Artificial Intelligence on Your Bridge to Retirement
Imagine you’re at a gorge. The deepest gorge in the world is the Grand Canyon, which is over one mile from crest to creek bed.
Your gorge is more modest than the Grand Canyon. It’s ½ mile deep and ¼ miles across from ridge to ridge.
Bridge to Retirement
A bridge connects the ridges. Do you remember when you first stepped onto the bridge? You were young and had big dreams. You smiled when you read the banner hanging over your head. ‘Begin your employment career’. You could barely read the banner on the far side of the bridge. Finally you saw your faraway destination, ‘Retirement’.
At this point in your career, you’re nearly half way across the bridge. Of course, many other people are crossing with you. You bump into someone occasionally, but that doesn’t stop you from pursuing your goal to reach retirement, however you’ve defined it.
You notice a commotion up ahead. People wearing black tee shirts are disrupting the flow of traffic.
You gasp when you see a black shirted man drag a person to the side of the bridge and throw them over. You quickly run to the side rail. You dread looking over, but you do. You expect to see that person still in freewill as they descend way down to the bottom of the gorge. Instead, they have fallen into a net suspended below the bridge. There are other people in the net.
You’re taken aback, but still determined to reach your destination. You’re nervous, but you move on. Other people are being thrown off the bridge as you approach the black shirted ones.
You’re close enough now to see white letters imprinted on the black shirts. Ai is printed on the front in bold letters. On the back in smaller text, Artificial Intelligence.
Your heart starts to race because you are about to encounter the Ai’s. One approaches. You freeze. He’s about to say something when he notices someone standing beside you. Ai goes to that person first.
Don’t Get Caught in the Net
“Leave me alone” shouts the job traveler to Ai. “We were doing just fine without you,” they continued. “You want to take my job. Go away!” they said furiously.
Right in the middle of their complaining, Ai drags them to the edge of the bridge and throws them over into the net below.
Quick thinking tells you that complaining isn’t the way to respond. Ai turns back to you and stands silently.
“I’ve worked with you,” you say to Ai. Indeed you have. You’ve toyed with one of the chatbots a few times.
“Would you like to work with me more?” asks Ai?
You think to yourself, ‘What choice do I have?’ You like to learn new things so you reply, “Yes.”
Ai smiles and extends a hand toward the far side of the bridge. You continue your trek toward retirement.
You might be wondering, ‘What about the people in the net?’
Getting Out of the Net
The people will receive their universal basic income. UBI is a no-strings-attached stipend the world governing bodies are proposing to give to the 800,000,000 employees expected to loose their jobs to Ai in the coming months and years. Universal basic income is a sophisticated way of saying, ‘welfare’.
My granddaughter said it best when she told me, “Ai isn’t going to take your job. People using it will.
In the book of 2 Thessalonians 3:7-9, the Apostle Paul give us a some helpful information regarding UBI and free handouts.
For you yourselves know how you ought to follow us, for we were not disorderly among you; nor did we eat anyone’s bread free of charge, but worked with labor and toil night and day, that we might not be a burden to any of you,not because we do not have authority, but to make ourselves an example of how you should follow us.
Here’s the takeaway: You might eventually have a right, even necessity to receive UBI. If so, set an example to others by clawing your way out of the net and earning your meal by your own efforts (empowered by God of course).
The Apostle Paul takes it further when he tells the Thessalonians in verse 10,
For even when we were with you, we commanded you this: If anyone will not work, neither shall he eat.
