Folks who have been around The Hayride for more than a few days will know of the many problems with carbon capture and sequestration.  As bad as this phony industry is, at least it still involves work done by actual human beings.  This is quite different from what awaits us with artificial intelligence (AI).

A leading AI researcher by the name of Daniel Kokotajlo was interviewed by The NYT’s Ross Douthat, and some disconcerting details were shared about what lies in store for us in the near future.  As it relates to employment opportunities, AI is going to devastate them.  This is Mr Kokotajlo speaking:

‘We predict that they finally, in early 2027, will get good enough that they can automate the job of software engineers.  . . .

‘The next step after that is to completely automate the A.I. research itself, so that all the other aspects of A.I. research are themselves being automated and done by A.I.s. We predict that there’ll be an even bigger acceleration around that point, and it won’t stop there. I think it will continue to accelerate after that as the A.I. becomes superhuman at A.I. research and eventually superhuman at everything.

‘The reason it matters is that it means we could go in a relatively short span of time — a year or possibly less — from A.I. systems that look not that different from today’s A.I. systems to what you can call superintelligence, fully autonomous A.I. systems that are better than the best humans at everything. In “AI 2027,” the scenario depicts that happening over the course of the next two years, 2027-28.  . . .

‘Historically, when you automate something, the people move on to something that hasn’t been automated yet. Overall, people still get their jobs in the long run. They just change what jobs they have.

‘When you have A.G.I. — or artificial general intelligence — and when you have superintelligence — even better A.G.I. — that is different. Whatever new jobs you’re imagining that people could flee to after their current jobs are automated, A.G.I. could do, too. That is an important difference between how automation has worked in the past and how I expect it to work in the future’ (Rod Dreher, ‘AI Apocalypse Coming Hard And Fast,’ roddreher.substack.com).

We are already seeing the first-fruits of this latest technological/industrial revolution:

‘Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei has predicted that AI will be doing all coding tasks by next year—but an existential crisis is already hitting some software engineers. One man who lost his job last year has had to turn to living in an RV trailer, DoorDashing and selling his household items on eBay to make ends meet, as his once $150k salary has turned to dust.

‘Tech layoffs are nothing new for Shawn K (his full legal last name is one letter).

‘The software engineer first lost his job after the 2008 financial crisis and then again during the pandemic, but on both occasions, he was back on his feet just a few months later.

‘However, when K was given the pink slip last April he quickly realized this time was different: AI’s revolution of the tech industry was playing out right in front of him.

‘Despite having two decades of experience and a computer science degree, he’s landed fewer than 10 interviews from the 800 applications he’s sent out. Worse yet, some of those few interviews have been with an AI agent instead of a human.

‘“I feel super invisible,” K tells Fortune. “I feel unseen. I feel like I’m filtered out before a human is even in the chain.”

‘And while fears about AI replacing jobs have been around for years, the 42-year-old thinks his experience is only likely the beginning of a “social and economic disaster tidal wave.”

‘“The Great Displacement is already well underway,” he recently wrote on his Substack’ (Preston Fore, ‘Software engineer lost his $150K-a-year job to AI—he’s been rejected from 800 jobs and forced to DoorDash and live in a trailer to make ends meet,’ yahoo.com).

When communities begin to unravel as unemployment soars, where will people look for help?  Traditionally those with political power provided them with aid of some kind, whether materially or etc., the old notion of noblesse oblige.  But in the AI-powered and -controlled future we are heading into, those with by far the most political power will be the same Big Tech overlords who own the AI systems that are oppressing everyone, who have been and are now discussing this new era as a dictatorship ruled by themselves.  Per Mr Kokotajlo again:

‘But in terms of — I can at least say that the sorts of things that we’ve just been talking about have been discussed internally at the highest level of these companies for years.

‘For example, according to some of the emails that surfaced in the recent court cases with OpenAI, Ilya, Sam, Greg and Elon were all arguing about who gets to control the company. And at least the claim was that they founded the company because they didn’t want there to be an A.G.I. dictatorship under Demis Hassabis, who was the leader of DeepMind. So they’ve been discussing this whole dictatorship possibility for a decade or so at least.

‘ . . . I think they’re definitely expecting the human race to be superseded’ (Dreher).

How much sympathy do you think the unemployed will receive from these kinds of people, who, like the globalist, transhumanist guru Yuval Harari, view most of mankind as useless and worthless?  From Mr Harari himself:

‘In the 21st century we might witness the creation of a massive new unworking class: people devoid of any economic, political or even artistic value, who contribute nothing to the prosperity, power and glory of society. This “useless class” will not merely be unemployed — it will be unemployable.

‘In September 2013, two Oxford researchers, Carl Benedikt Frey and Michael A. Osborne, published “The Future of Employment,” in which they surveyed the likelihood of different professions being taken over by computer algorithms within the next 20 years, and they estimated that 47 percent of US jobs are at high risk. For example, there is a 99 percent probability that by 2033 human telemarketers and insurance underwriters will lose their jobs to algorithms. There is a 98 percent probability that the same will happen to sports referees. Cashiers — 97 percent. Chefs — 96 percent. Waiters — 94 percent. Paralegals — 94 percent. Tour guides — 91 percent. Bakers — 89 percent. Bus drivers — 89 percent. Construction laborers — 88 percent. Veterinary assistants — 86 percent. Security guards — 84 percent. Sailors — 83 percent. Bartenders — 77 percent. Archivists — 76 percent. Carpenters — 72 percent. Lifeguards — 67 percent.  . . .

