Let’s reserve a thought for Mr. Zhou, a modern-day hero and symbol for all of us. We may never learn his real name. We may never know who he worked for, but we do know that he was a “quality control supervisor” for a model of generative artificial intelligence. We also know that Mr. Zhou, an administrative worker in the Chinese metropolis of Hangzhou, decided to rebel. And he won. Hangzhou is one of the hearts of the latest technological revolution, the city where Mr. Zhou lived and where his employer made him a proposal: accept a demotion and a 40% pay cut, on the grounds that artificial intelligence was already able to do his job better than he could.
Zhou refused. As expected, he was immediately fired, but he refused to let the matter rest. He sued his employer, and in April, the Hangzhou Intermediate People’s Court (a second-tier court) ruled in his favor, ordering the company to pay him damages of around €33.500.
With this decision and another similar one, the Chinese judicial system has determined that an employee cannot lose their job simply on the grounds that their position will be replaced by artificial intelligence. This is believed to be the first case of its kind in the world. It is particularly significant that such a decision comes from one of the most technologically advanced countries, but also from one of the countries with the least political freedom. As for me, I have just returned from a week in China – in Shanghai, Hangzhou and Shenzhen – and I can assure you that the reality is much more complex than it seems.
The entire country, or at least its most innovative metropolises, is gripped by a fever of automation, technological advancement, and the application of artificial intelligence to the physical world, at a pace of a race against time. When you get to talk freely with the Chinese, they admit that we Europeans seem stuck in a rut: too conservative and too slow.
Meanwhile, China has turned speed into its mantra and obsession. The goal is to become strategically independent of the rest of the world and maximally efficient at home before its population ages significantly. For this reason, the next Chinese revolution will be the materialization of artificial intelligence in robots, drones, industrial machinery, vehicles, trains, surveillance systems and even mechanical fighting dogs in the service of the police or the army. This revolution has already begun. The subsequent revolution, closely related to the first and which in some way justifies it, is expected to be the greatest demographic collapse that history has ever known.
Within about 40 years, China is expected to lose over 400 million inhabitants – an unprecedented contraction, even greater than that experienced by Europe during the Black Death in the Middle Ages. At that time, the relationship between feudal landlords and workers changed radically, because labor had become scarce and, therefore, much more valuable. This led to the birth of a new social stratum with political influence. Once again, the lack of labor will transform society and the value system, but perhaps in a different direction: in favor of machines and those who own intellectual property or control over them. It is certain that the two Chinese revolutions of this century, the technological and the demographic, will have profound consequences not only for industry, but also for our way of life in Italy and throughout Europe.