Will A.I. Trap You in the "Permanent Underclass"?

An online joke reflects a sincere fear about how A.I. automation will upend the labor market and create a new norm of inequality. The "lumpenproletariat," according to " The Communist Manifesto," is "the social scum, that passively rotting mass thrown off by the lowest layers of the old society." Lower than proletariat workers, the lumpenproletariat includes the indigent and the unemployable, those cast out of the workforce with no recourse, or those who can't enter it in the first place, such as young workers in times of economic depression. According to some in Silicon Valley, this sorry category will soon encompass much of the human population, as a new lumpenproletariat--or, in modern online parlance, a "permanent underclass"--is created by the accelerating progress of artificial intelligence. The idea of a permanent underclass has recently been embraced in part as an online joke and in part out of a sincere fear about how A.I. automation will upend the labor market and create a new norm of inequality.