AI, Musk, and Mass Displacement: A New Replacement Theory

When will AI get around to coming for its super-rich tech-bro fans?

This is the way it was before the Roosevelt administration came to the rescue. Unemployed men queued outside a Depression soup kitchen opened in Chicago, IL, by Al Capone, February 1931. Photo credit: National Archives at College Park / Wikimedia (PD)

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I just finished absorbing informed speculation that AI actually may supplant human beings much faster than anyone thought possible. How fast, you ask? Well, like, snap your fingers.

According to this analysis, within a year or two from now, untold millions of white collar workers could be laid off, replaced by AI.

What might be the impact of such massive unemployment? Couple that development with the Musk-Trump firing spree and/or a Trump-induced recession or depression, and we can see a situation where many of us are sidelined with no source of income or self-worth.

Where is all this going?

While Musk talks airily of giving everyone a “universal high income” and all the goods and services their hearts could desire, it seems to me that this AI-driven economic sea change will further empower and embolden the tiny percentage of people at the top of the heap.

But at some point, poetically, it might supplant them, too. Because if AI is so smart, then it doesn’t need a Jeff Bezos. It could engineer a competing distribution mechanism that is more effective and cheaper, not only eliminating the warehouse workers but also the high-paid Amazon bosses and executives.

It’s impossible to predict the ultimate outcome, of course, but clearly the battle for control of AI is a battle to control… everything and everyone.

And just as society was way too slow to understand the MAGA phenomenon and where it might go, it has been way too slow to grapple with AI as — yes of course an opportunity in many respects, but principally as a threat.

Because if much of society becomes unemployed, and if the Trump forces don’t want to look out for and provide services to the unemployed, folks will get desperate.

They’ll seek outlets for their anger, scapegoats. In dire situations, people act desperately — from random violence to whatever puts food on the table.

And though they will be at wits end, they will still, at least for the moment, have one thing: a vote. Their vote may be an expression, ultimately, of rebellion against the madness, for restoration of some mechanism for regulation, for restraint.

But with the primacy of AI, it is also conceivable that AI will drive political campaigns, further manipulating the public to vote against their own interests. (And hell, why stop there? Why not just take over the voting computers — AI, after all, would know them better than anybody, even Elon Musk — to vote for whatever works for AI?)

Let me know what you think about all this in the comments space.

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The world will always have evil, will always have madmen. We cannot prevent that. Our goal must be a vigilant, informed citizenry.

Today, we do not have that. Why not? And what role will AI have in all this? If it replaces humans? What if DOGE can replace humans with AI — and the AI, with its literally inconceivable cumulative power, is programmed in inhumane ways? Programmed to maximize power or “efficiency,” at the expense of, or to the exclusion of, all other considerations — the inefficiencies that protect us and so much of what we value about life on Earth?

How will AI change the way that humans process information — and will it even matter anymore?

What if AI runs the show, but it is still humans that determine, through voting and other mechanisms, who is in charge? What if AI can manipulate people into preferring certain leaders?

And assuming the mass layoffs and massive unemployment trends Musk started continue, will the rest of humanity become the chattel of the rich? Only needed in limited numbers for limited roles?

Or will AI also eliminate many of the ways the rich get rich — or their own utility as rich people?

Google is testing an experimental version of its search engine, Reuters reports, “that completely eliminates its classic 10 blue links in favor of an AI-generated summary.” This eliminates people’s access to news outlets, original info sources, and ability to confirm facts.

If that’s where all this is going, I can’t help wondering: When can we eliminate… Google itself?

Mass Psychosis

Watching Donald Trump’s full-on-lunatic State of the Union address, one experiences a flood of emotions, and the analysis comes just a bit later.

Quickly, though, it all boils down to: What can stop this madman?

In this space, we’ve talked about many possible approaches. But I keep coming back to one thing: Unless we tackle the bizarre thrall in which Trump seems to hold millions of Americans, things will just get worse.

It’s a case of mass psychosis.

Trump can make any false claim attractive — no matter how improbable, impossible, or conspicuously false, even about physical realities one can witness oneself — and many, many Americans will just eat it all up. There’s almost no way to combat this disease.

I posted about this on social media, and someone replied:

What is the basis or cause of this mass delusion?!? One can understand Jim Jones duping poor people in the hundreds, but this apparent mass deception and delusion must have some deep rooted psychological origins, no? Perhaps we need to study the NAZI or Soviet eras to understand what they knew and understood about mass psychosis.

