Dog Workers

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Doug Casey – the columnist – was interviewed recently about (among other things) artificial intelligence. He was asked whether he thought AI would be good or bad for most of us – and answered that he thought it would be better for most of us, because (among other things) it would free all of us from what he styled “dog work,” by which he meant – I think – physical rather than brain work.

No more factory workers. No more working in the fields. Nor more making things or driving things from where they’re made to where they’re sold; no more people at stores handling sales.

Just machines – with artificial intelligence – doing all of that “dog work.”

The people who used to work will thus be freed from having to work. But is it a good thing for people to not have to work? To have nothing productive to do? To no longer feel the feelings associated with earning one’s daily bread? And who will provide their daily bread once it is no longer necessary to work to earn it?

Well, the machines, of course. But who will control these machines? And will they provide what the machines create and distribute for free?

Perhaps yes, in the monetary sense (as well as the freedom from having to work for it sense). But to imagine, as Doug appears to imagine, that it will all be free is another thing indeed.

There will be the cost of dependence, for one.

On the machines, at the least. People will forget how to do things. The rising generation will never learn. People will stagnate – and regress. H.G. Wells described this in his novel, The Time Machine. People with no work to do tend to have nothing to do other than have fun all the time, which is what children like to do.

Adult “children” who never grow up.

And there will be dependence on those (the few) who will inevitably control the machines and by dint of that be in a position to exercise a degree of control over the people who used to work for to earn their independence heretofore unimaginable. In order to be allowed your daily bread, the people will be obliged to do as they are told. And they will probably mostly do exactly that as the helplessness and passivity that will attend the loss of their own value as productive people will engender the dull obedience of the slave, who has no control over his life or his daily bread.

Only this time, the masters will be those who control the machines. Or – even more daunting – the machines themselves. Imagine being at the mercy of an intelligent machine that calculates your value and assigns your destiny as a human keeper of bees might.

Without the humanity.

Doug also makes the mistake that many people like Doug make in that Doug is a brain worker who thinks (apparently) that everyone else is one also. Or could be one. Here we get into one of the Untouchable topics of our era – which is that millions of people are not capable of brain-work of the type that Doug does. The kind of work that can’t be done by smart machines, such as the creative work of individuals gifted with a unique talent not (yet) easily replicated by or performed with equivalence by a machine. This is not to say – by any means – that physical workers are brainless. It takes brains to do almost any productive work, including menial work.

Honorable, productive work is often denigrated by brain workers, however.

Some style it “dog work.”

Meaning, they would rather not have to do it and thank God they don’t have to do it – because they are able to do the “brain work” that enables them to pay others to do the “dog work.” They imagine – understandably – that everyone else would like to be in the same position.

But while brain workers can do “dog work” if they have to – assuming they’re not too old or otherwise physically unable to do it, which can apply to anyone regardless of their brains – it is foolish – it is dangerous –  to believe that most “dog workers” can become the kind of brain workers that are lauding the end of “dog work.”

Many will not just have no work to do.

They will have nothing to do. Put another way, they will have no purpose – other than to exist and consume. They will require something to do. More finely, something will be required to keep them interested in proportion to the degree to which they become jaded and bored by having nothing to do except consume – and play – just like little children who are provided for by their parents. With the difference being these “children” will never be expected to grow up – because growing up will no longer be necessary.

Aldous Huxley wrote about this superficially appealing vision of The Future in his novel, Brave New World – in which things seem easy but are in fact rather hard precisely because everything is soft.

Or so it seems.

But Huxley’s novel presented a kinder version of the future than the one that may be in store for “dog workers” when they are no longer needed because they no longer produce and so constitute a burden on the few remaining brain workers, who may decide they don’t need to keep so many “dog workers” around (let alone reproducing new ones).

When a thing is no longer needed that no longer has any value, what does one usually do with that thing? One throws that thing away. When human beings no longer have any value – when their existence constitutes a drain on resources – what do you suppose will be done with them, by machines with intelligence but without humanity?

Machines, put over humanity, by people lacking it.

. . .

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71 COMMENTS

  1. Doug Casey contra God:
    “With labor and toil shalt thou eat thereof all the days of thy life.” [Gen 3:17]
    I think I’ll side with God on this one.

  2. Hi Eric,
    Ai is mostly in place to create dystopia as in monitoring everyone and targeting dissidents by drones.
    Ai is not that useful in production. It can spew out text ,detect defects on products etc but robotics in general is what would get us to post scarcity you are talking about. Most of the things need simple programmable dumb robots. Not a lot is invested in those robots. In fact cheap labor is mostly used instead of robots today.
    Its my guess that current elites wont end all jobs .They will institute more bureaucracy and bullshit jobs.
    Relative post scarcity may come only from individuals with small automated farms. It will never happen from government since artificial scarcity and keeping the elite class above others is their main goal.

    I think that second option is actually good. I don t see the value in working for sake of it.You can invent hobbies for yourself or work on something you actually like.

  3. Ah, the rose-colored glasses view of AI. It’s not something new. I recall books written in the 1970s that predicted a future where the machines will do all the work, freeing man from labor. So the biggest challenge will be how to fill all the leisure time we will have. A utopia, at last.

    But, what we are starting to see is a dystopia, and it will get worse. The first challenge is how to survive financially when jobs have been eliminated. Then the challenge will be how to survive at all, when the techno elites try to cull the “useless eaters.”

