It's a morality tale, to be sure, extrapolating on late Victorian ideas of racial superiority and class division. Wells leaves a fair amount of ambiguity as to which group is worse off. However, the idea of divergent human evolution has been fleshed out in various subsequent dystopias, often with some Musk-esque group of elites blasting off and leaving the bulk of humanity bereft on a dying planet.
On a more immediate basis, critics of capitalism have, for more than a century, warned of profound dysfunctions in human societies stemming from the exploitation of the masses by the wealthy. The bourgeoning of modern Western (capitalist) society across the 20C (indeed, its very survival) has thus arguably depended on the willingness and ability of those elites in control of the economy and the state to accommodate a sufficiently robust middle class that has tamped down on revolutionary impulses while allowing the “one percent” to continue on their ever-upward climb to become “Masters of the Universe.”
The development of the computer era has deeply threatened this model by undercutting the need for lower-skilled jobs and the value of an increasing number of the better-paying jobs of the “middling sort” of human societies. And, while several billion people around the world aspire to the living standards of the bottom 20% of those in the West, for those who are part of the West’s “middling sorts,” the slide toward economic distress and irrelevance looks ominous. Some of the more perceptive recognize this existential threat and are the principal drivers of the general crisis of ungoverability of which I have regularly written (unfortunately, they have often had to resort to dubious “populists” to get themselves heard, to the general detriment of all).
It's a nice question of historiography as to when the “computer age” began (e.g., IBM’s Mark I (1944), ENIAC (1945), general commercial mainframes (1960s), PCs (1980s), the World Wide Web (1989)). All this technological development has been continuously accompanied by concerns over the effects of these technologies on society and the work force in particular; stories about the threat of “automation” date back half a century or so. It seems pretty clear that the dramatic introduction of generative AI in the last two years marks a major ratcheting-up of computer capabilities and the impacts on the work force are much more immediate now than earlier technology milestones.
Leaving aside the (not inconsiderable) issues of robots running amok or vastly increased electricity demand, the social implications of millions of folks losing their (relatively) well-paying (if generally lower-to-middle level) jobs over the next decade are going to be important (and, of course, were wholly ignored in the recent political campaigns). These pressures will join broader demographic trends (especially increasing average age), general overpopulation in Africa and Asia, accumulated overconsumption and underinvestment (aka “deficits” and national debt), reduced educational capability (itself accelerated by overreliance on AI by students and institutions).
This is likely to happen faster than other techno-driven social changes. I have written about AI before, but I just had a stunning experience of the power of AI to analyze, digest, and articulate a set of texts. It’s a new app from Google called Notebook LM. You can check it out in a 15 minute podcast it created in a couple of minutes from a 7000 word lecture text I wrote a few years ago (Link below).
The abstract the AI created looks a lot like what we have come to expect from generative AI, but the dialogue in the podcast a whole new level of coherence and conversational expression of the material it was based on (not to mention taking a few liberties with the information/arguments that were inputted. As a professor, I see a job threat; but more importantly, I see students outsourcing even more of the learning/digesting/analyzing/creating activities which we have come to expect as the essence of the educational process. As we professors try to get them to “think different,” these tools will enable them to farm out intellectual development and remain relatively unchanged by their educational experience. Who’s going to hire them and pay them a “middle class” salary necessary to support a suburban lifestyle? What incentives will they have in our nihilistic age to figure out how to have a decent standard of living? (or even a sense of style!)
Capitalism and geopolitics ensure that there’s no way to slow down, much less cap AI capabilities and deployment. All manner of menial, service, and simple production jobs are at risk; it’s not just Uber drivers, coders, customer “care” agents, and hamburger slingers. Politicians are wholly at sea on what to do. In short, it’s going to be a bloody mess. Look for a revival of the Luddites. Some of the roads forward lead to “revolution” (on which see my recent postings); but even if we muddle through, the prospect of significant portions of the population increasingly “underemployed” is a dire one. Politically, the country has tolerated this bifurcation of “classes” as long as it's been confined to “minority” and rural communities domestically and the bulk of the global population (i.e., Asia, Africa, Latin America). When it hits the “heartland” (i.e., suburbia), it could get ugly; if not politically, then at least economically and aesthetically. If you think there is energy around “MAGA” now, wait until the distance to American “Greatness” is farther than it is now.
In Wells’ tale, the Morlocks and Eloi are caricatures. On current trends, it won’t be 800,000 years to get there.