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.

A few days ago I was having network problems with the WiFi in my home office -- my connection was very slow and video conferences were freezing. After fussing with the mesh network extenders with no result, I called the cable provider. Normally, this involves having to navigate several automated voice response menus before a call center representative comes on the line to help. I explain the problem and they then run a remote diagnostic and usually suggest a cable modem reset. Often, that solves the problem.

Higher Educational Failure - Colleges and universities are still educating the majority of its students for the last century, not this one. Students graduating from medical school, law school, education, journalism, and dozens of other majors have no training in how robotics or AI will impact them. Higher education needs to rethink curriculum for the future. Massive, Permanent Underclass - More than 26m people in the US perform some form of manual labor as their sole source of income. Older Americans are, because of the high costs of health insurance and benefits, with no long-term loyalty by a company, much harder to reemploy.