A few days ago, I came across an article on LinkedIn with the uncanny title “Teach Your AI How You Make Decisions”.
To all of you, who have given implements such as perplexing AI or its dubious consorts access to files on your notebook: Don’t you just feel weird about letting technology you know so little about infiltrate your digital self? My impression is that outside of the international tech bubble on LinkedIn, most people’s experience using AI isn’t much beyond chatty fellows or software claiming to copilot your endeavors. Looming on the horizon, the real reckoning ahead is still going over our heads for now, especially in Europe. AI is literally steam rolling everything. Quick adapters worldwide are celebrating their newly built I-do-everything-myself-now-and-will-make-millions status – until they won’t be.
Yes, I have also been enthralled by AI, especially in 2023 when various tools began spewing seemingly appealing content of sorts. I have used AI in my work, although it cost me more time than anything else. Finally, I have even built an agent and named it Agent Cooper in reminiscence of Twin Peaks. This was a 1990s classic on television that literally swallowed you as viewer, episode by episode, back in the day.
Snake Oil
Speaking of swallowing, the Ouroboros is the ancient symbol of a snake devouring its own tail and thus devouring nothing but itself, over and over. It was originally attributed to the mythology of Ancient Egypt. Later, in alchemical symbolism, the Ouroboros represented a self-contained and cyclical process of transformation of matter. It was said to serve the refinement of substances. In present times, AI is modern day’s Ouroboros. It is technology that ultimately benefits a few, plowing through the net, creating slop, devouring slop and devouring jobs and markets right along with it.
On a global scale, AI is replacing human work at breakneck speed, much faster than new jobs are created. Developments are bound to propel entire industries towards market failure. How is it that this is rarely mentioned or discussed in detail?
Declining Spending Power
Hemenway Falk and Tsoukalas are outlining the effects of AI layoffs in their recent publication, “The AI Layoff Trap”: Employees are replaced by AI, lose their incomes and consequently their purchasing power. People’s loss of purchasing power, in turn, is hurting companies because it means they sell fewer goods and services. In a matter of time, the damage created by declining spending power is bound to spread across all areas, driving aggregate demand destruction. The publication from June 2026 is worth a read, I have linked it above.
The race for increasing automation is well under way. Already, significantly more jobs being replaced by AI than new jobs are being created. Expected outcomes are placing both consumers and companies in dire straits. Increasing competition and ever higher performing AI tools with unlimited productivity are exacerbating the problem. Newly laid-off jobseekers are aghast. For a new job, they are competing against each other, against bots who read their CV and against bots that do their work. On top, they are being ghosted by actual humans that don’t want to tell them there are no new jobs for them.
Not Taking Prisoners
Companies are well aware of what is looming ahead. Yet they are literally unable to change course. In line with the Prisoner’s Dilemma, the reason is simple. By employing AI, companies are able to cut costs immediately. If more companies were to slow down automation, more people would keep their jobs. This means income and purchasing power and company profits would increase. However, companies have little choice but to automate and cut costs with AI. That is competition while succumbing to the gaze of the snake.
Lower wages and salaries and founding new companies are no real remedy. Re-training, taxes on capital income and employee participation are not the answer to this either. Neither is universal basic income nor universal basic capital. Even voluntary agreements between companies are not going to solve AI putting people out of work.
A Pigouvian tax, similar to carbon taxes or taxes on tobacco, is proposed by Hemenway Falk and Tsoukalas as possible remedy. This may make sense. Such a tax could also consider the environmental impact of AI, which is equally difficult to measure. Something I have been wondering about for decades is why no international financial reporting standard sufficiently addresses the environmental impact of a company. By the looks of it, there also won’t be one for the adverse impacts of AI.
Killer Convenient
Technology brought convenience into our lives. Who wouldn’t type a simple question, such as which dental floss to buy, into Google? But would you get on a bus and ask the stranger sitting next to you on the bus which dental floss to buy? No? Are you fixing the software of your car yourself in your own shop? You don’t know how? Why are you using any software or online services in the first place? The answer to this multifaceted question boils down to one word: convenience.
Of course, it is convenient if AI can take over reading and replying to your emails. You don’t need your human assistant. And it is convenient if AI can take over sorting your data instead of your accountant. Plus it is convenient if you can use dictation to input what you want to express. You don’t have to ask your intern to type things for you. It is even more convenient if AI writes your copy. Magically, AI then becomes your sparring partner that debates with you on how to best express their, uh, your ideas.
Still, what will happen if it is decided that Ouroboros will head your way? It may swallow your work including all your awesome automations. Why? Because someone now feels they can create services and products just like your company.
This Is Your Brain On AI
How long did it really take you to reply to an email on your own before AI came along? Do you actually have to attend those five to six meetings and calls every day and have AI write a memo about it with action points that will be taken care of by AI? How effective is this? Or have you literally lost oversight of what you are inputting into which tool, what the tangible results are and how many hours you have spent “creating improvement with AI”? What has happened to your own actual work? Do we really need AI to be more effective?
To be honest, all the hype reminds me of how I once cooked a great Viennese beef soup known as “Rindssuppe” in Austria. The way you prepare Rindssuppe is by slowly simmering beef in a shiny broth with vegetables such as carrots, beets and parsley until you have a beautiful soup that you can serve as a starter before the main course of beef (“Tafelspitz”) with roasted potatoes, apple horseradish and a chive sauce or a dill sauce if you wish.
Deep in thought and in anticipation of the arriving guests, I strained the broth through a sieve – and you guessed it: there it went, right down the drain, as I had forgotten to place a pot beneath to catch the delicious liquid. Turned into slop right there.
Being A Turtle
It is similar with you AI output: you are creating and sending your thoughts and work down an abyss you don’t know, for your content to be easier found, tracked, captured and disseminated by bots and to feed a voracious system. Who is enjoying the fruits of your toils down the drain? Your broth is flowing into the unknown nether realms of the web, into data centers that use copious amounts of resources such as land, water and energy instead of benefitting you and others, mostly for the sake of “efficiency” and “convenience”. Also, you are likely feeding someone else’s assets instead of your own.
Is your company also desperately scrambling to jump on the AI bandwagon, but you can’t decide how? Think again before you make any hasty decisions and figure it out carefully. If something is causing this much growing pains, there is a reason. Yes, I am looking at you, companies in Europe. Better take developments with a grain of salt and because in the race with the Ouroboros, being the turtle with a hard shell may prove to be an advantage in the medium term after all.
Do I hate AI? No, I don’t hate AI. But please let us not jump on the AI bandwagon without thinking and let us figure out HOW we really want to use technology in a way that is sustainable. Humankind has celebrated progress over thousands of years based on our own brain power, based on self-efficacy, on collaboration and partnership. Let’s bet on nutritious food for thought instead of feeding the Ouroboros. If I can support you, feel free to get in touch.
📸 by COPPERTIST WU on Unsplash