Tech Won’t Save Us in the future with Paris Marx

And maybe that's why when you look back at that time, there weren't a lot of critical questions about technology and the people who make it and whether or not that technology was actually contributing to a better future, one that we'd actually want. That's a dynamic that Paris Marx says has led to tech leaders getting really used to being able to do whatever they want, and Paris is trying to course correct.

to have prosperity again. Because this tech industry was going to like drive a ton of job creation and blah blah blah, and so there was a real desire not to kind of look at the potential consequences, to not look at the downsides of this industry and these business models.

And now I feel like part of kind of, you know, we have seen a more critical view in the past number of years, especially since twenty eighteen, and I feel like part of that is not just kind of like you know, waking up to what is actually happening, but also reckoning with the consequences of not you know, looking at the potential downsides of the companies through those years, through the early twenty ten you know period, And now we're kind of trying to catch up and trying to

be like, whoa, what have we unleashed unto the world.

And now there's a real kind of desire to you know, not just criticize the Elon Musks and Jeff bezos Is of the world, but to say, like, we really bought into a lot of this stuff that Silicon Valley was selling us around how all we need is kind of new innovative technologies created by Google and Facebook and whatever, and that's going to make the world a better place, and we can see that that didn't work out, and so now we need to actually think a lot more

critically about what these tech companies are telling us, but also how we address these really serious problems that do exist in society and aren't going to be solved from a shiny new technology.

The point too, that like the mainstream would know about is like, you know, the social media platforms and like all they've done, and like we love to kind of hate Facebook, and I'm totally on board for hating Facebook, right, Like, don't get me wrong, but I think that it's much bigger than that, right, Like, sure, we had the Cambridge Analytica like leaks and the scandal around that, and like, you know, I think that that was kind of misconstrued a bit as saying, like, h it was because Facebook

like manipulated the populations of the UK and the US and all this stuff that we had this really terrible turn in our politics. And I don't think that that's actually accurate. I think it's a misreading of what actually happened. And like, I think that there are just things happening in our politics for reasons that are not technological, you know, that are kind of affecting what people are doing, which

is really unfortunate. But I think that like much more fundamentally, and I think the piece that we tend to ignore a lot more is what this actually meant for workers

as well. Right, Like, obviously, we had this massive boom in tech workers and people working in the tech industry that were making good salaries and like doing these startups and all this kind of stuff, and the media like very interested in that story, right in how there were these workers who were making all this money, they had great benefits when they went to their jobs, like free lunch and gyms and I don't know all the other

stuff that tech workers get. But then, like the tech industry was also very like, very clearly involved in affecting and attacking like the rights of workers in many different industries, not just in the United States or in other Western countries, but like around the world as well, Right, And I feel like we have not really kind of grappled with that as much through the gig economy and of course the Ubers of the world and things like that, you know,

explicitly attacking the regulations on the taxi industry and ensuring that this profession gets turned into this kind of unregulated contractor model where these people are like completely subjected to the rules of like Uber and the rules of these

gig companies. But then also like much more than that, you know, you think about Amazon rolling out out rhythmic management across its warehouses and turning warehouse work from like a unionized industry where people could make good money to like basically your equivalent of a minimum wage job or just a little bit above minimum wage. Right, that's kind

of like the standard if you're in a community. Right, it's the new kind of Walmart is working at the Amazon warehouse and this really changes, like, you know, then you also have the like one of the things that I think is pernicious here actually is that, like through the mid twenty tens, we had this narrative that automation and AI we're going to wipe out all these jobs, right, and we're kind of seeing repeats of that right now

with the whole generative AI boom. But like that moment, we have all this these narratives around it and we're like, oh my god, the robots are going to take our jobs. But actually what happens is the tech companies like deploy all these technologies to like decimate the labor rights of people across the economy, and we just kind of ignore that picture of it. But I think that's much more consequential and I think we should be paying more attention to it.

great about talking about. Which is that during the pandemic, which was so hard for all of us, I definitely got I mean I've used.

certainly don't have to, you know, cook it myself. But I don't even have to go to the I don't even have to call my local pizza place down the street and have a conversation with the person who owns it.