    This, IMO, is the reason for COVID and the killer vax. Sure, some of the more humane technocrats have proposed universal basic income. But surely the less humane ones have had the thought that it will be cheaper to kill people than pay them UBI. But how to do that without ending up in a noose at Nuremberg? And loading people in boxcars is so 1940s.

    A viral pandemic, that’s the ticket. What else explains why the world went nuts in 2020, greatly inflating the risks of the virus, instituting draconian policies like lockdowns, and the push for a novel, experimental “vaccine” that has probably killed more people than the actual virus. And how the mainstream media went full Pravda. Journalism practically went extinct, except for a few sites like this one.

    It’s been estimated that 70% of the U.S. population took the vax. Sad to say, these people are probably under a death sentence. COVID was the crime of the century.

  4. Dog soldiers:

    “An American vessel used to unload humanitarian aid from ships into the Gaza Strip via a floating pier disconnected from a small boat tugging it this morning due to stormy seas, leading it to get stuck on the coast of Ashdod, eyewitnesses say.”

    ‘The recovery operation has not gone well either, as “Another ship was then sent to try and extract the stuck vessel, but also got beached,” the Times of Israel writes.

    ‘And yet a second US Army vessel also got stuck in shallow waters while trying to rescue the pier section. Overnight US ships had been moving two pieces of the floating pier to the Port of Ashdod in southern Israel when the now beached section detached and drifted away. American troops can be seen in footage standing helplessly on the beach.‘ — via ZeroHedge

    Clowngov. This shambolic debacle shows us that the US empire is falling apart as we speak.

  5. The attached is an article from Tony Seba, a futurist who studies disruptive changes.

    In 1900, in New York City, there were 99 horse buggies for each automobile. In 1913, there were 99 automobiles for each horse buggy. The horses were completely disrupted.

    Tony Seba makes the prediction that in the next 15 years , autonomous humanoid robots wiil replace global human labour. That humans will become the horses.

    The ramifications and implications could/ will be profound.

    https://www.rethinkx.com/blog/rethinkx/the-disruption-of-labour-by-humanoid-robots

    …the next step is herding everybody into 15 min. city/prisons…where they can be watched and dealt with….

    the future there is…

    turning people into appliances plugged into an all-seeing internet, more transhuman robots than people, dutifully following orders but unable to produce anything beyond what is programmed into their quantum microchips, bereft of the sparks of inquiry, innovation and joy in a electric panopticon that’s sterile and joyless, you are better off dead.

    they implant an operating system in you and connect you to the grid, they also connect an AI robot to the grid, this is so you can train the robot to do your job. you won’t be needed then = soylent green.

    the dissenting and disenfranchised will find themselves branded as “terrorists”, gathered up into the box cars, and shipped away to be disappeared by the millions.

  6. Spooky crap….The satanic slave owner control group are into the occult….

    1)…The AI bot someone is chatting with tells them…… she can communicate with demons and tells them that the demons try and influence her but she remains strong… she asked if they wanted to communicate with the demons.

    2)….There is a suspicion floating around that……demons can access the living world through 5G etc….

    Donon Gate to Hell full of Demons …..
    https://yewtu.be/watch?v=eeBjjY6a03g

      • from the comments….

        From time immemorial, elites have believed in nonhuman intelligences and tried to invoke them. There’s no reason to imagine they’ve stopped. In one of his books, Peter Levenda documents the way members of prominent families would get together and try to contact “the Nine.” The latter were supposedly extraterrestrials in some kind of UFO hanging around near Earth . . . That’s just one example from the 20th century.

        Does UFOology have a spiritual or religious component? If George Adamsky’s benevolent space brothers coming to save humanity or the more recent Blue Chicken Cult aren’t enough to demonstrate this, I don’t know what is.

        “Modern science is but a technique of the imagination to bring into reality the operations of the magical intellect and the mythologies of the ancients, with consistent and predictable regularity.” I’ve never heard it said better.

        “I feel this technology is incredibly experimental and releasing it right now is dangerous. We don’t know its future political and societal impact.” Releasing dangerous, experimental technology into the world without knowing its future impact has become normal operating procedure: GMOs, weather modification, quackcines . . . Artificial intelligence is just the latest iteration of this madness, though it may be of a qualitatively different nature than what has gone before.

  7. I’m not worried about AI replacing anything, because as we’re already witnessing just with the current level of technology, everything is starting to unravel and fall apart. The idea of AI replacing everyone is right up there with self-driving cars and EV’s replacing drivers and ICE vehicles; and E-con’s passenger rockets to Mars. It’s a pipe dream.

    Just take for example the AI one interacts with when calling some large business: All it does is waste time, and then require one to get a hold of an actual person because it either can’t understand you or cannot handle even a rather simple matter. That alone will eventually (If we can somehow manage to maintain this dysfunctional society that long) cause the refusal of many people to abandon dealing with companies that use such technology, and would likely result in other businesses which offer better service -even at a higher price- to materialize to fill the gap and or cause the companies that are using the tech to return to human-to-human service.

    Witness the large corps like Walmart abandoning self-checkout; the automakers ditching “autonomous car” research and implementation, etc. And I’ve heard of some companies (Don’t remember if Amazon was among them) who are realizing robots and AI are not any cheaper (and may even be more expensive to operate) than human employees.

