1. The AI Illusion: The Primacy of Autonomy Over Machine Usefulness
This article analyzes the fundamental dispute over the direction of technological development: whether it should serve machine autonomy or the enhancement of human capabilities. The AI illusion is the drive to create systems that replace humans, where the individual becomes merely an "error in the process." The alternative is machine usefulness—designing machines as tools that increase human agency and competence rather than acting as their substitutes.
2. So-so Automation: Low Productivity Destroys Jobs
The currently dominant so-so automation displaces workers in low-value tasks without generating a leap in productivity. Such innovation destroys jobs but fails to create new, well-paying roles, leading to economic stagnation.
3. The Productivity Bandwagon: The Illusion of Universal Prosperity
We must debunk the myth of the productivity bandwagon, which assumes that increases in efficiency automatically raise wages. The locomotive of technology can pull away on its own if it is not coupled with institutions that ensure a fair distribution of profits and worker participation in success.
4. Marginal Productivity: The Real Measure of Worker Value
Marginal productivity is the real increase in value resulting from the work of an additional person. If technology makes humans a marginal addition to machines, the demand for labor falls and wages remain stagnant, even as overall corporate profits skyrocket.
5. The Vision of the Elites: A Monopoly on the Direction of Technological Innovation
The current direction of innovation is a vision of the elites, for whom "autonomy" is a slogan for building capital rents. This selection pattern ensures that funds flow into projects that replace people instead of strengthening craftsmanship and collaboration.
6. The Advertising Model: The Algorithmic Erosion of Democratic Debate
The digital advertising model monetizes human attention through surveillance. Algorithms prioritize polarizing and anger-inducing content, which destroys the deliberation necessary for democracy, replacing it with a stimulus-and-response loop.
7. Countervailing Forces: A Social Brake on Technocratic Power
Countervailing forces, such as labor unions and antitrust laws, are essential to impose constraints on technological elites. They act as the ABS system that prevents innovation from becoming a tool of expropriation.
8. Medieval Mills: A Lesson on Monopoly and Technical Coercion
The history of medieval mills teaches us that technology is not neutral. Although they increased efficiency, they served exclusively as a tool of monopoly for feudal lords, failing to improve the lives of the 90% of the population deprived of the rights to progress.
9. The Industrial Revolution: A Century of Exploitation Before Wage Growth
In the Industrial Revolution, productivity growth only brought widespread prosperity after decades of struggle for democratic reforms. Without countervailing forces, machines served only factory discipline and the degradation of workers' quality of life.
10. AI Scenarios: Between Market Monopoly and Regulation
The future of AI fluctuates between corporate monopoly and institutional breakthroughs. The key is whether organizations will redesign work around new tasks or limit themselves to cost-cutting, risking political destabilization.
11. Asymmetric Complementarity: Machine Dominance
Modern asymmetric complementarity is a trap: the human remains in the process, but only to be held responsible for the errors of a system over which they have no real power or right to audit algorithms.
12. Taxes and Regulations: Enforcing Machine Usefulness
Digital advertising taxes and strong competition laws are indispensable. These are instruments that can forcibly change the incentive system, compelling companies to invest in tools that enhance worker competencies.
13. The Oligarchy of Vision: Silicon Valley’s Dictate Over the Future
An oligarchy of vision controls both financial and narrative capital, imposing a belief in the inevitability of automation upon the world. The counterweight must be institutional pluralism, allowing for the testing of different developmental paths.
14. Machine Usefulness: Pillars of a New Technological Order
The machine usefulness program is based on four pillars: increasing human agency, creating new tasks, providing reliable information, and building open collaboration platforms instead of surveillance systems.
15. False Teleology: Technology is a Choice, Not Destiny
We must reject false teleology: technology has no goals of its own and does not inevitably lead us to a better world. In the age of algorithms, the crucial question becomes: is technology meant to empower us or control us? The answer will determine whether the future is a manifestation of our creativity or merely an echo of our fears. Progress is not destiny, but the result of institutional choices.
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