AI’s creators don’t care about the human cost of AI
First they came for the drivers. And I did not speak out, because I was not a driver.
A few months ago at a tech event in Berlin, I saw a presentation slide that embodied how the industry views automation. There was a picture of Daimler’s Freightliner Inspiration truck rolling through the Nevada Desert, a sunbeam glancing off its silky chassis.
Bold font, all caps: BYE BYE TRUCK DRIVERS!
The speaker (dressed unforgivably in a suit with sneakers) went on to compare the proliferation of driverless vehicles to the difference between using a screwdriver and a power drill — compounding the fact that, in the boardrooms of the firms that will define the era of automation, the humans it leaves behind are barely an afterthought.
This is not a one-off. I have seen countless presentations and speeches lauding the coming artificial intelligence revolution as one that will make all our lives better. In some instances, it undoubtedly will.
Futurist Ray Kurzweil told a Hanover audience this year that, “we’ve already eliminated all human employment several times over. How many jobs circa 1900 still exist today? But for every job that we’ve eliminated at the bottom of the skill ladder, we’ve created several new ones at the top of the skill ladder.”
