Tech executives are racing to outdo one another with increasingly alarming claims about AI-driven job automation. Their estimates vary, projecting that 30 per cent to 80 per cent of jobs will disappear within the next decade, and third parties are increasingly confirming these claims. The consequences are obvious; people’s livelihoods will be at risk as unemployment skyrockets. Hard-earned degrees and skills will become worthless almost overnight, leaving large parts of the population scrambling to make themselves relevant in a society that has deemed them obsolete. Yet there is one downstream consequence of AI automation that few are taking into account. AI will kill a key process on which our society relies: social mobility.
For generations, the standard path to get forward in life was to add value for someone else. It was a simple trade: to get what you want, you must give others what they need. As self-evident as this mantra appears, it is not without assumptions. For this trade to work, you need to be able to add value in the first place. Now that most cognitive jobs can be automated, there is not much left that AI cannot do better than a human. Regardless of effort, intelligence or willpower, there will be increasingly restricted opportunities to bring economic value, given most tasks can be done cheaper and better by machines.
When you cannot aid production, all you can do is entertain
Historically, those born without capital or a network relied on cognitive skills for social mobility. In the decades following World War II, office and white-collar jobs triumphed as the economy required increasingly qualified workers. It was customary for children to be considerably more educated than their parents, as working-class families transitioned into the intellectual office jobs of the new middle class. The “Great Compression” led to extensive social mobility as demand for qualified labour grew. These jobs are now going extinct, which means we are likely to see a complete reversal of the post-war consensus. What makes this all the more alarming is that it is already happening. Many industries have already faced this issue for years; creative jobs have sky-high levels of unemployment, and young software engineers are struggling to find jobs. We already have a preliminary taste of what is to come on a massive scale. Certainly, a portion of society will still be needed for the maintenance and operation of machines and data centres, but this will account for a small part of the workforce. For most, their potential is likely to go to waste as talent struggles to find an appropriate outlet. Consequently, the majority of the population is getting the rungs of the social ladder pulled out from under them.
Social mobility will become progressively locked as AI progresses. What is at risk is not simply job loss, but the very idea of income distribution. In recent history, the interdependence of social classes implied a convergence of interests. Valuable skills commanded a premium in the marketplace, which would lead to social mobility. Things have changed; the concept of valuable skills is vanishing in real time. AI-driven production systems are becoming increasingly self-sufficient, which will diminish the income flows redistributed across society. Productivity gains will come from improvements in AI, not from the upskilling of workers or human ingenuity. Wealth will be passed down within closed networks, with little need for outsiders. In this highly probable scenario, income distribution as we know it will cease to make sense. This problem is even more concerning than job automation.
Entrepreneurship will not be the cure. In modern capitalism, underdogs typically disrupt systems by building better, more convenient, and cheaper alternatives. Yet, an automated economy will increasingly self-optimise. This would ensure quick convergence on the cheapest product and the most efficient distribution, such that no new entrant will be able to compete. Faced with self-optimising incumbents, investment in new, high-risk ventures will progressively drop. Capital might as well be allocated to self-improving AI systems, removing human error from the equation. It will take a few years for companies to adapt to AI, but once they do, the odds will not favour humans.
Some claim that all is not lost, and argue that social mobility will still exist in the creative industries. Indeed, when you cannot aid production, all you can do is entertain. Once production has been automated, the only value that can be added is subjective amusement. Yet this is even more dismal for social mobility. When your contribution to society is determined by your ability to solve practical problems — for instance, by repairing cars or building software — the steps required for success are objective. There is a clear roadmap for success to follow. A stable path with clearly identifiable skills has historically been essential to social mobility; hence, the quintessential advice of the middle and working classes to become a doctor, a lawyer or an engineer. The creative industry works differently. There is no guaranteed answer to what people will like and what they will be willing to pay for. It requires resources, time, and effort to build an income and a network in the creative fields, where people frequently go without pay in the initial phases of their careers. This is why many contemporary artists have extensive family wealth and support. Such privilege is not available to most of the population. Social mobility through creative routes, especially under high financial and social stress, is barely an option.
More fundamentally, an economy increasingly geared towards entertainment would make social mobility increasingly arbitrary. It would rely on taste, whim and subjective opinions. People have different tastes, moods and aesthetics, which vary widely based on their circumstances. A song or a book might be praised one day and discarded the next — such is the nature of the creative industry. Social media is even more unstable, where careers are made and unwrap in weeks, and the quality of content is tenuously linked to its success. The instability and unpredictable nature of an entertainment economy become increasingly dangerous if there are no safer alternatives for social mobility. This is likely to foster widespread confusion and leave people feeling resentful at the unfairness of a system that provides no clarity. It will probably increase desperation, as we have seen in Britain, where young people are adopting increasingly dismal conceptions of the world. If society does not offer people real pathways to escape the situation they were born into, society is likely to devolve into cruel exploitation. Individuals are reduced to pandering to the uncertain amusement and whim of others.
A clear, trustworthy path for success is necessary for social cohesion and optimism. The belief in merit is one of the core building blocks of social trust. As trust in the collective’s willingness to reward merit and hard work falls, society becomes increasingly fractured. When social mobility collapses, the path is opened for dramatic outcomes. We are already seeing the cracks; let us make sure we avoid a breakdown.
