Navigating the New World While Clinging to the Past
In the heart of every individual today lies a silent battle, a struggle to bridge the gap between the rapidly unfolding future and the comfort of our known past. This dilemma, though universal, finds unique expression in each of us as we strive to maintain happiness and relevance in a society speeding towards technological singularity.
The stark reality of this transition has never been more evident than in the tech industry, a sector that once promised limitless potential for innovation and employment. Yet, as I recently shared in a deeply personal text message to a longtime friend, the dream seems to be unraveling. Leveraging ChatGPT, I've summarized my own heartfelt message to highlight our collective struggle and the urgent need for awareness and action.
In my message, I detail a five-month journey filled with challenges as I navigate the tech job market. Despite my efforts to adapt, including optimizing my resume for AI screening, I encounter near, universal rejection, highlighting a system increasingly dependent on automation that overlooks human qualifications and the value of personal contributions.
My narrative expands to critique the broader implications of unchecked AI development, touching on job displacement across various sectors, the societal impact of such displacement, and the personal toll on mental health. It emphasizes the silent crisis many workers face, driven by an employment system that increasingly marginalizes human skills in favor of technological efficiency.
Seeking to counter this trend, I advocate for ethical AI use through the Voice For Change Foundation, aiming to unify public sentiment and prompt legislative action to ensure that AI development considers human welfare. This advocacy is positioned as a collective effort to navigate the challenges posed by AI, emphasizing the importance of community, ethical considerations, and proactive measures to mitigate AI's potentially harmful effects on employment and societal structures.
Furthermore, my message underscores the urgent need for societal and governmental engagement with these issues to prevent exacerbating inequalities and to safeguard the well-being of all individuals as technology continues to evolve. It calls for a reevaluation of the values and priorities guiding technological advancement, urging a balance that fosters innovation while preserving human dignity and employment opportunities.
Lastly, my message reflects on the profound impact of technological change on all aspects of life, urging a thoughtful approach to integrating AI into society. I stress the importance of maintaining a human-centric perspective amidst technological evolution, ensuring that advancements in AI and automation enhance rather than diminish the human experience.
For those interested in a deeper dive, I am providing below a summary of the main talking points from the text to my friend, displaying again the prowess of artificial intelligence such as ChatGPT. The full version of my message available below the summary is a testament to the challenges and the resilience of those facing the brunt of technological advancement. It serves as a reminder that, despite our diverse experiences in this transition, our collective effort can shape a future that values human contribution and well-being.
Summary
Difficulty finding jobs in the tech sector due to resume rejections by bots.
The job application process has become highly competitive, with thousands applying for single roles.
The use of AI in screening applications often overlooks qualified candidates.
Personal efforts to make resumes AI-compatible have been unsuccessful.
Cover letters might become obsolete as AI-written content becomes more common.
Experiences of job rejections despite being qualified hint at systemic flaws in hiring processes.
The rapid adoption of AI in businesses is leading to job redundancies.
Future job landscapes may heavily favor those proficient in AI, disadvantaging others.
Government unemployment services are outdated and struggling to support the unemployed effectively.
The societal impact of AI and automation includes increased unemployment and displacement.
There's a call for ethical AI use and regulation to prevent widespread job displacement and societal disruption.
Rapid implementation of AI without adequate government oversight poses risks to societal well-being.
AI-driven job displacement affects all sectors, from fast food to high-level executive positions.
Economic and social systems are ill-prepared for the scale of displacement caused by automation and AI.
The narrative suggests a future where technological advancements could lead to societal inequality reminiscent of dystopian fiction.
There's a personal and collective need for adapting to and mitigating the challenges posed by AI and automation.
The importance of human creativity and adaptability in the face of AI's capabilities is highlighted.
Urges action rather than complacency in addressing the ethical and societal challenges of AI.
Advocates for a balanced approach to AI development that considers human rights and societal well-being.
Suggests the potential for AI to dramatically alter traditional job markets and societal structures.
Calls for community and legislative action to safeguard against the negative impacts of AI on employment and societal equality.
Full Text Message:
Hello my dear long-time friend,
Thank you for reaching out. First of all, I hope you, [Partner’s name], and the rest of your family are doing well. I didn’t mean to concern you with my latest Instagram post. I just posted a follow-up video explaining the meaning behind what I shared and said. Sometimes, to get people to listen, understand, or get your point across, you have to go through different avenues.
My own family does not necessarily believe that this whole AI thing is a big deal, but I have lived it for the past 5 months of my life. You CANNOT find a job in the tech sector anymore, bots reject your resume at a rate of close to almost 100% these days (from my experience being in the job market for the past 5 months) due to formatting issues with your PDF resume, even after I spent around $100 to pay for different online services in the attempt to make my resume “bot friendly”. It did not help one bit.
