We All Live Downstream
When building innovations in tech, infrastructure, policy or work, we need to consider the downstream effects of the things we build, and stop allowing the future to pay for our mistakes.
In the essay The super-empowered individual, Brian Morrissey writes about how the dire warnings of some about globalization of the late 90s and early oughts were largely “hand waved away” (his phrase) because the people profiting were, largely, themselves (or their donors) and the people being hurt were largely forgotten and not “politically powerful”.
The “giant sucking sound” Ross Perot warned of during the debates of NAFTA were seen as a last gasp of populism. In 1993, then-vice president Al Gore vanquished Perot during a live CNN debate that drew 16 million viewers – imagine such a thing today – and the political, financial and business power structures moved in lockstep to liberalize markets and embrace tech-driven automation and open markets.
Wiping out factory jobs was just an inevitable advance, hand waved away by both parties with vague talk of retraining programs to ease a factory worker into a service economy job. We didn’t spend much time on the lives upended in unfashionable areas of the country. Trump stepped into this void.
Now, with AI poised to remake large swathes of what tend to call the knowledge economy, the worm has turned. Instead of blue-collar jobs at stake, it is what Marc Andreessen calls the laptop class at risk. You can be sure the debate will be different about the downsides than during the globalization era, when opposition was mostly confined to a few academics and anarchists who smashed up Starbucks at the WTO meeting in 1999. The return of the kabuki theater of debt-ceiling fights seems silly when a bigger discussion should be happening about this next era of change.
(emphasis added)
This is an excellent note — suddenly it’s the gods of the internet and “digital marketers” who may be cut by the logical descendants of the razor blade of innovation they helped forge.
And, while the current debate surrounding the impact of AI on jobs is expected to differ from past discussions on globalization. The laptop class, being directly affected, may drive a more nuanced and widespread conversation. It is crucial for policymakers, businesses, and society at large to proactively address the implications of AI on employment, reskilling, and income inequality.
Since tasks involving data analysis, pattern recognition, and information processing can be automated, it stands to reason there will be a reduction in certain roles within sectors like finance, law, and consulting. However, it is essential to note that AI also has the potential to augment human capabilities and create new job opportunities, adding estimated trillions annually to the global economy.
And for that, perhaps maybe, someone will sit up and pay attention to the effect of the PEOPLE on the other end of all this innovation before too long.
Not that we need to not innovate, but we need to pay attention to the downstream effects of our actions, especially in areas such as:
Widespread job automation without adequate reskilling/educational opportunities in place
Unintended consequences of human-scale biases being suddenly mass produced by AI-driven technologies
The delicate balance of legislation and regulation of the AI-industry to allow for innovation, but preserve human-first rights and powers.
Significant income and educational inequalities driven by AI-enabled individuals or corporations who scale up their outsized power compared to non-AI-enabled individuals.
In the end, an important way forward is for us to pay attention to the downstream effects of our actions or inaction.
One way to care enough about those downstream is to imagine that it is ourselves who are being benefitted or hurt.
Because, in the end, it is us who are being affected.
Like the popular clean water public service announcements like to remind us:
“We all live downstream”