This Carbon Based Life

By David Glenn Cox

How much money would be enough to satisfy you? One million dollars? Ten million? A billion? Mansions and wall to wall sycophants and call girls. Sumptuous food and private jets, and famous art on the wall? Would it make you happy? Considering that once you have acquired this fabulous lifestyle, you must now protect it and hold on to it tightly, or it might disappear. Such are the problems of human apes.

SoftBank has recently applied for a ten billion with a “B” dollar loan. Because they want to get in on the AI bonanza and fear they may already be too late. Gimme the money! Quick, quick, gimme the money! I was feeling poorly the other day, with no appetite, constipated, and with hot flashes. So I went on WebMD. And visited with Dr. AI. I described my symptoms, and Dr. AI instantly had the solution. Obviously, I was going through menopause. I knew as soon as I mentioned hot flashes, the machine would say something stupid like that. Even after insisting I was a bona fide, biological male, Dr AI asked if I would like them to put me in contact with a competent OBGYN?

Better make that a twenty billion dollar loan. There is still much work to be done. Far be it from me to question science and modern medical technology, but I suspect a misdiagnosis. It’s a machine; it doesn’t think, it simply chooses from a weighted multiple-choice palette. But it’s a dream, a gleam in the eye. Somebody is going to get rich someday maybe, if we can just get the damn thing to work right.  

Meta, as in it doesn’t Meta any more. Aka Disgrace Book is betting heavily on AI and recently began a program to cull the herd of those pesky flesh and blood humans. Now, this isn’t a company teetering on the brink of bankruptcy, desperate to cut payroll. This is a company that literally prints money. Anxious, desperate to eliminate as many as possible of those over-paid humans. So that they can keep more of those precious pennies in their pockets. At the annual company meeting held at Mr. Zukerberg’s Hawaii compound, the goal was announced to eliminate up to 20% of the current meat bags and replace them all with AI.

As the AI was being implemented, bugs, and reliability issues began to surface. Were you recently banned from Disgrace book for posting pictures of your car, your cat or your mother?  You see? “Not See” becomes “Nazi!” What happens in a company when it becomes clear that the boss has it in for you? All of your coming in early or staying late means nothing. You’re an important member of our team, almost like family! Important in that you draw a paycheck and must be eliminated just as soon as we can get this damn shit working right. Can you come in this weekend to help us eliminate your job?

The call rings down the halls and corridors, abandon ship! No future here! Dead-end on Zuckerberg street! The good eject themselves before the aircraft goes down in flames. The remainder live in fear and hide behind their desks when they see the boss coming on Fridays. Caught in a vise of their own making, with  company morale at the level of a prison yard. “Psst, me and Lenny are going over the wall tonight.”

In the old days; they called this plan strangling the goose laying the golden eggs. But the white shirts and MBAs today use terms like human asset optimization and payroll streamlining. That way they can make more money! Replace all those heartbeats with digital decimal points ASAP! And if it doesn’t work too well? Who cares? Remembering that famous Russian efficiency expert, Dr. Goodenough. Customer service? You must be joking. The morons and peons will never notice the difference. And if they do? Fuck em! Who cares what they think!

Whenever a company sets out to improve profits, care and customer satisfaction generally go right out the window first. I had a friend who was an assistant plant manager at a frozen Pizza factory. The new owners decided to go with cheaper ingredients, and my friend began sending out resumes’. Those pimply-faced peons will never notice the difference. The layoffs began in less than a year and then the company decided it was time to revert to the better ingredients, but it was already too late. Time and customers lost are never found.

When I was a boy, I wanted a slot car so I could go to the slot car track with the big kids. Then all the slot car tracks shut down. When I was a little older, I’d plunk quarters into the video game arcade at the shopping mall. What’s a video game arcade? What’s a shopping mall? Time marches on, leaving business geniuses and MBAs behind in the gutter.

Who would have ever dreamed such industry giants as Kodak or RCA would disappear? Western Auto used to have a store in every mid-sized town in America. They paid their salespeople on salary and commission. Then the bosses came up with this genius idea. Get rid of the commission! We’ll save a bundle! Is there a Western Auto store in your town today? That’s why!

My Brother in law worked at an axle foundry in Alabama. One hundred and twenty-five degrees inside that forge shop. Some of the executives would step out onto the loading dock to smoke and complain about the ninety-degree heat of the day. Completely clueless of their co-workers working inside the fires of hell less than three hundred feet away. “Gosh, but it sure is hot out here today!”

It’s something similar to the Stanford experiment where the guards become careless and oblivious to the needs of the inmates. The executives got where they are because of their genius and cleverness. Everyone else is just a worthless fuckwad. “Gosh, I know how to improve profits, boss! Do you see those two guys? Fire one of them and make the other one work twice as fast. Outsource our inbound calls to India! Fire all the salespeople! Use AI! Our customers are all morons anyway and won’t know the damn difference. Thank you for calling. Your call is very important to us. Due to heavier than expected call volume, your expected wait time is approximately one hour and thirty-two minutes. Enjoy listening to this one lame song, over and over and over again, sucker! “Delta Dawn! What’s that flower you have on!”

There’s only one serious drawback to Artificial Intelligence. The public hates it! YouTube already advertises “No AI” on some of its videos. But don’t worry, boss, they’ll learn to love it. After all, boss, they’re all just simple morons, anyway. Just cram it down their throats. We’re going to be rich someday, you know!

“Our civilization is wonderful, in certain spectacular ways; wonderful in the material inflation which it calls progress; wonderful in its hunger for money, and in its indifference as to how it is acquired; in closing the public service against brains and character; in electing purchasable legislatures, blatherskite Congresses, and city governments which rob the town and sell municipal protection to gamblers, thieves and prostitutes for cash.

It is a civilization which has destroyed the simplicity and repose of life; replaced its contentment, its poetry, its soft romance-dreams and visions with the money-fever, sordid ideals, vulgar ambitions, and the sleep which does not refresh.

It has invented a thousand useless luxuries, and turned them into necessities; it has created a thousand vicious appetites and satisfies none of them; it has dethroned God and set up a shekel in His place.” – Mark Twain