POLITICS: AI-touting technocrats sell socialism as the solution

There’s a pervasive fear among average Americans about how artificial intelligence will shape our understanding of what it means to be a worker.

The establishment tells us to celebrate this technological advancement while industries are mutilating their workforce to create space for an artificial replacement.

America’s future doesn’t depend on our endless pursuit of a new cutting edge but our willingness to prevent economic casualties in our quest for technological advancement.

And with a widespread decimation of economic opportunities, desperate people with nowhere else to turn will see socialists like Mayor-elect Zohran Mamdani as the problem solvers.

I’ve worked in information technology for nearly 20 years and have a strong passion for the wonders of computerized ingenuity. But I’m equally skeptical about over-technologizing without a care for the repercussions from the pain that’ll ensue.

Elon Musk is celebrated as an innovator, and I appreciate the amount of risk he’s taken in his business ventures to become the wealthiest man in the world.

But Musk’s technological tunnel vision inevitably leaves Americans out of his line of sight.

A perfect example is the Los Angeles Tesla Diner, which uses robots and automation to serve customers. No one who’s been to a diner has ever thought about how we need to automate the friendly Nancy or Gladys.

Some see humans and robots working alongside each other a “cool” reimagining of the dining experience, but they miss that this is the prototype for America’s future.

We’re told not to fear AI as it will be a tool for remarkable efficiency and discovery, but even in its infancy, companies have adopted it as a replacement for human capital.

Instead of marketing clients hiring firms and actors to create their campaigns, they’re turning to AI to recreate human voices and artistry and formulate strategies, leaving tens to hundreds of thousands of people unemployed.

Amazon, America’s second-largest employer, has already begun downsizing its workforce, anticipating 75% of its operations will be automated by 2033. The company is replacing human labor with sophisticated robots and artificial intelligence, and this venture will keep expanding indefinitely.

If the nation’s technological leaders and employers are heavily investing in artificial intelligence and robotics, what will happen to the people rapidly replaced?

We’ve always had technology supplant old and redundant jobs, but this is different because of the speed of replacement, and it’s affecting multiple sectors simultaneously.

This isn’t a factory making a new machine that can put on a tire and doesn’t need a human to do it. This combination of AI and robotics will bring a multi-industry employment apocalypse and render many high- and low-paying jobs obsolete seemingly overnight.

Socialists are usually correct when identifying social problems; it’s their solutions that are illogical and sometimes evil.

But desperate people cling to the leader who recognizes their plight and offer answers when they feel like no one else cares about their pain.

With the direction our country is going in, Mamdani’s win won’t be a one-off event but a precursor to more socialists getting elected — because we’ll have white- and blue-collar workers without a place to go running to the government for survival. Socialism didn’t rise purely because our children weren’t educated about its dangers.

Our nation is already fragile — the shutdown showed us 40% of Americans rely on the federal government’s food stamps to eat. The middle class is in a vice grip as it battles rising energy costs partly due to the demand for high-energy-consumption AI data centers, and the American dream of homeownership has turned into a near impossibility for Gen Z and younger millennials.

Congress barely understands how email functions let alone artificial intelligence or robotics, so there’s no hope of properly regulated technological boundaries.

There’s an irony in Elon Musk leading DOGE into the federal government to shrink it — he and other technocrats will be the reason the federal government will expand in the future.

“The case for universal basic income or getting money into people’s hands just gets stronger all the time as AI gets faster and faster,” former presidential candidate Andrew Yang just told The Post. OpenAI CEO Sam Altman recently said, “I still am kind of excited” about “universal basic income, where you just give everybody money.”

It won’t be an adaptation issue because there will be no time for people to be re-educated before they’re rendered obsolete. The speed of destruction is uncanny, yet we’re told if we don’t jump on the racing train robotics and AI are managing, we’ll be left behind. How do you train millions of people for future roles that are being deleted in real time?

America is known for its unique optimism of the ability to lift yourself up by your bootstraps and climb economic classes.

But technocrats are robbing us of our bootstraps, and we’ll want the government to pay for new ones.

Adam B. Coleman is the author of “The Children We Left Behind” and founder of Wrong Speak Publishing.