Will A.I. Trap You in the "Permanent Underclass"?

"The "lumpenproletariat," according to " The Communist Manifesto," is "the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." Lower than proletariat workers, the lumpenproletariat includes the indigent and the unemployable, those cast out of the workforce with no recourse, or those who can't enter it in the first place, such as young workers in times of economic depression."

"The idea of a permanent underclass has recently been embraced in part as an online joke and in part out of a sincere fear about how A.I. automation will upend the labor market and create a new norm of inequality. In an A.I.-dominated future, those with capital will buy "compute" (the tech term for A.I. horsepower) and use it to accomplish work once done by humans: anything from coding software to designing marketing campaigns to managing factories."

The lumpenproletariat is described as the social scum and a passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of society. The category includes the indigent, the unemployable, and young workers unable to enter the workforce during depressions. Accelerating artificial intelligence threatens to expand that group into a permanent underclass as capital owners buy compute to perform work once done by humans. Those without access to compute will face limited alternatives and deeper inequality. Online culture has mixed jokes and genuine fear about the A.I. caste, producing memes urging people to create A.I.-related content to avoid exclusion. Satirical accounts exploit that anxiety.

Read at The New Yorker