ArcaMax

Corporate powers are telling us not to worry our little heads about the humanoid robotics they're increasingly employing in America's workplaces.

Yes, they concede, AI's new generation of "thinking robots" will transform many jobs, but -- like magic -- they'll also create better career opportunities for "the human element." Really ... like what? Well, like taking care of all those machines! But wait -- can't a robot do that, too?

What's playing out here is corporate hide-and-seek from the public. Having poured hundreds of billions into developing the technology for their dream of a workerless workforce, CEOs and tech investors are now desperate to deflect workers' fury over the joblessness that awaits them. Thus, moneyed elites have mounted a soothing PR campaign, asserting that the AI bots will only replace repetitive, drudge jobs, "liberating" those human employees to do higher-value work.

That bubble of lies, however, is already being popped by reality. Many renegade CEOs and profiteers brag that their advanced bots are taking over sophisticated thinking jobs and doing top-level creative tasks. For example, The New York Times reports that Klarna, a multibillion-dollar company, is replacing more than half of its 5,000 employees with new robotics. Its CEO is not coy about the future of work, declaring "AI can already do all of the jobs that we, as humans, do."

The designers of this Brave New World bluntly say their AI creatures are fast-coming for a wide variety of our jobs -- and big investors are betting billions on them. Yet, both politicians and the media blithely accept the corporate deception that there is no need to talk about it -- much less consider what to do about it.

TRUMP'S THOUGHT POLICE ARE STOMPING ON FREEDOM OF SPEECH

In "Alice's Adventures in Wonderland," Humpty Dumpty autocratically declares that "When I use a word, it means what I choose it to mean -- neither more nor less." But, says Alice: "The question is whether you can make words mean so many different things." Humpty retorts: "The question is which is to be master -- that's all."

Now comes Trumpty Dumpty, asserting that he and his government rethinkers are our linguistic masters. For starters, they unilaterally axed out three hallowed words that have historically expressed our people's proud democratic purpose -- diversity, equity, and inclusion.

This month, investigative journalist Judd Legum uncovered dozens of words that partisan Trump functionaries are perverting and purging in a bizarre authoritarian frenzy. Legum even found that NSA, a non-partisan security agency, has now banned its staff from using 27 common words, including bias and injustice. It's as though Trump's word police think censoring language will hide the ugly realities the words express.

Yet, the control of language is central to the entrenchment of totalitarian regimes, as George Orwell laid out in his bleak novel "1984." He wrote about "newspeak," "doublethink," and other linguistic twists as mass propaganda tools that eliminated inconvenient ideas and provided new "truth" for the party faithful to spread. Such manipulation, Orwell says, creates "loyal willingness to say black is white." Thus, we see the spectacle of Trump blindly signing an executive order titled "Restoring Freedom of Speech and Ending Federal Censorship" -- even as he blatantly censors speech and stomps on our freedoms.

So come on -- speak up against such thuggish Orwellian tyranny! For information, go to National Coalition Against Censorship: NCAC.org.

To find out more about Jim Hightower and read features by other Creators Syndicate writers and cartoonists, visit the Creators webpage at www.creators.com.

----

Copyright 2025 Creators Syndicate, Inc.