Interestingly I think if the AI succeed at the level that a lot of these CEOs hope we're not much better off either. And the sentiment that goes around is more: reduce the amount of people needed to do the same amount of work: https://www.theregister.com/2025/10/09/mckinsey_ai_monetizat... > McKinsey says, while quoting an HR executive at a Fortune 100 company griping: "All of these copilots are supposed to make work…
Nobody. It's a joke. The reason China could do this is because they were selling to the world. Our idiot elites don't even believe that it's bad to run massive trade deficits every year, while watching the gradually increasing strength of every exporting country.
A great movie about this that I watched recently is Der VW-Komplex (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pBRIzhbTFUA), where I learned that in the late 80s fully 10% of Volkswagen's output was purchased by Volkswagen's employees. Bitomsky was already asking "what will the robots buy?" And watching a management that seemed to think of human needs and desires as an annoying complication of machine and product design.
> The problem becomes that eventually all these people who are laid off are not going to find new roles.
I will note again that middle class people are completely unsympathetic to this problem until it affects them. They're like "Just learn Spanish!" "Just become programmers!" i.e. just be like me, who planned ahead and was quiet in class and is exactly where I belong. Complete idiot answers given by somebody who isn't worried about their own position in society at all.
Almost every independent retail business closed down because the US wouldn't tax imports or Amazon purchases, every small town in the US was wrecked and every Front Street filled with boarded up storefronts or rotating unprofitable boutiques run by the wives and children of rich men, and the upper middle class just laughed, looked down their noses and complained about their taxes.
I suggest gig work. The people who own the machines will send you tips through your phone if you pick up the leaves and trash around the gates of their homes.