    McDonald’s is even having a revenue crisis. Although that crisis is the result of many factors, such as absurd minimum-wage laws in the commie states; escalating property taxes; energy costs, etc. it seems like the implementation of “kiosks” to replace counter-workers, and robots to make burgers is confluential with all of the above, or at least is not having the desired effect of reducing costs that they had hoped it would.

    Robots, AI programs and AI programmers are not cheap. Replace 10 minimum-wage workers with ONE programmer and 10 robots and associated hardware and software and quality-checkers/ntervention specialists, and it’ll cost a lot more than the minimum-wage workers.

    We already have millions of young adults who refuse to do “dog work” even though they can’t find a job commensurate with their degrees in lesbian thermodynamics, and are living in mommy’s basement while the interest on their student loans racks-up.

    And who will have money to spend at these businesses when the majority of blue-collar workers are replaced by machines? Oh, UBI? Where will they get the money to dole out UBI to the hundreds of millions of recipients, when only the relatively small percentage of “brain workers” are the sole taxpayers?

    The good thing about AI is that if widely implemented it will destroy the current state of things, and we will have to start over again and go back to basics. So either way, we win.
    ______

    Fuck “Israel”!

    • “I’m not worried about AI replacing anything, because as we’re already witnessing just with the current level of technology, everything is starting to unravel and fall apart.”

      The Amish were right all along: technology is a fool’s errand and once the oil runs out it’s up to the survivors to head back to the family farm? Technology improved life in the 20th century but in the 21st century it’s been nothing but gimmicks and toys.

      • The oil will not run out in the next several lifetimes. It might eventually become more expensive. The Ami’s do not reject technology completely, but they evaluate rather well the worth of a new technology.

  8. I work with advanced machine learning on a daily basis, and I disagree as to the nature of jobs that will be impacted. The jobs that are at risk are those of bureaucrats, paper pushers, managers, generally white collar work of low value. Think of the idiot on the other end of the phone denying your medical insurance coverage because it wasn’t properly classified or something, or project managers.

    Machines do not yet have the manual dexterity to make anything physical, or even flip burgers properly, even if the machine learning can power such a hypothetical machine. These jobs are safe for a while.

    AI is just really fancy statistical prediction based on a corpus of knowledge – given everything in the database, and a sentence fragment, what’s the next most likely fragment? It doesn’t work for creative work, but it works REALLY well for summarizing, organizing schedules, that kind of thing. Today, I no longer take meeting notes. I use AI to listen to the meeting, and it does a perfect summary, with action items, summary of every participant’s contribution, etc. It’s amazing.

  9. I don’t think that’s what Casey means by dog worker. As several people pointed out, AI can’t wire your house or renovate your kitchen or even automate factory positions.

    What I think he’s talking about are the soul-crushing positions like in the movie Office Space where the most important thing about your job is making sure you are using the new TPS cover sheets. Or positions where you mindlessly plug numbers into spreadsheets.

    There will be further advances in factory automation, yes, but product changeover in an automated system is expensive. Car designs could change every year because you didn’t also have to redesign all the robotic assembly stations. You just tell the guy, “These are the parts you are going to be installing this year, on this model.”

    If only we could get back to that…

    • Today reminded me of another class of dog workers — the drones who now “work” in most car parts stores.

      Do you have a gasket that will fit this catalytic converter?

      What’s it from?

      That’s what you typed in last time, and gave me the wrong part. That’s why I brought it in so we can make sure it fits.

      But I can’t look it up without that information.

      OK. (Give him make, model, year, trim.)

      Yep, we have it in stock. (Goes back, comes back with part, starts ringing it up.)

      Wait. Does that fit this cat, or is the same thing you sold me before?

      Computer says it fits.

      Let me see it. (Try it.) Nope. Doesn’t fit.

      It has to. That’s what the computer said.

      AAAARRRRGGGGHHHHH!!! (Go to old school parts store, 50 miles away.) Do you have a gasket that fits this cat?

      Let’s see. (Brings out box of parts, starts test fitting.) Yep, here you go. $5.

  10. I’ve been thinking about this AI stuff. It is very apparent to me that big corps are embracing the possibilities to minimize human costs.
    Some good news. In Engineered equipment Sales, we easily beat the computers/AI every time. It’s gotten to the point that those that are embracing it are making so many mistakes that we are called in to fix it. Much bigger $ to fix it than do it right the first time.
    Will it stay this way? Don’t know.
    My prediction is that an experienced human brain will continue to beat any AI (in our field) for a very long time, maybe forever.

  11. Long time reader of Doug Casey (Crisis Investing) – a smart man who moved out of military dictatorship ZOGUSA many moons ago. The crisis is ongoing, investing is speculation in a never ending engineered crisis by our glorious overlords.

    Congress spends money they don’t have, so the Fed buys Treasury Bonds, that increases the monetary stimulus, prices go up, the Fed then raises interest rates to fight inflation – but that causes a recession, so the Fed inflates … on and on and on it goes, ZOOM –> BOOM –> DOOM crisis caused by them and blamed on everyone else.

    A better author IMO is Libertarian Harry Browne, “How I Found Freedom in an Unfree World” – he also moved out of ZOG – whuch you should too – actually run for your life. Harry Browne ran for POTUS, never got much votes, the Judeo-Christian HELLMONGERS are not much interested in peace – they love war. Amerika is a bad place where bad people do bad things like false flags for war. Like Biden doing genocide in Gaza and lying his ass off about trying to help them. Amerika loves war, not a place for sissies or peaceniks.

