Greg Epstein, Billionaire Humanism and MIT<\/h2>\n<\/p>\n\n\n\n![\"Alex](\"https:\/\/miro.medium.com\/fit\/c\/96\/96\/2*-E_d9TZf0CrgYbV_B-dXjQ.jpeg\")
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOn November the 28th an article was posted in TechCrunch about the Future of Work. The article is a conversation between Greg M. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God \u2014 and two key organisers EmTech. These two key organiser were Gideon Lichfield and Karen Hao. I could not access it, because it was behind a paywall. However this was accompanied by another article called:<\/p>\n
Will the future of work be ethical? <\/strong>After generations of increasing inequality, can we teach tech leaders to love their neighbors more than algorithms and profits?<\/a><\/p>\nThat article is open for access and one I recommend to read. The theme of EmTech this year seems to be AI, Machine Learning, and the future of work. It is what Greg describes as the \u201c\u2026opportunity to have an existential crisis; I could even say a religious crisis, though I\u2019m not just a confirmed atheist but a professional one as well.\u201d He ponders whether the future leaders will exploit more efficiently or find a different path.<\/p>\n
He begins by talking of a 17 year old from MIT, Melli Gupta, who hosts a debate. She has published on AI and Climate change in Matter magazine Exeter\u2019s STEM magazine. \u201cShe considers tech ethics her generation\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n
Anand Giridharadas <\/em>was present. <\/em>In his book Winners Take All<\/em>, writer Anand Giridharadas critiques what he calls the religion of \u201cwin-winism\u201d<\/a>. A few examples mentioned are:<\/p>\n\n- Mark Zuckerberg<\/em><\/strong> championing freedom of expression as a core democratic belief while simultaneously undermining democracy by taking millions to publish false political ads<\/em><\/li>\n
- Marc Benioff<\/em><\/strong> proclaiming the end of capitalism and a new era of ethics while <\/em>maintaining his own billionaire status<\/em><\/a> and <\/em>defending Salesforce\u2019s support of ICE<\/em><\/a>, even as undocumented children are separated from their families.<\/em><\/li>\n<\/ul>\n
Greg wonders: \u201cWill the future of work be a dystopia in which thoughtful young people like Gupta tell themselves they want to save the world, but end up ruling <\/em>the world instead?\u201d<\/p>\nHe mentions his time as a Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University since 2005. In 2018 he joined MIT\u2019s Office of Religious Life (which soon changed its name to the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life or ORSEL) as its Humanist Chaplain. At MIT, an institution so secular that only around 49 percent of its students consider themselves religious<\/a> (apparently a low number).<\/p>\nGreg tells of how he discovered that despite growing up in not the most wealthy situation he still had privilege: \u201c\u2026slavery was not only the moral evil I\u2019d always considered it \u2014 it was the single. largest. industry [\u2026] <\/em>With Donald Trump\u2019s election, I could no longer avoid the conclusion that white supremacy and kleptocracy are alive and well, here and now.\u201d <\/em>He talks of American meritocracy and Giridharadas critique of Zuckerberg and Bill Gates <\/strong>who give away billions but, he argues, do so mainly to hide greed, exploitation, and the subversion of democracy.<\/p>\nAs such Greg realises that he has failed to critique the power structures that he has found himself within.<\/p>\n
As a side note, this sounds ironic, as the discussions of ethics are beyond the most expensive paywall that TechCrunch has called \u2018Extra Crunch Exclusive\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\nScreenshot taken on the 1st of December 2019.<\/figcaption><\/figure>\nOn one hand it is always fun when there is talk of making things more accessible while putting it behind an expensive paywall. On the other hand I cannot be said to be much better as I post several of my posts behind the Medium Paywall.<\/em><\/p>\nGreg covers much ground and mentions Anthony Levandowski\u2019s attempt to found a church<\/a> worshipping the AI God of the future. He questions whether tech is more like a religion than an industry. The throws in climate again, giant data centers powering all this \u201cworld changing\u201d AI are worse for the climate than hundreds of trans-Atlantic flights<\/a>.<\/p>\nCalifornia Governor Gavin Newsom even announced a prestigious \u201cFuture of Work Commission<\/a>,\u201d the first of its kind to serve in such a statewide capacity. Greg mentions a TIME cover about work and a quick critique of The Second Machine Age<\/em>. In a pondering way Greg says:<\/p>\n\n\u201cI would come to wonder, is philosophizing about \u201cthe future of work\u201d just a way the richest, most influential people in the world convince themselves they care deeply about their employees, when what they\u2019re doing is more like strategizing how to continue to be exorbitantly powerful in the decades to come?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Billionaire Humanism<\/h2>\n
