Against AI Hysteria

Josiah Lippincott

Josiah Lippincott is a Ph.D. student at the Van Andel School of Statesmanship at Hillsdale College, and a writer for American Greatness and The Federalist. His writings can be found on Substack under the name Regime Critic.

There is crazy in the air. Do not give in. Do not become a psychic casualty.

Since 2020, the tendency towards apocalyptic fantasies, lurid speculation, and despair has become an endemic feature of American life. I hold the government lockdowns primarily responsible. The complete upending of social norms did lasting, long-term damage to many Americans’ mental and spiritual health.

The latest wave of hysteria is connected to Artificial Intelligence and its potential impacts on American life. On February 10, Matt Schumer, an AI start-up CEO, penned an article on X entitled “Something Big is Happening.” The piece went uber-viral. Today it has 84 million views and 40k shares.

Schumer’s thesis is that the AI revolution is a major economic and social happening that will upend our lives and lead to untold chaos.

Schumer explicitly compares AI to COVID. He frames himself as trying to give an early warning to those who don’t yet comprehend the new technology and the crisis it will cause.

I think we’re in the “this seems overblown” phase of something much, much bigger than COVID.

And what does Schumer think is this thing that is much bigger than COVID? He claims, following Dario Amodei (the CEO of Anthropic), that AI will eliminate most white-collar work:

 “I’m going to be direct with you because I think you deserve honesty more than comfort.”

Dario Amodei, who is probably the most safety-focused CEO in the AI industry, has publicly predicted that AI will eliminate 50 percent of entry-level white-collar jobs within one to five years. And many people in the industry think he’s being conservative. Given what the latest models can do, the capability for massive disruption could be here by the end of this year. It’ll take some time to ripple through the economy, but the underlying ability is arriving now.

Schumer claims that AI is a general substitute for cognitive work and that while in previous waves of automation workers could move into new lines of production, that won’t be the case with the AI revolution.

“This is different from every previous wave of automation, and I need you to understand why. AI isn’t replacing one specific skill. It’s a general substitute for cognitive work. It gets better at everything simultaneously. When factories automated, a displaced worker could retrain as an office worker. When the internet disrupted retail, workers moved into logistics or services. But AI doesn’t leave a convenient gap to move into. Whatever you retrain for, it’s improving at that too.”

Schumer is wrong. AI will not replace white-collar work. It will not replace work as such. It will not cause an economic collapse. Schumer does not understand human nature.

Automation and technological advancement will, in fact, do the exact opposite of what he is claiming. If AI’s inventors and promoters can deliver on their promises, then the result of this enormous increase in computational power and problem solving will be mass prosperity. The automation of certain sectors of cognitive work will not remove cognitive work as such. It cannot.

The True Economics of AI

AI, if successful, will simply lower the per-unit cost of certain cognitive services. This is a good thing for everyone. Lower input costs lead to lower prices or higher profits. Either consumers will gain new savings or business owners will have greater returns on investment. In either case, the newly saved dollars will be allocated to other goods.

This reallocation to new lines of production is economically beneficial in the ordinary sense: Lower input prices mean production can increase while remaining profitable. All prices are ratios. If the amount of goods for sale rises relative to the amount of money, the purchasing power of money will rise. The same wages from year to year will be worth more — they will command more resources.

Overall, more problems will get solved. We will have the old service and the new fruits of the savings generated. Life will get better for everyone who likes having more and better-quality goods, more time off work, and better healthcare. Savings anywhere are a boon to consumers everywhere.

Workers who are no longer needed in the old lines of production will transition into new ones just as they have always done. This transitional unemployment will be brief and unremarkable. Switching jobs to find a better, more profitable fit for yourself is fundamentally different from not being able to find a job at all due to malinvestment, famine, war, theft, etc. This distinction is crucial.

