Palantir CEO Says AI To Make Large-Scale Immigration Obsolete (mercurynews.com)
- Reference: 0180621780
- News link: https://slashdot.org/story/26/01/20/1834222/palantir-ceo-says-ai-to-make-large-scale-immigration-obsolete
- Source link: https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/01/20/palantir-ceo-says-ai-to-make-large-scale-immigration-obsolete/
> "There will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training," said Karp, speaking at a World Economic Forum panel in Davos, Switzerland on Tuesday. "I do think these trends really do make it hard to imagine why we should have large-scale immigration unless you have a very specialized skill."
>
> Karp, who holds a PhD in philosophy, used himself as an example of the type of "elite" white-collar worker most at risk of disruption. Vocational workers will be more valuable "if not irreplaceable," he said, criticizing the idea that higher education is the ultimate benchmark of a person's talents and employability.
[1] https://www.mercurynews.com/2026/01/20/palantir-ceo-says-ai-to-make-large-scale-immigration-obsolete/
What wonderful people. (Score:2)
/s
Re:What wonderful people. (Score:4, Insightful)
The antisemite just checked in. Now please check out.
Re: (Score:2)
Watching the moderation war over this comment progress is pretty wild.
There are a lot of people who apparently think that being critical of Israel is actually synonymous with antisemitism. One wonders what leads to that kind of brain damage.
Re: What wonderful people. (Score:2)
Anyone moderating this down is trying to create an alternative reality, because they cannot handle that there exists such a thing as valid criticism of Israel. Poor things.
Re: (Score:3)
You'd almost think that people can agree on some things without having to agree on everything. Or that a good person and a bad person might see something the same way.
Re: (Score:2)
lol- bless your heart.
So here's what's actually happening (Score:4, Interesting)
The upper class are carving up the world.
Trump and the billionaires behind him will get the Americans and they get Greenland so that they can project Force in case they need to. Putin gets Eastern Europe and Western if he can take it. Xi gets all of Asia and probably Africa although they will probably be some wars over there and your kids are getting drafted to fight in them.
Once this happens the only remaining concern for the elite is having enough Blue collar guys to do the stuff the robots can't quite do yet. That's why they're pushing blue collar. Immigration is going to stop because with the world carved up like that we are going to be in that endless war that they talked about in 1984.
Long-term the plan is to completely replace the peasantry with robots and AI so that the billionaires can be God Kings without that dependency on those filthy filthy consumers and employees. But their projections don't have them ready to do that just yet.
None of this is good for you or your kids or your grandkids. But they're going to jangle shiny keys in front of you to keep you distracted. Moral panics mostly, Google the phrase if you don't know what that is.
Meanwhile the mass of H1B immigration he's talking about isn't going anywhere anytime soon. The process described here is going to take decades and they're going to want plenty of cheap labor to replace you in the meantime while they get their AIs up and running
Alex Karp is an interesting case. (Score:4, Insightful)
Tell me you don't know why people migrate without telling me, that you don't know why people migrate.
Re: (Score:3)
I think if you read more carefully, he's not talking about why people migrate, but rather why countries allow migration into their country.
Re: (Score:2)
Tell me you don't know why countries allow migration without telling me you don't know why countries allow migration.
Re: (Score:3)
Countries allow migration because it increases profits for the oligarchs and it provides more votes for politicians; if the people won't elect the politicians, the politicians will elect a new people.
Re: (Score:2, Insightful)
The explanation of importing voters doesn't make sense. Most countries require an extended period of time for immigrants to become citizens. It takes decades for the new immigrants to become voters- long after the politicians are likely to be out of office. Besides that, there is no consistent voting pattern for new arrivals, nor is there any guarantee that immigrant communities will support pro-immigration politicians. For example, Cubans immigrant communities have consistently supported politicians with a
Re: (Score:1)
> Besides that, there is no consistent voting pattern for new arrivals
Why would Democrats import millions of foreigners if the majority would vote Republican?
Re: (Score:2)
Why did Reagan grant mass amnesty to immigrants in the 80s if he thought they were all going to vote for Democrats? Why did the Trump campaign target Cubans and Venezuelan immigrant communities if he thought they would be hostile to his message? Why did deportations spike under Obama if he thought he was deporting his future voters?