it's not really going to necessarily change like the bigger picture, like if one of us opts out, and you know, personally I do still opt out, Like I don't use Uber, I don't use any of the food delivery services anything like that, very rarely use Amazon unless I have to. But you know, I know that ultimately, like that's not

going to take down Jeff Bezos and Amazon. Right, But yeah, right, but I think to your bigger point, like you know what you say is very true, right, the tech companies have essentially tried to convince us, and in many cases

have successfully done so. To convince us that like things that are like regular average aspects of life are actually inconvenient and we need to like get rid of them, right, And the goal of that, from their perspective is that if they can kind of insert themselves between like more of our interactions, more of what kind of like the transactions that we make in our lives, and that is

better for them and their business models. Right If if we, if Amazon or Uber can like stick itself in the middle of more of the transactions that we do, if they ensure that like instead of going to the shop, instead of talking to someone, that we use one of their apps, then that is great for their kind of business model because they get to have like a piece of that transaction, right, And so this is like the

whole incentive behind it. And I remember, like all the way back in I think it was twenty fourteen, maybe it was twenty fifteen, Lauren Smiley, you know who writes for Wired now, But she wrote this piece called the shut in Economy where she was like outside of of Oakland for a while, and then she moved back in and all of a sudden it was like people were

or maybe she moved into San Francisco. It was like you know, it was in the Bay Area somewhere, and she saw that, like, there are all these people now that all of a sudden were like, you know, home a lot or at work a lot, and they were getting a lot of things delivered and like contracting a lot of services because the gig economy is just kind of booming in that in that period, right, And she was like, what is going on here, Like this is

really weird, this is not really good. You can see the distinction between the served and the servants basically very clearly in this model. And sure, it allows a few more people to become the served, but that means you need a whole bigger kind of population of servants to

serve them effectively. And what we saw during the pandemic was really like an expansion of this model where many more people became the people who were kind of like relying on gig services and e commerce websites and all this stuff to get everything delivered to them so they

could stay home and kind of isolate. But then you also needed this whole population that for a while we were calling essential workers, you know, to deliver all this stuff and do all this work for the people who were staying home and working from home and all this stuff, and like we've just kind of like moved on from that moment and not really thought about the kind of larger implications of that. And like, I do think that there were consequences and there were some shifts that happened

during the pandemic with those whole labor models. But I think that part of what we see right now with like the big whole generative I push is again like this this kind of return of this narrative that oh my god, like the AIS are going to take away all the jobs, when actually, like what we're much more likely to see is like the continuation of tech companies like kind of using technology against workers to further kind of you know, create more precarious employment and things like that.

And I think that is like what a lot of the media narratives don't suggest, but I think that's much more likely to be what we what comes out of it. And if we're not paying attention to it now, then it's going to be much more difficult to like stop that happening because we're too focused on like you know, agi and digital minds and all this like sci fi bullshit, Oh my.

the fuck? Of course, And now that is commonplace with services like Betterhelp, right, And so I think that you're so right that tech leaders want to be the wedge between us and you know, the business of being a human, and we're going to become more and more okay with the different things that they're okay, Like I don't want Jeff Bezos in the middle of my healthcare, right, I use one medical and that is exactly what the fuck is happening right now, right, Like, I'm not really comfortable

with like these very intimate things about my body and my health there being a Jeff Bezos interference. And I think that sort of without us really paying attention and really thinking about it more and more intimate spaces, it has become commonplace to think that a tech leader would be in the middle of your ability.

things delivered to us. And what we see, like over the course of like the first year or two of the pandemic, is that like the profits and the revenues of all these companies absolutely sore, right, And so it shows you that the more that we kind of use their services, the more that we look at our screens, the better that is for them. And they're incentivized to ensure that we spend more time as possible, like engaging with their services kind of in front of our screens,

all these sorts of things. And I would say, like that's exactly what the metaverse push was, right, like, how can we get you in front of a screen much more like the smart glasses all that stuff. The idea is just like you need to look at screens more, and it's like I don't actually want to do that.

But I think on your point about healthcare is interesting as well, because I've been thinking about it a lot lately because I'm in Canada, right, and so our healthcare system is a little bit different, and I have like even bigger concerns where like, you know, at least in the state, it's like the healthcare system is already private and so like to a certain degree, you're shifting from

like one private provider to another. But like, I think it's really kind of worrying to see the potential like encroachment and the further encroachment of like private companies on public healthcare systems, and especially like how technology and digital technology provides a means for that to happen, because the argument is like, oh, this is like new technology. It can't be done by the public sector, so you need to contract it from the private sector and bring it

into your public healthcare system. And then like you know, we could say that that's not going to make any difference, but really, like it's kind of what I call like a sly privatization that's happening there, and it does start to change the logics of like what is actually happening in the system, And it's not just a Canadian problem, Like you know, we see these things happening in the UK where there's a big push to privatize, and other countries where I've talked to people, So yeah, you know

a bit of a different perspective there. But those are things that I worry about too, even just beyond like the general encroachment into healthcare that these companies are.

very different from whatever it is you're picturing. It might look like more time spent on screens and more technology encroaching on more and more aspects of our lives, from the food we eat to how we get our medical care.

