We turn to science fiction to predict our future. Its morality plays are the source of our own conscience within the technological realm.

Because of science fiction, we think about robots, cloning, and, of course, artificial intelligence.

And also because of science fiction, we have images of sentient computers realizing that humans are an existential threat to the world. So they take the next logical steps to stop that from happening. By taking over the world.

The incredible breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI) in the last two months have been stunning. And those movies we’ve all watched and novels we’ve read bring our concerns to the surface. Concerns which include motivation. Both human and computer.

At the moment, however, that threat is all theoretical. A much different one is already here.

AI is designed to do what humans do. Only faster, more accurately, and broadly. And because the organizations designing AI have a profit motive, they really are thinking of ways to replace humans.

This is no different from automation, the move in the era of industrialization which first replaced humans with machines. From conveyer belts at first, to yes, robots.

Being replaced is not inevitable.

It is a choice we are allowing some to make for us. The some who will benefit by not paying humans to do the work. But the impact is on all of us.

The craziest part is that many of us will justify it. We’ll say that companies should replace their workers because the profit motive is obvious.

None of this rational.

It is the slave finding the best switch for receiving the owner’s beating. This isn’t rational from the slave’s point of view. He is assisting in his own abuse.

But it also isn’t rational in an objective sense. The world isn’t better when the owner beats his slave. It isn’t inevitable.

It is only useful for the owner.

Conditions which allow only the owners to benefit isn’t good for the community as a whole. And it is bad for the many who are directly impacted.

Protecting profit motives which impoverish and burden the community isn’t rational.

If we allow AI to replace workers across the entire global economy, we aren’t only talking about a few people who will be down on their luck because they “couldn’t pivot to the modern economy.” We are talking about intentionally creating poverty to preserve the excesses of the wealthy.

With no true benefit to the whole.

Choosing to replace each other is the real threat.

And this is already happening.

The power that AI brings to the table is incredible. And very useful. The potential to transform the way we work and communicate is mind-boggling. The genuine good that can come from AI is incalculable.

All of that must be harnessed in ways that provide the greatest benefit.

We have put this level of economic disruption in the hands of the wealthy before. Our choice to allow the wealthy industrialists to set the agenda led, not just to a greater concentration of wealth, but a singularly evil result: the Robber Baron Era.

Industrialists were able to trade their wealth for extreme wealth while directly impoverishing the workers. They built sweatshops and invented the extreme of industrial child labor. And they forced workers to choose between living a life of working poverty or extreme poverty.

Meanwhile, the industrialists convinced us to accept these conditions as our moral failing. They wrote tomes about their moral greatness as evidenced by their great wealth. They gave from their largess, not out of altruism, but from egoism, arguing that only they were good enough to know what is best for the people.

We need not recreate that era again.

We’re all adapting to AI.

It is with us now. We’ve been using it in simple ways for years. But intentionally using it will soon become a normal part of our lives.

It will be the personal data assistant on our phones and the idea generator we use for our projects and the virtual travel agent which will organize our trips. It will empower so much we can only dream of in our personal and professional lives.

We must also resist the impulse to use it to replace us, however. To replace real people. And resist the unitary profit motive that will be used to supplant the work of real people. People who make up our neighborhoods and communities.

Which means, that for many of us, intentionally talking to human beings and championing for their rights within the economy. In our daily lives and in our common life together. In our communities and with our federal governments.

Strengthening our neighborhoods is the rational move. For ourselves and our neighbors.