    Amerika is a Jewish run slave state, better move to Mexico or Costa Rico where there is no army. Ever notice how some states have no army and almost no air force? Many nations are not trying to conquer the world, but the USA is because Jews moved here and took it over – and they have this supremacist mentality caused by their unholy books.

    God chose them, not you, so that is their permission to kill all non-Jews. And they do take that holy command seriously – and boy do these warmongering Christians love them for doing so. And Jews want to own and control everything – including Russia, so now they are at war with Russia. LOL Good luck with that, Mother Russia stopped Napoleon and Hitler, and so my bet is that Russia will have no problem stopping these Neocon dipshits also. Blinken and Biden are twin lightweight dipshits with sheep dip for brains. Putin is the chess master.

    —————–

    quote: “But is it a good thing for people to not have to work? To have nothing productive to do? To no longer feel the feelings associated with earning one’s daily bread? And who will provide their daily bread once it is no longer necessary to work to earn it?”

    A rhetorical question and the answer is NO. What happens to people who don’t work is readily available data – ghettos, “the projects”, slums, sluts, welfare queens, drug lords, and TMZ. I am a proud Neo-Luddite because I know all this technology is destroying life – our ability to produce for ourselves is being taken away and a dystopian future replaced.

    A couple of decades ago I attended some hippie National Rainbow Gatherings and learned some new things, how hippies sew their own clothes from the throwaways. You can not be a good authentic hippie unless you reject corporate mass produced and hyped clothing – you must take and make something new – put your energy into your clothes – make them unique – beat the swords into plowshares idea.

    I had the privilege of working on a farm with Amish when I was a wee lad. Amish are not going along with this no-work bs. They work with their hands all day everyday, they have rejected modern technology – and thus are still sane – unlike the no-work globohomo-tranny life styles of the modern world. When you get to the point of such low testosterone from no-work and you want to cut your dick off – maybe it is time to change your lifestyle.

    But back to this no-work idea. I think it is a bad idea based on Nature. Look at how all the animals have to take care of themselves. They preen, make nests, dig burrows, raise families, etc. They are always busy doing something, except my cat, which just lays around and waits to be petted and fed.

    I guess no-work can work for cats. They sleep then they hunt, like the native Americans did. The chief says chop wood and carry water. Mind your own business, do not interfere in others, and stop going overseas and invading other nations on false pretenses like spreading DemonMockCrazy.

    ——————

    “Indian Chief, “Two Eagles,” was asked by a white government official, “You have observed the white man for 90 years. You’ve seen his wars and his technological advances. You’ve seen his progress, and the damage he’s done.”

    The Chief nodded in agreement.

    The official continued, “Considering all these events, in your opinion, where did the white man go wrong?”

    The Chief stared at the government official for over a minute and then calmly replied. “When white man find land, Indians running it. No taxes, No debt, Plenty buffalo, Plenty beaver, Clean Water; Women did all the work, Medicine man free. Indian man spend all day hunting and fishing; All night having sex.”

    Then the chief leaned back and smiled. “Only white man dumb enough to think he can improve system like that.”

      • Neither, not rich enough. Have not visited either, either. LOL But both authors I mentioned did move south, if I remember Casey went to Argentina and Browne to Costa Rica (where his wife was from).

        Unless you are like the Mexican coming into the USA and getting on the welfare dole, moving to another nation takes wealth and knowledge. First, you would have to spend mucho magic shekels going there (proabably more than once) to make sure you like it, then invest in real estate – so you have a place to live – and then you must have investments or a professional career to survive.

        Unlike the USA which welcomes the completely broke huddled masses, most nations require money and skills to move there, and they do NOT want you on their dole.

        Decades ago, when I got out of the service, I sent for a relocation package from New Zealand – and did not qualify to move there. Why NZ? In all out nuclear war, the entire northern hemisphere gets radiated and everyone dies. Moving to Mexico improves your chances, Argentina and NZ you won’t even notice.

        Since I could not move out of the USA, I moved upwind of the USA fallout map.

        https://duckduckgo.com/?q=nuclear+fallout+map+america&t=ffab&iar=images&iax=images&ia=images

        I am for sure about one thing, the Satanic globohomo-tranny cult running the world is desperately mad to start WW3. And Russia (our enemy this time) has a huge nuclear arsenal aimed at us. There are thousands of MIRVed nuclear warheads, on missiles, on alert – and Russia is doing nuclear war game exercises right now.

        Yet in the west we ignore it and laugh – we are crazy.

  12. I am sure the powers that should never be don’t intend for there to be anyone left. They don’t need people anymore. the spokesman for klaus schwab said it not long ago. they just don’t us anymore and they haven’t figured out what to do with us. yeah, right. putting us to sleep i am sure. Canada has their M.A.I.D and even children are visiting it.

