There was a time when only the artist could make a living from the useless. All others were condemned to usefulness. The arrival of AI corrects this injustice.
Know-how is not enough. You need useful know-how. Making an umbrella without a canvas is useless, nor is a chair without a seat. Only the artist can claim useless know-how, produce works without purpose or why. The knife without handle and without blade from Lichtenberg for example. But for others, such a posture condemns them to inconsistency. The homo Faber would then be accused of incompatibility with the functioning world. No matter how much he knew how, his know-how would have become useless. Here we are. It turns out that useless know-how is expected to grow exponentially in the years to come. It’s inevitable when technological revolutions occur, they say.
No problem, we add. We then invite this know-how that has become useless to be recycled, towards nobler skills likely to transcend one’s art. It’s not so much that his gesture has become obsolete because it could still be useful. It’s just that it has become tautological in the sense that it is reproduced by an automaton with less effort and less cost. In other words, Man does the same as the automaton, but worse. However, the accused has a choice of punishment. It either recycles itself or chooses to vegetate in a state of stasis for an indefinite period. He has this freedom.
Except that AI is not a revolution like any other. It is not a question of retraining a few skills, but of reformatting the entire system. By definition a revolution reshuffles the cards. But the AI threatens to take away everything in its path, to pull the table as they say. Obviously, since the worst is possible, so is the best. Thus among the greatest economists, all scenarios are possible, as summarized in this recent article by specialists on the issue. From exponential growth to forced unemployment for all. Uncertainty has become maximum, the horizon of possibilities infinite.
Anyway. It seems quite extraordinary that we have entrusted the keys to our professional future in the hands of a revolution whose beneficial effects we are so incapable of weighing against the detrimental ones. We probably had no choice. Progress cannot be decreed, it is invited. What happens next depends on what he imposes on us. Either we are guests invited to share his table, or we are his subjects reclusive in the rear guard of the shop.
And it’s not enough to look at the frenzied rise in the US stock market to be convinced that AI promises us a better future. The American stock market still has an inclination to believe in myths rather than the sad condition of reality. The spectacular rise of the so-called magnificent 7 (Alphabet, Amazon, Apple, Meta, Microsoft, Nvidia, Tesla) is certainly justified by the profits made by these companies to date. But it is precisely these profits that raise questions. How long will they be able to maintain this pace without signs of a tangible increase in labor productivity being visible in the economy?
So since the cards are no longer in our hands. Since it almost seems understood that this revolution will be more revolutionary than the previous ones. Maybe there is still time to prepare ourselves to know how to do useless things. The artist does it well and doesn’t seem to complain about it. The politician also seems to have taken a liking to the thing. So why not, perhaps we too will soon have the chance to appreciate the obscure sensation of producing a void, of making ourselves invisible to the eyes of the world. Isn’t melancholy the happiness of being sad, as Victor Hugo said?
Obviously there will remain the painful problem of the fridge, which must be stocked. Credit too, which must be honored. But I’m hopeful, I asked Chat GPT and he’s already offered me a whole bunch of solutions.