The fact of the matter is that the vast majority of politicians only care about the period when they are in political power. They don't think ahead to how today's children might
Re: (Score:2)
US blue states like mine: IL dont require IDs to vote. You putting this all together yet? The democrats were hoarding in illegal votes, not illegal citizens. Chicago just went tits up with a $1bn budget hole all blown on housing, feeding, giving free cell-phones for illegal immigrants for 2 years, than ICE came in and deported them anyways. Genius local governments. And yes the local latino community was in uproar about this as well.
Re: (Score:2)
Even if you don't need an ID to vote, you need an ID to register to vote. The GOP has constantly tilted at the "voter fraud" windmill and every time the best they can come up with is a single-digit number of "illegal" votes, which are often Republicans who voted under a relative's name.
Setting all that aside, if you can falsify votes, why do you even need the immigrants at all? Fewer than half of eligible voters actually vote. There's a huge pool of native-born votes you could they could falsify if they had
Re: (Score:2)
You can easily get a significant registrations if your campaign is flush with cash. I hear MN needed a ton of day care centers too. Theres never a fraud of some kind, amirite?
Re: (Score:2)
Republican officials are more likely to commit voter fraud than illegal immigrants.
Just one of those bizarre factoids that makes your interpretation of the data look stupid.
Illegally voting is a crime. And not a minor one. You go to jail for it.
Some day, when it proves to be a problem, Voter ID will certainly be a requirement. But today is not that day- and all the available evidence supports that conclusion.
The claim "The democrats were hoarding in illegal votes" is an outright abject falsehood. If y
Re: (Score:2)
I agree that increasing immigration is more about supporting large companies, who lobby for it in order to increase the low wage labor pool. However, there's also been significant [1]research [nber.org] which indicates that immigration is usually a net benefit for the democrat party, and a negative for the republican party, and this fact is often cited by political strategists, so the parties do believe this idea.
[1] https://www.nber.org/papers/w21941
Re: (Score:2)
> However, there's also been significant research [nber.org] which indicates that immigration is usually a net benefit for the democrat party
This was so close to just being a factual statement- but you rhetorical agenda became apparent with the use of the word "significant".
Beyond that- the conclusion is practically undeniable. Yes, the Democrat party does eventually benefit from immigration.
The math here is simple. Immigrants tend to be minorities. Immigrants have children. Children grow up. Grown up children who are citizens can vote. Minorities tend to vote Democrat.
> and this fact is often cited by political strategists, so the parties do believe this idea.
No, this fact is cited by political bobble heads, to fool people with a low
Re: (Score:2)
Na. Good political bobble head sound bite, but completely devoid of factual basis.
Politicians are far too short-sighted to give a fuck what the eventual voting-age children of immigrants will vote for.
Re: (Score:3)
> Good political bobble head sound bite, but completely devoid of factual basis.
And yet this is literally what politicians have been doing across the West for decades. Import foreigners and promise to give free stuff and patronage to foreigners who vote for them.
It's not even necessarily about the votes themselves. Mail-in voting means there's no need for the foreigners to even turn up and vote, political parties can simply submit fake votes for them. And in the US it means more seats in Congress because
Re: (Score:2)
> And yet this is literally what politicians have been doing across the West for decades. Import foreigners and promise to give free stuff and patronage to foreigners who vote for them.
Bullshit.
That's a political viewpoint. A clear-headed view of the facts don't support the assertion in the slightest.
> It's not even necessarily about the votes themselves. Mail-in voting means there's no need for the foreigners to even turn up and vote, political parties can simply submit fake votes for them.
Oh, give me a fucking break.
Get the fuck out of here, Trumptard. Use your own fucking head and quit ingesting that conspiracy theory horseshit.
> And in the US it means more seats in Congress because the population is larger.
This, at least, is true. However, this is another case where the facts simply don't support your political interpretation of them.
The immigrant population of the US does not congregate in states that Federally vote for policies favoring immigration.
