about it.
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