Tap the Breaks

From Venezuela to Greenland to Iran and ICE on the streets of Minneapolis (and the possibility of a U.S. military presence there), President Trump’s actions only three weeks into the new year are certainly creating a target-rich environment for any opinion columnist, while creating a slew of distractions from the core issues facing most Americans.

I’ll save those topics for another day and return for now to the topic of my last column, specifically artificial intelligence (AI).

In that column, I highlighted the need for a more measured and thoughtful approach to AI’s intrusion into our lives, with a nod to Governor Ron DeSantis’ desire to tap the brakes, even in opposition to President Trump’s approach to virtually unfettered expansion of AI for the sake of a romping stock market.

One of our readers reached out to me about the column and expressed similar concern. He’s in his eighties, still working full time, and asked me if I’d learned anything about the tax revenue impact of the jobs that will be lost to AI in the years ahead, specifically the social security revenue coming from humans doing jobs versus technology. I confessed I hadn’t really seen anything on that specific topic but told him I’d sniff around.

What I found was considerably more disturbing.

The Wall Street Journal had a great story on January 18 about the prevailing ethos in Silicon Valley titled “Why the Tech World Thinks the American Dream is Dying.”

The article, written by reporter Tim Higgins, addresses the question: “Will the AI boom be the last chance to get rich before artificial intelligence makes money essentially worthless?”

That might seem like a far-fetched prospect, but Higgins does a thorough job articulating how tech titans like Elon Musk and OpenAI’s Sam Altman and others are thinking about the current evolution of AI and its impact on our society, summarizing their views accordingly:

“The argument is that tech companies and their leaders will become a class unto their own with infinite wealth. No one else will have the means to generate money for themselves because AI will have taken their jobs and opportunities. In other words, the bridge is about to be raised for those chasing the American dream. Everyone is worried about being left on the wrong side.”

Higgins quotes a young executive in the AI space saying, “This is the last chance to build generational wealth. You need to make money now before you become part of the permanent underclass.”

This fits a distinct pattern in our past where the enrichment of the few can unleash misery for the many. That was certainly the case in 2008 with the housing market crash, driven by rapacious subprime lending by the likes of financial powerhouse Goldman Sachs.

Their greed unleashed havoc on the rest of us that took years to recover from, driving journalist Matt Taibi to describe Goldman Sachs as “a great vampire squid wrapped around the face of humanity, relentlessly jamming its blood funnel into anything that smells like money.”

It’s happening today with social media companies, who have rewired our collective consciousness to chase and consume silliness, rage, and division for the sake of a buck.

I’m no Luddite with an aversion to technology. I worked for a large computer company out west 25 years ago, when the internet was just beginning to change so much in our lives, mostly for the better, and it was a thrilling thing to be part of at the time.

But AI is posing huge downstream risks of unintended consequences if not reined in by forces outside the companies driving it. It’s not hard to imagine future generations unable to draft a heartfelt letter to a friend or create a new song, poem, or business pitch, because AI has done it for them all their lives.

And the job cuts are coming. Amazon, Microsoft, and IBM are among the companies citing AI behind the layoffs they announced last year. A recent study by the Massachusetts Institute of Technology showed nearly 12% of the entire U.S. labor market can effectively be replaced by AI, saving companies more than a trillion dollars in wages, healthcare, etc. My guess is that number will dramatically increase as AI capability advances.

In general, I think government should tread lightly when considering regulations on businesses and industries, provided those companies demonstrate a balance between the public good and profit. Nothing I’ve seen from the new tech overlords indicates that balance.