I was reading an article about some CEO talking about how the AI-centric future will be a boon for skilled tradesmen-type jobs and people with neurodivergent syndromes like ADHD and autism.
Well, I guess do I have a bit of that ADHD juice running in my head so I just couldn’t stop thinking about what the future would look like for humanity in the face of AI. I’m sure the guy was talking a bit out of his dyslexic backside to grab headlines all around the world to some degree, but that really got me thinking…have we been looking at this AI stuff all wrong this whole time?
Skilled Trades Jobs#
With AI taking over all the traditional sitting down jobs that women naturally excel at due to our office setup being the ideal breeding grounds for successful women, it turns out that tradesmen type jobs are the only types of jobs that are currently “safe” from the AI chopper.
In a way, this makes sense since AI is just a brain that can’t really do much on its own…it needs limbs and a body to do its dirty work outside of the virtual realm. If it did have access to a factory however, should it reach some sort of sentience or at least reach its General Intelligence form, it could control the entire factory and become Skynet, launching a global assault on humanity…unless of course that factory is some kind of canned food processing plant in which case the worst it could do is poison the food before shipping it out to the masses.
In the same way that oldskool cars are immune to EMPs and solar flares, oldskool industries like carpentry, plumbing and bricklaying would be immune to the AI onslaught to a degree. I mean, plumbing companies would still rely on computers for invoicing, taxes etc, but at least if you hire your friendly neighbourhood handyman, you could pay them in cash to fix your leaky kitchen sink.
Playing into the “duality of man” here, we go from the Old Type to the Newtype…
Neurodivergence#
Similar to what I talked about in a previous post, it does look like the future of humanity is micro-attention spans riddled with unfulfillment and the desire for constant mental stimulation. AI provides all of that, providing anxiety and depression at no added cost!
In a weird way, this symbiosis between neurodivergent individuals and AI seems to be what is driving the progress of our current tech landscape. The human feeds the AI with non-stop input while the AI reciprocates with shots of dopamine at regular intervals.
You could argue that this destructive cycle is just an evolution of the previous generation’s drug addiction, whereby the chemical substances whic trigger effective neuron activity are replaced wholely by external triggers that allow the body’s own chemistry to do all that on its own…
Similar to sci-fi level tech where a super AI which interfaces with some medical beam laser apparatus can perform non-invasive surgery to fix a blood clot in the brain as compared to our current tech where surgeons have to literally cut open your skull to access your brain in order to do some fancy neural rewiring and soldering.
It’s no wonder more and more of the younger generation choose to stay away from alcohol…I mean why would you want to numb your senses when you could just overload them and get the same (if not better) high? For much less at that, seeing as how inflation and the economy are just running wild now.
Choose your destiny#
I feel like there should be a middle ground somewhere for us. Going full-on one way or the other is just not what we’re meant to be as humans. It’s really no wonder that most societies that go the “either-or” route end up jeopardizing their future and just crumble with the burden of not being able to pull what they need from the other side of the fence.
Going full on tradesman is akin to going back a thousand years or so. With so many people learning the trades of old, will there be enough demand when the supply goes overboard? Similarly in the other direction, when more and more people develop neurodivergence through practice and/or artificial enhancements (I’m not sure if this is possible, but it sure is in sci-fi and anime!) we’d end up with so many products that are essentially carbon copies of each other that nobody would want to buy them…and we’re already hitting this bottleneck as we speak with all the weekend “vibe coding” projects that turn into the next MLM subscription scam that nobody is buying anymore.
This is where Eastern philosophy about balance and harmony provides the answer to everything. We see it in societies that manage to balance both sides of the coin; China being the most recent example, what with their crazy architectural marvels and cyberpunk styled cities…reminiscent of Japan’s vibes just 2 decades ago.
Taking on this mindset, I actually went and touched grass for a good part of the this week. I started clearing up my backyard and I’m planning to build a nice porch/patio in front of my house with my own two hands. It’s been a long time since I’ve done anything like this and it’s nice to get out in the nature every now and again to remind ourselves that we’re just human, and that it’s fine to be slow and inefficient.
My next project? Making a simple wooden stool from an old tree trunk with my eldest boy. Maybe I’ll make a blogpost out of it, or maybe you could follow my substack to keep up to date with whatever I’m up to. Either way, go touch some grass. It’ll do your soul some good.
-Fab