With your degree in "oiling and lubrication", all those fancy musk-made robots are going to need you so they don't become paralyzed and rusty. It is a fantasy that A/i will replace most jobs. It is far too retarded mentally and is emotionally distant. Heck, the silly A/i customer service goons are some of the dumbest creations ever.
Peter, as a natural optimist, I'm with you on this. However, only because of the "human condition", I fear that the transition phase may take longer than you think. Humans are slower to adapt and understand opportunities than machines and during this slow transition period, I worry that bad things might happen as a result of the social upheaval and disruption caused.
Crony capitalism has done so much harm to society in general and there is a need to address the wealth and income disparity already in place at a time when AI will cause massive further disruption like to cause further attraction of Marxism to younger generations who see the failure of "The American Dream" and a general lack of opportunity - further enhanced by a failed education system which doesn't encourage critical thinking.
Of course, the same malign forces that have created this condition will not be a positive influence on getting through this transition phase and are ready (Problem>Reaction>Solution - the Hegelian Dialect) to do everything possible to maintain their control and (mis)use the opportunity (Never waste a good crisis?) to introduce the NWO centralized technocracy so as to further subjugate humanity and eliminate freedoms of just about everything
I believe all these corporations are simply lying. It is much easier to fire people when you tell them they have been replaced by AI instead of telling them you want the company to make more profit. AI is still not reliable and continues to make things up. If a company were seriously replacing that many people with AI now, it is time to short their stock because they are going to lose customers and rely on bad AI bad data/bad recommendations. Stupid is as stupid does.
I agree that is at least partially correct. MSM presents a selective interpretation of the global economic conditions but looking beneath the surface, only slightly, reveals a far more worrying picture ( eg employment in the Household Survey as opposed to the BIS goal-seeked Establishment survey). This, on top of the Debt issues in the major economies does suggest that a substantial reduction in employment is coming.
Great review of the 'other side' of the AI discussion. All makes sense when you compare AI evolution to the evolution of technoloy over time.
But all technology has had a major negative impacts once it got into the wrong hands. We gave up horse and carriage, bought into motorized vehicle technology and ended up killing people with tanks.
We developed airplanes, but now drones are assassinating people.
Everything has to be moderated and when techonology shows any chance of being used for evil, it must be curtailed or destroyed as a security risk and potential crime against humanity.
There use to be such a thing as the 'precautionary principle'. This needs to be codified in all laws so that if there is any potential for harm to humans, the technology must be altered or destroyed. Had that been done with the mRNA technology, tens of millions of people would not be dead or dying.
We must always take into account those evil beings with the money to turn beneficial technology into weapons against mankind.
In the vertical infographic: "65 Jobs With The Lowest Risk of Automation", I am surprised to see that "Choreographers" is number-two, ranked for projected growth by 2031. HAHA! So, come the Great Reset we'll all want to hire a dance teacher to help us do viral shimmies to up our social credit score so we can spend our $CBDC? I mean, I'm all for dancing (for its own sake, with humans, and not for social approval) but what an odd profession to take the silver medal. Joking aside, I find this hard to believe – nobody dances anymore, what the hell is this?
That aside, great article, and I love the historic and economic analytic lens you regard the future with here. Your predictions line up mostly with my layman's intuition, but regarding the situation from the ground (i.e. inductively looking a special cases, rather than deductively from models or theories) seems to foretell a different horizon. Take the handmade instrument professionals "Luthiers" for example – there was a spurt of Great American Luthiers from about 1980-2010, but they are retiring and dying off, and nobody is filling their ranks. Very few people play (acoustic) music anymore; only niche weirdos (like myself). We've become almost entirely consumers of music and not "players", hence the "makers" (i.e. luthiers) going out of business. Similarly we have increasingly become consumers of sex (bring back the players!) Same goes for sport (we watch it, but seldom play casually within our community). You get the idea.
All in all, I fear we are being shunted into becoming exclusively consumers. Very few people know how to make anything that doesn't require social approval to know whether it succeeded or not – ya know? I cannot see the current trendline radically changing course come AI, rather—only getting worse. And that current trajectory is as Toby Rogers cynically sums up: "We used to make things, now we just make people sick and profit from that."
With your degree in "oiling and lubrication", all those fancy musk-made robots are going to need you so they don't become paralyzed and rusty. It is a fantasy that A/i will replace most jobs. It is far too retarded mentally and is emotionally distant. Heck, the silly A/i customer service goons are some of the dumbest creations ever.
Data centers are starting to overtake Arizona, but I don't know if they are really the job creators they purport to be.
Embarrassingly enough, even real humans are being replaced by their deepfakes, a process that has apparently taken a recent boost:
https://rayhorvaththesource.substack.com/p/replacing-every-american-with-deepfakes
Also, I’m quite certain that MDs and NPs will be replaced by AI, so the list seems inaccurate.