I don't necessarily think that it's good to be encouraged to spend more of my time in front of a screen looking at a screen, like I want to be in the meat space. I want to be having actual connections with humans irl. Obviously it's a place of privilege, like not everybody can can do that easily. I'm like, very lucky that that is my experience in the world.

But sometimes when I would probably have said that most people who have the ability to get out into the world, they want that they see that as a good thing, as a part of life. That I hear people like Lex Friedman or something elon Musk talk, and I don't think we're all on.

this future where that is more and more commonplace. And because of the way I think, partly because of the way that like tech press sometimes covers these people, we don't stop and think, like, well, is this the person

that we want designing the future? This person who has like describing a very weird relationship with their robot, vacuum or whatever, that there's not a relationship that I want to have, But this is the person who is put in charge of designing the future of how I will relate with technology, do you know what I mean?

would say it's actually quite limited. Like I think that people are definitely like excited by the idea of humans doing more in space, and people generally like the idea of like electric cars, and sure there's some conservatives who don't like that, but like you know, in general, like I think these broad ideas are things that people find appealing.

But I think that if you dig into like the more kind of niche, the more kind of specific viewpoints of these influential tech leaders, I think that you'll quickly find that if people knew more about them, they would think that it was really weird and like really separate from what most people think like a good life actually

looks like. And I think, like, you know, maybe this is a bit stereotypical, but I think a bit of that is related to how a lot of these people in the tech and who are successful in this particular industry do seem to be like socially stunted in many ways. If you look at the Zuckerbergs, the Elon Musks, like

you know, Lex Friedman. Of course you mentioned like a lot of these people do seem to have difficulty with like social relationships, and I'm not going to like diagnose them on this podcast, but I think that also shapes the way that they think society should be set up

and like what the future should look like. And so we have these people who are like very kind of socially isolated and have difficulty relating to other people then kind of trying to design or trying to dream up, like what society is going to look like for everybody else, and that naturally shapes how they think that that society should look and how we should all interact with one another in the future, when most of us don't have that issue and would like to spend more time kind

of getting to know other people. And of course we know right now that you know, there's plenty of talk about it, there's kind of like a loneliness crisis in you know, I would say, like the Western world probably broadly, and like I think that that is linked one to our grater reliance on technology, but I would like go back much further and say that it's also a result of the way that we've designed our communities to be like, you know, very suburban in many cases, so you're really

distanced from a lot of the people that you might care about, and it becomes more difficult to actually reach them because of transportation all these sorts of things. So like, I think that's rooted in like, you know, much more kind of like physical geographical problems. And then the tech

industry because of this is how it works. It responds that by saying, not, maybe we should rethink the way that our communities are set up so that we can encourage like, you know, people to live closer together, for us to like fund public social spaces where people can come together and you know, they don't need to you know,

pay to go somewhere to do something. But also beyond that, they would say, like instead of proposing those things that that might actually address the issue, they would say, you know what we need to actually make people more social or make people interact with one another more, is actually a new technology that will enable them to do that, where whether it's like Facebook and how that is kind of imagined to connect the world, or like the metaverse, because now we don't need to go spend time with

people in person. We can just put on a VR headset and we can put on these other technologies on our hands and on our bodies. That allows us to feel a physical presence in a virtual environment. And like great for all the tech companies because they're constantly tracking us, they're getting all the data on us, they're showing us ads all the time. We're in this virtual world that

they completely control. But I think it's like a terrible idea of what a future would look like if we actually like moved in that direction instead of just saying, hey, maybe we should make it easier for you to see the people that you care about and get away from the technology that these companies want you to be looking at all the time.

they know how to code. You'll never even be able to figure it out. So this technology that is already impacting so much of your life shaping your day to day that is like a meshed with your daily experiences. You don't even need to ask questions about it, right, Like you don't even get to who are you tech?

And I think that you also see that reflected in like the discourse around how government understands technology and whether government can regulate technology, And every single time that there's like a new technology or we're discussing tech policy or something like that, like one of the narratives that we constantly hear is, uh, you know, the political leaders don't get it they're too old like whatever it is, so they can't respond to this, they can't do anything about it.

And inherently, like within that narrative is you know, we just need to trust like the tech leaders to regulate themselves, to like be ethical. If we just put a bit more pressure on them, then they'll be better, right, you know, don't be evil the old Google slogan, when we know that they're very evil.

they could do no wrong. All the reporting was like these great companies who are doing so many great things

for us. Then near the end of the twenty tens and kind of through the early twenty twenties, we have this shift where all of a sudden, you know, we're recognizing that maybe we shouldn't have been so positive, so kind of uncritical of what they were doing, and there's a broader kind of recognition that these companies do need more kind of critical you know, critical analysis, critical insight, We need to actually be looking at what they're what

they're doing, right. And I think that that's important because I think that, on one hand, like it does kind of bring the public along, and it does kind of tell the public like, you know, maybe all that we were saying before and all that it was cracked up to be, and actually these tech companies deserve more scrutiny.

