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In this episode of The Econoclasts, Yanis Varoufakis and Wolfgang Munchau debunk the delusions surrounding artificial intelligence by examining how its recent ability to solve complex mathematical problems signals a massive structural threat to the global labor market, while warning against the transhumanist endgame of ‘Techlord’ Silicon Valley elites like Elon Musk and Peter Thiel, who view Homo sapiens as mere primitive hardware to be replaced by cyborgs.
WM is right that traditional Comp Sci, Data Eng, etc types of jobs are going to disappear – the cohort in these professions (and I am one of them) are well aware what is happening, and the end-game. However we are not the people you need to worry about. Dousing us with software automation is like attempting to blast fire at a fire-demon – we are not damaged by that which we were born of.
The real problem is cognitive work in all the rest of the services industries: literally hundreds of millions of jobs across the world. The mass of people here have only a hazy idea of what’s coming, and unlike the Comp Sci professionals, don’t have many places to run. It’s about the nature and specifics of expertise that is accreted over years and decades – the Comp Sci type expertise within the existing cohort is “with the grain” so to speak of the incoming automation, so people who are willing to upskill can remain within the same ecosystem – for now. The incoming cohorts, young people, are stuffed – no one is going to employ them as interns to get onto the first rung of the work ladder. As in, if you were a manager, would you take on interns when you see your existing software team triple their output with Claude Code? Other cognitive work outside tech however, is likely to see an outright takeover by the machines with minimal human inputs, and the bulk of the people here have, literally, nowhere to run.
If you look at the circus our governing class are indulging in even as this meteor is about to hit, it tells you, either these people are total clowns, or they are deliberately and malevolently not discussing that which will turn the lives of millions upside-down in short order. Either way, I know one thing – they are not going to be forgiven. Don’t be surprised if you see mass orders of Louisettes suddenly arriving in France.
Well, Marx provided a solution. Seize power.
Did Marx’s solution take into account: (1) that those who hold power are not eager to see it seized from them and will take measures, (2) that, having seized power, the revolutionaries will neatly split into a handful of commissars who comprise the new oligarchy, and a large pyramid of kulaks, bringing the situation right back to the status quo ante? He did not.
Look, I want to comment on the thesis put forward by Yanis Varoufakis, but every time I try, I start giggling, and then guffawing, until tears are streaming from my eyes, and I’m incapacitated. Sorry, so, so sorry.