In a world of the CBDC, pleasing humans who cannot pay, anyway, loses significance.
I have some slightly different opinions but still this does somewhat line up with my article on the Entertainment economy which includes experiences - So it won't be enough to be a chef - it will have to be a more direct experience because robots are already cooking food. robots are taking blood pressure and giving massages. https://medium.com/@indyrowes/the-entertainment-economy-the-next-frontier-in-a-post-labor-united-states-39add441f59c
It would be an honour to have you on the Contrarian Capitalist podcast @Peter St Onge !
Peter, as a natural optimist, I'm with you on this. However, only because of the "human condition", I fear that the transition phase may take longer than you think. Humans are slower to adapt and understand opportunities than machines and during this slow transition period, I worry that bad things might happen as a result of the social upheaval and disruption caused.
Crony capitalism has done so much harm to society in general and there is a need to address the wealth and income disparity already in place at a time when AI will cause massive further disruption like to cause further attraction of Marxism to younger generations who see the failure of "The American Dream" and a general lack of opportunity - further enhanced by a failed education system which doesn't encourage critical thinking.
Of course, the same malign forces that have created this condition will not be a positive influence on getting through this transition phase and are ready (Problem>Reaction>Solution - the Hegelian Dialect) to do everything possible to maintain their control and (mis)use the opportunity (Never waste a good crisis?) to introduce the NWO centralized technocracy so as to further subjugate humanity and eliminate freedoms of just about everything
I believe all these corporations are simply lying. It is much easier to fire people when you tell them they have been replaced by AI instead of telling them you want the company to make more profit. AI is still not reliable and continues to make things up. If a company were seriously replacing that many people with AI now, it is time to short their stock because they are going to lose customers and rely on bad AI bad data/bad recommendations. Stupid is as stupid does.
I agree that is at least partially correct. MSM presents a selective interpretation of the global economic conditions but looking beneath the surface, only slightly, reveals a far more worrying picture ( eg employment in the Household Survey as opposed to the BIS goal-seeked Establishment survey). This, on top of the Debt issues in the major economies does suggest that a substantial reduction in employment is coming.
Great review of the 'other side' of the AI discussion. All makes sense when you compare AI evolution to the evolution of technoloy over time.
But all technology has had a major negative impacts once it got into the wrong hands. We gave up horse and carriage, bought into motorized vehicle technology and ended up killing people with tanks.
We developed airplanes, but now drones are assassinating people.
Everything has to be moderated and when techonology shows any chance of being used for evil, it must be curtailed or destroyed as a security risk and potential crime against humanity.
There use to be such a thing as the 'precautionary principle'. This needs to be codified in all laws so that if there is any potential for harm to humans, the technology must be altered or destroyed. Had that been done with the mRNA technology, tens of millions of people would not be dead or dying.
We must always take into account those evil beings with the money to turn beneficial technology into weapons against mankind.
"AI: Over-Promise + Under-Perform = Disillusionment and Blowback"
https://charleshughsmith.blogspot.com/2025/07/ai-over-promise-under-perform.html
--
AI will never replace salespeople.
In the vertical infographic: "65 Jobs With The Lowest Risk of Automation", I am surprised to see that "Choreographers" is number-two, ranked for projected growth by 2031. HAHA! So, come the Great Reset we'll all want to hire a dance teacher to help us do viral shimmies to up our social credit score so we can spend our $CBDC? I mean, I'm all for dancing (for its own sake, with humans, and not for social approval) but what an odd profession to take the silver medal. Joking aside, I find this hard to believe – nobody dances anymore, what the hell is this?
That aside, great article, and I love the historic and economic analytic lens you regard the future with here. Your predictions line up mostly with my layman's intuition, but regarding the situation from the ground (i.e. inductively looking a special cases, rather than deductively from models or theories) seems to foretell a different horizon. Take the handmade instrument professionals "Luthiers" for example – there was a spurt of Great American Luthiers from about 1980-2010, but they are retiring and dying off, and nobody is filling their ranks. Very few people play (acoustic) music anymore; only niche weirdos (like myself). We've become almost entirely consumers of music and not "players", hence the "makers" (i.e. luthiers) going out of business. Similarly we have increasingly become consumers of sex (bring back the players!) Same goes for sport (we watch it, but seldom play casually within our community). You get the idea.
All in all, I fear we are being shunted into becoming exclusively consumers. Very few people know how to make anything that doesn't require social approval to know whether it succeeded or not – ya know? I cannot see the current trendline radically changing course come AI, rather—only getting worse. And that current trajectory is as Toby Rogers cynically sums up: "We used to make things, now we just make people sick and profit from that."