But I think it also kind of what you see in that moment as well, is that the people in charge of the tech industry were used to being treated like these kind of godlike figures, Like these kind of figures who were you know, giving us all this intelligence, who we kind of worshiped, you know, like if you think of like how Steve Jobs used to be seen and he was handing us down our iPods and our things like that, right, like he was worshiped, right, it

was it was basically like a like a religion. And I find it interesting if you look at the like auditorium that Apple has created on their Apple campus. Now, like to me, if you look at it, like it has the vibes of a church kind of and like pews and all this sort of like this is how I feel when I look at it. Right, But anyway,

this is this is not the point. But if you look at what happened as the press became more critical, and as the public became more critical, and as the government became more critical of the tech industry, all of a sudden, you have these tech leaders who are used to being worshiped start to shift how they are responding, right, and all of a sudden, they are feeling like victimized.

You know, they are kind of all powerful, they're billionaires, they're some of the richest people in the world, but they are treating themselves like victims because all of a sudden, we're not worshiping everything that they do and just thinking that, you know, everything that they do is positive.

tech leaders getting involved in politics and government. But when these people who have the power to exert such control over our futures embrace ideologies that are harmful, like long termism to pro natalism, an ideology embraced by Elon Musk that posits that all the really wealthy tech people should be having lots and lots of kids to pass down their superior genes and repopulate the earth with their super babies. It's kind of hard to imagine that it'll be a future that's better for all of us.

way that they think it should operate. But then you also see, like you know, people like David Sachs getting more involved in politics, you know, donating more. Obviously you have Peter Tiel, but he's been at it much longer than that. He has a kind of a larger project. And obviously more recently you see Elon Musk becoming much

more open about his politics. But this is indicative of a broader shift that we're seeing in the Valley away from kind of, you know, these people being seen as like liberal Democrats or whatever, toward the recognition that you know, these are powerful capitalists at the head of an industry, and now instead of being more they are being challenged and their position is being challenged, and they want to ensure that everyone understands that they actually deserve the position

that they're in. They didn't just get it because they happened to be in the right place at the right time when this massive industry was taking off and there was a dot com boom, and they their startup was one of the ones that rode the wave, and that kind of gave them allowed them to like luck in and use their already privileged positions to then kind of

take off to this new level. Right, And so I think that is why we see, especially in the past few years, them embracing these particular ideologies that are all around kind of ensuring that the public believes that they deserve the position that they're in, that they deserve the

wealth that they're in. And you know, when I say that, I mean things like effective altruism, which I say is basically the notion that like, you know, there's nothing wrong with philanthropy, with there's nothing wrong with philanthropy, there's nothing

wrong with rich people. And how we actually solve our problems is not by challenging rich people and taxing them more, but ensuring they spend their billion of dollars more effectively to address problems, or like long termism that says, you know, actually, yeah, sure we face these problems right now in society, but you know, we need to be thinking on a much

longer time horizon. And you regular people, the you know, the means and yous and the listeners of this podcast in the world, we are too kind of involved and to thinking our thinking too much about the day to day and how we're going to pay our bills and on all these sorts of things. So we can't think on these time horizons. So we need these wealthy people like the Elon Musks of the world and the Jeff bezos Is of the world to do that work for us, So they need to be up there and thinking about

space colonization and all this bullshit, right. And then of course the other piece of this, I would say, is like the pronatalism that we're seeing as well, which is like, you know, really kind of bringing the eugenics thinking back into this eugenics thinking that has always been around in

tech circles and in Silicon Valley. You know, Stanford University was kind of a hotbed of eugenics thinking and kind of you know, reviving this put a fresh putting a fresh goal on it, so that there is kind of a new revival and a new justification for thinking about, you know, genetics, for thinking about genes, for thinking about kind of you know, Elon Musk really thinks that because he is incredibly wealthy, that means as well that he's incredibly smart, right, and that the smarts that he has

need to be passed on to future generations, to his kids, because then, you know, if not, the world kind of risks having all these low IQ people going around like it's just wild thinking. But it shows you, how, you know, in many different ways. They are invested in ensuring that they keep their power, that they maintain their position, and that we regular people are not challenging them, and kind of the wealth and the power that they've accumulated over the past few decades.