He brings forward a term \u2018billionaire humanism\u2019. He mentions a report by McKinsey Global Institute, \u201cThe Future of Work in America<\/a>,\u201d speaking perhaps to its cynical standpoint \u2014 \u201cTheir point is fairly clear: increased polarization means certain sectors like health and STEM are poised for big gains.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\u201cBillionaire humanism is what happens when we say <\/em>we value every human life as primal and equal, but in practice we are just fine if most humans suffer under the stress of every manner of precariousness, from birth to death, so a relative handful of humans can live lives of extraordinary freedom and luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nHis critique is hard hitting of the influential Future of Work report<\/a> in 2017 by Michael Bloomberg. \u201cEach scenario is named after a game: Rock Paper Scissors, King of the Castle, Jump Rope, and Go. Which reminds me of a certain Twitter meme:<\/p>\n\nAbsolutely no one:<\/p>\n
No one at all:<\/p>\n
Literally no person:<\/p>\n
The Shift Commission: \u201cHey, let\u2019s make our deliberations over whether people will be able to find decent jobs a generation from now, or whether almost everyone but us will wind up in poverty, into a cutesy game!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n
He speaks warmly of MIT economics professor David Autor presenting his latest paper, \u201cWork of the Past, Work of the Future<\/a>.\u201d Autor studies displaced workers: non-college educated, mostly men in manufacturing who have experienced automation. Then he starkly condemns Osterman\u2019s book Who Will Care For Us <\/em>and his remarks here are on improving conditions for the millions of \u201cdirect care workers\u201d \u2014 improving opportunities to clean up after rich people.<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cAre band-aid solutions to market-driven inequality the best we can hope for?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
He quotes Neil Postman saying: \u201cEconomics really is a branch of moral theology,\u201d in his 1992 book Technopoly. <\/em>He mentions mission-driven tech and Karen Hao who went into a technology company just to exit after the CEO had been ousted by the board.<\/p>\n\n\u201cMedia Lab building, in which the conference took place, was under the direction of Joi Ito, <\/strong><\/a>a tech ethicist so legendary that when Barack Obama took the reins of an issue of Wired<\/em> magazine as a guest editor in 2016 \u2014 as the sitting United States President \u2014 he asked to personally interview Ito about the future of artificial intelligence. Just two months or so after Hao and I sat there, news broke that Ito had cultivated a longtime relationship with none other than Jeffrey Epstein (no fucking relation, thank you)<\/em>, the notorious child molester and a ubiquitous figure in certain elite science, tech, and writing circles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\nHe mentions in the same breath Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:<\/p>\n
\n\nWho decides what it looks like for every life to have \u201cequal value?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Greg mentions this might sound pretentious, but as he says: \u201c\u2026at the end of the day, Bill Gates <\/em>decides on the direction of the foundation founded on his twelve-figure net worth.\u201d Gates met with Epstein in 2011 after he was convicted, as an example. He mentions tax: \u201cWe could tax them much more and redistribute the proceeds to poor and exploited people, which might well eliminate the need for their charity in the first place.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\nMIT has a mission for social good, but it has worked long advancing weapons of mass destruction. The $1 billion Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing<\/a> is named after a donor with close ties to Donald Trump.<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cShow me your budget, and then I\u2019ll tell you what your values are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n
Towards the end of this article, Gideo Lichfield gives Greg the most gloomy answer he apparently has received in my over 40 interviews to date. \u201cI\u2019m not especially optimistic \u2026 In the very long term, you know, none of it matters. The species disappears. And I\u2019m pretty pessimistic in the short term [as well.]\u201d<\/p>\n
The Dark Side of On-Demand Work, is moderated by Hao, the AI reporter, and features Mary Gray, <\/strong><\/a>an anthropologist and tech researcher. Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass <\/em>(co-authored with Siddharth Suri, a computer scientist)<\/p>\n\n\n\u201cAdam Neumann, only months before his platinum parachute cash-out, to the tune of $1\u20132 billion dollars, put the company he founded in such poor financial position that it couldn\u2019t even afford to pay severance<\/a> to thousands of laid-off employees.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\nAnother tech researcher talks of Michigan Flint with 2,500 lead service lines still in place<\/a>.<\/p>\n