Additionally, computational power is a scarce resource. AI is not getting better at “everything” all the time. AI models are limited by existing data processing power. We are not at the point, for instance, where an AI model can simply be told to “cure cancer” and then do it. Therefore, the technology still needs a lot of work.

Since computational power is limited and human desires are unlimited, there will always be more need for thought than there is cognitive power available. If AI only has enough processing power to solve the first one billion problems in human life, then a human being can turn a profit by solving problem number 1,000,000,001.

As long as there is scarcity, pain, and death in this world, human beings will need to work and to allocate their limited resources as efficiently as possible if they want to be happy. The idea that AI will strip us of our meaning as human beings by solving problems is nihilistic. Human beings do not gain meaning from suffering and pain as such.

The purpose of work is the fruit it produces. The purpose of struggle is in the overcoming. The purpose of battle is victory. The purpose of working on a problem is to solve it.

Romantic dreaming about the beauty of suffering, stupidity, and death is nothing less than the longing for a return to the abyss. As a civilized and humane man, I disavow it.

Practical Example: Cancer

In 2020, Americans spent $200 billion on cancer-related health care. There are 14,500 oncologists in America. Let’s say the Silicon Valley types deliver on their promises of revolutionary change and AI finds a cure for this horrific disease. What would happen to the health care industry? The economy at large?

First, solving cancer isn’t just a matter of dollars and cents. More than a half million Americans die of cancer every year. It is almost impossible to overstate how wonderful curing cancer would be for the American people and for the world. Curing cancer is as close to an obvious and unmitigated good thing as one can imagine.

Americans would be a lot happier if they weren’t losing their loved ones to untimely death. This is why curing cancer is economically valuable. Happiness is the purpose of wealth. Spending more time with loved ones is a source of a lot of joy.

And, yes, there is also the matter of money. Curing cancer would also result in enormous financial savings. For one, Americans wouldn’t have to spend $200 billion on cancer care. They could spend that money on other things: Vacations, toys, clothes, computers, or investments.

Moreover, curing cancer would increase the number of available workers. Human beings who would otherwise be dead would now be alive and able to work. This means they can now contribute to the welfare of themselves and others using their minds and bodies.

Curing cancer would boost GDP, raise wages, save lives, and make lots of Americans very happy.

But what about the doctors whose technical knowledge is no longer needed now that AI solved the problem they worked on? Wouldn’t they be left destitute and impoverished?

No.

Remember, curing cancer would result in hundreds of billions of dollars in savings. That money will be spent or invested in new lines of production. The initial influx of money into new goods will either cause businesses to raise the price or accept shortages. However, those higher prices and consumer-driven shortages will provide an incentive for further production.

The former oncologists will move into those industries. The only other option is to lobby the government to give them welfare benefits or to regulate the use of AI in medicine. Those are political choices that have nothing to do with economic science.

Taxing productive people to give money to the now unemployed oncologists will not create prosperity. It is, in fact, anti-social. It establishes the precedent that businessmen — in this case doctors — who make investments of time and resources that don’t pay out have a right to seize money from their neighbors at gunpoint.

This is a recipe for tyranny and civil war. It is not moral. It does not benefit workers since the workers paying the taxes for the welfare subsidy are worse off.

Every resource must come from somewhere. Taxes aren’t magic.

It is true, if doctors find themselves out of work because cancer gets solved that might be distressing for some of them. These doctors might have liked their hospital staff and sense of purpose. They might have taken out a lot of debt that now they need to find a new way to pay off.

But that’s just life. The purpose of becoming an oncologist isn’t to get paid money or hang out with your friends or wear a lab coat and have an office. The point of becoming an oncologist is to cure cancer. If there is no cancer, then there is no point in being an oncologist.

If the investment in time and energy into becoming a cancer doctor doesn’t pay off because cancer gets solved that isn’t anyone’s “fault.” It wasn’t a bad investment when those doctors made it. They couldn’t have foreseen the advances in medical science that would make their services obsolete. It doesn’t mean their lives were a waste, it means they need to find something new to do that will benefit others.