Re: (Score:2)
More fact free nonsense they distribute to distract the rubes! They give billions in hand-outs to people like Karp while screwing everyone else. Then they get people to vote for it by telling them scary stories about big bad immigrants and icky transpeople.
Contradiction (Score:3)
The first two sentences contradict each other, in my mind. Or perhaps he doesn't understand why mass immigration occurs.
Certainly the U.S. doesn't "need" mass immigration. Mass immigration occurs because there is greater opportunity here than elsewhere. AI eliminating jobs would more likely have a cooling effect on immigration because there would be less opportunity(jobs) here. But, even with less jobs, the opportunity for higher pay will attract a lot of immigration.
And, that doesn't bode well for domestic workers either. It only increases competition for those "vocational" jobs. Vocational jobs for which America's knowledge workers have no training, nor experience, nor desire for that matter. There's no one looking to abandon their office 9-5 to become a roofer for a quarter of the pay.
I do agree that high-level white collar positions, such as his, should be replaced by AI. They are certainly ripe or even ideal for AI replacement. But, as yet, we've seen none of the rulers - CEOs and upper management - willing to cede their crowns to AI and I don't see why that would change.
Re: (Score:3)
> Certainly the U.S. doesn't "need" mass immigration.
I am reading online all the time that the US would have no concerns with population decline if it just stopped being so racist and filled the gap with millions and millions of immigrants.
Immigration bounded by what can be accommodated (Score:3)
>> Certainly the U.S. doesn't "need" mass immigration.
> I am reading online all the time that the US would have no concerns with population decline if it just stopped being so racist and filled the gap with millions and millions of immigrants.
A country can only accommodate new arrivals at a certain rate. Immigration has to be bound by that rate. The US needs immigrants. But it also needs to know who is coming, some background screening needs to be done, a health check needs to be done. We did such things at Ellis Island for many decades, allowing vast number to enter at the rate we could accommodate.
Re:Immigration bounded by what can be accommodated (Score:4, Insightful)
Ellis Island didn't really have much meaningful vetting. Basically anybody who could physically make it to the U.S. was allowed in provided they didn't have a dread disease that was easily identifiable based on the rudimentary medical knowledge of the time and wasn't some notorious anarchist. It's not like Ellis Island had full access to Irish or Italian criminal records and could do proper background checks.
Mass immigration could actually be done much better today. You could allow mass immigrants (not just elites who qualify for things like management, investor, or "Einstein" visas) to apply in advance and submit to a thorough background check. But for all practical purposes, there is no such process. There was a "visa lottery" (currently shuttered) but it was never more than a tiny fraction of immigrants and the chances of any individual applicant "winning" was extremely small.
In practice, the asylum system became the route for non-elite immigrants starting in the late 20th century, but it was never really fit for that purpose and its use (and misuse) is responsible for a lot of the problematic immigration politics today. It's completely unrealistic to ask an immigration judge to vet claims of oppression in a far-away country and do so in a timely manner with the resources provided. In practice, what happened was permissive administrations mostly took applicants at their word but then left them in limbo for years, and restrictive administrations just kicked them all out, which has lead to a schizophrenic and disjointed policy in the aggregate where the difference between a path to citizenship, permanent limbo, and deportation to a country that may or may not be your own is mostly a matter of luck.
Re: (Score:1)
You should break out of your reading bubble. You're being misinformed and probably manipulated.
Re:Contradiction (Score:4, Insightful)
Mass immigration occurs because it's cheaper for oligarchs to hire foreigners than local people (and, to a lesser extent, because politicians need new voters).
There was never a need for mass immigration. It's just the modern, Woke version of slavery.
Re: (Score:2)
"There's no one looking to abandon their office 9-5 to become a roofer for a quarter of the pay."
Minimum wage is $17.13 an hour in WA state. Roofers are eligible for time and a half too. There are other options as well,
"The average salary for a electrician is $39.44 per hour in Washington State and $9,438 overtime per year."
[1]https://www.indeed.com/career/... [indeed.com]
If your job goes poof in a cloud of AI smoke you may not have a choice but to change careers. I had an involuntary change of careers myself.
