Conspiracy? What conspiracy?
Skills shortages, industry suicides and the rise and rise of AI and automation. These things are unconnected, right?
I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. I mean, I am not entirely convinced by the solo shooter theory in the assassination of John F Kennedy; but I am as certain as can be that Elvis Presley passed away on 16 August 1977, as reported. While I cannot believe we are alone in the vast expanses of the universe, I do not believe there are little green men walking among us. I also believe that Big Foot, the Yeti and the Loch Ness Monster are nothing more than a scam to lure tourists. And while I firmly believe that industrial conglomerates have too much influence, I am not convinced that The Illuminati is pulling the strings of global politics.
But what if they were? What if there was a Top Secret, clandestine cabal operating from an underground lair that really was controlling the lives of billions for the own ends. It would explain so much.
Imagine you are Elon Musk, Bill Gates, Jeff Bezos or any other mega-rich Bond villain wannabe. You have earned your billions initially by tireless hard work and dedication; and, more recently, by employing scores of human drones to do your bidding. Your business has grown year-on-year for decades. But that growth is slowing. It is unsustainable. There is a problem. And that problem is human beings.
You have studied the charts and it is clear that man (and woman) is the weak link in your operations. Assuming they arrive for work, they are lazy and unreliable. Sometimes they don’t turn up for work at all. Sometimes, when they do, they are hungover, under the influence of drugs or alcohol. They expect you to pay them even while they are sunning themselves on holiday or when they are sick. They even expect to be given time off the day after a football match.
But what can you do? If you sacked them all and replaced them with robots, there would be outcry and outrage and your share price would take a kicking. There would also be huge redundancy payouts to take care of. As much as you might like to, you cannot just lay off all the humans in your employment.
But what if there was another way?
You could start with the schools; after all, you may well be supplying them with software anyway. You convince the education system that vocational jobs are a thing of the past and that pupils and future workers can just stay at home, tap a computer keyboard, and still earn enough to feed themselves and their families.
Speaking of feeding themselves, make fast food more accessible than anything of nutritional value. Slowly convince people to crave salt, sugar and convenience, even though all three are rendering them listless, lazy and obese.
Next up, social media. Young people are now raised on social media so it will be easy to convince them that there are fortunes to be made as gamers, TikTokers or OnlyFans models. Reinforce this message at every opportunity even though, while there are billions of active social media users, only a small handful are making any real money from it.
That slowly strangles and cuts off the supply of future workers. But what of those already employed? That is an equally easy fix.
Ensure the worst possible work/life imbalance and make workers so utterly miserable that some actually take their own lives. Introduce obstacles such as competence cards that require workers to actually pay in order to be allowed to work. Regularly shift the goalposts so that even those that have been doing the job for decades have to prove their ability to do so on a regular basis. Top that off with employment terms that allow you to pick up and put down staff at a whim; undermining their mental health still further whilst lightening the load on your bottom line.
Begin to automate certain roles to minimise your reliance upon human interaction. Send drones to carry out surveys, for example; or deploy robot dogs to analyse the landscape prior to construction.
All of this will take some time, of course. We are playing the long game here. But then, one day, you are “forced” to announce that there are just not enough workers. Vital products and much-needed infrastructure will be undermined unless you can find some way to carry out this work.
Focus initially on the need to carry out labour intensive or repetitive tasks - No-one will fight for the rights of men and women to do work that is quite clearly beneath them. Thus begins the first phase of replacing humans by stealth.
Having proved that robots and AI are actually more reliable than humans for menial tasks, you slowly start to expand their brief. Soon, people will no longer be required to operate machines and equipment; they will be absent from the factory floor. Those that are still employed will no longer report to a human line manager; they merely feed their details into a computer terminal so they can be monitored and managed via AI.
And all the while this revolution is taking place, you continually remind humans that this is for their own good; that they will have more leisure time; that they will have access to products, services and instant gratification without the “unpleasantness” of having to interact with an actual person.
All that is left, having decimated the educational and employment landscape, is to sit back, count your cash, and plan your next trip into outer space.
As I said at the outset, I am NOT a conspiracy theorist. But you have to admit, some of this does ring awfully true. It might explain why, despite our supposedly best efforts, we have never overcome the skills shortage; why some traditionally human jobs are already being done by machine. And maybe it explains why the mega rich have such a fascination with outer space. It’s not because they know the end is nigh for the planet and are, therefore, setting up home elsewhere. Perhaps it’s because they know that one day man will wake up, realise it has been replaced and be thirsty for revenge.
Of course, this is a work of fiction. I made it all up. But, if any of it turns out to be true, you heard it here first.