To which I replied:

Absolutely. This has to become a key focus of our attention, otherwise it will only get worse. I write about this a lot on my Substack. If you’re interested in being part of a research group on the issue, please send me a direct message on Substack or email me.

Let me extend that invitation to any readers out there with suitable background in behavioral social science research, or other extensive relevant knowledge of how past regimes were able to control their populations.

In the meantime, consider this comment by Charles MacKay from his book Extraordinary Popular Delusions and the Madness of Crowds:

Men, it has been well said, think in herds; it will be seen that they go mad in herds, while they only recover their senses slowly, one by one.

For Trump, Anyone Can Be an Influencer

I read a piece in The Washington Post on how a retired veteran who teaches karate in a small Texas town posted his Trump-friendly “analysis” of the Oval Office meeting with Ukrainian President Volodymyr Zelenskyy on a obscure local Facebook page, which somehow spread, and was brought to the attention of Trump himself, who excerpted the praise.

Among other things, the poster said, “Trump played both sides like a master chess player.” He also opined that, by proposing a situation where the US has a stake in Ukrainian minerals, Trump brilliantly guaranteed that Putin would have to get out rather than face the US.

Here’s the Post’s summary of cumulative reader responses:

The comments overwhelmingly criticize the influence of social media, particularly a Facebook post by Michael McCune, on President Trump’s political decisions regarding Ukraine. Many commenters express concern and disbelief that Trump would take foreign policy advice from someone with no expertise, highlighting the absurdity and potential dangers of such actions. The general sentiment is that this approach undermines the credibility and effectiveness of U.S. foreign policy, with some commenters suggesting that Trump’s decisions are more about personal gain and flattery than strategic thinking.

The Department of Dumb

The White House just announced:

The Department of Health and Human Service’s Centers for Disease Control and Prevention launched a new tool to detail conflicts of interest among current and past members of its vaccine advisory committee.

For one thing, the staffers in the White House Office of Communications (OC) cannot spell, nor use proper grammar, nor punctuate properly; for example, in the above paragraph, it should be plural “Services” not the singular possessive “Service’s.”

Failing to demonstrate basic literacy while communicating for the most powerful official in the land is no small thing. And the fact that the Trump people don’t notice, or don’t care, reveals how standards are precipitously degrading under this administration. (No wonder more and more people need to depend on AI to get their work done!)

It raises the issue of the importance of education at a time when Trump is eliminating the Department of Education, and Musk’s DOGE is turning loose young programmers who often lack the fruits of a broad liberal arts education — call them coders without a clue, CWACs for short.

And speaking of the OC, it now routinely produces media releases that contain actual attacks and juvenile insults, not unlike something we might get if eight-year-olds were in charge there.

A few days ago, the White House referred to Rep. Eugene Vindman (D-VA) as “disgraced” [no indication how] — and, in response to his criticism of Trump, the representatives of the president of the United States actually said this, verbatim, in an official document disseminated to the press corps:

“What a stupid, moronic statement.”

Every day, it seems, the White House press machinery issues new taunts and other crude forms of disparagement.

Never in this country’s history has any administration of any party done such things.

But the free fall is so fast, the overwhelm so great, the avalanche of offensive statements so massive that I don’t see the media even trying to cover this particular media-relations mess, which is literally right in front of their eyes all day long.

Soul and Subtlety, Lost

The losses to society under the Trump Know-Nothing Blitzkrieg are so great that the quashing of more modest — but still valuable — contributions of government is thrown into shadow.

Just one example is the kind of work funded by the National Endowment for the Humanities, which made possible Ken Burns’s Civil War documentary and many other projects that explore America’s history, some of which can be previewed online. Go here to watch some sublime documentaries on acclaimed poets, starting with Robert Lowell, whose words take on powerful new resonance with our current crisis.

Related: Labor Day: Art From the Great Depression

This sort of thing will of course be dismissed mockingly as junk, or leftist, or too woke, or inherently worthless because it doesn’t show people how to profit off crypto or some such momentary MAGA priority.

It seems trivial to them, because it is about wisdom. And today, wisdom has been deeply discounted, ridiculed, attacked. Fighting for wisdom, more than “just” jobs and rights and privacy and freedom and democracy — that is the larger battle to which we commit.

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