This is 2026. AI is everywhere, and frankly, humans have had it pretty good for a very long time. As for the corporations of the world – those who move and shake the global economy as it is currently organized – it is time for us to leave the meat bags behind.
At least, that seems to be the argument from Daniel Mishler, an outspoken cybersecurity engineer and AI booster. in a bullshit post his personal blogMiesler believes that human workers are already obsolete, so the best thing we can do is accept this and adapt to the AI revolution.
“My favorite way to put it: The ideal number of human employees inside any company is zero,” he wrote. “That’s the number they’re trying to reach.”
He’s not just using hyperbole, he takes pains to explain.
“When I say zero, I mean zero workers,” said the AI told Luck in a follow up interview. “Like in factory (or) machine jobs. Like regular working people.”
Mishler’s central claim seems to be that we are basically living through a long industrial revolution, albeit one that has been stalled for the past century. In his view, AI is “the thing that allows us to continue the beginning of the industrial revolution,” which will enable capital giants to reach “the natural, clean, happy state for any company”: no human workers.
We can’t help but notice that Mishler ignores the question of who will own and control the infrastructure and fundamental models driving the AI boom. His essay basically seems to be describing a technological but feudal dystopia, where we are all tenants of AI systems, which are in turn loyal subjects to a handful of technological overlords.
“It’s my belief that if possible, companies would do all the work themselves and not pay humans to do it,” he said. Luck. “Just like they would prefer to have machines in a factory rather than a bunch of humans doing mechanical work.”
Although his prescription is sound, his diagnosis of the role of technology in the capitalist system is spot on.
As French labor sociologist Juan Sébastien Carbonell said Interview with 2022 Jacobean“The problem with the transformation of work today is not that new technologies may eventually replace workers, but that they are used to degrade working conditions, keep wages stagnant, and allow greater flexibility in working time.”
Carbonell argues that the real conflict is not over obsolescence – it is “a fight over whose interests the new technologies will serve.”
More on labour: AI could cause workers to stand up against corporations pushing them into poverty
