Look ma, no hands needed!

Ready or not, here it comes: They’re automating the packinghouse.

Marble Technologies of Lincoln, Neb., uses artificial intelligence to eliminate human labor (and error) in packaging for meatpacking plants, covering about 3% of the nation’s beef production in just three years. It is working on automation “from the ground up” — kill floor to the loading dock. It won’t be long.

The implications for Storm Lake, where thousands of knives are wielded by human hands daily, are enormous.

Gear can distinguish between a lamb chop and a pork chop. Cameras adjust equipment for product size and shape. Deployment is just starting. It will trim human jobs from deboning to packaging to clerical.

We are not ready for this.

No less than Microsoft founder Bill Gates, who helped uncork the genie, told The New York Times last week: “In private, people who understand how good this stuff is, and how much better it’s getting, they’re very worried.”

Gates thinks highly of himself but not even he knows how to put it back in the bottle. He worries about biological weapons. AI hacking programs have escaped their labs. AI drones are being used to bomb Ukraine.

Gates suggested a tax, an admission that he is at a loss.

So you can’t blame our two candidates for governor for not having this figured out. Perhaps they should ask Claude. They mainly outline ideas about data centers, which 70% of the voters hate and nearly 100% use all day long. Democrat Rob Sand says data centers deserve no tax breaks, that they must not cause rate increases for other customers, and siting should be subject to public hearings with transparency. It’s moderate. Republican Zach Lahn says much the same, but he calls for a “temporary” moratorium on new data centers.

MidAmerican Energy reports that large energy consumers already must pay their own way. Iowa is 12th in the nation with 105 data centers (including Microsoft) but Mid- American rates are 44% lower than the national average. Over half of the state’s electricity is generated from wind turbines. Electric rates are regulated by the Iowa Utilities Board, appointed by the governor. A little bit of socialism can be a good thing.

There will be more data centers. Regulate them. A moratorium is futile. Make them run exclusively on renewable energy without consuming water.

What about the rest of the whole AI schmear? Cashiers are being squeezed out by self-checkout, just like gas station attendants a generation ago. Gates was offended to learn that AI writes better code than he can.

What will we do in Storm Lake and Denison without meat cutters? What about the schools? The livestock will be here on computerized feed but not the people.

It is not hypothetical.

AI is already being used for precision fertilizer and pesticide application by drone. It is being used to monitor livestock health. Hen houses are automated. You don’t need help until the conveyor breaks down. Iowa State offers a master’s degree in AI. The University of Iowa has its own initiative. Medicine is being transformed. Everyone is plugged in whether they want to be or not.

Gates got his epiphany in 2022 with an in-home demonstration. That’s how fast the industry is evolving. He is a year older than I. I don’t care to keep up at this point, until AI finds a cure for my next ailment. The president is 11 years older than I. He is not with it. Neither is Chuck Grassley. Few among the elder class can conceive how things will change.

The party line on the phone was still a thing when I was a kid. The fax machine came and went. Text me. It used to take a half-dozen typesetters to put out a community newspaper when I started — now there are none. You can absorb a few typesetters. How do you absorb thousands of people in a town like this who are not AI engineers or physicians? Presumably you will always need a plumber but not a human on the ham line. This is absent from our political conversation. We are just catching up to data centers, which have been in Des Moines for decades.

All the while rural areas empty out. No milkmaid in the parlor. Sand says that AI should not be used to deny health care or rip people off. Good as it goes. Lahn thinks AI should be regulated. Nice start. Now where do you take that?

What do you do with poor people without much education? Do you put them in a Musk spaceship and send them to colonize Mars? When employment declines, how do you re-educate workers for jobs that survive? Wells Fargo has cut more than 300 jobs in Des Moines this year. Des Moines and Cedar Rapids live on back-office clerical jobs that will vanish shortly in the finance industry.

It will take more than a tax and a prayer to coax the genie. We’re not ready for this.