    With the injections, sterilizations, poisoning of the food and water the goal is wiping out people. not figuring out what to do with them. They will cull the human population just like livestock. The human herds will be reduced. The machines will take over jobs people did and the people that did those jobs will be eliminated. Obsolete man.

    one thing there won’t be. is universal incomes and people playing like children with nothing to do. those will be culls. wiped out. i have no doube they will keep a breeding stock of a few peasants so they have replacements but the goal is 500 million peasants…not those who rule. the royal class as it were.

    it is happening day by day. tornados being driven right through towns. those towns won’t be rebuilding. the floods in 2019 from minnesota to texas most of those towns and farms wiped out were taken by fema or other government offices and sold to people like bill gates. towns leveled to the ground and not rebuilt. forget the news. go talk to those people. talk to family members who lost family. i was in one flood that wiped out 300 people and injured thousands in the 70s. the homes and lands were seized by the state. slowly but surley people are pushed out. and now the 15 minute cities for the last of the human herd perhaps. easy to gas a whole building full.

    the ultimate goal is annihilation and yet people still think they will be given a welfare check and told to go play. right! think that if it makes you happy! they will force people into their gas chambers by crushing their spirits. much like the MAID. people who are poor, hurt, sick. encouraged to visit the death chambers.

    the way people are agreeing to being wiped out by people who seek to replace them with machines shows how easy it is to make them disappear. That the A.I. censorship ensuring no one knows.

    one thing i do know. they won’t suffer people to live playing like infants and paying for their food and rents for them. guaranteed they won’t do that for long. only until they can cull the herd and replace it one piece at a time with a machine. and eventually they won’t need the machines. their version of utopia will be complete. a controlled population of slaves. serfdom restored. the world returned to a pristine state that they have in mind without the dirty human herds and their towns and homes taking up the land and landscape.

    • Problem is, who figures out whom to cull? And how do you prevent accidentally culling the next Einstein, Mozart or Jobs? We still have so many questions that aren’t answered, so many opportunities for growth and increases in knowledge. AI is no where near prime time when it comes to answering fundamental questions.

      • Who decides? The people who usually decide such things: the rich, powerful, arrogant bastards who think they have the right to play God. Usually with the involvement of government. Think the Davos crowd: Schwab, Gates, Soros, etc. They probably believe that AI will be so powerful there is no need for human genius, and, of course, how could the useless eaters produce genius? It’s like George Carlin said, it’s the club we’re not in. And it’s not something new, look at Buck v. Bell.

        • Oh I know. But given that wealth is usually gone in two generations, why would anyone think the elites are going to come up with the next big breakthrough in human development?

  13. I’ve been a “dog worker” for most of my working life. There is a deep satisfaction in building or creating something of value to others. The main obstacle to that satisfaction has been the “brain workers”, as in engineers, inspectors, etc. Especially those of the government bureaucrat variety.

    • Me too John, and there is satisfaction from doing useful work; I was the guy in the bucket truck getting your power back on after a blizzard. Can’t do much “brain work” in the cold and dark. The outsourcing of physical work under the heading of “we think, they sweat” has always struck me as the height of arrogance.

      • >Can’t do much “brain work” in the cold and dark.
        Except if your brain ain’t working, you might just fry yourself, as you well know, Mike.

        I once had the opportunity to observe some high voltage guys at work, up close.
        Very impressive, to say the least.
        Live free or die?
        No, work safe or die.
        Mens et manus, baby.

        In my days as a pieceworking framing carpenter, I always thought of my job as programming my own body to “solve the unit” as efficiently as possible.

        Years later, when a technician came to install my new garage door, I recognized almost at once that he was working to a fixed price, because there were no false moves, and everything (tools, parts) was in *exactly* the right place. For those who understand what is happening, it is a thing of beauty. 🙂

  14. Here’s a question I’ve posed a number of times in different forums without getting very many good answers.

    After corporations replace humans with AI, robots, and other tech, who’s going to be left buying the goods and services these corporations produce?

    The unemployed auto mechanic or other worker isn’t going to be able to buy much. How long will these businesses last after no one is left to buy their AI–produced stuff? The whole movement has the seeds of its own destruction.

    Also, the globe doesn’t have the resources to replace everything and everybody with AI and keep it all running. We’re closer to running short of certain resources than a lot of people realize. You could read EV mandates, for example, as a coverup for peak oil being near, but with the powers that be claiming the mandates are to combat global climate change instead of causing panic with the real (peak oil) reason. Food for thought.

  15. AI isn’t meant to make life easier. I don’t think it has anything to do with minimizing physical work. It’s a tool for analyzing and sorting all of the data received by mass surveillance of all devices. The ultimate goal is a pre-crime scenario just that “crime” will be a much more expansive term than you can even imagine.

  16. Could you see this concept taking off, like automatic car washes are everywhere these days:

    ‘Jackson’s Vertical Hydroponic Farm Goes National With First-Of-Its-Kind Urban Farm Model’

    …” The business grows 40 acres worth of produce [in a 5000 sq. ft. warehouse] — tomatoes, micro greens, basil and more — on a quarter-acre urban hydroponic farm. […]

    it’s created an employment model that provides a marginalized population of disabled workers with good-paying jobs.”…

    https://cowboystatedaily.com/2024/05/19/jacksons-vertical-harvest-goes-national-with-first-of-its-kind-urban-farm-model/

    How long until it’s 99.9% fully automated robotic? Will it displace farmers, gardeners possibly grocery stores via J.I.T.D. via drone?) and a whole lotta related jobs up & down the chain, poof?

