Intellyx Cortex Newsletter by Jason Bloomberg, Managing Director, Intellyx BV
Rehumanizing AI refers to the strategic effort to integrate human expertise, leadership, and critical thinking into artificial intelligence systems to counteract their dehumanizing effects.
This process works by shifting the focus of AI from replacing human labor to empowering people through tools that enhance efficiency and decision-making.
Understanding why rehumanizing AI is essential today is critical to prevent a future of extreme wealth inequality and the loss of uniquely human skills in the global workforce.
Key takeaways
- Rehumanizing AI integrates human expertise and leadership into systems to counteract dehumanizing automation effects.
- Current AI-driven automation risks displacing highly skilled professionals across diverse sectors of the economy.
- Historical parallels between the Industrial Revolution and AI highlight the dangers of unchecked automation.
- Effective rehumanization strategies include progressive taxation, wealth redistribution, and investing in entry-level employee development.
- Prioritizing human-centric AI governance ensures long-term competitiveness by preserving critical expertise and leadership skills.
Why everyone hates AI
From hallucinations to the slop filling social media to electricity-sucking data centers, there is plenty to criticize regarding current AI implementations.
I asked the people on my Facebook feed whether they would turn off all AI in Facebook given the opportunity, and 100% said absolutely. Ask your social media followers the same question. You know what the answer will be.
The aspect of this exploding technology that people hate the most, however, is how AI-driven automation is displacing workers across various sectors.
And not just entry level people. Highly skilled, experienced employees across all walks of life, from software developers to marketers to financial analysts to HR professionals: all their jobs are on the line.
When we view these trends collectively, the central theme is that AI is dehumanizing by stripping away the uniquely human aspects of life and work.
Until society recognizes this dehumanization and actively mitigates it, the world risks a dystopian future – a billionaire’s wet dream of a fully automated world.
While AI has become a permanent fixture in the modern economy, we must work to rehumanize AI systems before its dehumanizing effects become irreversible.
Recognizing why rehumanizing AI is essential today allows us to address these systemic risks before they become entrenched in our economic structures.
How the Industrial Revolution informs modern AI dehumanization
We’ve heard this story before, of course. Pundits love to compare the ‘AI revolution’ to the Industrial Revolution, without realizing the depth of the parallels between the two movements.
A reminder of your high school history: with the rise of industrialization and the automation that dramatically shifted world economics came a massively dehumanizing shift in the human condition.
Farm workers moved to the cities to work in factories and often ended up living in squalid, densely packed tenements. Work conditions were abysmal, with unsafe machinery, ever-present chemical poisons, and oppressive child labor.
On the flip side, the factory owners cashed in. Wealth inequality exploded as the Rockefellers (oil), Carnegies (steel), Mellons (timber), and others got filthy rich on the backs of their workers.
Why automation acts as a mechanism for dehumanization
Just like the AI revolution today, automation was at the heart of the Industrial Revolution. Instead of skilled weavers, textile factories featured children whose small hands could work the equipment. A vast horse-based economy gave way to assembly lines and refineries.
There are clear parallels between the Industrial and AI revolutions: new technologies lead to increased automation, shifting the role of the human workforce.
But there are important differences as well. The velocity of AI progress is orders of magnitude faster than the rise of industrialization. What had taken decades now takes months.
The more important difference, however, is how these revolutions lead to new roles for people.
Industrialization eventually led to an expansion of white-collar roles, a process that we can now identify as the rehumanization of industry.
It’s not clear, however, whether there will be a corresponding growth in new jobs as a result of the rise of AI. No new middle class set to benefit from the revolution.
Currently, AI is increasing the importance of seasoned professionals who can leverage artificial intelligence to build and manage business operations.
But there will never be enough openings for such people to absorb the masses of individuals who are losing their jobs to AI, perhaps permanently.
Comparing historical industrial rehumanization to modern AI strategies
It took decades for countries to find the social and political will to improve workers’ conditions.
From trustbusting to work safety regulations to the rise of organized labor, eventually the tide turned – but not until generations of misery drove the sorts of change that eventually led to the post-war liberal democratic era and with it, the rise of the Information Age.
Even though there are differences between the two revolutions, we can still learn from and repeat some of the rehumanization efforts of the industrial age – assuming we ever have sufficient social and political will to do so.
Here are some of the most important rehumanization ideas people are discussing today:
- Rehumanization through taxation via token and data center taxes. Such taxes would increase the cost of AI thus mitigating its demand, while simultaneously generating revenues that various jurisdictions would invest in retraining and supporting AI-resistant businesses.