Tech companies out there are saving money by switching to AI and reducing the amount of hours that their staff would spend going through the thousands of applications submitted for one single role; roles I apply on LinkedIn sometimes show 750+ applications, you have to count the hundreds more applications from Indeed, Monster.com, other similar websites, people applying directly through the careers page, people trying to get promoted within the company as well, so you are talking about sometimes thousands of applications submitted for one single role, it’s almost like playing the lottery.
In theory, you would think that this process of high filtering could help companies find the perfect candidate for the position so the hiring manager only has to review only a few applications instead of thousands of them, right? But this system has flaws. The way I can explain it is: each resume is assigned a grading system, from let’s say 1 through 10, only the graded resumes of 9+ would get pushed to the hiring manager for review. The way the system assigns the grade is by looking at the amount of keywords matching from either your resume or your cover letter to the job description and requirements for the role, then it gives the resume a percentage match score.
I have had to use ChatGPT by copying/pasting the job description of jobs I was applying for, then uploaded my PDF resume to the AI, and asked ChatGPT the following prompt: “Please provide a cover letter that highlights the skills from my resume, tailored to the job requirements for the role”. Press Enter. After 2 seconds, it would provide you with the cover letter. I would spend on average about 30 minutes to modify the letter to my liking, making it sound like I wrote it. The AI doesn’t know your prior achievements at past jobs, so obviously you have to edit it quite a bit.
I was worried that some hiring companies might have this technology that could tell if my resume was AI-written or not, which might get me automatically turned down. So, I ended up spending extra money, on another service, that checked my cover letter, after I tweaked it, to make sure it didn’t look like a robot did it. 🤦 By doing all these efforts, I was thinking, isn’t it most likely that the bots will find my cover letter more “relevant” if another bot wrote it?
I feel like I’ve almost gone nuts over trying to make my resume stand out, trying to become a professional at figuring out how to perfect this new “Science” of building the most optimized resume. I read dozens of articles on how to make my resume or cover letter better than anyone else but in vain, nothing worked. It’s kind of insane to realize where we have gotten. I don’t believe cover letters will actually be a thing anymore in the foreseeable future, because most cover letters out there now are half the time written by bots like I explained earlier, and the whole point of making a cover is to show your future employer your personality through your writing so once you resume, if you are lucky, gets pushed to a manager for review, how is he supposed to get a sense of who you are as a person through your writing if whatever he reads is written by a bot?! Cover letters becoming obsolete is not too far-fetched, because it just won’t make sense anymore what we are doing.
No one can spend 2 hours writing a tailored cover letter from scratch for each role that you apply for, otherwise, it would be a full-time job, 24/7, because of the amount of resumes you have to apply to now to get any chance of getting a positive reply, it’s a numbers game. Maybe I should have continued to apply to more jobs, maybe after 1,000 applications submitted, I would have gotten maybe 1 single positive reply. Horror stories from people who I know personally made me lose hope, a friend of mine applied to 400 jobs online over the last 6 months, 0 positive replies. He ended up getting a job for a job he didn’t even apply for through a connection of his. A very close friend of mine, highly skilled, with a career and experience that was honorable, climbed up the ladder and was a Director of Operations at big companies had lost her job June 2023. Applied for jobs for half a year, every single day, she finally found a job a couple of months ago because I think she knew someone at the company or something, they had worked together at a prior job.
So yeah, it is discouraging when you see you are getting rejected every single time. It feels like a dead end. Besides me trying EVERYTHING that I could in the last 5 months, I have been unsuccessful at landing a first-round interview for any of the roles I applied to, even roles that I was overqualified for; some jobs were asking for a minimum of 5 years of experience in data analytics, I have 9+, rejected because I don’t “qualify” (resume formatting issue). It would ask to be proficient in software such as Microsoft Power BI for at least 2 years minimum, I have 4+ years of experience, rejected because I don’t “qualify” (resume formatting issue). So what do you mean I don’t “qualify” for the role? Can you at least give me a shot to maybe speak with an HR person and have at least a screening call?
I noticed a trend. Sometimes, I would be submitting a resume, let’s say at 9am on a Sunday, to a local company located on the West Coast, so I know for sure that their offices are closed and would be getting within 15 minutes what it sounds like an auto-generated email but they try to make it sound like a human person wrote it you know, along the lines: “Hi Kevin, thank you for your submission, after “further review”, unfortunately, you do not qualify for the role…” It is doubtful that on a day off, within 15 minutes, an actual person reviewed my information and application thoroughly. Because of the extreme usage of this technology of the ATS system it’s called (Applicant Tracking Software), aka bots, it is supposed to make the life of hiring managers easier but it is failing the entire sector of tech workers attempting to land a job at the moment. The hiring process has dramatically changed from 2 years ago from what I noticed. Back then, you could apply to maybe 30 or 50 jobs and receive at least a couple positive replies. I’ve applied to 250 jobs in the past 4.5 months and I have gotten 0 positive replies… Again, I am not the only one in this situation, some of my friends in the tech sector trying to find a job right now are saying the same thing as I mentioned above and there are news articles out there to prove it.