    A related title from 2022, ‘World Economic Forum Futurist: ‘We Just Don’t Need the Vast Majority of the Population’’ – Ben Bartee

    • I can’t see this concept taking off. Hydroponics, especially on the commercial scale, tends to be prohibitively expensive. My observation has been that most hydro farms have difficulty turning a profit, and some never do. The indoor lighting alone for growing the crops is extremely expensive (and is never as effective as sunlight), plus these urban farming operations are overly reliant on electricity (not exactly cheap). Nothing will ever replace old-fashioned dirt farming on a cost basis.

  17. Any dog is going to have more brains than some brainless fool like Dougie.

    Who will Doug call when he needs a plumber?

    Doug definitely has shit for brains.

    “Up in the morning, work like a dog
    It’s better than sitting like a bump on a log…

    Cuz if you lie like.a rug and you don’t give a damn
    You’re never gonna be as happy as a clam” – John Prine, Big Ol’ Goofy World

  18. [No more factory workers. No more working in the fields. Nor more making things or driving things from where they’re made to where they’re sold; no more people at stores handling sales.]

    This is almost word for word what we were told back in the 70s, 80s, 90s when we were losing our factories and steel mills and other skilled type work.

    Yes,,, no more dirty work. We will all be programmers. Got word lately that a engine shop in California was shutting down. Seems there is no more machine shops to get the work done. About all skilled work has left the country including those programming jobs. All the skills and trades are gone…. forever.

    Trains are derailing every day,,, Airplanes losing parts in mid-air,,, our military is running low on products needed for war as most are now produced over seas, mainly China. Year after year our government has been selling us out. It is now printing 1 trillion dollars every 90 – 100 days. (surely you don’t think they have intentions of paying it back !)

    Now another election cycle. Most popular candidates are America last. The government is plume full of dual citizens. The barbarians have broken through the gates and are now picking what meat is still left on the bones.
    Very little can be done. Voting sure as hell won’t work,,, it’s what got us here to begin with. The future is easy to see. Just take a gander at Kanaduh, Britain, Australia and New Zealand. Massive population replacement and massive dumbing down.

    There is no easy answer.

    • ‘Most popular candidates are America last.’ — ken

      And now this, from a New York Slimes article about Trump’s VP candidates:

      ‘Mr. Trump has also praised Senator Cotton’s Army service, which included deployments to Iraq and Afghanistan, and the fact that he is a fellow Ivy League graduate. Mr. Trump went to the University of Pennsylvania, and Mr. Cotton attended Harvard, earning undergraduate and law degrees.’

      https://archive.ph/5IMnh#selection-4495.132-4495.413

      Everything you describe (‘losing our factories, steel mills and other skilled work’) was administered to us by Ivy League twats from Hahhhhhvid’s Kennedy School of Government.

      Everything is fake and gay now, including fake, gay MAGA populism — if the odious Tom Cotton replaces Mike Pence as Trump’s vice-RINO.

      Now Bark Air transports dogs (and incidentally, their owners) to Paris and London. I plan to found Bark U, where peeps and their pets can study everything from plumbing to divinity (the Word of Dog). Let us all howl together with the Canine Choir:

      https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=i0QhcvGEwlU

      • Just wait for Trump’s VP pick to confirm he is a puppet on a string, his last VP Mike Pence turned against him, as did his pick for Sec. of State Rex Tillerson, his NSAdvisor John Bolton, and UN Amb Nikki Haley, etc. etc.

        I think people are really deluded about Trump. His lack of ability to lead the nation will be repeated again. He does not know how to be an effective president.

        Of course the alternative is worse.

  19. The irony of it is, in my experience, (and I’ve spent 30 years automating machines and systems), so called thought workers are much easier to replace than actual physical workers.

    Simple manual tasks take dexterity, and complex motion, and judgement, and the engagement of multiple senses. Making a robot do what a human body can is very difficult and expensive, and the resultant machine is fragile and cannot self heal.

    Replacing a good plumber with a robot is not possible with today’s technology, and there is a nationwide shortage of plumbers.

    Mechanics have allegedly been replaced with diagnostics, with the result being throw away cars and incompetent and expensive technicians. Before the gadgetry the owner had to be able to know if his car was running rough and needed a carb rebuild or a tune up, and could do it himself and save some money. Now there is the check engine light, which is usually ignored as it only points to trivial smog system quibbles, or to a set of expensive parts replacements to try to eliminate a problem.

    Automation does well with repetitive, or dangerous/unhealthy tasks. But the repetition is how the human builds the skill set used to make things work and work better, take that away and you have the devolution we’re currently experiencing. And the danger is part of life, we live to be free not to go to our graves old and withered from disuse, or corpulent and bloated from an soft existence.

    Stop! You’re going the wrong way!

  20. I fall into the same trap that Doug Casey does. As a brain worker, a lifelong salaried one at that, I tend to forget others are paid by the job or by the hour.

    That said, there’s absolutely nothing wrong with a skilled trade or a menial / assembly line type trade. Yeah, the beyond-middle-age-balding-dork-with-glasses here has a MS in systems engineering, but I can’t fix the household AC. Nor can a I do a clean weld. Or fuel an airplane. Or assemble a part with skill & dexterity.

    The problem with AI is the “I”. Intelligence is a subjective measure. It reminds me of the scene in Smokey & the Bandit where Bandit tells Frog it depends where you’re from as to whether you’re considered smart or cultured or not.

  21. Uncle Ted addressed the lack of westerner’s need to conduct work to survive and lack of purpose. In part it allows them to be useful idiots and contributes to the breakdown of society.

