A trap to end human employment?

Why AI is not the full story about our new class based society

Plus ça change, plus c’est la même chose. I stumbled across a website of public speakers recently–individuals who could be hired to talk at company events on a wide variety of topics for a (not inconsiderable) fee. At first I thought: this is interesting, perhaps I could join! But then I baulked. I had only heard of one person on the list out of a hundred or more, so who were these people? They seemed to be simply a club of business colleagues who had figured out that they could leverage the trust they had in one another to make money, pontificating on subjects in a hopefully entertaining way. But what did they really know? They had no obvious credentials. Why should anyone trust what they had to say? But, of course, the answer is simple: trust is not a rational calculation.

Trust in the Internet era

Trust is an interesting aspect of human judgement. It works the same online as offline, but our habits are somewhat different. Its two parts (trust and trustworthiness) seem to work together as a coarse regulator of impressions, shaping our preferences and keeping us out of trouble. The role of trust in the 21st century is interesting, not only for conventional society, but on web forums, in computer games, and in virtual reality. But it’s a lazy judgement, so we afford it to things we believe we “know” well by default: starting with tribe and kin.