To further explain what the ATS system is doing, and I noticed it in approximately 50% of the time, the system extracts information from your PDF resume wrongly. As an example, it would grab one of your past job titles and inputs it into the wrong field on the application page online, such as the company name. Sometimes, it would grab the period of time you’ve worked at company X, Y, or Z and puts it into the field of one of your job title so, when the bot is attempting to “scan” your information and tries to make sense of it, it cannot “read” it properly as it may not understand for instance that “2007-2009” is not a position title but a date format so this is where the automatic rejection of your application comes from.
Some websites out there such as Workday, a platform that companies use for the recruitment process, allows you to edit the information extracted from your PDF resume after you upload it online, this gives you the opportunity to edit the mistakes the ATS system could have made. It takes quite a long time as you have to verify that every single field is accurate and in the correct format, making the goal of optimizing the extraction of the information from your resume barely make any sense…but there are some platforms and websites out there that don’t allow you to edit information once you submit your resume such as the “LinkedIn Easy Apply” functionality, which allows you to submit your application very easily and quickly but you don’t have the opportunity to know or be aware of if it is extracting the information from your resume accurately on the other end of the system or not. Every time I submit a “LinkedIn Easy Apply” application, I think to myself, this is useless, I am sending a “Message in a Bottle” to the Ocean.
Recently, tech companies have been streamlining their operations to AI, meaning they are switching their manual processes to automation processes so they don’t need as many employees at the moment because they don’t want to pay workers to do a job they know will no longer be relevant in the future so they are doing this to save money, making them a bigger profit for now. They will be most likely ready to hire people back in about 6 months when they need workers who are skilled in AI, that would have done their homework to learn about this technology on the side because employers want you to be more productive by using these AI plugins, tools, and solutions they will pay memberships for only $20/month. As a tech worker, your job will most likely consist of using these AI tools all day long, drag and dropping files here and there, having the AI do your job faster than you ever would be able to do, send the finished work to the client in a zip file or whatever, not really needing your brain, (which is not fulfilling at all in my mind), almost like if your job would be switching to almost being like a “robot” in a way I guess…I absolutely understand as a data analyst that this is where my field is headed towards to and I am not sure at this point I want to become an implementer of AI tools and solutions, it sounds awful.
So yeah, businesses want you to be more efficient so they can make more money so they will be investing in AI heavily in the next 3 to 5 years, that’s what AI experts say. As a company, these AI tools and solutions allow you to make a bigger profit by having you, as a “human” worker, to no longer only accomplish 10 tasks a day in an 8-hour workday but 25 now, making you a true super productive “machine” using these new technologies. So, in about 6 months to a year, if you are a data analyst, like myself for example, looking for a job and don’t know AI, it’s going to be increasingly difficult to stay relevant in the job market, you may actually become un-hireable as your skill set will likely be 1) replaced by a tool out there for much cheaper than human labor, 2) the hiring landscape becoming even more saturated because everyone would be fighting (like in The Hunger Games movie) for that 1 single job at a company to become “The” AI implementer there. That same company could have had a whole team of 8 data analysts before but now they only need 1 person to do the same amount of work 7 other people would have done manually so that’s 7 people hungry out there without a job. To reiterate, employers are most likely to not need as many people on their team as these AI solutions will make your work so much more productive that they won’t find the value in keeping every single person on staff who requires higher wages every year, to be able to purchase goods and services (as inflation goes up), need vacation time, sick time, is not always reliable, showing up to work late sometimes due to personal and family commitments. The AI and robots don’t need to sleep, eat, go to the bathroom or go to their family at night. This technology can work 24/7 and is much more reliable than a person, and of course, more cost-efficient to businesses. No employers out there will want to hire you in a few years as a data analyst like myself who used to make a 6-figure salary when there will most likely be a plug-in that could replicate your work. A startup out there has raised $21 million dollars to create a version of the AI that has the potential to fully replace the work of a software engineer…you know the guys that get paid on average $250,000/year in the silicon Valley for companies like Facebook and who most likely have student loans still to pay.