reflected in like everything that they're talking about right. And I do think it's funny because like, on the one hand, they present themselves as these like brilliant engineers who like understand everything, and like, you know, the whole thing about these Silicon Valley founders is that, like you know, going back to like the PayPal mafia days and stuff like that, is like they really believed that they had this kind of inherent knowledge, this knowledge that allowed them not just

to understand technology, but to move into any industry that they thought was ripe for kind of technological disruption and disrupt it basically. Right, you know, Elon Musk can go into banking and cars and space and Twitter and whatever, and because he is just the smartest person in the world, he will know exactly what needs to happen for all of these sectors to be transformed and made better by

the tech industry. And I think what we've actually seen, like if we actually look at the impact of the tech industry is that in some cases, yes, they have made things more efficient if they have kind of organized things properly. Like if you look at as much as I hate Amazon, like it's supply chain and logistics system does seem to be like, you know, quite an impressive

feat that it has put together. Right, there's a whole load of exploitation that it's built on, and like all that kind of stuff, Like let's not forget that, but you know, it has kind of effectively put this system together that like I would love to see transferred over to the post office or something like that.

how all these vehicles go. But you know, if you look at listen to people who actually understand transportation, like Hubert Horn, a transportation consultant who's been kind of writing critically about Uber for years, you understand that actually their model is like less efficient than the model that existed before because they have lost like all of these you know, ways of organizing the business that are actually more efficient

in that they don't have a fleet of cars. Everyone has to own their own car and do their own maintenance and buy their own insurance, and that's much less

efficient than what existed before. And because you have this kind of global company that has these massive, expensive headquarters and these like well paid executives and these high paid tech workers and all this kind of stuff like working on all these things, actually the cost of running that business is higher than like a regular taxi company that just like had a small office in a city and like a few dispatchers and stuff like that, and like

you know, they kind of managed it and worked it out, so so you know, and I think that there are actually many other examples like that, where like we think that because of the narrative around the tech industry that oh my god, they've revolutionized all these things, they've made everything better, But actually they've just put like the gloss of digital tech over something that already existed and tell

us that it's better. And we kind of believe it because this is the narrative that we have about technology. But that isn't necessarily the case.

sort of believing it. Like, I think a big part of it it's also just good old fashion hubris that if I'm really good at building rockets, of course I would be good at figuring out, you know, content moderation, which is this incredibly complex thing that like people debate all the time about how to do it right. I'm I built a rocket, right, Like, I'm a pretty good podcaster. That doesn't mean that I would be a good president or that I could solve you know, uh uh, like.

an inherent intelligence. And you know, the tech industry for whatever reason, is like can just do everything and whatever, and you know, they also kind of like apply this kind of software mindset to everything to the physical world

even when it doesn't doesn't work out. And so, you know, I think that one of the things that's been refreshing over the past few years is to see kind of a greater awareness around you know, these people and their flaws and how they're not kind of like messiahs and great people who are like making the world better, but actually like you know, exploiters who you know, are making massive profits off of a ton of workers, workers who they're trying to like hide behind, you know, the kind

of veil of technology, but actually you know, they are creating these systems that are built on exploitation. And like generative AI of course is another version of this. You know, even though it's presented as just being like all the tech technology and computers like doing all this magical stuff, there's there's always kind of workers below it that like

we like to ignore. And so I think one of the things that's been positive is seeing people wake up a bit more, and certainly not everyone has, certainly, like you know, I would like more people to have done so, But I still think it's positive to see us moving in this direction. To see that like as soon as new technologies are announced and kind of unveiled and rolled out now that you know, very quickly, there's a discussion around you know, does this make sense? Should we be

regulating it? Like what are we doing about this? Like we see whitchat GBT, or we saw about the metaverse, like people just quickly ridiculing it as soon as Mark Zuckerberg rolled it out, And like, I think that's a really positive like change, because I wonder if we would have saw that like a decade or so ago. And also,

like you know, how Crypto was. Sure you had a lot of people who were like really invested in it and really believe that crypto is the future and whatever, but you also had this really strong community who was saying, like, hold up, this does not make any sense. This is just spammy, exploitative Ponzi schemes, and we can't allow this

to go anywhere. And I think that we've seen like the you know, the kind of the steam kind of has come out of that bubble right like it has collapsedure, they're not all gone, but I think that these things are like positive and they give me some hope that like we're at least sort of going in the right direction, and we just need to keep kind of you know, keeping up the good fight to ensure that as you know, the tech industry keeps kind of pushing these new waves

of hype that you know, there are critics who are around who are looking at what's happening and saying, like,

hold up just a minute. What these people say are saying like makes absolutely no sense, and we need to be looking not at like the pr and the marketing lines that these companies and you know, the executives like Sam Altman want us to be thinking about and looking at and talking talking about, but to actually look at the real impacts, to like be informed by history and how these things have worked out in the past, because the tech industry loves to ignore history and to actually

try to like get some lessons about what might happen so that we can respond like proactively, instead of being a few years down the line and realizing, like, man, we've let this go a bit too far. It might be impossible to roll it back at this point, right, So yeah, I take some hope from those things.

