BILLIONAIRE PREPPERS? WHAT DO THEY KNOW?

From Zuckerberg to Musk to Bill Gates to Jeff Bezos - How come they are all spending millions and millions of dollars on land and huge and luxurious survival bunkers in far away places like Alaska, Hawaii and New Zealand? What is it that they know that the rest of us don´t?

The truth is, not much. We have been hearing and seeing for the past 20 plus years now, through movies, books and series about the technological changes that have upended society to the point of accepting alternative facts as well, facts.

Kellyanne Conway explains ´alternative facts.´

What I believe is happening is that, due to all the extraordinary and monumental technological changes that we can all see in Artificial Intelligence (AI), the potential for this technology to bring doom to the whole world is more imminent than ever. And they know it!

Here is Sam Altman from Open AI, explaining how this technology could go ¨quite wrong¨.

Or Elon Musk when he compares AI to nuclear bombs.

Geoffrey Hinton, AI Godfather, warns us all that ¨AI can kill humans.¨

What is very interesting is that many of them are touting mostly the good things that humanity is about to get from these innovations. Things like: health benefits, AI writing code, helping you to brainstorm ideas or writing a book. In the end, it will make almost everyone more efficient and thus increase productivity.

These outcomes are all great, but notice the last two mentioned: improve efficiency and productivity. In the capitalistic world these are code words for firing people. As simple as that.

If you are a CEO, and suddenly this incredible technology falls on you lap which promises that you will be able to do more, a lot more with less - all those mundane, repetitive tasks would be taken care of by an AI App - well then, your thoughts would be concerned only with how big your next year´s bonus is going to be, once the cost cutting (efficiency) and productivity increases get to the bottom line. This is how it is. The moment it becomes feasible to reduce costs by using AI, management will.

UNEMPLOYMENT IN THE AI INDUSTRY

A sample of this can already be seen in the same industry that developed AI, the high tech industry.

In 2023, there were 262,995 employees laid off. This happened during an economic boom for the industry. A year in which companies earned record revenues and profits, and where stock owners saw most of their stocks double or even triple in price. In 2024, the trend has continued with 49,943 employees laid off by the end of February.

Therefore, based on the claims, this technology might be good for humanity and a company´s bottom line, but not good at all for employment.

THE FUTURE UNKNOWN

So, what kind of a world should we expect to have in the near future? The truth is, no one knows. But if what we will have is a world where AI increases the bottom line of an industry by getting rid of employees, and there are no social structured programs to deal with the world wide masses of the future unemployed, then I can optimistically forecast a lot of uncertainty, anger and hunger from regular folks. How about the potential for unrest, chaos, famine, civil war, financial collapse at a scale never seen before? Who knows? Is this the reason why the 1% are making sure to have a hideout bunker, packed with all the necessities - at a luxury level - to ride out the apocalypse?

They have created a technology that they still don´t know how to control, that they still do not have a clear grasp of how it works, and that without even including the rest of humanity in the conversation of whether this is a good idea or not, have decided to let it loose into the world without really understanding the unexpected outcomes and repercussions of their actions. Or maybe, they did know and that´s why they are making their moves ahead of time.

Should we all be preparing for any unexpected outcomes? Well, these are definitely interesting times to be alive.

Thanks for reading. Abrazos.

Diego Rojas