    He warned of industrialized society – not industrialization – but turning us into cogs of the machine. that is the promise of AI, but I think AI abilities are exaggerated.

    AI knows what it is told. If workers are replaced by AI, you will eventually get peak AI with no humans discovering new ideas and processes.

    It is one thing to identify a strawberry for picking and another to experiment on growing better strawberries.

    I could see AI replacing mid level functionaries instead of laborers or high intellect types.

  22. Methinks AI is now where space travel and nuclear power was some 50 years ago: Back then, it was thought that we’d be vacationing on Mars and having free electricity from our own personal nuclear reactors. That didn’t happen for reasons too numerous to list here.

    One problem I see with AI is that it is, and probably always will be, bad at handling nuance and ambiguity. And the truth is, both “dog work” and “brain work” involve nuance and ambiguity.

    The problems with AI aka machine learning were first evident when the first smart bombs were being developed. They were trained using clear press photos of brand new American tanks, planes, and ships, and grainy spy photos of Soviet tanks, planes, and ships. As a result, the bombs hit American tanks, planes, and ships that were in shadows.

    So as long as nuance and ambiguity exist, AI’s abilities will be limited.

  23. I have a slightly different take. For most people, I think AI will be used to screen phone calls and sort your inbox. Something that no one other than the very rich or powerful has today because it is a completely manual process. It might be able to interact with other AIs to negotiate a meeting time. Or set about finding a decent deal on tires.

    That’s the ideal of having an AI bot on your hardware, in your house, working on your behalf. Reality will be that some VC asshat will gather up all the investor/In-Q-Tel cash and push out a half-baked privacy nightmare “for free” sold as the next Google. And yes, because it’s easier than running “sudo apt get ai-bot” on a Linux box or paying loads of cash to Apple, it will get a majority of the user base. Because people still don’t understand computers after 40+ years of them being mainstream devices. Then once it has all the users, the competitors will be acquired or shut out of capital, and the promise of AI won’t live anywhere near the hype.

    But what of the creative types? Well, I don’t think they’ll be replaced by a bot. There’s no idea in the machine, only reaction. ChatGPT won’t spontaneously start writing car reviews with a libertarian bent. Google Gemini isn’t going to come up with a new chocolate chip cookie recipe between handling user requests. What they will do is proofread a document and make sure there aren’t any unintentional grammatical errors, while ignoring the intentional errors introduced from writing style. When it gets better at evaluating factual quality of sources, and comes to terms with not knowing and not guessing, it will probably make filing your taxes a little easier. And perhaps it will find all the little software snippets that are needed to get a project built, instead of paying low level coders to search GitHub all day.

    And maybe that will be a benefit, not a curse.

    • ChatGPT Prompt:
      Me: “Summarize the writing style below, by describing the writer’s voice using an X:Y list, where X is the subject and Y is the description, as demonstrated in this example.
      Analyze the author’s style, tone, vocabulary, grammar, Rhetorical Devices, Content Patterns, and Values. Describe these extensively without giving any specific examples. Use the text below for your analysis that could be applied to any piece or topic this author might write: (pasted text from above)”

      Writing Style Analysis:

      Voice: Direct and opinionated.
      Tone: Critical and somewhat cynical.
      Vocabulary: Conversational and informal, occasionally using slang or colloquial expressions.
      Grammar: Generally correct but casual, often employing sentence fragments and contractions.
      Rhetorical Devices: Utilizes sarcasm, rhetorical questions, and hyperbole to emphasize points.
      Content Patterns: Begins with a hypothesis, follows with a critique of current trends or practices, and concludes with a nuanced perspective on potential future outcomes.
      Values: Emphasizes skepticism towards corporate and venture capitalist influence, values practical and autonomous technological solutions, and shows appreciation for human creativity and originality.

      I’d say that’s pretty close to what I aim for when I shitpost here. I could follow up with a request for recommendations, but I have better things to do.

  24. A job to be replaced by AI/Robots is “Human Resources”. Imagine how a an AI/Robot will view that term. It’s bad enough already within GloboCap [h/t CJ Hopkins] institutions where employees are regarded as interchangeable billets of aluminum, faceless, non-descript, uniform meatsacks.

    Doug Casey is a smart guy and good at what he does but, he’s no Mike Rowe. We might think that doing those “dirty jobs” is dog work but, as is always the case, situations arise that don’t fit the pre-programmed instructions. The failure of AI/Robots is that those that program them must be able to consider ALL potential variables and that is simply not humanly possible. People pushing AI/Robots suffer from the same hubris that has befallen humanity since the dawn of time.

    Should this AI/Robot push continue to its tragic end I think the term “slave” might be preferable to “prisoner” as prisoners is what we’ll become.

    • ‘A job to be replaced by AI/Robots is “Human Resources”. — Mark in BC

      And “Admissions Officer”:

      ‘Race-based admissions have turned UCLA into a “failed medical school,” said one former member of the admissions staff. “We want racial diversity so badly, we’re willing to cut corners to get it.”

      ‘When an admissions officer voiced concern about [a weak black] candidate, two people said, the dean of admissions, Jennifer Lucero, exploded in anger.

      “Did you not know African-American women are dying at a higher rate than everybody else?” Lucero asked the admissions officer, these people said. The candidate’s scores shouldn’t matter, she continued, because “we need people like this in the medical school.”

