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As per “The Communist Manifesto,” the “lumpenproletariat” constitutes “the social dregs, that inertly decaying heap cast off by the lowest strata of the old order.” Ranking below proletariat workers, the lumpenproletariat encompasses the destitute and the unemployable, those ejected from the workforce without alternatives, or those unable to enter it to begin with, such as young laborers during periods of economic downturn. According to certain individuals in Silicon Valley, this unfortunate group will soon include a large portion of the global population, as a fresh lumpenproletariat—or, in contemporary online terms, a “permanent underclass”—is spawned by the quickening march of artificial intelligence.
The concept of a permanent underclass has recently been taken up partly as an online jest and partly from a genuine apprehension about how A.I. automation will disrupt the job market and give rise to a new standard of disparity. In a future dominated by A.I., those with capital will acquire “compute” (the technological term for A.I. processing power) and deploy it to execute tasks formerly carried out by humans: spanning from coding software to crafting marketing strategies to overseeing factories. Those lacking comparable resources will be left with scarce options. A feeling of foreboding regarding this approaching A.I. social hierarchy has sparked a renewed eagerness to get ahead while one still can. “You have 2 years to create a podcast in order to escape the permanent underclass,” one Silicon Valley meme account, @creatine_cycle, recently shared on X, implying that perhaps renown can still rescue you. “Honestly if you don’t want to be a part of the permanent underclass you should probably ship slop asap,” another person commented, employing the slang term for any content produced or enhanced by A.I.; essentially, start embracing A.I. products or remain impoverished forever. Jayden Clark, the mind behind @creatine_cycle, is a former musician turned entrepreneur based in San Francisco. His specialized posts lampoon the tech industry’s ego, which he has witnessed transform drastically since the emergence of the A.I. boom. In the future envisioned by A.I. entrepreneurs, Clark revealed to me, “nobody’s working anymore.” He added, “whoever hasn’t gotten in, you have no other chance to climb the ladder.”
The concerns of an impending deadline for being employable arise partly from a notable essay, published the previous year by researcher and former OpenAI staffer Leopold Aschenbrenner, anticipating that A.I. will match or surpass human ability by 2027. Aschenbrenner states that it is “strikingly plausible” that, by that time, “models will be able to do the work of an AI researcher/engineer.” At that juncture, technological advancement would become self-perpetuating, running on an uncontrolled feedback cycle: A.I. would independently develop more potent A.I., rendering humans unnecessary. Nate Soares, a leading A.I. pessimist, the president of the Machine Intelligence Research Institute, and co-author of a recent best-selling book on A.I. titled “If Anyone Builds It, Everyone Dies,” shared with me, “In Silicon Valley, it’s like everyone’s seen a ghost.” He continued, “We don’t know how long there is on the clock” before the arrival of complete A.I. automation. Irrespective of his personal existential anxieties about the technology, Soares noted, “people should not be banking on work in the long term.” Tech positions may be the initial casualties, akin to how Frankenstein’s monster slew its creator. Then follows the broader realm of digitized labor: composing e-mails, completing spreadsheets, creating presentations. Ultimately, self-improving A.I. will devise intelligent machines to more effectively accomplish physical tasks. Whatever A.I. can perform superiorly, it will, according to Soares: “Humans are just not the most efficient arrangement of matter to do almost any job.”
The dread of a permanent underclass originates in part from the advancement A.I. has already achieved. Whether we desire it or not, the technology is gradually infiltrating our day-to-day lives. Both OpenAI and Meta have recently debuted feeds of entirely A.I.-generated videos, heralding a period of social media where even the most elaborate content we consume is no longer crafted by humans. Everyday corporate software such as Salesforce is being enhanced with A.I.-driven “agents” that can autonomously execute tasks for users. Waymo vehicles navigate themselves through the streets of major cities. Some economic figures are already suggesting a deceleration in hiring, particularly among new entrants; this year, the unemployment rate for recent American college graduates exceeded the national average, an oddity that an Oxford Economics report primarily attributed to A.I. automation. Entry-level software developers are encountering particular hardship. Jasmine Sun, a former Substack employee who publishes a newsletter covering Silicon Valley culture, remarked to me, regarding tech employees, “Many are really struggling and can’t find even a normal salary, and some of the people are raking it in with these never-seen-before tech salaries. That creates this sense of bifurcation.”
The novel desirable employee archetype is a “cracked twenty-two-year-old,” Sun described, utilizing the slang for an ultra-productive, extremely online programmer who might work “nine-nine-six,” a term adopted from workers in China that signifies a schedule of 9 A.M. to 9 P.M., six days a week. The sole means of escaping the permanent A.I. underclass, ironically, is to embrace and toil in a robot-like manner. “Rather than being politically radicalized, everyone grinds harder,” Sun noted. The payoff for the grind might be a position as a ruler of the A.I. future: the more closely you collaborate with the machine, the greater your influence will be. Concerns about a permanent underclass underscore the absence of a cohesive vision for how a future society governed by A.I. will be organized. Sun stated, regarding the Silicon Valley elites promoting accelerationism, “They’re not thinking through the economic implications; no one has a plan for redistribution or Universal Basic Income.” What will remain for the subordinates, it appears, is a bleak world of A.I.-produced content and the illusion of companionship from chatbots. As Sun expressed it, “Are you going to be the piggy or be the one making the slop?”
To gain insight into how non-tech workers are perceiving A.I.’s menace of economic division, I posted an inquiry on my social-media accounts. I received a response from Jabari Canada, a cinematographer who shifted to architecture after realizing that his film-production work would soon be automated. Agnieszka Bąk, a math tutor in Poland, informed me that she could no longer trust her students to complete their assignments independently but also questioned her own policy of abstaining from A.I.: “Am I setting myself up for failure because I refuse to give in?” Chris, a brand planner in London, disclosed to me, “I have genuinely considered retraining as something like a plumber. I doubt they’ll be able to replace the opposable thumb in my lifetime.” Arielle Pardes, a journalist, stated that she’s been employed in the beverage sector because it feels inherently human: “Robots can’t taste wine.” Everyone is “thinking about how to future-proof our ways of generating an income,” Pardes added. The most stable sectors, it stands to reason, might be those that cater to the extremely affluent, who will persist in amassing wine and other luxury items. Redirect toward those, or simply escape to the woods to pursue a form of neo-Amish, anti-tech self-reliance. “Tell me where the commune is and I’m packing my bags with a one-way ticket,” Bąk declared.
In Marx and Engels’s “The Communist Manifesto” framework, A.I.’s underclass might ultimately join the proletariat rebellion. However, that would necessitate a collective awareness of the technology’s oppressive consequences, and class consciousness could be challenging to foster in an era where media streams and information intake are increasingly shaped by A.I. itself. Marx and Engels posited that the lumpenproletariat was especially susceptible to political manipulation: the group’s dire straits, he wrote, “prepare it far more for the part of a bribed tool of reactionary intrigue.” It’s easy to envision a similar pattern unfolding, already, among those aspiring to avert membership in A.I.’s permanent underclass. Struggling to decelerate the A.I. revolution now would only be an acknowledgment that you’re not capable enough to participate in it. ♦
Sourse: newyorker.com