The Purpose of Government

Allowing governments, corporations, unions, or privileged people to use violence and coercion to compel unwanted service is nothing less than slavery. It is antithetical to the American way of life.

The purpose of the American government is to protect property, not steal it. Forcing your neighbors to bail out your unsuccessful financial decisions at gunpoint is wrong.

This principle should apply to everyone. Truck drivers, accountants, lawyers, bankers, teachers, pipe fitters, handymen — not one of these “classes” of workers should have any right to use state violence to harm their fellow citizens or “protect” their incomes from others.

The right to property and the “right” to a specific job are incompatible. If I can spend my money however I see fit, then if I refuse to patronize certain businesses, they might go under. If those businesses can use violence to compel me to shop there then I don’t really own “my” money, they do.

Then the key thing is to become one of the privileged slave drivers instead of one of the slaves. In the Gorgias, Socrates and Callicles have a long argument over whether it is better to be a rapist or The Raped.

As a radical moderate centrist, I propose a third way: neither.

Tyranny and slavery are both uncivilized. They are inimical to reason, prosperity, and civilization.

Automation is Not a Threat

Automation is not violence. It is not theft. It does not require government intervention.

If I put a gun to your head and tell you to “gimme yo sh-t” that is violence. If I use a calculator to solve a math problem instead of paying you to do it in your head, that is not violence.

The difference is subtle, I know, but stay with me.

If you decide to put a gun to my head because I used a computer to solve a problem that you think I should have hired you to do, then you are a thief. You are a bad person who just put me in a self-defense situation.

Appealing to the state isn’t a solution. Putting on a dress doesn’t make you a woman. Putting on a uniform doesn’t make you right.

Once we admit the principle that some Americans are allowed to use violence to force other Americans to give them money, we have set ourselves on the course for revolution and civil war. Right now, of course, the standard view is that some people are special and deserve to have this power. It has been this way since at least the New Deal.

Jamie Dimon Doesn’t Know What He’s Talking About

Jamie Dimon, the CEO of JPMorgan, is simply reflecting the mainstream consensus in American life when he told investors at a dinner this week that he thinks the AI industry needs to be regulated by a partnership between business and government to ensure correct social outcomes:

“What if I think there are 2 million commercial truckers in the United States, and there are lots of other examples you can give. There’s a thought exercise, and you could push a button, eliminate all of them, and they make $120,000 on average. Save fuel, save lives, save time, a more efficient system, less disrupted highways, all that beautiful stuff. Would you do it if you put 2 million people on the street where even if there are jobs available, that next job is $25,000 a year, stocking shelves? I was saying, ‘That’s kind of really bad, kind of civilly, should we as society agree to that?’ I don’t think so. I was talking about the business and government, and they should start thinking today, not when it happens, what would we do to deal with the [AI] issue? It’s got to be business and government.”

What Dimon is saying here is a less aggressive form of the argument Marx presents in the Communist Manifesto which asserts that increasing automation impoverishes workers and creates the condition for the revolution of the proletariat.

Marx calls cheap goods the “heavy artillery” of the bourgeoisie. When you buy a shirt for $10 at Wal-Mart that is the same as getting hit by a 155mm shell, apparently.

Marx’s solution to this “problem” was to exterminate the capitalists and property owners. Dimon just wants to manage them with state power, guided of course by the wise experts in business (like himself and his friends). We might well ask how Dimon knows what is best for society. Who put him in charge?

If wisdom is the standard, then Dimon most certainly should not rule us as a philosopher-king. He doesn’t understand human nature. If robot semi-trucks were actually faster, safer, and more efficient than human drivers that would be a huge boon to society. The savings from cheaper transportation would make life better for everyone — including the former truck drivers!

They, and everyone else, would get to live in a world with less pollution, cheaper production, fewer roadway deaths, and more goods for sale. The savings would benefit truck drivers just like everyone else. They would have to work new jobs in the new lines of production. That is a good thing.