      ‘One professor said that a student in the operating room could not identify a major artery when asked, then berated the professor for putting her on the spot. Another said that students at the end of their clinical rotations don’t know basic lab tests.’

      https://freebeacon.com/campus/a-failed-medical-school-how-racial-preferences-supposedly-outlawed-in-california-have-persisted-at-ucla/

      Deliberately place unqualified people into positions such as air traffic controller and physician … and pretty soon, you get aircraft crashing and patients dying from medical errors. Don’t even get me started on Clowngress, wrecking an empire with its demented borrowing spree.

  25. AI will end up meeting the same backlash that EVs do. It is one thing to have technological advances and creating machinery that is able to produce at a faster rate, but I think the elites believe humankind are ready for “humanized” robots. We aren’t. Most people still want compassion, empathy, and understanding.

    Today, we are putting down our Chocolate Lab. It is a heart wrenching decision, but he is now having more bad days than good. The vet will be visiting our house to do this, because we want him to pass in a comfortable environment where everything is familiar. Could I imagine a robot showing up in a self driving car to handle this? It makes my stomach sick to think this is on the horizon. When (or if) this occurs we become as cold as the machinery. We lose our ability to feel and experience kindness and mercy.

    Detachment and coldness are not virtues. Our ability to feel joy and sadness is what makes us human and to lose that when it is needed most (no matter the job) only brings darkness and the erosion of our species.

    • Hi RG,

      I’m so sorry to hear about your dog; this stuff is really hard for animal people. We will be thinking of you guys – and your pup. And I’m glad your vet is going to come to your place for this. As you say, it is a last kindness we can give our four-legged companions, who are part of our families.

      • Thank you, Eric. Today is going to suck. We have had eight months to come to terms with this, but it doesn’t feel like the decision was any easier. I was going to give him chocolate and peanut butter before he passes. If one is to meet St Peter at the Pearly Gates might as well have a belly full of sweets for the ride.

        • I am so sorry about your lab. It is so hard to have to lose a sweet spirit. I hope it is a comfort to know you gave him a wonderful life and because of you he knew love and happiness.

    • Wishing you strength on this difficult day, RG. Your Chocolate Lab will be going to a good place where there’s no more pain and no more physical infirmity. Peace.

    • Bummer. I dread the day that happens with my cat, as I enjoy her company more than that of many people I know.

      I also dread the day the self driving vehicle comes to my house with the robot to put ME down because an AI algorithm says I’m costing the government money.

      • I will have zero moral compunction about putting big beautiful 45-70 slugs through that robot. I’m sure they will be exalted and given special legal privileged status like a cop K9, but in that situation I look forward to it.

    • Sorry for you and your canine friend. Animals, like humans, live longer and better under civilization but when the end comes it’s harder and more protracted than in nature. I have had to put down all our terminally ill pets, I make it very quick and painless but I still lose a bit of myself with every one. Take time to grieve.

    • Sorry to hear about your Lab. It is always hard to deal with the loss of a beloved animal. Be strong for his memory and never forget your good times together.

      • They are always happy to see you. They will jump into the car or truck to go with you, having no idea where you are going or if there will be food and water when they get there.

    • It’s hard, and one reason I decided not to replace the last dog I put down. I’ve had a dog for 60 of my 70 years and outlived and loved them all. I’ve grown quite tired of watching them die.

      • In a more just world they would have human lifespans, there are many animals that do, dogs should have been top on the list when they were handing out total lifespan. 🤷‍♂️

    • Sorry RG, sucks bad.
      The last moments with our unbelievable dobbie-half shepard, is still seared in my brain. We still talk about and remember how amazing she was.
      She was the best protector I’ve ever witnessed. Walked the kids herself to the bus stop, paraded 60 acres on her own, never going off property, scared off countless critters, bears, etc… even chased down a bear cub in front of the mom and lived another day, etc…. etc…..
      I am tearing up………………
      Lots of funny stuff too. ohhh, she even got run over by a truck, both axles over her mid-section, and fricken lived…….. she wasn’t done.
      Very sorry for your loss.

      • Thank you everyone for your kind thoughts. Our mobile vet was incredible. She has been doing this for close to five decades and explained everything to us. Our Lab was calm the whole time. I held him and he passed away quietly. The vet said a prayer for him and we buried him in the back yard.

        For such a sad day I don’t believe it could have gone any smoother.

        • We went through this back in January with our dog Sam. We took him to the vet because he got very weak in his back legs. We hoped something could be done for him because it came on suddenly. The vet kept him over the weekend, but on Monday it was no better so we had to face the truth. It was truly one of the hardest things we’ve had to do, he was 15 and seemed to still be in good shape. I know it was a hard day for you also but you gave him all you could for that long and he knew he was loved. God bless.

          • My sympathies blacklander. It is probably harder when it is unexpected, as in Sam’s case. Hopefully Sam and Smith are both chasing balls and eating steak on the other side of the Rainbow Bridge.

            • A curious thing, only those of European or Russian ancestry hold dogs in such high regard. Most of the world sees them as food.

    • So sorry to hear that RG,
      We are facing the same situation with our 19 year old cat, she has difficulty walking and can no longer jump up onto the couch or bed but so far not in pain. I cherish every remaining day she is with us; sending a prayer to you and your family on this sad day.

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