Stay open-mi
[1] https://www.indeed.com/career/electrician/salaries/WA
Re: (Score:2)
To be fair, $17.13 an hour is well below a quarter of my pay for my office job (split WfH and in-office) in WA.
Electricians though, can make a very respectable salary.
But of course, as you mention, if my job suddenly goes up in AI smoke- I'll have to do what I can do. But to the parent's point, I'm certainly not looking forward to it.
Re: Contradiction (Score:2)
Even then once the white collar jobs go then there will be many electricians/plumbers/carpenters once that happens the per hour wage will plummet.
Re: (Score:2)
Very true.
Re: (Score:2)
I have a colleague who is an electrician but decided to do a lower paying job as a helpdesk guy because while the pay was better, he wasn't uncomfortable with his arse being on the line for a mistake, however unlikely, which results in a fire.
Re: (Score:2)
Ya, electrician is an interesting one. Those folks.... they really do earn that salary. If not in the actual difficulty of the work, then in the liability they assume.
The electricians my organization contracts deal with high voltage, stupidly high current shit. If they fuck up, fires are a possibility- and also just outright electrocution. I'm not sure I'd want that stress, either.
Re: (Score:2)
When in history, has a new automation technology led to long-term poor outcomes for humans? Short term, yes, there have been job losses when farms were mechanized, when factories were automated, when factories replaced blacksmiths. But after a decade or two, things always reset to a new normal, a new normal which offers improved lives for everyone.
Re: (Score:2)
True true. So long as you aren't the generation that gets to suffer and die from the loss/change, it'll be roses and sunshine.
Fuck the legions of blacksmiths whose lives turned to misery and death came early.
I'm sure that the next generation will fully appreciate your selfless sacrifice that made this bright present and futures possible.
Re: (Score:2)
> So long as you aren't the generation that gets to suffer and die from the loss/change
Whatever! I've had to retrain myself multiple times in the 37 years of my career. My first job used punch cards, PE tapes, and interchangeable disk drive platters. I've done a ton of work with modems and HPPCL. I know how to connect Unisys serial terminals using poll/select. Do you think those skills will get me a job today? Hardly!
In the past 100 years, farm employment went from 70% of the US population, to less than 5%. Where were all the starving out-of-work farmers rioting in the streets? In the last 50
Re: (Score:2)
> Whatever! I've had to retrain myself multiple times in the 37 years of my career.
You are just so awesome. How can you possibly expect all us morons to be as good as you?
But, You're still in an IT office job, been if it has changed. Are you willing to do roofing? Are you willing to do roofing fopr a quarter of the pay?
> In the past 100 years, farm employment went from 70% of the US population, to less than 5%. Where were all the starving out-of-work farmers rioting in the streets?
You should be ashamed of yourself. You are simultaneously selfish, insensitive, and willfully ignorant.
[1]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[2]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
[3]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/... [wikipedia.org]
> In the last 50 years, factory employment in the us went from 30% of the US population to about 8%. Again, where are all the tales of woe?
Just hoping you'll get yourself a clue.
[4]https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/.. [wikipedia.org]
[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dust_Bowl
[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Depression
[3] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/1980s_farm_crisis
[4] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/History_of_Detroit
Re: (Score:3)
> Certainly the U.S. doesn't "need" mass immigration.
The US certainly need significant immigration for several reasons. First, the declining birth rate for US residents is putting pressure on young people to support retired people, and immigration has been propping up this retirement system. Second, most US residents don't want a lot of the jobs that immigrants do because they are physically hard and pay poor, often non-living wages. Third, the US economy is heavily dependent on consumer spending, and the removal of spending by millions of immigrants would
Re: (Score:2)
> Certainly the U.S. doesn't "need" mass immigration.
I wonder if Alex Karp is one of those who contends that a declining (or even stagnating) population level will mean the end of civilization, as a lot of tech bros subscribe to these days. If so, that is one place where mass immigration can help - there's no shortage of useful people in this world.
Oh, he doesn't want those people? Well, I guess he can still hang with the pronatalist, Gilead-coded nutjobs in Silicon Valley.
Re: (Score:2)
> The first two sentences contradict each other, in my mind. Or perhaps he doesn't understand why mass immigration occurs.