Investors are pouring billions of dollars right now to develop versions of the AI called “ChatGPT-s” that will be a version of ChatGPT that will be tailored to every single sector out there, making the redundant manual tasks be automated so more efficient to accomplish. These new versions of the AI will be able to do your job of doing manual tasks all day at your computer in a fraction of the cost under a minute. As of 2.5 months ago, my field as a data analyst is bound to be dead because you can now upload an Excel file to ChatGPT. It can create charts for you, something that used to take me hours to build manually on Microsoft Power BI. You can ask questions to the AI in regards to the data now, specific questions- a skill that took me about a decade to be proficient at and a service my last employer would charge clients hundreds of dollars an hour for me to do, sometimes spending hours on Zoom calls with clients explaining data findings so they can understand how to make the best financial and business decisions and be more successful. Do you really think that an employer is going to want to pay sometimes thousands of dollars to a third party company to get work or projects done when they could just have someone on their team use a tool (that will most likely be created on the market in the years to come) at just $20/month that can find a solution to their problems in a fraction of a second by just uploading the same Excel file I would use to create my Microsoft Power BI KPI (Key Performance Indicators) dashboards? They wouldn’t. What tech companies are doing right now is throwing away their own employees who’ve worked hard to the trash into a job market that is saturated, and on average, since the beginning of this year, 780 workers, EVERY SINGLE day, are losing their job over this. They are going through similar hardship I have gone through this for the past 5 months: can’t pay their rent or mortgage, some families can no longer afford to put their children through school or college, losing access to healthcare as when you lose your job, as you know, you are not entitled to healthcare here in the US, health is not a Human Right like in France where I’m from. You have a job? You can have healthcare. You have money? You can have healthcare. You don’t have a job or money? We don’t care. To the eyes of society, you are nothing, because you are not a contributor to the economy I guess? We are all about to not be contributors with automation taking over our jobs and people are going to need to be provided pills at night to sleep and cope just like I have been needing to deal with this new reality of the world. People struggling emotionally, mentally, and financially to make it and begging for unemployment services which takes sometimes months like it took me to see a single penny. These government agencies are not equipped to meet the current and upcoming demand of displaced workers due to AI and automation implementation, there is no way. EDD unemployment services still require you to FAX paperwork?! It doesn’t make sense that they are still asking to fax paperwork to provide additional pieces of evidence for your application to be approved, it’s 2024, c’mon. They claim it is because Fax technology is more “secured” than emails but I have no doubt that if this government agency doesn’t make quick upgrades, it’s most likely that they will still require you to Fax paperwork 10 years from now, while the rest of the World would have switched to AI?! 🤦 Good luck finding a Fax machine out there that still works after they cut access to the phone lines, just like they’ve done or about to do with home telephones. This is the strongest example of failing to adapt. We can’t adapt as The United States of America? The #1 country in the World?! It took EDD 3 weeks for them to review my application, meanwhile, I’m starving, can’t pay my bills or struggling to keep a roof on top of my head. I mean, I have been paying unemployment services insurance on my paychecks every 2 weeks for the past 9 years, where is my money when I need it? It is obviously not in EDD’s best interest to accept all applications, otherwise, they would be bleeding money, so the entire process has been designed specifically by very smart people, to take as long as possible right? I have worked in customer service before, as my first job, 10 years ago, back in LA, and I know for a fact that the customer service agent bonus’ structure is most likely based on how many rejections they can do per day. After I was lied to by the EDD customer service agent over the phone (can’t blame her, she was just doing her job, doing what she is being told to do) telling me that they did not receive both of my Fax paperwork. Almost lost it. The first page was a Doctor’s note saying that I needed to be put on rest from suffering from a burnout at my last job, the second one was an updated Dr’s note stating that 2 weeks later, I was now feeling better after being prescribed the proper medication and I was actively looking for a job, which I was, all day long, sending dozens of resumes online, starting the following day as I had lost my job actually so I had been “ACTIVELY” looking for work, that’s for sure. I told EDD I had a printed confirmation from FedEx saying they had received both paperwork. I was told that they had only received the first Dr’s note (conveniently) and that the system was going to deny my claim automatically by 5pm, that same day…Of course it was going to deny me, if it says on paper that you are not “allowed” to work for 2 months by a professional medical expert, you can’t qualify for unemployment services, as you need to be “actively” looking for work to qualify, my situation would fall under family leave or whatever it’s called. The second I told the customer service agent over the phone when I was originally filing I had a Dr. note, which I guess was stupid of me to be honest and tell the truth, she told me to Fax it to her right away! Of course she knew that this would lead to a rejection, more bonus pay for her I guess, I don’t know. So, I made sure to send my paperwork by snail mail the second time right? Because they had lied to me the first time already. Paid for tracking number and signature. I had proof they received page 2 of my Dr. note, December 12th of last year. I called on the 15th, giving an employee enough time to open my letter manually and enter my information in the system, (when this could be all done online by the way but they of course don’t let you upload paperwork from your online portal because that would make it way too fast for you to get your money…) anyway, I was told by another very well trained customer service agent, again, the following: “Well, Sir, because you sent us the paperwork with the need of a signature and a tracking number, it is actually going through a different processing facility in Ohio” Ohio?!!! Why?! I live in California and trying to apply for unemployment services in my State, why does it need to be sent to Ohio? This is obviously another lie, because I’m told this would take an additional 3 weeks to process so by this time, I’m 2 months in, still without making an income, unchanged expenses, $0 from unemployment services. Called EDD back a month later, asked for an update and they said something along the lines: “We received your paperwork. It is now out of our hands here at EDD. A judge will be contacting you to schedule an appeal. There is nothing we can do for you now.” I said: “How long can I expect for this process to take?”, “Well, you know, it’s post-Covid times, they are dealing with backlog, they are understaffed, most likely to take 4 to 6 months to have your hearing scheduled” Four…to….Six…Months? I have been out of an income since mid-November of 2023 and when I was told this, it was about mid-January so I said to the agent “So…most likely I won’t get anything, if any, by maybe end of summer of 2024?”, “That is correct, goodbye Sir”. What EDD should be doing is hire a bunch of part-time or full-time workers (in need of temporary work) for a period of 3 to 5 months to go through any backlog that may be remaining from Covid times, and invest in new technologies to upgrade their computers that have most likely not been upgraded since the 90s and leverage artificial intelligence to take care of simple tasks and repetitive processes, allowing the workers to deal with more complex issues the AI can’t do. All of this would increase the “customer service experience” but it costs money to do these upgrades, and that’s the problem, it doesn’t sound like a priority for the government.
