‘YOU CAN ALL MAKE ME HATS MADE OF GOLD.’
A.I. can now drive cars, write poetry, paint pictures, do accounts, do chatbots… soon
As half-man, half-robot Mark Zuckerberg pushes his company Meta to develop A.I., in the first of our exclusive interviews, we asked him would anybody have a job when A.I. takes over?
MZ: Ha! Not everybody will be out of work; that’s ridiculous… I, for one, will have a job.
PC: What about everybody else in society? Will they have a job?
MZ: Oh… I hadn’t thought about that. I’m sure we’ll invent new jobs …For instance, I’ll need someone to ‘Bring-Me-All-My-Cash-in-Wheelbarrows.’ ..I mean, a few billion people could do that? And a few billion more people can make me hats made of gold and diamond-encrusted sofas? …and I’ll definitely need lots of security guards to defend me from the angry masses. So there’ll be lots and lots of work in the Bodyguard sector…
PC: And what about the other billions of people? Will they be able to find work which gives them purpose and meaning?
MZ: Look, if they ARE struggling for employment, why don’t they try and do what I do – and try and invent a metaverse? Anyone can do it: all you need is a mere $69.8bn fortune and a sociopathic-ability-to-ignore-what-everybody-else-might-want.
You don’t have to be that good at creating metaverses – I mean, heck – I couldn’t create a decent metaverse if you paid me. But at least it gets me out of the house all day.
PC: Isn’t it Ironic? By developing A.I. you might be on path of destroying everybody’s jobs – but when it comes to doing your own, i.e. creating metaverses – you can’t do it properly?
MZ: Sorry, I don’t compute irony or humour. That’s completely lost on me.
PC: OK, one final question. Have you A.I. developers ever considered that potentially your work is potentially very damaging for Humankind? Or have you not weighed up the ethics?
MZ: Of course, we need to weigh up the pros- and cons- of A.I. sensibly. On one side, we have Humanity’s position at the top of the food chain… On the other, my ability to afford a groovy new sofa. I think I can speak for all of us, when I say, I really need a new sofa. Because the springs have gone on my old one. And it doesn’t have diamonds in it. So I’m developing A.I. whether you like it or not.
PC: Isn’t the whole project potentially dangerously megalomaniacal?
MZ: Not at all. Now, if you don’t shut up I’ll get my people to invent another chatbot to replace you and ask the questions.