I think he is directly lying and knows it.
AI is going to have children then? (Score:2)
For unless the natives can be persuaded to have more children immigration will be essential - at least until such time that AI can manage that.
So the doctors are trimming the hedges? (Score:1)
Sounds like his argument is that we'll have so many out-of-work software engineers and customer service reps desperate to pick crops and nail shingles on roofs for $16/hour that we won't need migrant labor anymore.
Not sure that sounds like a very hopeful future....
Re: (Score:2)
> Sounds like his argument is that we'll have so many out-of-work software engineers and customer service reps desperate to pick crops and nail shingles on roofs for $16/hour that we won't need migrant labor anymore. Not sure that sounds like a very hopeful future....
No problem, some of us software engineers are so old we had to take various shop classes while in high school. :-)
He's long ben an anti-immigrant Zealot (Score:4, Insightful)
This is nothing new from Karp. It's just using the buzzword of the day to help justify a policy he's always wanted for reasons that have nothing to do with modern technology.
And yet even this new anti-immigration rhetoric makes no sense. The whole point of immigration (from an economic standpoint) is to correct misallocations of skills between places. If Country A has a surplus of skilled electricians and country B has a deficit, it makes sense for country B to allow electricians from country B to immigrate. AI doesn't change that. His argument (in vouge among tech bros) is that there will be all of these out of work white collar people who can just train for blue-collar work. But real life doesn't work like that. An out of work 50 year old white collar worker isn't in a position to spend 10 years of apprenticeship and skills development to become a master electrician. When people are displaced by new technology, the cruel reality is most of them don't successfully retrain unless it happens very early in their career. Most of those out of work coal workers in West Virginia who were told to "learn to code" didn't actually succeed, and those who did are now looking at being displaced by AI.
Yet another paywalled source (Score:2)
Gack!
Whao cares what he says (Score:3)
Karp and Thiel and two dystopian CEO pitching nonsense since even before LLM became hype. I am glad i own zero stock in their surveilance tech. i want to be no part of that. And why Americans care so much about what imbeciles say as long as they have a lot of dosh ? What's so fascinating about that ?
Re: (Score:2)
> Karp and Thiel and two dystopian CEO pitching nonsense since even before LLM became hype. I am glad i own zero stock in their surveilance tech. i want to be no part of that. And why Americans care so much about what imbeciles say as long as they have a lot of dosh ? What's so fascinating about that ?
We have a strong, extremely strong, worship of monetary value. It's instilled into us from birth, more strongly than church teachings or any other aspect of society. We are to see those with more monetary worth as more important people, and study and worship their every word. Because monetary value directly equates to intelligence and wisdom. And while it's all a complete load of absolute hogwash, large swaths of the population fall under that spell because it's disseminated through the large conglomerate o
Re: (Score:2)
Indeed. Well, in actual reality, more money becomes worthless above a pretty low level and above that it becomes a liability, at least of you are a morally intact being (which is very rare in the super-rich and may not even exist).
Money also cannot provide safety. You will still die. You may still have an accident. You may still be a moron, an asshole or deeply immoral (just look at Musk, for an example). The pursuit of money is one of the traps you are faced in life. And many fall for it and waste their li
Re: (Score:2)
He's selling AI snake oil. LLM's are not going to "wake up" or anything similar because they are NOT AI or any kind of intelligence. Their utility in replacing workers is extremely suspect, to be polite. Heck just try to get one to tell you how many R's are in strawberry - before they hardcode the answer.
The best case scenario for people like Karp, Thiel, Altman, Musk, and the rest, is that you can convince enough managers AI can do the job. After they commit it becomes much more difficult to back out ad
Re: (Score:2)
When you do not understand morality, things like power, money or charisma can become stand-ins. A completely broken and deeply immoral approach, but many people are like that.
Dear Palantir CEO, STFU (Score:2)
As long as immigrants will work for even PENNIES less per hour than people already here, there will be a "need" for mass immigration. You have zero god damned clue WTF you are talking about, and should probably shut the fuck up about it. AI is not the god you and your ilk think it is, and is not going to summarily fix the entirety of all global problems. You are not one of the prophets of the new AI god. You are just a suit trying to make profits grow by pushing public narratives that make it obvious to any
Climate Change (Score:4, Interesting)
What an idiot. AI is going to accelerate global warming, which is going to drive millions to migrate...