My entire point of explaining this in detail is that this government agency is absolutely 100% ill-prepared to face the high demand of the amount of displaced workers who are currently without an income or are likely to lose their jobs within the next few months/years due to the rapid rise of the implementation of AI and automation across all sectors and job types, from Fast Food workers to white and blue-collar jobs, all the way to CEOs. They’ve started replacing CEOs now by artificial intelligence, at $20/month 🤦 [Friend’s name], I’m telling you, you don’t hear about any of this on the news on TV and what’s happening in the real world, they tell you that everything is fine. The economy is doing great. Unemployment rate is at its lowest or whatever they say. They show you charts with light blue or green colors (I’ve been a data analyst for 10 years, I know how to make charts look good and pretty, trust me) saying: “There were 275,000 jobs created in February alone last month”. Great. What about the job displacement issue currently happening across the tech industry? which is a true reality, they don’t talk about that. Where is the footage on TV of interviews of displaced tech workers and the hell they are living right now, just like me? Can’t find any online. I looked. They don’t want to alarm the population I guess on what’s happening. Fear doesn’t sell. I mean, sometimes. When they were showing you a countdown on TV all day long of how many people were passing away of Covid every day in the world, that definitely sold more shots to people who maybe didn’t need it, healthy young individuals like me, but I was scared, I thought I was going to die because I was brainwashed, went to go get 4 boosters, making Pfizer more money. I understand we were trying to put a stop to the pandemic in the beginning and trying to save people’s lives but why are they still selling you shots at the pharmacy in today’s world? Shots that are likely to be good against a Covid strain from 6 months ago. People don’t pass away of Covid as much these days then back in 2020. We most all likely had Covid, every single person on Earth, maybe the ones who didn’t get sick, they were most likely to be not showing symptoms. So, back to the job displacement issue, after realizing that companies out there exist just to make money off of you, and it’s well known, I am TIRED of living this silent struggle alone when I know for a fact 780 people every single day on average lose their jobs out there, in my sector, and that is the reason why I post about it on social media because for change to occur in life, it usually never happens if you sit still and be silent, or “Sit tight and assess” like they say in the movie “Don’t Look Up”. I am personally not wanting to see everyone in America having to go on strike for months over the next 3 to 5 years because people are begging for their field not to get canceled over AI taking over having to say: “Hey, we need our jobs still, we need to put food on our tables”, just like the Hollywood writers strike last summer. They saw AI technology could potentially replace their skills as writers. By using a few keywords in ChatGPT, the AI can come up under a second with an entire page of a script of a TV Show or movie. The job of the writer is doing what now? Not using their creativity? Which takes sometimes maybe 8 hours for a writer to come up with just one page of a script? What is their job becoming? The job of a “reviewer”, patching words together here and there spit up by the AI, most likely a job that takes an hour on average, maybe? Meanwhile, the giant studios, paying the writer, just saved 7 hours in overhead. Making them a bigger profit. So, they went on strike. Did not get paid for 4 and a half months, they literally fought for their lives, told the big studios: “You cannot over-utilize AI for all of the work out there that needs to be done by writers, because it’s going to put all of us out of a job.” (It was an issue for background actors as well, fearing to be replaced by AI-generated humans on TV, I think everyone was scared) So, they negotiated, that AI could be used for only a small amount of all the scripts that needed to be written out there, writers said, okay fine, you can have a little bit of what you want and the big studios had to agree, otherwise these writers were NEVER going to go back to work because if they couldn’t have negotiated, this technology would have put them all out of a job anyway. The Secretary-Treasurer of SAG-Aftra (the Screen Actors Guild), Ms. Joely Fisher, even said it herself, at the end of the strike, I was scrolling TikTok or Instagram and saw a video of a speech she gave. She said something along the lines: “There are (real) people standing behind me, we fought to the end, we believe the writing in the agreement is there, we’ve put guardrails and “boundaries on AI”. When I watched this video, I couldn’t believe what I was hearing. “BOUNDARIES on AI?”, W** is that? I was thinking to myself, is this happening in real life because this sounds like something coming out of a science-fiction movie. No. It was definitely happening in real life. I also remember reading in the news this strike going down last summer in 2023, and I even told to myself at the time: Well, ChatGPT is good at written text right? It can help you write blog posts or social media posts, so I saw why it was going after the writers first. I remember thinking, I’m a data analyst, I deal with numbers all day long, financial data, my skill set is very specific. The AI will never be able to do what took me 10 years to be good at, right? I was so wrong. Like I explained earlier, just as of a few months ago, the AI, is a better data analyst now that I could ever be in my entire life. I had a discussion with a close friend of mine the other day, she told me, Kevin, I understand where you are coming from, I mean, do people really think out there that they are that smart? That the AI cannot outsmart them and do their job better? She said. We almost laughed about it because she was so on point. IMF chief Kristalina Georgieva said on January 14th of this year: “Nearly 40% of global employment could be disrupted by AI”. 