this post was submitted on 04 Feb 2026
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The article title is click bait here is the full article:

Wondering what your career looks like in our increasingly uncertain, AI-powered future? According to Palantir CEO Alex Karp, it’s going to involve less of the comfortable office work to which most people aspire, a more old fashioned grunt work with your hands.

Speaking at the World Economic Forum yesterday, Karp insisted that the future of work is vocational — not just for those already in manufacturing and the skilled trades, but for the majority of humanity.

In the age of AI, Karp told attendees at a forum, a strong formal education in any of the humanities will soon spell certain doom.

“You went to an elite school, and you studied philosophy; hopefully you have some other skill,” he warned, adding that AI “will destroy humanities jobs.”

Karp, who himself holds humanities degrees from the elite liberal arts institutions of Haverford College and Stanford Law, will presumably be alright. With a net worth of $15.5 billion — well within the top 0.1 percent of global wealth owners — the Palantir CEO has enough money and power to live like a feudal lord (and that’s before AI even takes over.)

The rest of us, he indicates, will be stuck on the assembly line, building whatever the tech companies require.

“If you’re a vocational technician, or like, we’re building batteries for a battery company… now you’re very valuable, if not irreplaceable,” Karp insisted. “I mean, y’know, not to divert to my usual political screeds, but there will be more than enough jobs for the citizens of your nation, especially those with vocational training.”

Now, there’s nothing wrong with vocational work or manufacturing. The global economy runs on these jobs. But in a theoretical world so fundamentally transformed by AI that intellectual labor essentially ceases to exist, it’s telling that tech billionaires like Karp see the rest of humanity as their worker bees.

It seems that the AI revolution never seems to threaten those who stand to profit the most from it — just the 99.9 percent of us building their batteries.

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[–] L_N@piefed.ca 43 points 7 hours ago (7 children)

I don't understand why we don't revolt against the billionaires.

[–] ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 1 points 43 minutes ago

Because these billionaires convinced the manual workers that intellectual workers are the real problem, so now they're cheering that the "gay office workers will finally be cured of their homosexuality through pain therapy" (I know way too many people believing "getting spoiled as a kid" or not being taught how to be a man is responsible for queerness, which includes "not being the manliest man on the earth").

[–] Soup@lemmy.world 1 points 44 minutes ago

Not even revolt, I don’t understand why we just willingly hand them power. Like, half of Canada voted for the far-right Conservative party and the other half voted for the center-right, lower-case conservative party. It’s going as expected but we just keep doing it.

[–] DizzyMoth@lemmy.world 2 points 2 hours ago (1 children)

Many people live with the idea that one day they could became part of that 0.1 percent, and i mean it's hard to blame them all of us independent from where we are have been feed with this kind of propaganda our entire life

[–] L_N@piefed.ca 1 points 1 hour ago

Yeah...it's never gonna happen. I'm pretty sure the 1% don't want us in their gang at all. We're only the exploitable mass for them. We're like slaves they can use to make more money.

[–] CrabAndBroom@lemmy.ml 26 points 6 hours ago (3 children)

Does building a guillotine count as working with your hands?

[–] 7101334@lemmy.world 6 points 4 hours ago (1 children)

See guillotines are very romantic. Old-timey. Classically French. That's all well and good for their historical record, but we're living in 2026 in America.

I think woodchippers are much more emblematic of our working class.

Indeed. Industrial methods for the post industrial age...

[–] L_N@piefed.ca 16 points 6 hours ago

checks notes yes

[–] 46_and_2@lemmy.world 3 points 5 hours ago

And CEOs will be working with their heads, as intended.

[–] j_elgato@leminal.space 5 points 6 hours ago

Much would be solved if we were to eat one of them. I mean, it works for the chimpanzees...