Re: (Score:2)
Not an idiot, simply a smart person with no morality or integrity whatsoever. He knows he is lying. He knows he is doing damage. He does not mind.
That is genius (Score:5, Insightful)
A MAGA-hat wearing AI company suggests that AI will allow us to close our borders and keep all those furinners out. Absolute genius marketing. I mean that sincerely. Kudos to the marketing intern that came up with that.
Philosophy PhDs are "elite" workers? (Score:2)
Wait... I think the "elite" is superfluous.
Philosophy PhDs are workers? Where? Starbucks? Or is it the tiny percent who go on to teach other philosophy students?
Now, don't get me wrong, I like philosophy. I minored in it. I was one of the top students in the department. But it isn't a practical skill or field. If anything, it gets in the way of practicality. Karp is an outlier.
I don't know if AI could replace philosophers though. They invariably produce results. When an LLM can sit idle for
Re: (Score:2)
They are intellectually elite. It is one of the more difficult degrees and I would hire one over many others simply because I know they can figure things out on their feet having earned that degree (assuming they can't cheat their way which I would think should be more difficult than other degrees to sneak away with.)
Re: (Score:2)
Have you even taken beyond a 200 level Philosophy class? Have you read out of the Philosophy section of the library? Have you discussed something with any depth with a PhD Philosopher? Have you worked in IT with a philosophy graduate who was learning the job on the job?
I think not.
Palantir is EVIL (Score:2)
Most lawyers give the few good lawyers a bad rap. But most philosophers give their discipline a good reputation (if not rigid and annoying as fuck but not evil.)
There are still plenty of EVIL corps, a few EVIL philosophers, and probably a bit more who will whore themselves out to EVIL corps. Palantir is more EVIL because they have a PhD philosopher in charge. You only help them by discounting his expert training. Also Palantir is from Mr. Antichrist, Peter Theil (who obsesses in a disingenuous way more aki
Re: (Score:2)
His undergrad was philosophy. Then he did a law degree. Then his PhD, which is in social science, where his thesis (judging solely from the title) was about the relationship between jargon, aggression and culture.
Re: (Score:2)
The few ones that are "elite" in Philosophy are those that go on to teach and research. Doing a PhD in that area does in no way make you part of an "elite". It just means you found a way to finance it. This person has a rather hugely inflated ego and massively overstated sense of self-worth.
That said, Philosophy done right needs actual insight and ability to reason. That can be useful or stand in your way. If you also have a sense of morality, it usually is the latter. But I guess a CEO of Palantir will not
blow blow (Score:2)
Blow, blow, blow hard sweet blowhards.
Policyporn (Score:2)
Alex Karp is a provider of domestic security porn, political positions just over the top that affirm the radical fantasies of security service falcons.
Positions that make the opponents such as liberals freak out, so Karp is viewed as a friend of the security departments.
..and if they can't be trained... (Score:2)
We have a solution for them. Just need them to walk across this perfectly safe platform over this funnel-shaped thing that may or may not be a rock crusher or industrial wood chipper.
Oh boy... (Score:2)
Libertarian tech bros justify xenophobia. Film at 11.
Yeah sure (Score:2)
An AI agent is totally going to clean his ass when he's no longer able to do it himself.
Re: (Score:2)
Reminds me of this [1]French commercial [youtube.com]. You don't need to understand French to get it.
[1] https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=13GTbEW0bco
Face Palm (Score:2)
Tell me you don't understand what kinds of jobs immigrants do without telling me you don't understand what kinds of jobs immigrants do.
Obsolete? (Score:3)
Broadly, immigration is the movement of people to better opportunities. I doubt AI is going to make every country into paradise overnight so until that happen, people will want to move. Especially as climate changes take effect. Immigration from the third world is going to ramp up as areas become uninhabitable
AI the grape picker (Score:2)
So AI is going to take over manual labor? Picking grapes, roofing, concrete, drywall, crap kitchen jobs that don't pay. What an amazing chatbot.