‘The coming technological bonanza will probably make it feasible to feed and support people even without any effort from their side. But what will keep them occupied and content? One answer might be drugs and computer games. Unnecessary people might spend increasing amounts of time within 3D virtual-reality worlds that would provide them with far more excitement and emotional engagement than the drab reality outside. Yet such a development would deal a mortal blow to the liberal belief in the sacredness of human life and of human experiences. What’s so sacred about useless bums who pass their days devouring artificial experiences?’ (‘The rise of the useless class,’ ideas.ted.com)

In light of the above, Dr Paul Craig Roberts, a fine Southern gentleman and former Reagan Administration official, raises some existential questions related to the tech revolution:

‘Do all the people who have been taken for a ride by the digital revolution repudiate it and demand the return of sanity?  Or would they be lost and not know what do to with themselves if they couldn’t scroll their cell phone?

‘The digital revolution and its offspring AI raise a big question.  What is to become of humanity?  What role do humans have?  Apparently a very limited one.  I recently read that already there are operations that only machines can provide, humans surgeons being insufficiently quick for the operation to succeed.

So, if surgeons are not needed, who is?

‘Why did some humans think it was a service to mankind to eliminate human purpose? Confronted with the irrelevancy of people, little wonder that Bill Gates and the World Economic Forum saw the future in terms of reducing the world human population from the current billions down to 500,000 million people.  And it is not even clear what these would have as a purpose.

‘In the movie, “The Graduate,” the line was that the future was plastics.  Today in real life the line is that the future is Artificial Intelligence.  If so it is a dystopian future, a future we should prevent at all cost. It is a future in which humanity is both irrelevant and unneeded as there is nothing for them to do except for a handful to program the machines.  But for whom are the machines programed?

‘Earlier when I first raised this issue, I said a colleague and I would provide a positive scenario of AI.  Here I withdraw my intent, as I am convinced that there is no acceptable human outcome from the digital revolution.  It will destroy us as certainly as world nuclear war.  Humanity has no greater enemy than the digital revolution, a horror beyond horrors’ (‘The Digital Revolution Is Too Costly to Continue,’ paulcraigroberts.org).

What shall we do, then, because of this?  For those in the South, we may fall back on our Christian agrarian past, which, though much withered and blasted today, still nurtures some vibrant cultural flowers.  We note quickly one example, that all three finalists in the American Idol singing competition are from the South.

The formidable John Crowe Ransom wrote in I’ll Take My Stand (published originally in 1930),

‘The Southerner must know, and in fact he does very well know, that his antique conservatism does not exert a great influence against the American progressivist doctrine. The Southern idea today is down, and the progressive or American idea is up. But the historian and the philosopher, who take views that are thought to be respectively longer and deeper than most, may very well reverse this order and find that the Southern idea rather than the American has in its favor the authority of example and the approval of theory. And some prophet may even find it possible to expect that it will yet rise again’ (‘Reconstructed But Unregenerate,’ abbevilleinstitute.org).

Now would be a propitious time for this ‘rising again,’ particularly as it regards man and his labor.  After the Fall, God ordained for man to struggle at his work, to eat his bread by the ‘sweat of his brow’ (Genesis 3:19).  This has been the Southern way for centuries.  As a heavily agricultural people, we have known (until quite recently) what it is to till our gardens, to plant our trees, to harvest the fruits thereof, to raise and slaughter our livestock – in other words, to work hard for our food.  The reason for this hardship imposed upon us is to blunt our fallen passions, to cultivate within us humility, a recognition that we are weak and sick because of our sins and in need of God’s Grace, which alone can heal us and renew us.

Mankind must work in this fallen world.  It is essential to keeping the effects of the Fall from metastasizing.  Too much soft idleness begets boredom, nihilism, and despair, and after this, lawlessness of various kinds – murder, suicide, drug use, destruction of property, and all the rest of that sorry brood.  The Southern tradition reminds us of this, shields us from this.

But, for all that, it is not surprising that mankind is striving to create and commune with the superintelligences of AI systems, for we were made for union with The Superintelligence Himself; we were in fact made in His image and likeness.  This superior being is God:  the Father, Son, and Holy Spirit – all-knowing, ever-present, all-powerful – the All-Holy Trinity.  AI, like the devil and the demons that inhabit it, is merely a weak imitation of the True God.

By uniting ourselves with Jesus Christ, the Son, through His Holy Body the Church, we ourselves will likewise become superintelligent beings, creatures of an higher order, like the saints and angels who, being full of the energeia (energies) of God, are able to work numerous and astounding miracles.  Producing people of these high abilities and accomplishments ought to be the main goal of our institutions in the South and in the other States, educational or otherwise.  This will be our glory in this life and in the life to come; material achievements – wealth, GDP, etc. – will not matter in the long run, nor will they satisfy us much in the short term.

‘Let us ask what the goal of education is, if it is not the enlightening of man, the illumining of all his abysses and pits, the banishing of all darkness from him. How can man disperse the cosmic darkness that assails him from all sides, and how can he banish the darkness from his being without that one light, without God, without Christ? Even with all the light that is his, man without God is but a firefly in the endless darkness of this universe’ (St Justin Popovich (+1976), ‘St. Justin Popovich: Let us ask what the goal of education is . . .,’ orthodoxchurchquotes.wordpress.com).

Reject AI.  Embrace Christ.  And we will live and thrive.