Artificial intelligence is not a problem because of how many jobs we are going to lose in the coming years. Artificial intelligence may be a problem because of the direction industrialism has taken in our lives: Did it make work more efficient or make living easier? Is it one or the other? Or is there more to unravel?

The industrial revolution gave us amazing inventions from the printing press, the steam engine down to the electricity, the lightbulb, the motor car and much more than I can list. Most of these were tools of efficiency. This efficiency made work yield more production and life easier. Less manual labor, more machine labor. That is good thing right? It is, for the most part. More product, less time. More product, more profit. More profit, more revenue. More revenue for wages. Stop right there. Not so fast. It did lead to more wages depending which organization you may have been a part of but after the success of the labor movements of the early 20th century, there was great wave of societal progress that understood the underlying agreement of industrial efficiency. When people make more they spend more. When they spend more, revenue is generated and the cycle continues.

However, somewhere along the line, as innovation burst its way in the scene in the latter half of the 20th century and the first decade of the 21st century, a new wave of industry broke through. The industrial focus started to shift into making living easier instead of making work more efficient. There was steady growth industrially but seemingly not enough to incentivize disruption. The next wave of innovation was making living easier. Once we got on board with the personal computer we were well on course to the pocket computer that we now call the smartphone. More and more companies were created that were based on improving the living model to the extent that it integrated our work as well. Hence why the average working person today can check their work email on their phone. But what else can we do on our phones? We can order food, call a ride, book a hair appointment on an app, schedule a date, apply for jobs, and watch entertainment from movies, television shows and sports games. So what seems to be the problem?

The underlying industrial agreement was the more money that was generated from work/labor efficiency would provide profit/revenue that would lead to consumption capital for the worker. What we acquired from working was here to afford us an easier living or convenience. Most people will say, they work to provide themselves needs like food, water, clothing, housing, heating etc. But the industries that provide those do not grow as exponentially as the convenience service industries like your convenience apps such as; Uber, Netflix, Meta, Amazon, TikTok. So when we have more people looking to work in the high revenue convenience industries as above, there is a step that has been skipped in the value chain. But even more importantly, there is an industrial oversight at play. You could put the blame on the organizations or the government. But it was largely this; people were no longer experience the gains in labor efficiency through wages but there was an entire sector of industry reliant on the purchase of convenience that is fully reliant on the gained wages. People are less likely to shop on Amazon, pay for YouTube premium, Netflix, take Uber and Venmo you on time if they are not holding onto enough money once the rent is paid. So as wages did not grow on par over time with the growth in revenue in industrial efficiency, the convenience sector was set on a collision course with the harsh reality that broke people cannot be expected to be convenience customers.

Thus the industrial track of making more revenue due to increased efficiency was supposed to lead to more wages, in order for the convenience arm of industrialization to truly hold. To make more and earn more should have put more people in a position to spend more. But when revenue was withheld for over a third of a century overvaluation was sure to ensue. On one hand, I can see the boomers who experienced an economic boom at the hands of labor efficiency but cannot be convinced of the convenience efficiency as one is about labor while the other is about living. But the biggest blind spot in this is that they forgot that money they are taking and rewarding people with was all coming out of the same pot and the only thing keeping people broke today is the illusion that gratification without exertion does not count as labor whilst growth without measurable improvement does. So if we cannot agree to be in service of convenience due to how far we have come technologically, then the operating paradigm around productivity will have most of us view artificial intelligence as a disruption rather than an enhancer.

by Julian Michael Yong.