People move for different reasons, not just money. (Score:2)
I would imagine that mass migrations to leave places no longer cool enough or wet enough to sustain life, or where rude neighbors routinely shoot up the area, will still happen in his best of all possible worlds. Besides, there is a good chance that the next Carrington event could wipe out the technology his fortune depends on... And maybe, just maybe, I want to move because I really want to see mt.Fuji or mt.Rainier out my window instead of the backside of a factory...
Hes wrong (Score:2)
Or deliberately spreading something false. Businesses will always crave cheap manual labor. Despite whining to the contrary, the point of visa programs (from the employer point of view) is to reduce labor costs. This feels like a dog whistle to socialize infrastructure costs related to AI buildout.
What a complete cretin (Score:2)
Lying with a straight face about something really important to a lot of people.
Re: (Score:1)
The U.S. only exists as a country in the first place because of historic mass migration. Without ancient mass migration, it would still be a wilderness. Without more recent mass migration, it would probably be several nations arising from dozens of historic Native American tribes. Or do you suppose there was a specific point in history when mass migration was no longer acceptable?
AI... (Score:2)
Is there nothing it can't do...
Re: (Score:2)
I'd like to see a longer excerpt before assuming "these trends" (from the quote) actually equate to AI. If nothing else I'd think telecommuting across the globe was a more obvious challenge to AI, and outsourcing certainly has been a substantial issue for years now.
Re: (Score:2)
I had a typo, I meant telecommuting seems like a more direct challenge to the need for immigration than AI does. Not that telecommuting is a challege to AI.
Re: AI... (Score:2)
Meaning there is no need to bring white collar temporary workers (as in H1B) since AI has their knowledge and skills already encoded. Local people with vocational training can supervise AI to do the job. Unless you have very specialized skill.
Remote work is not the Panacea many claim it to be (Score:3)
Remote work is not the Panacea many claim it to be. The more coordination and collaboration there is the more in-person has advantages.
I do both. Sure I like working from home and not dealing with traffic. It works well for some project and it works poorly for others. There is not universal solution that applies in all cases.
Re: (Score:2)
> The more coordination and collaboration there is the more in-person has advantages.
The more coordination and collaboration there is, the more benefit there is to doing it remotely. If you're not getting those benefits, you're doing it very wrong. Where I work, we get way more benefits from collaborating over the Internet, and much more friction trying to do the same thing in-person. It's not even a fair fight. In-person vs. remote is like a fat slob at his worst vs. Mike Tyson in his prime.
Re: Remote work is not the Panacea many claim it t (Score:2)
It depends on the team. I can see how a group of socially awkward introverts would have trouble sitting in the same room, but every big project kick-off we've had, everyone's been in the office together. We order lunch in and bounce ideas off each other. Can't do that over the internet anywhere near as effectively.
Looking forward to AI's displacing CEOs (Score:3)
I'm looking forward to AI's displacing CEOs
Re: Looking forward to AI's displacing CEOs (Score:2)
Thats the one role AI wont replace
Re:AI... (Score:4, Insightful)
Well, it still can't pick apples or milk cows. It still can't clean your house or mow your lawn. You know, the kinds of jobs immigrants tend to do.
Re: (Score:3)
> or mow your lawn.
There are lawnmower bots, now.
Sure, it doesn't need AI for that at all... but I'd scratch that one from the list.
We don't have Rosey the Robot yet, but I suspect that's not quite as far out as some of us imagine.
Picking apples- that one will be hard to replace.
Mechanized cow milking- very much a solved problem. Replacing the little human involvement in that wouldn't be difficult. I've witnessed it. It's both kind of fucked up and fascinating at the same time.
Re: (Score:3)
There are a bunch of different apple-picking machines. We'd have automated much more of agriculture if people couldn't hire illegals to do it for $5 an hour.
Rather like the Romans could have had an Industrial Revolution a thousand years early if they didn't have masses of cheap slaves to do the work.
Re: (Score:2)
Oh?
I've spent a lot of time in the orchards of Eastern WA, I still see that being done by hand. They do use tools to help, though.
