During a recent campaign stop, presidential hopeful Andrew Yang returned to what has become a central message of his campaign by cautioning that a coming wave of automation will see artificial intelligence replace nearly all the ridiculous crap you do at work when you should be working.
“AI will soon be able to produce the same quantity of aimless procrastination as an adult human employee, but in a fraction of the time,” Yang told his supporters from the podium of a Des Moines gymnasium. “By 2024, scientists predict these programs will be able to reorganize their desktop folder layout with nano-scale accuracy, create Pinterest boards for amenities of a house they can never afford, stare blankly at a wall without blinking for eternity, and determine, through Buzzfeed, ‘Which Celeb [they] are Destined to Marry based on what Type of Toaster [they] Own’ for far cheaper than a human worker.”
Meanwhile, he added, advanced robots threaten to completely eliminate the need for human involvement in physical activities ranging from punching a wall when they lose the office fantasy league to walking up and down rows of cubicles looking for funny Dilbert clippings.
“Have you seen the videos of that Boston Robotics robot strutting around and moving boxes and stuff?” Yang asked. “Imagine one of those things, only it’s leaning against a wall by the water cooler and asking everyone who walks past if they saw the new season of Stranger Things. Pretty scary stuff, right?”
Concluding on a more optimistic note, Yang noted that one area which seems like it will remain irreplaceable into the foreseeable future is the human impulse to take half-hour-long bathroom breaks and quietly sob.
“Machines,” the candidate explained, “remain unable to either cry or shit.”
