When humans are the problem
With artificial idiocy, the economy moves ever farther from being a system that serves people
Gerry McGovern—in the middle of a social media thread about artificial idiocy—writes, “@cbzo Indeed. Working in tech for 30 years, one of the first things I learned was that in most IT projects, humans are seen as the problem to solve. The underlying philosophy of tech is to replace problematic humans. AI is a natural progression of that thinking.”[1]
The thread begins with an article’s warning that reliance on search engines—whether artificial idiots or not—inhibit the development of neurological “structures . . . indispensable for intuitive reasoning, error-checking and smooth skill execution.”[2] This in turn leads to a suspicion that artificial idiocy is meant to solve resulting deficits in innovation and critical thinking.[3] All this reminds me of a story in the Phaedrus about a king objecting to a new ‘technology’ that he warned would eviscerate human memory—that ‘technology’ was writing.[4]
My experience in high technology is, to put it mildly, a lot spottier than McGovern’s so I would be out of place to even attempt to refute him or his interlocutor. What I’ll say instead is that these are interesting observations. The Phaedrus suggests to me that the outcome will be somewhat less dire, but that says nothing about the intent.
Hardly a day goes by when I do not see headlines about people worried about artificial idiocy taking away their jobs and it has long been clear that capitalists resent every penny they pay their workers, indeed that Black slavery’s origins lay in capitalist complaints of a “worker shortage” which really meant that they couldn’t find workers willing to accept low enough wages.[5]
It's not hard to imagine how robots and artificial idiots might save capitalists oodles and gobs of billions of dollars in labor costs. Which is why to drive through Silicon Valley is to be treated to billboard after billboard extolling artificial idiocy.
What strikes me about all this is the sheer psychopathy of it all. What will become of the humans who are displaced as the economic system gains ever more distance from any notion that it is something that is supposed to work for humans?
I see no plan for those humans any more than I do for those who are already consigned by the permanent war against inflation to permanent unemployment.[6] After all, the point of all this is to reduce or even to eliminate labor costs, not to find jobs for people. Humans are indeed, it seems, the problem.
[1] Gerry McGovern, Mastodon, September 7, 2025, https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/115163225596893424
[2] Quoted in Gerry McGovern, Mastodon, September 7, 2025, https://mastodon.green/@gerrymcgovern/115163096930875486
[3] c. just c., “@gerrymcgovern I can’t help but think that these are among the “problems” AI (in its LLM form at least) is aimed to “solve”: human memory and critical thinking,” Mastodon, September 7, 2025, https://mastodon.green/@cbzo/115163173216503973
[4] Plato, Phaedrus, W. C. Helmbold and W. G. Rabinowitz, trans. (Upper Saddle River, NJ: Prentice Hall, 1956).
[5] Jon Schwarz, “The Business Class Has Been Fearmongering About Worker Shortages for Centuries,” Intercept, May 7, 2021, https://theintercept.com/2021/05/07/worker-shortage-slavery-capitalism/
[6] Stephanie Kelton, Deficit Myth (New York: Public Affairs, 2021).