<\/a><\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\nOn November the 28th an article was posted in TechCrunch about the Future of Work. The article is a conversation between Greg M. Epstein, the Humanist Chaplain at Harvard and MIT, and the author of the New York Times bestselling book Good Without God \u2014 and two key organisers EmTech. These two key organiser were Gideon Lichfield and Karen Hao. I could not access it, because it was behind a paywall. However this was accompanied by another article called:<\/p>\n
Will the future of work be ethical? <\/strong>After generations of increasing inequality, can we teach tech leaders to love their neighbors more than algorithms and profits?<\/a><\/p>\n That article is open for access and one I recommend to read. The theme of EmTech this year seems to be AI, Machine Learning, and the future of work. It is what Greg describes as the \u201c\u2026opportunity to have an existential crisis; I could even say a religious crisis, though I\u2019m not just a confirmed atheist but a professional one as well.\u201d He ponders whether the future leaders will exploit more efficiently or find a different path.<\/p>\n He begins by talking of a 17 year old from MIT, Melli Gupta, who hosts a debate. She has published on AI and Climate change in Matter magazine Exeter\u2019s STEM magazine. \u201cShe considers tech ethics her generation\u2019s job.\u201d<\/p>\n Anand Giridharadas <\/em>was present. <\/em>In his book Winners Take All<\/em>, writer Anand Giridharadas critiques what he calls the religion of \u201cwin-winism\u201d<\/a>. A few examples mentioned are:<\/p>\n Greg wonders: \u201cWill the future of work be a dystopia in which thoughtful young people like Gupta tell themselves they want to save the world, but end up ruling <\/em>the world instead?\u201d<\/p>\n He mentions his time as a Humanist Chaplain at Harvard University since 2005. In 2018 he joined MIT\u2019s Office of Religious Life (which soon changed its name to the Office of Religious, Spiritual, and Ethical Life or ORSEL) as its Humanist Chaplain. At MIT, an institution so secular that only around 49 percent of its students consider themselves religious<\/a> (apparently a low number).<\/p>\n Greg tells of how he discovered that despite growing up in not the most wealthy situation he still had privilege: \u201c\u2026slavery was not only the moral evil I\u2019d always considered it \u2014 it was the single. largest. industry [\u2026] <\/em>With Donald Trump\u2019s election, I could no longer avoid the conclusion that white supremacy and kleptocracy are alive and well, here and now.\u201d <\/em>He talks of American meritocracy and Giridharadas critique of Zuckerberg and Bill Gates <\/strong>who give away billions but, he argues, do so mainly to hide greed, exploitation, and the subversion of democracy.<\/p>\n As such Greg realises that he has failed to critique the power structures that he has found himself within.<\/p>\n As a side note, this sounds ironic, as the discussions of ethics are beyond the most expensive paywall that TechCrunch has called \u2018Extra Crunch Exclusive\u2019.<\/em><\/p>\n On one hand it is always fun when there is talk of making things more accessible while putting it behind an expensive paywall. On the other hand I cannot be said to be much better as I post several of my posts behind the Medium Paywall.<\/em><\/p>\n Greg covers much ground and mentions Anthony Levandowski\u2019s attempt to found a church<\/a> worshipping the AI God of the future. He questions whether tech is more like a religion than an industry. The throws in climate again, giant data centers powering all this \u201cworld changing\u201d AI are worse for the climate than hundreds of trans-Atlantic flights<\/a>.<\/p>\n California Governor Gavin Newsom even announced a prestigious \u201cFuture of Work Commission<\/a>,\u201d the first of its kind to serve in such a statewide capacity. Greg mentions a TIME cover about work and a quick critique of The Second Machine Age<\/em>. In a pondering way Greg says:<\/p>\n \u201cI would come to wonder, is philosophizing about \u201cthe future of work\u201d just a way the richest, most influential people in the world convince themselves they care deeply about their employees, when what they\u2019re doing is more like strategizing how to continue to be exorbitantly powerful in the decades to come?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He brings forward a term \u2018billionaire humanism\u2019. He mentions a report by McKinsey Global Institute, \u201cThe Future of Work in America<\/a>,\u201d speaking perhaps to its cynical standpoint \u2014 \u201cTheir point is fairly clear: increased polarization means certain sectors like health and STEM are poised for big gains.