40% of all jobs across the entire planet? I mean, whatever “disrupted” or “impacted” means. You have to read between the lines, it means “canceled”, replaced by the AI. Unless, Governments can vote on legislative measures, just like Europe is doing right now and establish rules that while we are going through this transition period of this AI BOOM 💥, the private sector CAN NO LONGER displace workers to this magnitude, otherwise, it’s going to put too much stress on the economy, on government agencies such as unemployment services and the healthcare system that is completely broken. We need TIME. We need to be able to pull the plug and say “STOP”. I can actually hear Joe Biden say these words in my head in a White House announcement on all TV Channels: “STOOOOOP”. The government has the power to do these extreme measures for the better good of this country. There needs to be a mandate that says, as of tomorrow, no more firing by the tech companies. 95% of them make huge profits so don’t tell me they are struggling financially, while the government figures this out, meaning, while the election goes down. Actually, the election should be pushed to another year or two while The Biden-Harris Administration passes laws that won’t be able to be reversed by the next future President of The United States, you know the guy with the orange hair, the racist fake businessman, the one who degrades women by saying “Grab them by the p****”, what’s his name again? Yes, the Dictator guy you know?…..🤔Adolf Hitler? No, not him…. Joseph Stalin? No, that’s not him…. Vladimir Putin, no…. OH YES! DONALD JOHN TRUMP, 45th President of the United States of America. Or “Honest Don” like he calls himself. This is the biggest lie I’ve ever heard. The guy is a “pathological liar” as Bernie Sanders said many times.
Enough about the guy who appointed to the Supreme Court people who forgave him for everything he’s done, we need time to come up with a plan. Not “Sit tight and assess” like Meryl Streep is saying playing the character of the President of The United States in the movie “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix. Now is the time to Act, not after the elections, next year, or whenever, we have limited time. This technology is happening at an exponential rate and speed. Elon Musk said it himself last week: “The AI will be smarter than a human brain by next year. It will be smarter than all humans combined by 2029”. I’ll barely be 40 years old. What does that mean “smarter”? Can it outsmart us humans like in The Terminator movies? Like, for real? There is an article out there written titled “Tech Billionaires Need to Stop Trying to Make the Science Fiction They Grew Up on Real” and that is EXACTLY what is happening. American Tech CEOs, wanting to recreate in real life the movie scenarios of science fiction movies they grew up watching as children, just like you and I did and now we are just going along for the ride, watching it all go down. (There was no global referendum where we were all asked what it is that we envision this technology (AI) to do). You know, movies like The Terminator scenario where the machines take over humanity? I mean, there is a reason why Mark Zuckerberg is building himself a doomsday bunker somewhere for 260 million dollars. Is there something that you are up to that you are not telling the World about? This is so foolish and dishonest. The people at the top, with money and power know EXACTLY how far the technologies they created can go. They are preparing now, for what’s ahead. Most recently, the scenario from The Hunger Games movie could become a reality, where only the top 1% of the 1% live in “The Capitol.” They watch us struggle to survive on TV screens in their barricaded West Coast towns, all the while having a good laugh? Would this become a twisted new way of experiencing “Reality TV” entertainment? Selling dreams and fun vacations to people through micro-ships like in the movie “Total Recall” with Arnold Schwarzenegger? Colonizing Mars or another planet because people at the top are trying to somehow make humanity survive out there since we know with Global Warming, a growing world's population that we can’t stop and is likely going to run out of food, increase famine, wars happening around the world, Putin, having the ability to push a button at any time and blow us all up? I don’t know if you’ve seen the movie “Voyagers” with Colin Farrell but that is exactly what happens in this movie. We’ve put children inside of a cage on Earth basically, no access to the outside World, no contact with nature, basically nurture them like mice to get an understanding of the World the way we want them to believe. Found a planet that is habitable 87 years away from Earth, most likely will take 3 generations to get there right? Humans having to procreate on board of the spaceship to make it there alive. Once there, we can start all new right? Create a utopian world out there without pain and suffering? Maybe this is the true plan Elon Musk has, to save Humanity, if you are religious, should we see him as “Our God and Savior”? And even though we are all about to suffer, because of worldwide job displacement and famine, maybe we need to thank the guy, for trying to find a solution as to how can we, as a human species, continue to live on out there into the Universe? I don’t know, I’m struggling with this right now and I know that the next stage of my grieving about everything that is about to unfold is: Acceptance. Because I want to live a happy life and I only have one life, which is already too short. I want to make the best of it and try to live in the moment as much as I can. I don’t want this technology to change me wanting to have kids in the future, because you never know what tomorrow holds anyway, you may not even be alive. I can upload my thoughts into an AI chip later in life and live forever in a virtual world like in the TV show “Upload” on Amazon Prime I guess once they offer this as a service, just need to make sure I have enough in my 401k.