like a typical American how will this change? How will AI change her life in ten years? And that he not only didn't have an answer, that it was like he had not thought about the question. And I was like, oh God, that's not good. And so I think that

we hear so much pr speak. We hear so much like AI is gonna change everything, It's gonna take all of our jobs, and then people saying like, no, that's what that's what people who make money off of AI want you to be thinking about and want you to be repeating and want you to be like making a thing like making thatch happen when it like what are your thoughts when it comes to generative AI and where how it is going to actually impact the lives of someone like the you know mother of Ree who you

know makes add a middle income What do you think how is it going to impact our lives?

their products. And what you very clearly saw was that, you know, after the crypto collapse and after you know, the kind of ridiculing of the metaverse, and after the raising of interest rates in particular, the tech industry really needed something, right. It really needed you know, a next big thing to kind of show to everybody to make sure we were all talking about, to make sure it stayed relevant, and again to keep money flowing, right, to

keep money moving through the system. And so generative AI has emerged as that thing. And so I look back at the mid twenty tens, as we were talking about, when there were all of these narratives around how robots and AI were going to take all of our jobs, right, and millions of people were going to be out of work, Like there were studies saying like forty fifty percent of people were going to lose their jobs in the coming years,

all this kind of stuff. There were going to be no more truckers because self driving cars were going to replace them all. There were going to be no more taxi drivers or uber drivers because we're self driving cars were going to be everywhere in the next few years, right, still waiting for those self driving cars, you know, I know there are a few on the streets in San Francisco and stuff, but like they're really not a mass

transportation system. And what we saw durund the pandemic was actually we needed some more truck drivers because the whole kind of supply chain was a mess. And part of the problem there is because truck drivers have had their working conditions and their wages so pushed down over recent decades that people don't want to join the profession. And so it's not because like robots are getting rid of them. It's because work the working conditions suck, and we actually

need more of them. But anyway, that's kind of you know, getting away from the point. But so I saw all of that, and I saw like all of the narratives around that moment and how there was a lot of excitement and a lot of belief that like robots were going to replace baristas and they were going to replace elder care workers and all this was just a few

years away and never happened. Right, What we actually had was technology being deployed in you know, the ways that we've been talking about, where it ensured that workers were reclassified from employee to contractor, where it ensured that their pay was was lessened, where it ensured that they were more precarious, where ensured that there was algorithmic management and

more surveillance of them. These were the actual kind of legacies of that period, not destroying jobs and all all that kind of stuff, and not making things a whole lot more productive. We didn't actually see a whole lot

of investment in automation through that decade. The scholar economic historian Aaron Benanov kind of found that when he went and actually looked through the data for that period, what we actually saw was, you know, just all of these kind of surveillance tech and all this kind of stuff used against workers. And so when I see what's going on right now, I see the hype cycle I was talking about. I see kind of the return of some

of these narratives from the mid twenty tens. You know, open AI released the papers say talking about all the jobs that were that were at risk because of CHAT, GPT and all this kind of stuff. But that's not to say that there aren't real threats that are being posed by this technology, where again, it can further disempower labor, it can further ensure that they're more precarious, it can further push down wages. We're seeing, like you know, the

front end of that. The most obvious piece of that is like the writers and the screen actors who are undergoing contract negotiations right now. The writers are even on strike and one of the things that they're concerned about is how AI can be used in their industries to kind of reshape their performances, to change the words to kind of generate you know, scripts or generate writing that they would have to rewrite, and it would mean that there would be less work to do for them, and

it would also mean that the quality would decline. Like I think that those are more of the risks of generative AI if we're looking at the potential impacts, and I would say that right now, these technologies are also being sold to us in such a way where like they're going to become ubiquitous in our lives. We're going to be using generative AI and chatbots all the time. They're going to be like rolled out into everything. This

is just the new way of the world. I think a lot of people are being too quick to like accept that as inevitable when I don't think it is. Like think about the voice assistance that were rolled out in the past, like six or eight years. How many people actually use those regularly anymore? I certainly don't, And I read a story recently that suggests actually a lot