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n \u201cBillionaire humanism is what happens when we say <\/em>we value every human life as primal and equal, but in practice we are just fine if most humans suffer under the stress of every manner of precariousness, from birth to death, so a relative handful of humans can live lives of extraordinary freedom and luxury.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n His critique is hard hitting of the influential Future of Work report<\/a> in 2017 by Michael Bloomberg. \u201cEach scenario is named after a game: Rock Paper Scissors, King of the Castle, Jump Rope, and Go. Which reminds me of a certain Twitter meme:<\/p>\n Absolutely no one:<\/p>\n No one at all:<\/p>\n Literally no person:<\/p>\n The Shift Commission: \u201cHey, let\u2019s make our deliberations over whether people will be able to find decent jobs a generation from now, or whether almost everyone but us will wind up in poverty, into a cutesy game!\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He speaks warmly of MIT economics professor David Autor presenting his latest paper, \u201cWork of the Past, Work of the Future<\/a>.\u201d Autor studies displaced workers: non-college educated, mostly men in manufacturing who have experienced automation. Then he starkly condemns Osterman\u2019s book Who Will Care For Us <\/em>and his remarks here are on improving conditions for the millions of \u201cdirect care workers\u201d \u2014 improving opportunities to clean up after rich people.<\/p>\n \u201cAre band-aid solutions to market-driven inequality the best we can hope for?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n He quotes Neil Postman saying: \u201cEconomics really is a branch of moral theology,\u201d in his 1992 book Technopoly. <\/em>He mentions mission-driven tech and Karen Hao who went into a technology company just to exit after the CEO had been ousted by the board.<\/p>\n \u201cMedia Lab building, in which the conference took place, was under the direction of Joi Ito, <\/strong><\/a>a tech ethicist so legendary that when Barack Obama took the reins of an issue of Wired<\/em> magazine as a guest editor in 2016 \u2014 as the sitting United States President \u2014 he asked to personally interview Ito about the future of artificial intelligence. Just two months or so after Hao and I sat there, news broke that Ito had cultivated a longtime relationship with none other than Jeffrey Epstein (no fucking relation, thank you)<\/em>, the notorious child molester and a ubiquitous figure in certain elite science, tech, and writing circles.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/blockquote>\n He mentions in the same breath Bill and Melinda Gates Foundation:<\/p>\n Who decides what it looks like for every life to have \u201cequal value?\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Greg mentions this might sound pretentious, but as he says: \u201c\u2026at the end of the day, Bill Gates <\/em>decides on the direction of the foundation founded on his twelve-figure net worth.\u201d Gates met with Epstein in 2011 after he was convicted, as an example. He mentions tax: \u201cWe could tax them much more and redistribute the proceeds to poor and exploited people, which might well eliminate the need for their charity in the first place.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n MIT has a mission for social good, but it has worked long advancing weapons of mass destruction. The $1 billion Stephen A. Schwarzman College of Computing<\/a> is named after a donor with close ties to Donald Trump.<\/p>\n \u201cShow me your budget, and then I\u2019ll tell you what your values are.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Towards the end of this article, Gideo Lichfield gives Greg the most gloomy answer he apparently has received in my over 40 interviews to date. \u201cI\u2019m not especially optimistic \u2026 In the very long term, you know, none of it matters. The species disappears. And I\u2019m pretty pessimistic in the short term [as well.]\u201d<\/p>\n The Dark Side of On-Demand Work, is moderated by Hao, the AI reporter, and features Mary Gray, <\/strong><\/a>an anthropologist and tech researcher. Ghost Work: How to Stop Silicon Valley from Building a New Global Underclass <\/em>(co-authored with Siddharth Suri, a computer scientist)<\/p>\n \u201cAdam Neumann, only months before his platinum parachute cash-out, to the tune of $1\u20132 billion dollars, put the company he founded in such poor financial position that it couldn\u2019t even afford to pay severance<\/a> to thousands of laid-off employees.\u201d<\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/blockquote>\n Another tech researcher talks of Michigan Flint with 2,500 lead service lines still in place<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n
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Billionaire Humanism<\/h2>\n
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