The Economist recently posted an article that coined(?) the expression “status death” to articulate a feeling many workers, (infosec, tech, white collar, etc.) have had for a while now. While the article doesn’t really define it–it relies on the reader to understand it intuitively–the words hit with a sense of appropriateness. Yes, this is true: the endeavors we used to pursue that conferred high status no longer do so, either much or at all.

Yet misunderstanding the awesome power of status is among the AI industry’s greatest risks. The pride with which its bosses have talked about white-collar job losses is an error born of a failure to appreciate how much workers wish to avoid a diminution of their standing.

Setting aside whether AI can ever do what the P.T. Barnum techbros promise (it can’t), there’s another issue of confronting the problem of diminished or displaced workers. It remains to be seen, will they be like their parents’ (or grandparents’) generation who were unwilling or unable to pivot when the local mill closed? Will they (can they?) resist the change successfully, and swoop in when the large tech companies fail to ever recoup their expenses from all this compute? The bottom’s going to fall out eventually, but who’s going to be left holding the bag? The cynic in me says all of us, while the assholes who caused it to happen will sail away on their yachts.