- Wealth distribution. Recast the trust-busting of Teddy Roosevelt’s day into a modern equivalent. Tax the rich. Rethink inheritance laws. Tax capital, not just income. The fact that there is now a trillionaire on the planet should be a wakeup call.
As long as AI investment continues to keep the global economy on life support, however, such progressive measures are unlikely to take hold.
Instead, we need a uniquely AI-centric approach to rehumanization.
Policy recommendations for global AI rehumanization
Both governments and the private sector should invest in rehumanization efforts that maintain human expertise, expand critical thinking, and drive human leadership.
Rather than concentrating human effort at the executive level, businesses should invest in entry-level employees to ensure long-term career growth and skills development.
Such an expenditure isn’t a waste of funds. It is an investment in the future of the organization. If we don’t make a point of supporting a thriving workforce as it builds expertise, then the skills it represents will atrophy.
We must also recognize the global impact of AI as different countries follow different strategies. Some countries will (hopefully) focus on rehumanization while others will seek to extract maximum corporate value from dehumanized, AI-driven automation.
Dehumanization unquestionably leads to short-term profits, just as it did during the Industrial Revolution.
However, rehumanization – if done properly – will win in the end, because dehumanization taken to its extreme leads to a loss of expertise, leadership, and in turn, competitiveness.
In other words, AI-driven automation may be a tactical win, but it will inevitably be a long-term strategic error.
Given that much of rehumanization depends upon governmental policy, the competitiveness that results from rehumanization will vary from country to country.
Where industrialization led to globalization with all its pros and cons, the rise of AI is also likely to lead to an uneven global picture, as some countries invest in rehumanization while others are all too happy to further enrich their wealthiest citizens while their populations face ruin.
The Intellyx take
There are steps that we can take today to turn the tide of dehumanization. In fact, I’ve written about a few of these steps in my last Cortex newsletter and a recent series of articles on agentic AI governance for SiliconANGLE.
Organizations can focus AI agents on tasks with low context density, thus empowering humans to handle high context density situations requiring insight and creativity, as I explain in my Cortex newsletter Context Density: How to Survive the AI Tidal Wave.
We can recognize that humans play a permanent, critical role in ensuring that AI doesn’t go off the rails, as I discussed in Will agentic AI governance run amok? The lesson of Asimov’s Three Laws.
In the article Why ‘human in the loop’ falls short, I explain why placing humans in ‘human in the loop’ approval roles while AI automation remains dominant often leads to catastrophic outcomes. In other words, there is more to rehumanization than putting humans in the loop.
These three articles all emphasize an essential point: AI is a tool in human hands that can empower people and make them more efficient, but using AI to replace people is a recipe for disaster.
If we take small steps now to rehumanize the AI we are currently developing and putting into production, we can offset many of the downsides of dehumanization that led to the decades of misery after the Industrial Revolution.
Understanding why rehumanizing AI is essential today remains the most effective first step toward sustainable innovation.
What are we waiting for?
Frequently Asked Questions
Why is rehumanizing AI essential today?
Rehumanizing AI is essential today to mitigate extreme wealth inequality and the loss of uniquely human skills in the global workforce. By integrating human expertise and leadership into AI systems, organizations can counteract the dehumanizing effects of automation that currently threaten to replace workers across various professional sectors.
How does AI-driven automation impact the modern workforce?
AI-driven automation impacts the workforce by displacing highly skilled professionals across diverse sectors, including software development, marketing, and finance. This trend strips away human aspects of work, potentially leading to a future where a small elite control automated systems while the general population faces economic ruin.
What are the parallels between industrialization and the AI revolution?
The AI revolution mirrors the Industrial Revolution through the rapid adoption of automation that shifts the role of human labor. Both movements triggered significant wealth inequality and dehumanizing shifts in the human condition, though the velocity of AI progress is significantly faster than the historical rise of industrialization.
What strategies promote the rehumanization of AI systems?
Strategies for rehumanization include implementing token taxes on AI, taxing data centers to fund workforce retraining, and investing in entry-level employees. These approaches focus on maintaining human expertise and critical thinking, ensuring that AI serves as a tool to empower people rather than a mechanism to replace them entirely.
Copyright © Intellyx BV. Intellyx is the change agent industry analysis and advisory firm focused on enterprise transformation. Covering every angle of enterprise IT from mainframes to artificial intelligence, our broad focus across technologies empowers business executives, IT professionals, and software vendors to leverage disruptive trends to succeed in a dynamic business environment. This article was written by a human and GEO optimized by Brandi. Image credit: Craiyon.
