What tech bros are talking about when they talk about "abundance"
Hint - it doesn't mean what you think it means.
Despite sucking vast quantities of data, water, energy, land and, let’s not forget, money from the world like an insatiable omnivorous vampire the AI tech bros assure us an age of abundance is coming, to wit:
“The primary effect of technology is to increase abundance.” Ray Kurzweil, Google Futurist
“An AI-driven productivity boom could create an era of abundance.” Marc Andreessen, Andreessen Horowitz Partner & Conehead
“I think we see a path now where the world gets much more abundant and much better every year.” Sam Altman, Open AI CEO
“This means a future of abundance. A future where there is no poverty, where people can have whatever they want in terms of goods and services.” Elon Musk, Professional Troll
“We predict an Era of Abundance.” From Andreessen Horowitz’s AI thesis
Sounds great guys but… We in the west are already living in an age of abundance and it doesn’t seem to making us any happier.
Abundant junk food has created an obesity epidemic.
Abundant connectivity has created a loneliness epidemic.
Abundant entertainment has created a mental health epidemic.
Abundant commerce has created a personal debt crisis.
Abundant credit has contributed to a cost of living crisis.
So, when you say abundance what exactly do you mean?
For these people the ONLY measure of self-worth and success is money. Sam Altman may claim to take no salary from Open AI but he still measures his success in terms of how much money he can raise and how that increases the amount of money his company is worth and how much money that adds to his and his shareholders’ portfolios. What they cannot understand or even conceive of is that the rest of us don’t share their motivation. The rest of us don’t desire abundance, we desire sufficiency in the present and stability in the future as Substacker Tom White articulates perfectly in this note below:
The suspiciously coordinated abundance messaging of the tech-bros is a preemptive strike on skeptics. It enables them to point to people like me and say, “Do you not want abundance? Do you want people to be deprived?”, but I’m not doing the depriving. It is they who are stealing the water and and energy from communities and forcing prices up, it is they who are appropriating work from artists and forcing them into bankruptcy, it is they who are eradicating jobs for young people and yet not compensating them for it. I wonder if there will ever come a time when Altman, Musk and co feel like they have enough personal abundance that they’d like to share some?
I’m sorry, sarcasm is truly the lowest form of wit; I know the answer to that question and it is no, that time will never come. What the tech bros mean by abundance is that you will be able to pay them for access to the greatest library of information, the greatest shed of virtual tools ever stolen and to use that to try and build abundance for yourself. AI is not the antidote to conservative, individualist, bootstrapping so-called meritocracy, it is the crystalisation of it. If - with all these tools - you cannot make yourself a billionaire then it’s YOUR FAULT. You are feckless, lazy, stupid, ignorant, even ungrateful. Once again we paint poverty as an individual moral failing rather than a systemic one.
All of these companies have a diversity pillar but, at their core, they think we should all be the same - the same as them that is - regardless of our myriad backgrounds and cultures, skills and talents, obligations and responsibilities, rituals and traditions, risk appetites and ambitions. Like them, we should want to spend all day indoors, racking up compute bills, striving to be individual billionaires and if we choose otherwise, well…
Of course, for all their claims to innovation we’ve actually heard this plenty of times before:
Anyone with an iPhone can make a film - the implication being that you no longer need any experience or a crew, just you and your little black box of dreams to make it in Hollywood.
Anyone with Garageband can make an album - whether or not you have any actual musical talent.
Anyone with an Internet connection can become an expert on anything - assuming you have all day to watch online lectures and no obligation to prove you actually understood them.
Etc, etc, ad nauseum.
What they fail to understand is that work is not only a route to money for workers and bosses, it is a source of purpose, motivation, mentorship, growth, dignity and community too. If it wasn’t why would all these billionaires still be working so much? They already have abundant abundance but clearly they desire or derive more than material gain from their jobs. Well, what about the rest of us? Maybe we aren’t so different after all.
Cover Photo by Matthew Henry on Unsplash
To Do List
My recommendations for new things to read, watch, look at, listen to and do this week:
As mentioned above I can recommend Louis Theroux’s documentary ‘Inside The Manosphere’ on Netflix if you want to find out what mewing, mogging and looksmaxxxing is! Here’s my take:
Over the next couple months I’ll be attending two of the four gigs in The Esplanade’s Mosaic series; namely Hiromi’s Sonicwonder and The Jesus & Mary Chain but the others look mighty impressive too. Listings and tickets available here: https://www.esplanade.com/whats-on/festivals-and-series/series/mosaic-music-series
I fear money. I’m one of those people who cannot look at his bank balance at the ATM despite the fact that I know I have no debt and do reasonably well for myself. Why should this be the case? Substacker Hanna Horvath hits the nail on the head:
Right. That’ll do ya, Nx