A conversation with media theorist Douglas Rushkoff, known for Team Human and Survival of the Richest, in a session framed around artificial intelligence. Rushkoff says his view of AI shifts day to day and that on this one it looks like another investment cycle following crypto, VR and AR — closer to Adobe Photoshop, which eliminated paste-up work while creating a graphic design profession. His argument is that AI mostly exposes institutions that were already failing: he recalls telling CNN's Jake Tapper there might be an unemployment solution rather than problem, since jobs were invented in late medieval Europe as chartered monopolies replacing craft, and says schools were degraded when administrators asked corporations what workers they needed. He warns against accepting the question of what humans are for. Pinchbeck responds on education's role in sustaining democratic culture.
Guest: Douglas Rushkoff
In brief
- Rushkoff argues that the institutions AI appears to threaten — employment, schooling, professional expertise — were already compromised before AI arrived.
- Jobs were an invention of late medieval Europe that replaced craft with chartered monopoly, so the demand for job creation reflects a need to justify participation in capitalism rather than a human need.
- Public education was damaged when universities and principals outsourced worker training to corporate requirements, abandoning school as a gift of critical capacity to the working class.
- Once the conversation becomes what humans are for, the argument is already lost, because it accepts that human existence must be justified by utility.
- Following Mumford, Rushkoff holds that cultural conditions form first and technologies then ride the resulting standing wave, which is also how he reads Trump.
- As machines absorb more utility work, Rushkoff expects a compensating turn toward embodied, somatic and psychedelic sensibility, analogous to Romanticism's response to industrialization.
Full text
So I kind of just wanted to you know sort of set the table a little bit uh in terms of yeah thinking about you know this as um what's happening with artificial intelligence as in a way logical perhaps even inevitable consequence or outcome of uh this whole trend in the development of human consciousness human psychology and um some something about this precipice you know yeah I mean I still have um I feel differently about AI on different days. Um, and today's one of the days where I'm feeling a little bit more crypto, VR, AR, it a technology industry in desperate need of another moniker for investment and another way of promising um, tremendous exponential growth. And it's feeling even though it does cool weird things, it's feeling increasingly Adobe Photoshop to me. And I do know people that lost their jobs to Adobe Photoshop who did paste up and some of the things in print production. And it was a sad day for those people.
And then not to sound tech broy, but it did create work for a whole lot of graphic designers. and the difference between uh the kinds of uh the kinds of work that graphic designers did with Adobe Photoshop and the kinds of work that the rest of us did with Adobe Photoshop quickly revealed themselves and new a new balance uh a new balance was achieved. So, I'm in I'm in one of those mo moods today. And when I'm in one of those moods, I start looking at the kinds of things that AI seems to threaten as important conversations to have, not because AI is coming, but because those institutions uh that a the idea of AI is revealing faults in existing institutions. So when oh uh uh AIs are coming for our jobs, this was a a a great moment I had.
I was doing a CNN interview with with Jake Tapper and it was on one of the days where I didn't care about AI and he uh he was trying to get me worked up and finally he said, "Well, you know, Dr. Rushkoff, what about the unemployment problem?" And I was like, "Well, what about the unemployment solution?" You know, and I did the kind of Mc Luhan thing. When were jobs invented? You know, they're invented in the late medieval Europe as a replacement for craft because they were chartered monopoly. I did that whole thing, invention of employment. And I'm like, I don't want a job. I never wanted a job.
I want stuff. I want money. I want meaningful participation in society. But the job, I don't want a job. And does anyone want a job? Why do we have to have jobs? Do we? and oh well you know if people don't have jobs then you know they won't have income and don't oh so you're saying that we need jobs in order to justify our participation in the spoils of capitalism so we need to create jobs it's like what right so the the beauty of AI as even a thought experiment is it forces us to look at that or uh in my in my field everyone's like oh AI is threatening school it's such a going to be it's really going to ruin colleges it's ruining them ruining high schools We already ruin high schools.
We ruin high school and college when the president of our universities and our principal started to go to the to the the CEOs of corporations and ask them, "What do you need from the worker of tomorrow? What do you want us to teach our students so they're ready to get jobs in your companies?" And so we're saying, okay, so we're mad at AI when it was we who let corporate America outsource worker training to the public sector by surrendering our schools to this industrial uh utilitarian notion of what what kids should be doing rather than understanding school public school as what it is is a gift to the working class. a way for human beings to uh engage meaningfully and critically in the world even if they're going to be working, you know, as a as a coal miner. They get to at least get out of the coal mine at night and read a novel or read the newspaper and participate in politics. So again, it's like each of these things that AI seems to threaten, I'm like it was pre-threatened.
It's very Mumfordian really to say that the cultural conditions are created first and then the thing comes in. It's the same way I look at Trump and and to any MAGA people I'm sorry but but I look at at Trump is not the thing. There was a standing wave in culture moving forward and Trump jumped into AI is jumping into a certain standing wave. It may have um some value utility thing but it may be gone in three years at least LLMs or whatever it is that we're thinking of or it may be uh not as not as central as we're imagining however fun um these these things are are to play with. So uh that's sort of where where what I'm looking at.
Then if that's the case, then for me the AI opportunity is to begin to rethink these notions of uh how can we serve um humans and life and intellect and consciousness in this? How do we get away from the main AI conversation which is what are humans for? We're going to lose that conversation. We're going to lose it because there's really no good justification, you know, uh in that sense. We we we're not for anything. Once we're put in the position of proving our worth, our reason to exist, we've bought, you know, the worst underlying assumptions about what's going on here. I don't think I don't think that's it.
And then finally is it for me is and I guess this is the most obvious point that the the more utility value that could be um uh uh achieved by our machines, the more opportunity we have to lean into the human living difference which is the doula part. You know so the doctor has always been half factual half doula. Now they get to lean into that part. How is my body being here with your body? How are we co-et metabolizing some kind of a trauma together? You know that those are the um the weirder and that's the beauty of it. The weirder seemingly esoteric um sematic embodied aspects of of humanity that come come to the four.
You know, just as the romantic movement rose in reaction to the industrial age, there is a neo psychedelic mushroom embodied, ecstatic, dense, sematic sensibility that seems to be rising um in response to uh uh uh automated technologies. Um yeah, I mean I mean that's all very interesting. I mean um pulling some of the facets apart a little bit. I mean with education, sure. Sure. I mean, you could say it was to create productive workers, but it was also to create like a shared coherent sort of um culture, you know, so you could have a democratic and you know, relatively, you know, that's what I'm saying was the real purpose, the purpose that we've lost.
Yeah. In other words, we surrendered that higher purpose to the corporate purpose. So now that education is failing in the age of AI, it's failing because the education has become students delivering answers. So, if it's about students delivering answers to teachers, then AI, why wouldn't they use AI to do that? If it was about learning how to participate in democracy and the arts and culture and having a shared sensibility, then you wouldn't use AI to get that answer. And your teacher wouldn't have you turn in something that could be done that way. Your teacher would have you doing showand tell and consensus building and conversation and precisely what precisely what you're saying.
You know, my point isn't that these institutions are wrong. It's that we've surrendered these these these inner the these true humanistic functions of these institutions. We surrendered them to those same industrial age values and now we're complaining that AI is going to come and ruin things for us. I'm saying we pre- ruined these institutions with our own values.
Automatic transcript, lightly edited for readability. Originally published on the Liminal News channel.