The argument that truck drivers are “dumb” and therefore can’t do anything other than drive trucks is wrong. “Truck driver” is not a category of human species. It is a kind of work. The ancestors of truck drivers were not truck drivers; they were farmers, peasants, and small shop artisans.

The invention of the diesel engine and semi-truck helped lift those people and their children out of grinding poverty. Future technological innovation will do the same for the children of truck drivers.

It is foolish to assume that the same people who drive trucks today can only bag groceries if they don’t have truck to drive. In a world where we have dramatically reduced transportation costs there will be lots of new jobs available that are not possible now due to the high costs of our current way of doing things.

Moreover, in that world the cost of all consumer goods would drop as production becomes more efficient. These new future jobs will exist in a world of increasing abundance and therefore a rising standard of living. Taking away this future from Americans in the name of “helping” workers is senseless at best and evil at worst.

The government does not and should not worry about truck drivers as such. It should worry instead about protecting Americans, no matter what kind of work they do. The structure of the economy is ever changing but the just purpose of government is unalterable.

Property and Civilization

Prosperity requires property rights. Civilization and theft do not go together. All forms of leftist government, whether outright Communism or managerial “progressivism” are destructive of the common good. A “populism” that advocates harming one part of the people to “help” another sector isn’t populist at all! It is factional and ruinous.

AI hysteria, in the end, is nothing more than idiotic boosterism (buy stocks in AI companies if you want to avoid the permanent underclass!), cynical ploys for political power, or outright ideological fanaticism. Indeed, you will often see all three characteristics in the same human being.

In my view, AI is useful, but its benefits are probably overstated. I imagine it will take far longer to make the technology useful for human life than its promoters imagine. But I do think it has great promise. I hope and pray that large portions of the current economy can be automated. I like the idea of being wealthier, of having a bigger home, more time with my family, and more time to devote to the life of the mind.

I simply don’t think the AI revolution will be that dramatic. For instance, instead of seeing the complete elimination of whole industries it seems more likely to me that these industries will still exist but at a much higher level of productivity. For instance, computer programmers of the future with the help of AI will likely write orders of magnitude more code at higher quality than they do now.

For my part, I am not worried about AI taking my job. AI will not eliminate the need for education and serious political thinking. After the AI revolution we will still ponder the deep questions about justice, purpose, morality, and death.

Computers might make data easier to acquire, sort, and collate. They won’t tell us what to do with this data.

In the end, there is no substitute for human thinking and will. It is through us that all machines have come into being, and it is we who must choose how best to use them.

Practical Advice

The future is not fated to be one of crisis and war. We can choose otherwise. So do not give in to fear. Do not panic. Do not let your heart be troubled. Life is change. You are changing. There is nothing to be done on that front. Human beings are born, grow, and then die.

Every person reading this is headed towards the grave. The greatest of all Changes awaits all of us. We must live in the light of that reality. We should, however, be courageous and cheerful. We should make the best of the time and energy we do have.

Freaking out about AI is not a good use of those resources. But if you are still concerned, here is my practical advice on how to meet the latest tech revolution:

 Pay off your debts

• Spend less than you make.
• Keep 3-6 months of savings on hand, invest the rest.
• Do your work well.
• Cultivate deep and meaningful friendships
• Exercise regularly.
• Take time to care for your soul.

The best thing you can do right now if you are worried about AI because of a social media post you saw is to set your phone down and go on a walk. The sun will rise tomorrow. This is not a pandemic. In fact, the Pandemic^TM was not a pandemic.

You will still have to work in the future. Yes, it might be in a new field or for a new business. The future is unknowable, and no one has ever had the power to promise you a permanent position. No one can even promise you that you will wake up tomorrow.

As the Good Book says:

“Do not worry about tomorrow, for tomorrow will worry about itself. Each day has enough trouble of its own.”

Words to live by.     *