After a long hiatus, I am once again featured at The American Spectator. My essay, ‘Defending “Adequate” Humans Against AI,’ is found here.
There’s a whole realm of life that belongs to the Adequate. Good enough for the general public. That’s the realm where most of us live, and where skilled workers used to learn their crafts.
In the AI future, infinite goods will be produced, but who will buy those goods? Where will the consumer acquire purchasing power, when both manual and mental labor have been automated? At what point will our AI masters decide that the human being, like Ned Ludd the weaver or Lars the script translator, is a downward drag on the bottom line?
Glad to see that you are back with the Spectator.
I’m not very cheerful about the AI business as it relates to fiction. It ought to be easy to crank out an AI=generated Star Trek novel, for example, that I would have read and enjoyed as a youngster.
Funny to think that, not so many years ago, there was published the first novel written by a computer as was claimed. It was titled The Policeman’s Beard Is Half-Constructed — just an oddball novelty, I suppose — didn’t read it.