I’ve read a lot of early 1900s “harsh realities of the industrial revolution” novels in the past couple years: The Ragged Trousered Philanthropists, Road to Wigan Pier, The Clergyman’s Daughter, Hard Times. They all center on a similar theme: how god-awful it was to be part of the working-class (i.e., most people) during those times. 12-hour work days, 6-day weeks. No pension, no holidays, no overtime, no workplace safety. Wages that were barely sufficient to keep you and your family alive. Filthy, crowded, miserable suburbs shrouded in coal dust. From George Orwell’s Road to Wigan Pier:
“The train bore me away, through the monstrous scenery of slag-heaps, chimneys, piled scrap-iron, foul canals, paths of cindery mud criss-crossed by the prints of clogs…As we moved slowly through the outskirts of the town we passed row after row of little grey slum houses running at right angles to the embankment. At the back of one of the houses a young woman…She looked up as the train passed, and I was almost near enough to catch her eye. She had a round pale face, the usual exhausted face of the slum girl who is twenty-five and looks forty, thanks to miscarriages and drudgery; and it wore, for the second in which I saw it, the most desolate, hopeless expression I have ever-seen.”
We in the West all live lives of comparative luxury and ease thanks to the industrial revolution. There’s no question that we’re better off for it. But we’re 100+ years from the onset of that cataclysmic, world-changing process. If you asked the people that lived through that transition, would they say their life of suffering was worth the easy-living of some yet-to-exist 30-something white collar schmuck? Those generations lived through a complete upending of the life and economic system they knew, brutal decades of worker exploitation, and two world wars of unimaginable suffering and cruelty. I bet they wouldn’t make that trade. Offer me the same; I almost certainly wouldn’t.
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We’re about to enter a new revolution: this time, it will target the white-collared. It promises to be just as destabilizing, just as norm-destroying. Economies will experience massive convulsions as governments and companies adjust to the abilities and realities of AI-powered everything. Entire job categories might cease to exist. The supply of labour will far outnumber the need for it. Wealth inequality will get much worse.
How much human suffering will all of that upheaval cause? Will it be as bad as the coal dust-smothered row houses and rampant poverty of the industrial revolution? Will humans again have to traverse generations of suffering and world-spanning conflict to come out of the other side better off?
The most frightening times to be alive are times of great transition. Our world is about to enter the largest economic and geopolitical shift since the industrial revolution. No one knows how it will turn out. There are theories of how best to prepare, but they’re all based on assumptions, the results of which become fuzzier the further they’re projected forward. The truth is, even those working on the bleeding edge of AI can make only the vaguest predictions about what the world will look like in just five years’ time. Most of us—all we can do is hope the small handful of scientists, programmers and politicians responsible for the direction, behavior and policies governing this emerging technology are capable stewards, doing their best to ensure its benefits are equally shared and risks thoughtfully avoided. I’m cautiously optimistic.
