Don’t Blame the Robots

There’s More to the Two Americas Problem than AI

It’s not AI, but the centralization of tech and knowledge in general, that has created the two Americas. One America is a sprawling system of knowledge workers that has collected the excess GDP gains from the past hundred years. The Other America is whatever’s outside of that System, an America where everybody is one bad illness away from missing rent or one injury away from opioid addiction.

Like 9/11 before it, AI is the new fall-guy for America’s ills

The AI-is-evil theme is the only thing people can understand. Everybody’s familiar with the Terminator and Siri. But how can automation take credit for killing the workforce? There aren’t robots yet. 100% of vehicles are still driven by humans. Despite being the first great American carmaker in almost a century, Elon Musk is somehow now a symbol of a coastal tech elite that is marginalizing the Common Man. No, what killed the workforce is something else, something less obvious. But before we get to that, is employment actually under attack?

Never mind the nuances of labor statistics, the robots are coming for us