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The "Why" of AI [1]

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Date: 2023-02-22  

Portrait of an AI by Midjourney

Amidst all the recent hand-wringing about artificial neural networks (AI) and the negative consequences widespread use of the technology might bring about for workers, there is much discussion of the “How”; how they work, how they might benefit or damage society and how it will affect the job prospects of highly-skilled workers. There is also a lot of talk about “What” AI is and is not; are AI neural networks conscious (they are not), are they a direct replacement for human workers (maybe)? Neural networks are just large data sets that are able to make connections in EXISTING information analyzing language of the user's input. The responses these systems generate can be in the form of the written word or as images - amalgams of existing forms to make new iterations of those forms. This is what humans do when creating something using the knowledge they have gathered or researched. AI's do not "understand" in the way a human being understands, since human understanding is based on all the senses, experiences, conscious and subconscious connections - and, let's not forget accidental misinterpretations - of the world around us.

We might imagine that the introduction of a machine that does the work of 100 factory workers simply means that productivity of the factory is increased and the human supervisors that remain have better jobs and that displaced workers will go on to work elsewhere or get better jobs themselves. But a machine that can replace designers, attorneys, copywriters - and might even reach up into the management and decision makers within the workforce - is something likely to engender more powerful resistance. When higher income workers feel threatened by AI you might have a very real problem. Low wage, manual workers are easy to dismiss unless protected by an organized union. And even then, these protections may themselves cave to the inevitable changes within an industry brought about by automation. And those in jobs that traditionally require higher levels of training are often less likely to feel the need for wage protection. They're mostly doing better than the average worker on the shop floor. Also those with higher the level of qualifications feel that they have more power to influence government agencies and the courts. So, a potential incursion into the higher levels of the workforce is bound to be of concern to many, what we have always referred to as "skilled workers".

That is the “What of AI. What seems less discussed in the “WHY” of AI. The underlying impetus for this development.

Wise people often say, “Just because you CAN do something doesn’t mean you should”. The Luddites of the early Industrial Revolution feared that machines would replace humans in their labor-intensive industries, and it must be said that in the short-to-medium term this was probably a well-founded fear. As new technologies were developed in the period between roughly 1760 to 1840 some number of workers in some industries were displaced, but over time workers moved from the countryside to the cities, contributing to massively increased manufacturing output. Retraining and redeployment of workers resulted in rising standards of living for the median worker, albeit on a scale dwarfed by the standards achieved by the "owner class". Technological innovations from this period, and up to the present day, can be accurately described as a combination of invention and exploitation.

“The exploitation of human beings that was the African slave trade, as well as the widespread abuse of indentured servitude, was the socially sanctioned exploitation of free and cheap labor. that built today's economic powerhouses - the industrialized "First World". The sudden accessibility of vast supplies of free/cheap labor and virtually free energy - from fossil fuels, coal and oil - turbo-charged the creation of the technological feedback loops that have sculpted the world in which we now live. Technology, fossil fuels and cheap labor have transformed human society, gradually (and in certain respects, superficially) raising the standards of living of millions of people living in the industrialized world. However, the largest effect of this advancement of industrial processes has been the concentration of immense wealth in the hands of a very few. Today the gap between the rich and the poor is the widest in human history. It is only logical to conclude that the Industrial Revolution and the Tech Revolution of the past almost twenty years was engineered to overwhelmingly benefit the wealthy and to mollify ordinary working people with notable, but lopsided, advances in living standards.

The development of AI seems to be driven by exactly the same "market forces" to benefit the same group of owners. Tech companies, as well as other wealthy industries, seek to enrich themselves through the automation of more the complex human skills they need to succeed. In other words, to eliminate the need for human workers and transferring that work to machines. The story they tell is they same one they always tell, that the development of AI is meant to make life easier for the regular person - providing tools to make work more efficient, leisure more fun. However, when industry talks about worker efficiency they are talking about a) increasing productivity in order to, b) reduce their workforce - the single most expensive line item in their profit-and-loss reports.

In 1930, the economist John Maynard Keynes predicted that, thanks to technological progress, his own grandchildren would likely work no more than 15 hours a week. Of course, he wasn’t implying that their incomes would be reduced in the same proportion as the reduction in world hours. The idea of course is that as the economy becomes more efficient that workers are freed to work fewer hours to achieve the same economic output. Leisure time and work would be inverted from past standards, with a two-day work week and a five day weekend. People would work only as much as needed. However, it is clear that the economy is not built for the majority, but for the minority - the owners, not the workers. In 1972, as robotic technology was beginning to make its first major inroads into manufacturing, The Wall Street Journal agreed with the view that by the twenty-first century workers would naturally work many fewer hours as society gradually uncouples "income" from "work".

We have to ask ourselves, why do we insist that people work in order to put a roof over their heads, feed their families, put their children through college, access health care services and grow old as financially secure elders? The world economy could, with correct management, provide all human needs. Who benefits from the labor market model of income distribution? Surely it is people who do not wish to limit their potential income to millions of dollars, those whose mantra is perpetuate growth - even on a finite planet like ours!

It seems that the age-old chassis upon which “meritocracy” is built - a horse-and-buggy era chassis at that - is based upon the belief that the sum total value of a person is that person's monetary value to the economy. That without "a job" people have no incentive to innovate, contribute to society in general or better themselves as individuals is a core tenet of this system. Of course, it is very easy to see the many, many fallacies here. The value of my family is not the value they bring to the economy. Neither is the value of any human being able to be fully describes in dollars, pounds, yen or any other notional currency. I will simply list some jobs that people have by way of illustration: An underpaid nurse working 80 hours and more per week for a pittance; a grocery store worker who cannot afford housing in the upscale neighborhood where he works and must spend two hours commuting to and from his job and still barely covers his bills; a songwriter whose music has to be a mere hobby because art doesn't pay, so he works at a car dealership - a job he hates.

If you’re wondering… this article was written with zero input from an AI. The image accompanying it was “created” using Midjourney - an image generating neural network that assembles an iterative series of images from it’s vast database of imagery scraped from the internet from language prompts entered by the user.

Simon Holden is a British visual effects supervisor working in Los Angeles since 1989.

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[1] Url: https://www.dailykos.com/stories/2023/2/22/2154379/-The-Why-of-AI

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