of people don't. This is not just anecdotal evidence. So you know, I think that there's a lot of things that the tech industry rolls out that we think are like the next big paradigm, that we think are going to revolutionize everything, and it doesn't actually play out as planned. And I think the final point I would make on this is that when we look at generative AI, what we actually see is that it increases, like the cost structure,

it increases the cost of doing these things. So if you're switching over a search engine from the way it works right now to like generative AI and chatbots, the cost per search goes up, you know, quite significantly, actually, because it uses more computer power, because it's trained on these massive models, because it relies on all this centralized kind of computation right in these massive data centers that these companies own and I think that that's another piece

of this that maybe there's not enough talk about, because certainly you have the sam Altmans of the world going out and saying this is going to empower every individual, and we're going to have chatbots that are like personalized for you and all this kind of stuff. Actually, what this technology does is, you know, we've been talking about like anti trust and breaking up companies and the issues with like monopolization in the tech industry for a few

years now. What this actually does is like kind of cement that power, because you can't really have generative AI without scraping all of this data from the web, without having this centralized kind of computing infrastructure that only a small number of companies globally can actually control. And so if we do move in this direction, we're kind of building in the power of these large companies in a way that we were trying to challenge a few years ago.

And that suggests to me that they're also kind of responding to that fact. You know, there was a story just a few months ago about how the tech companies had very quite successfully kind of challenged and kind of blunted the push for anti trust, and now that the Republicans have taken over one of the houses in the States that sorry I can't remember which, the Senator of

the House or whatever. Anyway, they took over one of those and so now like it's pretty much going to be impossible to get any like anti trust legislation through for the next number of years, I would say. So the tech industry is very concerned about these things as well, very kind of alert to this. So, yeah, those are all my thoughts on Jenner VAI.

a successful self published author and all this stuff. And like you know, there's there's all these courses around SEO and search engine option optimization to ensure that your website is going to like get to the top of the search results, and like this is something that happens every single time, and I think it's very indicative of this happening again that like some of the like you know, beyond the kind of pr lines from the sam Altmans and like the real AI boosters that you see the

people saying that like you know, it's a massive threat to humanity, using these kind of long term mist arguments against it, saying that you know, they're on the cusp of digital minds. All this stuff is complete bullshit by

the way, you know. But the other like big narrative that you see on Twitter and TikTok and like all these other social media platforms is like the hustle bros and the hustle people like going really hard, like the LinkedIn the LinkedIn folks as well, like this is all the stuff you need to know about AI, this is how it's going to improve your workflow, help you writing emails, like all this blah blah blah. Yeah, it's it's a load of bull shit.

less than I used to. I'm not like off it all together, but especially when you see it like slowly moving in this kind of direction, that Elon Musk is taking it where like I think he's explicitly making decisions to kind of reshape it as more of like a right wing platform, right like parlor failed gab failed thrue socials a joke, Like you know, they they still want to control, like, you know, the the kind of way that we communicate with one another. They still want to

control the media. That's long been like part of the rights, you know kind of desire what they want to do. You know, they have Fox News, but they also kind of strongly influence like the liberal media quote unquote as well to kind of pull the narratives in that direction. So obviously they want to do that on social media as well, and have been effectively doing so for many years.

We can go back to the reporting on Facebook and like how Zuckerberg was like worried about kind of pissing off the conservatives or making it look like he was taking actions that would go against him even as their pages were like getting the most kind of views and growth and all that stuff. And so now you see like Tucker Carlson starting a Twitter show, like how does

that make any sense? We see DeSantis, Like as we're talking, DeSantis is going to like announce his presidential bid this evening, you know, and obviously all these kind of right wing folks just get so much additional traction, or they don't seem to think so, I guess, but you know, they get promoted a lot on Twitter now because of how Musk has changed things around and let all the Nazis back on and all that stuff, like, yeah, it's just

a it's a real health site. Like we used to joke it was a health site that like now is really elside.

I feel or like weren't able to get it. There was always this vibe of like, maybe it's just like an edgy thing that he's doing, or it's a like I once read someone saying like, oh, he's trying to save the environment by making buying electric cars, that he makes look more appealing to people on the right to help solve climate injustice, Like what a take Why do you think it was so hard for people to just like take him at his word and like listen to the things that he says and believe them when he

says them.

