Ben's Blog

In the right hands Artificial Intelligence could make the world a better place. The same can be said about G. M.O.s. The product is not the problem. anything that means less work for all has got to be a good thing. But AI does not offer anyone less work, it just makes the workers made redundant find different work. Usually this means creating a whole new industry, which is great for the economy, but terrible for the climate and the environment. Almost universally, what is good for the economy, is bad for the climate. Deployed by avaricious tech oligarchs, Ai is no exception. This hand full of billionaires and trillionaires are the ones steering the global economy, the government is trying to play catch up. It is absolutely necessary for the rest of the population who are not super rich to wrest back control of the economy, and AI is the most important chunk of the economy we need back in our hands. Imagine if the profit gains from the introduction of AI were shared out to all the workers made redundant and all the workers whose creativity was stolen to make the AI, it would mean they could all work less. This would be a Godsend for the climate and the environment. In fact it is the only possible way to avoid the looming catastrophe of climate collapse. The economy must shrink, there is no other option! 

In 1855 in Melbourne the stonemasons guild (union) achieved the 8 hour day. Eventually this momentous achievement spread around the world to all the developed nations and beyond.

At the beginning of the last century Benjamin Franklin, Karl Marx and J.S.Mill all predicted that the future would be filled with an over abundance of leisure time. George Bernard Shaw predicted that by the year 2000 we’d all be working 2 hour days. Later, John Maynard Keynes predicted that by 2030 we’d all be working a 15 hour week. (a bit less optimistic than Shaw) When Isaac Asimov, the great science fiction writer, was asked what he thought life would be like in 2030, he said the biggest problem would be how to spend all our leisure time. That turned out to be science fiction.

So what went wrong?

In this absurd system we have created for ourselves, When AI is introduced, skilled and  diligent workers who have shown total loyalty to the company, are given the sack, thrown on the scrap heap.

In a fair and equitable society, those who profit from replacing humans with AI should be required to share that benefit with the redundant workers and the creative people ripped off to make AI. This means they could all work less, and more jobs would be available for everyone else. Eventually everyone could have a secure part-time job that provides for their needs.

It is said that science fiction often gives birth to science, and science occasionally gives birth to better ways of doing things. Eventually we could come to live in the society those visionaries envisioned.

Ben Laycock  2026

Ben Boyang  2026