In my new book LAST WRITER SITTING, an unemployed copywriter is asked to write a speech and deliver it at The March For Humanity - mankind's last chance to express its disgust at how many livelihoods artificial intelligence is destroying. Here's a transcript of that speech:
Discrimination.
It’s illegal to discriminate against someone in terms of their age, skin colour, sex, sexual preferences, and ability. And yet, here we have no action being taken at all by governments across the globe against perhaps the biggest example of ability discrimination the world has ever seen.
Every single human being on this planet is being discriminated against by Ai. We are being discriminated against for being human.
Robots, machines, call them what you like, they are taking people’s jobs purely because humans cannot work as fast or for as long or for as cheaply as these inhuman forms of artificial intelligence.
We humans have brains and bodies that naturally fade with age and we are being discriminated against because of this. Machines, with no brain or body to worry about and with the capacity to learn and learn and learn are taking our jobs.
And because us humans need to be paid for the work we do, we are being discriminated against and losing out to machines who don’t have families to support or houses to buy.
And what do governments do about this discrimination? You’d expect them to take swift and decisive action, right? But with Ai, where is the action to stop this anti-humanity discrimination? Those in power are watching from the sidelines because they have invested billions of our money in developing this anti-humanity technology without a second thought for how it discriminates against every human being on this planet.
They are basically saying it’s OK for the whole of humanity to be discriminated against for not having the same abilities as Ai. For not being as quick or as clever or as cheap as machines.
That cannot be right.
No such blatant discrimination can be allowed to stand.
The current unregulated use of job stealing Ai cannot continue unopposed.
Let’s march today to end this discrimination.
Let’s march to end all job-stealing Ai now and re-assert our right to be human, to have faults, limitations, wants and needs.
To have jobs and feel that it’s OK to be human while we work a limited number of hours a day for decent pay, taking breaks to do human things like eat snacks and breathe fresh air and yes, go for a shit.
We have a right to earn a living based on human standards of working, and a right not to be compared to machines who have unfair advantages over us because they are not human and we are.
Let’s make today a line in the sand day.
Let’s march for humanity.