of this wonderful stuff for us. He was investing in the rockets and was going to take us the Mars, and he was building the electric car and was going to save us from climate change and like all this kind of stuff, right, And the media did hold him up as this figure who could really do no wrong and who we really had to like worship as not just like this incredible tech entrepreneur, but as the builder of the future, right, Like he had a vision that

nobody else had that you couldn't get from the political system or anything like that. Like he was the future and he was someone that we had to trust. And I think that that has like, even though that has started to shift in recent years, I think that first of all, it took a while for the media to really wake up. I think like even as you did have them publishing more kind of critical stories on Elon Musk,

they would still publish the puff pieces as well. Right, you know, even what was it last year, he was still named Times Person of the Year or whatever, Like, even as he was increasingly being engulfed in controversy, there were a ton of stories about the racism and sexism in his factories. You know, there was the story I believe about him like sexually assaulting the flight attendant. I

believe that was just before that happened. Like there was all this stuff that was kind of coming out about Elon Musk, and he still got this this title, right, And so I think that like unfortunately, like I think that there's a lot of people who really believe in the cult of and who are not just kind of like personally invested, but also let's be real, they've bought a Tesla or they bought Tesla stock and they're like

financially invested in Elon Musk. Because one of the things that is like somewhat unique about Tesla is there's a lot of quote unquote retail investors, people that are not institutional investors who owned Tesla stock, which is a bit less common. Right, It's because Elon Musk has all these fans and they've bought in and they kind of believe what he's doing and where he's going, and they want to follow him. Of course, some people have woken up.

But then the other piece of this is there were a lot of you know, kind of people who reported on Elon Musk who got to know Elon Musk because they're access journalists and I won't name names, but maybe you can think about who I'm talking about for a number of years who really helped him to kind of build up the reputation that he had and wanted to

ensure that they maintain that connection to him. And I think also kind of some in the way that they presented Elon Musk to the public and didn't want to recognize that not only was it not only is he kind of a bad person, who is you know, ensuring that transphobic talking points, who is ensuring that kind of white nationalist talking points, Like all of this kind of really terrible political stuff is being furthered and that he's like actively sharing it and promoting it and believing it.

But also that there how they presented him for so long was also wrong and was not an accurate reflection of who he was and what he was doing and his impact on the world because they created this narrative around him. They created this character of Elon Musk, and he was you know, this was a valuable property that the media had created and kind of sold to the world. It was great for him, that allowed him to get investment. It was also great for them because any time they

publish anything on Elon Musk, it gets a ton of views. Right, people love him, people hate him, whatever people want to read about him, And so that was great for the media as well. And that's part of the reason that they that they kind of created this narrative around him,

that they created the character of Vila Musk. But if you go back to it the very early days when he is starting zip too, when he's starting x dot com, you can see the stories about how he is a terrible manager who is an asshole to the people who work for him. Right, this is not unknown, This is very clear at that time, and that continues as he starts other businesses as well. And like we see the stories time and again through his history of like who

he actually is. But I think that some of these people who worked in the media, who kind of were incentivized to promote him in this way, ensured that that aspect of his personality and who he was was always downplayed, was always kind of hidden from the public, was not part of the persona that was sold to us. And so now there's kind of a reckoning, not just with who he is, because some of these people will say, oh,

he's just changed in the past like six months. No, he's always been this person and now he's just being

more open about it. And so there's a not just with that, but also like with what we've been told about him for a long time, and some people really don't want to engage with that and don't want to believe that he was always who he is now and is just being more open about it, and want to pretend that this is kind of a break from what they knew before or again is some kind of like you know, three dimensional chess sort of a thing that's going on where he's actually trying to get conservatives on

board with climate policy. Like it's just total bullshit, right, But yeah, so that's kind of how I think about that.

me hope. I as I was saying, like I feel hopeful seeing kind of people push back against the tech industry and seeing like the broader realization that we have around these people in the industry, around like what they are doing, and the recognition that like you know, they're not who they have been sold to us to be.

But then like on top of that, it's also quite inspiring to see, especially in the past number of years, a lot more organizing, not just in the tech industry, but like in the society more broadly, people kind of pushing back against you know, actions of the tech industry, people unionizing, like all these kinds of things I think are really hopeful because they suggest that, you know, maybe we're moving in a direction where people are getting really pissed off with the way that things are and are

trying to you know, change those things, are trying to ensure that we don't keep moving in that direction. And of course, you know, I guess the flips of that is that we also see that organizing happening on the other side among the fascists and the white nationalists who are trying to make the world worse. But I think that it's almost like inevitable that in the stage of capitalism that we're in, we're just going to see this

kind of polarization. And you know, the goal is to ensure that we have as much energy and power as we can build, like you know, on the left and among people who actually care about like regular people and not just like, you know, all this kind of fascist, racist garbage that we're increasingly seeing to kind of build

a better world. So I feel like I feel like that's a bit mixed, but I would say on the whole, I am hopeful that you know, even though things are going bad in some areas, I think that there's a reason to believe that people are willing to fight for something better, and you know, hopefully that continues.

Bridget Todd. If you want to help us grow, rate and review.