As I See It: What’s Past is Prologue

January 12, 2026 Victor Rozek

Imagine working as a sailmaker in the 1830s. You apprenticed as a young boy and now, in your mid-40s, you work with dozens of highly skilled tradesmen to produce the motive power for fleets of whalers, fishing boats, coastal and global trading vessels, and naval frigates.

Your work is considered essential. It fuels trade, exploration, transport and defense. To outfit a single large ship, the amount of canvass required could span three-quarters of an acre. The lives of sailors depend on the quality and craftsmanship of your labor. Since the mid-16th century your profession has been secure, respected and – like other skilled trades – has enjoyed superior compensation to that granted common laborers.

But something happened a few years prior that will soon swamp your profession and fracture your life. You may have heard about it but thought its impact would be limited. Or, you may have ignored it, believing the value and importance of your contribution would not diminish.

That event was the introduction of the steamboat. In 1807, Fulton’s North River Steamboat first chugged up the Hudson. In less than a decade, steamboats were moving people and goods up and down river, and a few years later expanded to include coastal travel. By 1819, a steam-assisted ship made its first ocean crossing.

As a sailmaker, you are now working in support of a shipping industry that would soon have no place for you. Your skills are not transferrable, your labor, once so essential, is now passé. Your future is uncertain.

It’s ironic that 200 years later, a similar scenario is playing out in IT. As the AI frenzy intensifies, a wide range of predictions abound. Karen Hao, author of “Empire of AI” divides them roughly into two camps: Boomers versus Doomers. In this case Boomers does not refer to an aging demographic but rather AI’s vocal champions – notably industry leaders with huge investments in AI – who predict a world of ease and leisure.

Jensen Huang, the co-founder and chief executive officer of Nvidia (with well over $100 billion already invested) predicts that workers can look forward to a four-day work week, and that every job will be transformed, presumably for the better.

Not to be outdone, Elon Musk predicts that in less than two decades most humans won’t have to work at all. (I assume he believes that to be a positive outcome, although it’s not clear how tens of millions of people will support themselves or, how a largely aimless population will suddenly fill all the empty hours.)

Boomers are particularly optimistic about AI’s potential to enhance healthcare. It has already proven invaluable in diagnostic medicine and is expected to hasten drug development and advance customized, individualized treatments. Better care, Boomers argue, portends longer life spans.

Unparalleled productivity spawning exceptional economic growth is the most common Boomer prediction. As routine tasks are automated, they argue, employees will be free to focus on higher-value endeavors. Creativity will flourish, and human potential will soar.

Conversely, Doomers warn that the benefits of AI will not be universal. Some inventions by virtue of design or scalability provide widespread benefits. Electricity, for example, is almost universally available and is inclusive of people across nearly all economic strata. Likewise the bicycle offered inexpensive transportation to people who could not afford alternatives. More recently, the cell phone has become a universal appendage.

But almost everyone agrees that AI will cause massive displacement in the workforce. Bill Gates thinks humans may soon not even be needed for most tasks.

Nobel Prize winning British computer scientist Geoffrey Hinton, dubbed “The Godfather of AI,” believes the transition will, of necessity, leave millions of workers behind. Given that roughly a trillion dollars is being invested in data centers and advanced chip technology, the only way to recoup some of that investment is to entice customers by promising to do their work for far less than they would have to pay employees. Thus, the Boomers business plan essentially requires replacing people.

Arvind Krishna, IBM’s CEO, doesn’t believe the numbers even add up. Given the current cost of infrastructure, which requires massive amounts of power and water, it will be nearly impossible to show a profit. Krishna estimates that, before all is said and done, capital expenditures will top $8 trillion dollars. At that rate, you would need roughly $800 billion in profit just to pay the interest, as we reported recently.

Meanwhile, local communities are organizing in opposition to scaling at all cost. In the US alone, there are some 4,000 AI data centers in operation or currently under construction, with over 550 new projects planned. The frenzied AI building boom is substantially funded by the big four’s manic competition for AI supremacy: Google Cloud, Microsoft Azure, Meta Platforms, and Amazon Web Services.

Against such overwhelming odds, an environmental coalition recently sent a letter to lawmakers warning that “The rapid, largely unregulated rise of data centers to fuel the AI and crypto frenzy is disrupting communities across the country and threatening America’s economic, environmental, climate and water security.”

Lacking influence and cash, their concerns will go unheeded. An executive order was recently signed that prohibits states from regulating AI. It’s no coincidence, as the New York Times reported, that David Sacks, the president’s AI advisor and tech czar, has 708 tech investments, 449 of which are in companies with ties to AI.

Karen Hao fears we are entering an era of techno-authoritarianism. As if punctuating the growing supremacy of AI, Time Magazine announced its Person of the Year was in fact a gang of eight prominent AI developers. The irony was not lost on Jimmy Kimmel who quipped: “The people that replace people are the people of the year.”

While it is inevitable that new technologies will displace some portion of the labor force, where AI is concerned, the speed of implementation, the scale, and the lack of regulation portends suffering for the many and profits for the few. It is shaping up to be perhaps the ultimate example of abuses inherent in deregulation: the privatization of profits and the socialization of costs.

AI without guardrails, what could possibly go wrong?

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