Wolfy Chai

In today’s society, humans form hierarchies around traits that people characterize as either inferior or superior to themselves. One poignant example of this is the type of job that one has—and, logically following, their associated education “level.” There are two main categories of hierarchy: a vertical hierarchy that seeks to divide people by age, and a horizontal hierarchy that divides people by employment and educational levels.

Today, many people get their sense of worth from where they fall on the hierarchy. The belief in education and hard work serves as a motivating agent. This motivation is fueled by the myth that education is the force that bridges the gap between one class and another—that anything is possible.

In the age of AI, that is not going to be as much of a factor, if it will be a factor at all. One of the most concerning observations I have had is that, at its core, certain people are seen as useful while others are seen as useless.

This divide is further amplified by technology that has already begun replacing jobs. For example, the convenience of a grocery store self-checkout makes people devalue human workers. When given the choice between standing in line for 15 minutes or 2 minutes, most people would take the 2-minute wait any day.

When forced to go to the in-person checkout lines, it is now almost seen as an inconvenience. People get impatient. They often ignore the clerk working the register—even more so, the human bagging the groceries. Even if people do not say it out loud, these workers are seen as “useless,” almost an unproductive nuisance. Many do not consider that their shiny, superior jobs are also at risk, even though, in reality, those jobs will likely be taken over by technology and AI as well.

There is a myth that higher education provides immunity from the AI takeover. This is a myth because AI has already been shown to be equally, if not more, capable in those domains. After all, what is education really? Education is just the assimilation of additional knowledge—something that AI is already exceptionally adept at doing. Like a Google search engine, AI has access to virtually all information and, unlike humans, is not limited by exposure and memory. In many senses, AI is already superior.

The illusion of immunity also carries with it a sharp generational gap that poses major ethical dilemmas. The new generation that is about to enter the workforce is not acquainted with the skills required to outcompete AI. Additionally, they are not able to be as productive as more seasoned workers. Thus, they are more readily replaceable. Generations caught in the middle of the two were not trained in technologies and are experiencing major shifts in the job market. For them, there has never been any familiarity. Everything is constantly changing. The skill gap is growing wider and wider. Career shifting is becoming more inflexible and impractical because of the speed of change that most sectors experience. Older workers are generally the most accustomed to protocols and procedures. They have the most sophisticated knowledge base. For that reason, they are often seen as a valuable asset, even if they are slow adapters of new technologies and AI. They tend to be harder to replace—at least in this current moment.

My question is: how will we treat each other in a world where everyone inevitably will be in the same position? Well, not everyone will be in the same position. For one, social security payments are going out to the elderly. At the current rate, social security will not be paid out to younger generations by the time they reach retirement. In fact, there is a push to increase the retirement age further to prevent people from collecting their benefits.

This is not even accounting for the astonishing levels of financial fraud currently infecting the government—for example, pervasive mortgage fraud, risky government-private borrowing of pension fund and social security money, and the “secret budget” that has amassed over 30 trillion in unaccounted adjustments, nearly equal in step with the national debt. The financial recklessness has taxpayers paying more and more for the government’s incompetence and financial crimes. With a ballooning national debt, interest payments are increasing year after year.

Additionally, older generations have more assets that are better insulated from the forces of market uncertainty, government corruption, and inflation. They own more houses and own the land that their houses are on.

Most younger generations cannot afford to buy a home, for example. Moreover, they cannot afford to own anything. Young generations are being led into the trap of systems that are established for rent-collection purposes. To illustrate the effect of the pervasiveness of this intrusion: investment firms are buying up land and renting houses on it. The people might “own” the house sitting on the land, but not the land itself. Thus, firms are collecting rents on the house by proxy.

A lot of older generations write off the younger generations. This vertical hierarchy minimizes the very real problems facing younger generations. We live and operate in two different worlds and two different economic circumstances. We were told to go get degrees, and we did. Younger generations are the most educated group in the country’s history. Yet, we do not have the finances to show for it.

This divide-and-judge thinking is not something worth being consumed by in an era where people are simply trying to survive. We cannot forget to look back over our shoulders and help others just because we happen to be lucky enough to make it. People need to understand that not everything is about hard work. Many are put into situations that feel impossible, given unrealistic conditioning, and do not have the same capacity to “figure it all out.” It is overwhelming, and our society gives us very little support. This does not make people “useless.”

This brings me to my main point: what we see as “useful” is a social construct. Almost everyone is taught to believe that our usefulness is tied to our finances, our job, our status, or our education. This very Western, American mindset is just that—a mindset. It is a human-created system that people have bought into. It is only one way of thinking about things. It implies that human life is more or less worthy of consideration and respect based on one or all of these status factors.

Terms like “valuable asset,” “productivity,” “employability,” and “competency” have been scattered throughout society and affectionately coined as meritable attributes. If we move into an AI employment system, these concepts will be subject to stress testing. Will people still be useful? Will they be inherently useful? Do people need to be useful? Maybe people do not need to be “useful” according to the current and historical definitions of usefulness.

People have acquired “useful” status before under the current model that diverges from the traditional hierarchy system. But those are exceptions, not commonly found in the 99% of the human population that could potentially be replaced by AI.

These exceptions include someone who has profound artistic talents, a singer, a dancer, etc.; someone who is obviously disabled since birth, like a person with Down Syndrome; or someone who has sustained injuries such as paralysis, chronic illness, or limb removal later in life. Those three categories fit within the acceptable range of “usefulness” under the current model. Although, one could argue that many times they do not. They do not in the sense that they are not seen as “co-equal humans”; their worth is either attributed to their talent or their status as a human.

Additionally, if all they “are” to someone is their talents—in other words, the parts of themselves that remain useful—how is that humanizing? How is that seeing them as a co-equal human? Their usefulness simply gets boiled down to a set of attributes that make them tolerable and worthy of respect. If they lose those attributes or talents, will they cease to be useful? They certainly will be seen as “less interesting” or “not notable.”

There is a general disdain for people who are lazy, useless, or not working hard enough. This distaste is a breeding ground that cultivates these types of divisions and threatens our capacity to empathize with other people. That person checking you out at the grocery store is a human. That person serving you food at a restaurant is a human. That person on the other side of your judgmental glare is a human.

As a society, I argue that the way we see reality and relate to it through these hierarchical structures has to change. Otherwise, we will be no better than the robots who replace us.