Re:AI... (Score:4, Insightful)
I spotted the Trump-follower. They're the only ones who refer to immigrants as "illegals." Most of them would come in legally if there were a legal way to do so. So let's make it a straightforward process: pay a reasonable fee and fill out paperwork, sign up with the IRS for tax withholding, and let them in. But I doubt you'd agree to such an arrangement. If I'm right, then your beef is not really with "illegals" but with immigrants, period. And that's a different beef altogether.
Re: AI... (Score:3)
Any time you hear someone call immigrants "illegals", you should refer to Trump supporters as "immorals".
Re: AI... (Score:2)
I think it should be non controversial that no matter what the punishment is for being in a country illegally, the punishment for employing someone who is in that country illegally should be more severe. We all have our own ideas. What problem do yours solve?
Re: (Score:3)
So if we have all this automation technology for lawn mowing, why do we not see a lawn mower bot in every yard? Two reasons: #1 is cost--they are NOT cheap, and #2 is that they only do half the job. You still have to go around by hand with a string trimmer to get the grass that grows in places where the bot can't reach.
And if we have all this apple-picking technology, why do we still employ thousands of migrants each apple-picking season? Same two reasons: #1 is cost--workers are cheaper by far. And #2 is t
Re: (Score:2)
> So if we have all this automation technology for lawn mowing, why do we not see a lawn mower bot in every yard? Two reasons: #1 is cost--they are NOT cheap, and #2 is that they only do half the job. You still have to go around by hand with a string trimmer to get the grass that grows in places where the bot can't reach.
#1, primarily. They really are fucking expensive.
Same with vacuum cleaner bots. I mean when you really get down to it- a Roomba is fucking ridiculously priced (was? are they still in business?)
I've got 2 of them.. but I can't really say what they offer was worth $1,800.
#2, they do as good as a person with a similarly dimensioned mower, so #2 is only really a cogent point in the context of #1, which I already agree with.
> And if we have all this apple-picking technology, why do we still employ thousands of migrants each apple-picking season? Same two reasons: #1 is cost--workers are cheaper by far. And #2 is that they're still not as good as people at identifying which apples to pick, so they don't do the job *well*.
I said nothing of apple-picking technology... In fact, to the contrary.
I live in a St
Re: (Score:2)
No, the mower bots do NOT do edging / trimming. At all.
As for dairy farms, cost is still an issue. Only the giant farms will be able to afford that level of automation.
AI automation is the same. Cost will be an issue, from self-driving cars to office work.
Re: (Score:2)
> No, the mower bots do NOT do edging / trimming. At all.
They do everything a similarly dimensioned human-driven mower can do.
> As for dairy farms, cost is still an issue. Only the giant farms will be able to afford that level of automation.
Well, of course.
But the smaller farms don't really matter for this discussion. Small farms can't even afford basic mechanized milking.
I feel like you're grasping for straws here. Smaller farms are no economically important in the grand scheme of things.
> AI automation is the same. Cost will be an issue, from self-driving cars to office work.
You're over here trying to disprove automation.... and I gotta say, I'm a bit worried you've had a stroke.
Re: (Score:2)
Much like roomba for the house. Half the job. I had to pick everything up make sure no cords to entangle it. I imagine the lawn bots suffer a range of issues that make them near useless. We are a long way from the Jetson's maid Rosey.
Re: (Score:2)
It also can't protect you from the insurgents who want to remove your tribe from the gene pool, or force you at sword point to convert to their brand of wingnuttery, then slit your throat so you can't relapse into sin. Or just steal whatever you make on the posh foreign job.
There are a lot of reasons people emigrate. Jobs aren't even a major one for mass emigration.
Re:AI... (Score:4, Funny)
> Is there nothing it can't do...
Turn a profit?
=Smidge=
Re: (Score:1)
> Is there nothing it can't do...
Farm work. There are about 2 million foreign-born farm workers in the US, and the vast majority of those are undocumented. AI will be like McKinsey and will tell you what to do but won't actually do the work.
The farm owners are largely Republican conservatives that champion restricting immigration, and yet, it's interesting that it's the Republican conservatives that will be hurt the most by the very thing that they champion.