AI & The Great Displacement?

QUESTION: Mr. Armstrong, there are a lot of people who seem to take your track record and pretend that they have made calls on all sorts of things but lack the data or the computer to back up their claims. They then run some infomercial and go on an on before they tell you what they are selling. The latest scam is how everyone will be displaced by AI and be left destitute unless you listen to them. If they are selling weight loss to financial news, they produce long winded videos that are tiring and its the same formula to sell something. You don’t do that. Is there a great displacement coming because of AI?

DP

ANSWER: Yes, but what is the definition of “great” that they like to scare people with. The Industrial Revolution’s displacement impact was catastrophic for many in the short term. People absolutely had to learn new ways of working, but this “retraining” was an informal, often brutal process of economic Darwinism—adapt or face destitution. Every new technology has displaced the work force. In 1860, 53% of the civil work force was employed in AGRICULTURE. The Industrial Revolution is what inspired Karl Marx and gave birth to Communism because people suddenly worked for a capitalist and he profited from the real wealth which was labor. By 1900 that 53% had declined to 41% and by 1980 it was 3%. Go back to the 18th century and that is when Adam Smith wrote his Wealth of Nations in 1776 which was a counter-argument against the French Physiocrats who claimed that the wealth of a nation was only agriculture and a blacksmith lived off the wealth of the farmer like a parasite.

So, will AI displace people? Of course, as EVERY technological innovation has done since the Romans invested the aqueduct. This is a complicated subject and it is too extensive for a blog post. We will be covering this at the WEC and we will may the AI report available after the conference.