Charles Bartlett.net

Category: Society

  • AI Musical Job Chairs

    AI Musical Job Chairs

    A compelling post about an unfortunate situation. To be honest, the word ‘unfortunate’ isn’t the right word and doesn’t do justice.
    If AI lives up to the hype and expectations… and for those of us working with the tools every day… there is no reason to think it won’t. The next 3-5 years are going to be a very brutal game of musical job-chairs.

    At every company, the music will stop, and 20-30% of employees will not have a desk chair to sit on. Because companies do not have a choice. Companies will have to invest in AI and cut labor costs to remain competitive.

    This has always been the endgame of automation.

    And I absolutely believe AI automation is the right path for society. A person should never be doing a job that a machine can do. Unless it is for fun or some other entertainment value.

    But make no mistake, AI will break the economy. Businesses need paying customers to survive. Eventually the Tech industry will have to begin worrying about that. And some already are. It’s why several well-known tech industry leaders are calling for a Universal Basic Income.

    And that is the part that worries me. I don’t know how deep the pain has to reach before governments take action. Will cities have to burn down? Will data centers and corporate headquarters be physically attacked by mobs? How many homes will be foreclosed on before governments take action?

    I don’t know what will be the catalyst to initiate radical change. But it’s coming.

    We are entering the next evolution of our economy, beyond our current Information economy, where the basic needs of survival will be disconnected from the traditional definition of a ‘job’ that provides economic value in the marketplace.

  • Something That Should Not Happen

    Something That Should Not Happen

    I don’t understand why an ideology that the U.S. fought and beat in WWII is allowed to exist in the United States. Fought and beat at great cost of American lives. And millions of lives throughout the world.

    Dozens of neo-Nazis publish newsletters on the platform, as highlighted in a recent Atlantic article. That includes Richard Spencer, who helped organize 2017’s deadly “Unite the Right” rally in Charlottesville, Virginia, and now makes thousands of dollars a year from his Substack newsletter.

    Stephen Council, ‘Writers for SF’s Substack are tired of its ‘Nazi problem,’ but the CEO doesn’t care’, SFGate, Dec 22, 2023

    I do not believe that enemies of the State should be protected under the Bill of Rights. Nor do I believe that just because several decades have past that an ideology should be allowed to reconstitute itself and promote the same hatred and regressive ideas it did leading up to WWII.

    Shame on Substack.

    This is not a First Amendment issue, and Substack is providing a safe harbor for neo-Nazi’s to exist and grow.

  • Lead is not your friend

    Lead is not your friend

    Rebecca Watson creates fantastic videos that take a closer look at the evidence and research on something she becomes curious about. She is one of those people that spends a lot of time thinking about why she thinks the things she thinks.

    I highly recommend watching this video about lead in the environment and the serious social and health impacts it has.

    Spoiler Alert : Gen X is the generation with the greatest amount of exposure to lead which happened during the 70s and 80s.

  • Social Media is not Yours

    Social Media is not Yours

    Imagine working on a social media account for 16 years and building 500,000 followers. And overnight have the owner of the company take the username away from you. Without notice.

    16 years of branding gone. All of your digital assets have to be updated. Without any compensation. Just a curt support ticket email communicating to you what will be done to you.

    You may be thinking, why would anyone invest time on that social media platform to build a following. Why indeed.

    But the reality is that everything you put into any social media platform is not yours. It’s not your resume. It’s not your family photo album. It’s not your portfolio, or your scrapbook.

    You can lose it all based on a product manager’s roadmap, or the whims of a recalcitrant CEO.

    There is an emerging alternative though. And it very well may save the Internet. Returning it back to it’s former decentralized content glory days that were pre-Google.

    The Fediverse, specifically the ActivityPub protocol, is something you should keep an eye on. The term is a merge of ‘federated’ and ‘universe’ to describe a collection of social media platforms that can freely exchange content and engagement activity (both ways) with a digital property you own (i.e. a web site).

    The promise is that it will allow you to post content in a digital space you own, build a following through multiple social media platforms, and most importantly, bring your community of followers with you if you decide to leave a social media platform.

    Until the Fediverse has widespread support, you might want to pause community building on the platform formerly known as Twitter.

  • Mr. Rogers was from the future

    Mr. Rogers was from the future

    You can’t tell me that Mr. Rogers didn’t come back from the future to help us. I immediately did a “deep fake” search on this video. And it appears to be legit.

    My mind went there because after watching it, I’m staring out the window trying to understand how one person could transcend the conventional thought and zeitgeist in which they were raised and emersed in. On, everything.

    What he said to Carson is widely understood and accepted by most today.

    But this interview was recorded in 1980. Mr. Rogers must have held this belief for at least a decade or more before this interview. And he spoke to Carson at ease in an earnest tone to indicate that believed it is not up for debate.

    Although I think Carson could have handled it in a classier way, I don’t fault him too much because I don’t think he knew how to respond in that moment.

    But it certainly highlighted what separated Mr. Rogers from most people.

  • Government Deficits are a Myth

    Government Deficits are a Myth

    For many years I’ve had the sneaking suspicion that government debt really doesn’t matter. For my entire life, it has almost always went up and up each year. And when it’s politically convenient, one party cries that the sky is falling.

    But the sky never falls.

    Last week I stumbled across Stephanie Kelton and her economic theory of Modern Monetary Theory, and it goes a long way in explaining the reality of our economy and the facts on the ground.