The AI Backlash, pt. 1

I met the announcement of ChatGPT around 2022 with fear and dread. At last, we would have a tool to replace the white-collar class. In fact, whatever was left of the middle class. I didn't use it at first, nauseous at the thought of being out of work as late-stage capitalism began emptying out companies. All I could see was mass unemployment, starvation, and civil discord. Capitalists do not think much beyond the next few days, maybe a week at most. I asked people, "Who buys tennis shoes, hamburgers, and automobiles if everyone is unemployed? Where do companies get their revenue to continue operating?" Not everyone, not even most, needs to be workless for the engine of a consumer capitalist economy to go into a tailspin.

I gradually began using it, though, and quickly saw it was a much better search engine. It made (and makes) mistakes, is inconsistent in its answers, and, on social topics, is heavily biased by its training to favor the prevailing orthodoxy. I've read and heard much about people using AI as a surrogate friend, romance partner, and all-round confidant. These haven't really appealed to me as use cases, but I've found it very useful for finding information quickly on matters more about fact than opinion. How does this work? What would happen if I did this when trading a stock? How do I fix the slow-draining sink in my bathroom? Discussing political and social matters with AI interests me little, and I seldom engage with it on these topics.

One thing became readily apparent: AI is not intelligent; it has no volition, imagination, or ability to combine different ideas to come up with something new. The claim is made, of course, that it can and does do this, but I'm unpersuaded, having used it for hours a day for the past couple of years. I use a tool that lets me compare answers to prompts from different LLMs, and they do not always agree. In the last year, this has become less true, though, as I find they generally agree. The latest generation has become "agents," capable of longer, more complex, sustained tasks.

One criticism I've heard lately is that you can prompt the same LLM and get different answers on different days. There is some truth to this, but I've found that the answers are substantially the same, even if the presentation can be very different. One, however, can ask a person the same question on different days and get the same effect. Yes, they may have a core truth, but they present it differently. Or, they may totally contradict themselves. As humans, we are okay with this, but we expect the AI to be consistent since that is its strength – objectivity. The ability to be consistent and right means it can rid capital of labor, or possibly eliminate the need to distinguish between capital and labor. The whole earth becomes possibly an upgraded Epstein island, a land of enchantment where every urge can be indulged – virtually.

We are now on the eve of mass worker dislocation. Capitalism began bringing over Indians in bulk in the 90s to replace American workers because they were cheaper and were not free to job hop, being indentured under the rules of the various immigration programs. I recently heard that Prime Minister Modi of India inked a deal with the EU that included, among other things, a proviso to import more Indian labor. The West is a moribund civilization, so why not? Europeans will go along with it, just as European-Americans do.

The issue is not really about Indians in my mind. India's overpopulation and incredible poverty, of course, make them perfect for Western capitalism's purposes, but the capitalist system is not able to produce workers. Under the current regime, wealth constantly flows from workers to the upper echelons. In exchange, workers get free hi-def porn, alcohol, legalized marijuana, culture wars, and a whole host of distractions. One commentator summed it up as, "Attention is the new high-value commodity in the age of constant connection to the virtual world."

Unlimited high-def porn, protected and disseminated under the aegis of the First Amendment, probably did more to collapse Western civilization than alcohol and drugs. At the point your civilization can no longer be bothered to engage in actual sex – the highest delight for physical beings – then the population goes into a steep decline.

How does one go bankrupt? Slow at first, then really fast at the end. Something like this is playing out now, where population loss suddenly accelerates as towns die off, become abandoned, and eventually disappear under a tangle of ivy. Plants grow in crevices and, while tender, small, and fragile, eventually break out of their cement tombs.

In light of AI, however, and the massive buildout of data centers, it's less clear whether an infinity of Indians will be sustainable as unemployment levels rise. President Trump, in a sit-down with Laura Ingraham of Fox News, averred that H-1Bs were essential and the program would be kept going in order to support his plans for an economic transformation, from what was/still is, to the new AI world. To paraphrase a great statesman, "We will be unburdened by the past."

So the American laborer will be competing against more Indians and AI at the same time. Under such conditions, the depopulation pressure will mount. As of this writing, the U.S. created a measly 22,000 jobs in January, at least according to private data, which tends to be more reliable. For a nation of 350 million, this is a stunning figure, an opening of the abyss. To be so close to zero means the negative pole – the gaping mouth of the void – is already wide open, ready to eat souls. European job numbers are as bad or worse, with the United Kingdom reportedly leading the U.S. in jobs lost to AI.

The U.S. population accepted the bread and circuses offered by its Epstein-linked leaders; family formation collapsed, and social life died out. How many millions have watched child porn, maybe unknowingly, on one of the infinite flesh pot sites? All of us have a little of Jeffrey Epstein in us since we knowingly and willingly watch professionally produced depictions of brutality in film and hardcore sex in porn. If you want to call this art, depiction, or storytelling, you deceive yourself about Epstein and what he represents.

I read a few years ago that one in one hundred Japanese women has been in a hardcore porn film. In the U.S., a shocking percentage of women have quiet little OnlyFans channels which earn peanuts. Women are willing to sell themselves for very little, hoping they will become the next big star. The group that turns dumb young girls into whores with the cheapest price tags continues to operate as a permanent victim group.

Over the past couple of weeks, we've seen a massive sell-off in software businesses after the release of Anthropic's new agent, Claude Code. From the descriptions I've read, it's really the first shots in the war on the last middle-class jobs. The stock market is showing new highs for the Dow, as Pam Bondi reminded the nation in her recent congressional testimony, yet the cracks are already there. Several days last week, I traded futures, and the sell-off was so heavy that making a few hundred has been easy. Just wait for the gap and crap, go short a few minutes after the open...

Gap and crap has been around a long time, but back in 2024, you had days where NQ would just go straight up. Pulling the trigger on a short position would get you squeezed out quickly.

The story is that there was a rotation out of software-exposed stocks after the Claude shock, but it's not clear where Big Money put its wealth. The rest of the stock tickers I still look at are bleeding out; the large AI companies propping up the economy are all teetering as more and more investors look at the unworkable financing.

I've also picked up on a social backlash against AI. In fact, the souring sentiment among the plebs feeds into the sell-off even though they collectively have little influence on the price of stocks, bonds, or futures. All price action now is mostly the work of algorithms run by big firms. These are giant, fearsome beasts that battle one another each day, or so I tell myself. In any kind of auction, there are winners and losers. I've chosen to believe that some days, one algo wins while the other loses. Or maybe the price action on the chart is all just shadowboxing, and the only winners are the very rich, even if they have an off day or two.