AI is the talk of the town among CEO and business leaders as they try to increase their profits by replacing what were once human positions with artificial intelligence. Shawn K, a current resident of New York, is one of the victims of this human purge; he lost his software engineering job with a $150K annual salary to AI. Now, he has taken to a much simpler, frugal lifestyle by living out in an RV trailer in a rural area in the Central New York highlands. He has gone from the high life of a well-paid employee to a DoorDash deliveryman.
“The Great Displacement Is Already Well Underway” is the title of Shawn’s blog post in Substack, which is about his experience since his life-altering layoff. “I went from a highly valued technologist to basically nothing in the course of a year or two with the rise of AI,” he wrote, explaining how artificial intelligence has had a huge impact on so many people, himself included, that the concept has become mainstream.
“10 minutes after I post this article, I’m going to go back to sending out my 900th through 920th tech job applications to AI bots that I won’t hear back on, work on building my pressure washing business I’ve begun investing in on credit that I don’t know how I will repay, and then maybe destroy my body and mind delivering doordash orders for a few hours.”
Shawn K might have hit rock bottom with his recent termination, but that doesn’t mean he is too deep in the gutter, mentally speaking. He’s still trying his best to find alternate ways of making money while looking into a possible career pivot. He claims to own multiple homes, which might sound absurd, as he doesn’t just sell them. However, his disabled mother would have nowhere to go, not to mention all the homes would be sold at a loss. In his words, “It’s not that easy.”
As someone who has lost so much of his livelihood and career experience to AI, K believes that machines should do the work and that the new value they are creating should be shared with everyone. “I’m only mad about losing my job to AI because I live in a society that says you don’t have a right to feed yourself and survive unless you exchange your labor for capital,” he wrote. After all, we did experience something similar during COVID-19, and many people were cared for and sent money for free.
Plenty of people in his post’s comments are in overwhelming support of his endeavors, while there are a few who are cynical or critical of his situation. Whatever the case, this story is a great example that AI isn’t a force that can be simply ignored. Its influence is growing as technology develops, so the best we can do is adapt to the changes it brings about our lives.