I know what I just said above was heavy but, If you watch the movie “Voyagers”, you’ll see that things rarely go down the way you plan it, no matter how smart you are. This phenomenon is called Entropy, Google it. Anyway, if you haven’t seen the movie, I won’t spoil it. This makes me think of the saying that could not be more true at the moment: “When Life imitates Art”, they say. Maybe my advocacy efforts or anything that I am trying to do to promote Ethical use of AI is something that I have in my blood from the French Revolution, I don’t know but I am not about to watch the country I moved to 15 years ago from France go downhill like this to the profits of the big corporations. McDonald's and other fast-food corporations are expected to replace ALL of their employees with machines within the next 3 to 5 years, much cheaper and reliable than a human worker. Experts say that the implementation of machinery will occur at an exponential rate since fast-food workers are making more and more money with the increase of the minimum wage in the State of California starting April 2024 at $20/month. In theory, this is great for the workers. They need to be able to afford the high price of food and housing just like you and I. But with inflation, the minimum wage for fast food workers, is most likely to be $22.5 by next year, $25 in 3 years, $30/hour in 5 years…Do you really think that McDonald’s is going to spend $63,000/year on a person to flip burgers? When a robot could do it for less than $10,000/year? I don’t think so. Automation of these types of services with AI like AI-generated bots at the drive-through window which has been implemented by the fast-food restaurant Wendy’s already, is supposed to provide a better “customer service experience”. You receive your food faster now and your order doesn’t get messed up by the human worker because they have technology now that can fry the fries more consistently with AI and machine learning and AI-generated voices at the drive-through window that can speak in 185 different languages instantly by analyzing your voice after just 3 seconds of recording you saying: “Hi, I would like to order a number 1 please?” The AI can tailor its approach to you and understand you better than a foreign immigrant person for example who could have trouble speaking English. So there is a reason why I keep talking about the fact that it could become the freaking Hunger Games movie out there in real life. As people of this country, see their entire field die, what are they going to do? People really think out there the AI can’t replace them? Come on, people think they are really that smart that this technology can’t do things more efficiently? (Repeating myself on purpose) You see my point. So, if you have a nation of 333 million people and you have 160 million of them working, if the amount of unemployed people as of February 2024 is 6.5 million people. Let’s hypothetically assume that automation and AI could replace let’s say at least 10% of the workforce, that’s a very small conservative number. 10% of 160 million people currently working is 16 million people losing their job, adding to the already 6.5 million unemployed people. If this were to occur, it would be a monumental DISASTER, an event of catastrophic proportions. Just like Leonardo DiCaprio is talking about in the movie “Don’t Look Up” about that meteor headed towards us, a force that could be a metaphor for artificial intelligence. It would be terrible not only for the economy, the societal well-being of the citizens of the United States but also for the overall prosperity of our country. Every single American city is facing a homelessness crisis already. Where are these displaced workers going to go if there aren’t reskilling programs for them to reenter the job market or some kind of financial aid for them to navigate this AI transition era? Most likely half could no longer find a job because their fields would have been replaced by the machines, automation, or AI, these people are going to struggle to eat and find shelter, like in The Hunger Games, while Elon Musk, Sam Altman (CEO of Open AI), and Mark Zuckerberg, are partying it up in their little “Capitol” of theirs? They know where we are headed [Friend’s name], that is why Mark Zuckerberg built himself a “Doomsday” bunker somewhere for 265 million dollars! I can’t repeat myself enough!! Why would he do that if nothing bad was coming? Don’t they talk in the Bible of a period of 7 years in decline? I never actually ready the whole book, tried to have ChatGPT summarize it but it said it was too long…Just like OpenAI’s own Terms and Conditions and Privacy Policy, took long to summarize it said….🤦These people at the top, with power and money, understand, that if you have a huge amount of the U.S. population that is out of work, people are going to be upset due to trying to survive, and they are going to try to find someone to blame, meaning their own government to have done absolutely nothing. And, there is something here that is called the 2nd Amendment…so if you don’t want to live your life in a war zone over the next decade and continue to live in a prosperous country and in a democracy and provide a good life to your children, I invite you to sign my petition on the website of my nonprofit organization called Voice For Change Foundation, which aims around advocating for Ethical AI and is trying to get the support of communities as well as a United Voice (that’s why it’s called Voice and not Voices (plural), it is not meant to be my voice personally but all of us. If you feel compelled after everything I said to spend a couple of minutes filling out the Google form at:
www.VoiceForChangeFoundation.org/petition
I would really appreciate it. I intend to share the signatures with the people in charge of this country (State Senators of all 50 States of the States the petition signers live in, Congressmen, Congresswomen, Representatives of the House, Supreme Court, EVERY SINGLE GOVERNMENT BODY out there) to show them that we are not accepting to struggle silently. I am currently in the works of having Hollywood famous actors and actresses sign it as well as if unethical decisions are made in the release of OpenAI’s tool called “Sora”, the entire film industry would be dead and they would all be as actors out of a job. (Because they ask for millions of dollars to be in movies and the studios could recreate an entire movie with just one single photo of their face, this technology is absolutely insane.) My open letter titled “Act Now” aimed at the U.S. Congress clearly explains how AI can be used and leveraged for the greater good in different areas of American society. I appreciate you spending a couple of minutes filling out the Google form. Good luck out there and hope you are having a great Easter!
www.VoiceForChangeFoundation.org/petition
P.S.: if any of the examples, data findings, and facts I provided above were not convincing enough, you can watch the movie “Don’t Look Up” on Netflix. When you watch the movie, think as the meteor coming towards Earth at an incredible speed as a metaphor to the AI. This technology is being implemented at an alarming rate with no government supervision, and while everyone is choosing to deny what is happening or try to still live a normal life, this meteor is coming, like Leonardo DiCaprio says in the movie, it is not a question of “IF” it will happen, there is a 100% chance it will happen, just like what is about to unfold with AI. The tech CEOs have created a technology that can no longer be stopped. They’ve opened Pandora’s Box. There is no going back. So how can WE, as People of this Earth (seriously), the other 8.1 billion of us, come up with measures and guidelines to safeguard Human Rights and societal well-being? Tried to ask ChatGPT how can the governments of all the countries could potentially come up with a detailed plan of action to create a “Global AI Ethics Charter”. That conversation, was censored by OpenAI. It gives me a “404 error page”, when I go to the link I had shared by email to a mathematician trying to confirm the prediction of how many people in the tech sector could potentially experience job displacement over the next 6 months to a year, using different data points such as the dates of when these layoffs were announced in the news, since the beginning of this year, an average of about 10% of the workforce being displaced, if you were to calculate at the same exponential rate, that if this trend were to continue, across the top 100 American tech companies (not including small to medium size businesses), that number, was about half a million. That is a hypothetical projection of workers losing their job in the tech sector alone. I hope you understand now how AI could have the potential of being a big problem to humanity. Most likely the reason why Elon is planning to go to Mars. Because we are f***** the way things are headed. Unless, the governments ACT NOW.
P.P.S: I apologize for the lengthy text and hope that this was not too long for you to read. I just thought that I needed to provide very specific examples and details, based sometimes on data findings and my extensive research on different topics over the past 5 months, crazy how much time you have in your hands when you are out of a job, right? lol I wanted for you to understand, as someone who’s been my friend and I still consider you as my friend (even though I haven’t seen you in a while), the true situation of the World that is about to unfold. I feel like there may be people out there that are not educated enough or have not done the proper research because they may only be watching the news on TV which is not telling the true situation of the real world out there or because they may be shown on social media what the tech CEOs want them to see and know, I have no idea. Hopefully, you can relate to my struggles. Hope you enjoy your Easter Sunday with [Partner’s name] and your girls. See you hopefully soon.
P.P.P.S.: I hope I didn’t scare you about all of this, because I know you and [Partner’s name] are new moms with 2 beautiful girls but all I am trying to do is bring awareness so we can act together towards a common goal in our lifetime. Maybe what will happen is inevitable you can argue and is what history has to do and we should leave it alone and lead its course. But with technological advancements, like I mentioned with the tool “Sora”, it has the potential of creating an entire Blockbuster-like movie from text right? Besides the fact it could eradicate the entire movie industry, wouldn’t what is about to unfold make a great movie though?
