When we kids skinned a knee or jammed a finger, Dad would ascertain that we were not immediately dying and then insist, “Oh, you’re fine,” and go on washing the car.
Similarly, a lot of CEOs have been trying to calm our upset about AI lately. On Monday in the Executive Communication Report (a newsletter I write that you would be crazy not to subscribe to because it is both useful and free), this item:
In the interest of space, I didn’t include this added morsel from the CNN piece:
“The pace of adoption of this technology is going a little bit faster. As businesses wrestle with deploying the technology and the automation, the short-term disruption might be a little bit higher” [than the Industrial Revolution?!] the Goldman Sachs CEO said. “But our economy is incredibly broad and nimble.”
Wait, what does this guy think the rest of us lie awake worrying about? Civilization coming to an end? The end of history? No, money boy! Those are academic matters, top of mind only to chin-strokers who have gazillions of dollars in their doomsday vault. I bet you folks also think a lot about the sun going out, in another five billion years. I probably would, if I were you. We all need something to fear, besides fear itself.
We short-term thinkers? We paycheck piggies? We’re down here fretting about losing our actual jobs and our actual way of life—kinda like millions did in all those other “floods” of technologies of which you so blithely speak. More profoundly than that, we’re worried about our children not having a future that connects in any way with what they’ve been raised to expect—during the generation or three that our “broad and nimble” economy might take to absorb “the short-term disruption.”
Luckily, we working people have tools for coping with our existential dread. Passed down in our cultural DNA through centuries of economic and social upheaval and disease and war, our coping skills include: Rearranging deck chairs. Faith in God, in one another and in ourselves. Denial. Netflix. Sports, and other forms of violence. Drugs and alcohol. And so on and so forth. These tools vary in their effectiveness, but all of them work better than reassuring quotes from rich guys about how nimble the fucking economy is.
Believe me.
Brilliant piece, David. Well said.
Wonderful. What they’ve got to fear is the revolution. And that might be bringing some unexpected short-term disruption to them.
True, Brian. I often think of Chicago’s robber barons around the turn of the last century, cowering with their wives and children in their homes on Prairie Avenue—”millionaires row”—while striking workers marched up the street throwing bricks through their windows. What does that look like, today?
Refreshing to get a perspective on AI different from, “You coal miners just need to get on the AI bandwagon.”