Musk said, "The ultimate goal of capitalism is to’ capitalize’ everything in the world." Of course, including people, turning people into a part of capital.
Strictly speaking, "human capital" is an immoral word. People create capital, but capitalists want to turn people into their own capital and means of production.
It’s not a fantasy, but it’s true that Amazon on the other side of the ocean happened.
Amazon has developed an artificial intelligence system, which can monitor the working status of every employee.
For example, a sorter, how many couriers did he sort in an hour? Amazon’s regulation is 120 pieces. If the indicator is not met, the artificial intelligence system generates a report and automatically dismisses "lazy" employees.
According to statistics, there is a cargo hold with 2,500 people who automatically expelled 300 "bastards" within one year after running this artificial intelligence system, which is highly efficient.
The dismissed employee went to court to sue Amazon. As a result, Amazon presented the detailed data to the judge, accurate to the employee’s hourly workload, and successfully convinced the judge that the employee was indeed a "bastard" and was not wronged.
Under the monitoring of artificial intelligence, Amazon’s sorting efficiency has increased by 15% and its salary expenditure has decreased by 10%.
The development of artificial intelligence is a double-edged sword. Some people use it to develop medical robots and save lives. Some people use it to develop supervisors and turn people into machines.
Let’s talk about why capitalists couldn’t monitor the working status of every employee before the artificial intelligence system appeared.
This involves an economic concept-the boundary of the company. Company is the core of modern capitalism. If we leave the organized company, we will return to the handicraft workshops in feudal times, which can’t meet the needs of mass production.
Stimulated by profits, the company will continue to expand its scale, expand its production and occupy a larger market with more commodities.
The expansion of the company’s scale has brought a management problem: how to ensure that tens of thousands of employees don’t "fish"?
The simplest way is to hire a supervisor and employ people to monitor people. But this brings two contradictions: First, supervisors are also employees, and they also get paid. For a factory with 20,000 employees, at least 4,000 supervisors need to be employed to ensure that there is no blind spot for monitoring.
There may be only 2,000 employees fishing, but it’s uneconomical to pay 4,000 supervisors more. Second, supervisors are human beings, they have feelings, and they will selectively monitor.
People with good relationships cut them some slack, while those with bad relationships face death. Good employees may be forced away, while bad employees are sheltered.
Therefore, no factory would choose to employ a large number of supervisors, but invented the KPI system to measure the workload of an employee. There is no need to repeat how inefficient the KPI system is. Most companies’ KPI systems are just digital games, and it is easy to cheat.
It is precisely because of various restrictions in the operation of factories that economists agree that companies have boundaries and cannot expand indefinitely. The bigger you are, the more bastards you can’t monitor, and the less efficient your company will be. This is the root of "big company disease".
The emergence of artificial intelligence has completely solved the "big company disease". First of all, artificial intelligence doesn’t need salary. It only needs to pay one-time research and development expenses in the early stage and low maintenance expenses in the later stage to monitor everyone.
Secondly, artificial intelligence has no feelings, it is very fair, and will just find out every bastard hidden in the corner of the company. Finally, artificial intelligence doesn’t need rest, it can work 24 hours a day, leaving no gaps.
With Amazon’s intelligent supervisor, the boundaries of the company will cease to exist, and a number of world-class monopoly companies may appear.
It’s hard to tell whether it’s good or bad.
On the bright side, there are indeed "slackers" in every big company who just take money and do nothing. Their laziness is unfair to diligent employees. Clearing the "bastards" out of the company is conducive to creating a fairer working environment.
On the bad side, employees are likely to become robots, exposed to the monitoring of artificial intelligence all the time and forced to work all the time. It’s like the scene in Chaplin’s movie "Modern Times": workers subconsciously screw when they eat.
If this artificial intelligence system is extended to life, the consequences can be imagined.
Author: Jiang Zuo Youan