The article title is click bait here is the full article:
Wondering what your career looks like in our increasingly uncertain, AI-powered future? According to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, it’s going to involve less of the comfortable office work to which most people aspire, a more old fashioned grunt work with your hands.
Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity.
In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.
“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”
Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)
The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.
“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company… now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp insisted. “I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”
Now, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.
It seems that the AI revolution never seems to threaten those who stand to profit the most from it — just the 99.9 percent of us building their batteries.
Idk we’ve learned that American citizens don’t do shit all even when the boots on their neck.
It’s taking time, but the wheels are already in motion.
Each day people feel like they have less to lose and nothing to live for. Crime will go up, productivity will go down.
China is going to lead the world because America is run by people who went to business school.
All those folks out protesting and getting in ICE’s face is nothing right?
Not true, there’s been lots of big talk, and some actual organization and resistance.
I know you think the snark is cute or funny, but resistance is happening. Courts are ruling on things, people are protesting massively, and Minneapolis is actively resisting. Peacefully. Read your history. Peaceful protest does work.
I’ve read a lot of history. Peaceful protest works sometimes, and when it does, it requires a level of solidarity and organization we haven’t yet seen in the US. It also depends on how psyhopathic those in power are. There was peaceful protest against the Nazis, and those involved were murdered. Resistance against Stalinism went the same way. There’s no sign so far that Trump and senior MAGA leadership are in any way constrained by morality or human decency, so it’s really a question of how far civil society and institutional resistance can deter them.
Still, peaceful protest is definitely a less horrible option than violent direct action, though it’s possible to have both in parallel. Consider ML King and the more radical groups who didn’t practice non-violence such as the Panthers, or Gandhi and Chandra Bose.
It isn’t on their neck to be brutally frank. Going after illegal immigrants and terrorizing Minnesota isn’t hitting the vast majority of Americans. History shows when the middle/lower classes become desperate and food becomes an issue that is when the knives come out.
“food becomes an issue”
Literally the first thing any Romanians mention to me about the late 80s, right before the revolution. Stores were empty and everyone was lining up for rations.
That is what I read about Weimar Germany. When the middle class found itself on a precipice that is when everyone became agitated.
To be fair it’s not on most people’s necks yet. 80% of people are free to ignore what’s happening so far. And most of them have. But the ratchet will click. Likely as not the world will get the bloody spectacle they apparently are craving.
They’re beginning to stir. The only thing they can do is passively resist and they’re becoming more aware of that each day.