A.I. Is Just Outsourcing

NYT Article Link (no paywall)

A New York Times article is making its rounds through corporate America, infiltrating Zoom rooms, board rooms, and living rooms with the familiar promise of transformation. The talking points are predictable: AI will let businesses create faster, run leaner, scale infinitely. They hold up Gamma – a slide deck builder with 50 million users managed by just 28 employees – as proof of concept.

Impressive? Perhaps. Revolutionary? Hardly.

The irony is that while everyone's celebrating these "decent but not great" products as paradigm shifts, they're missing the most obvious pattern: AI is nothing but outsourcing in a digital wrapper.

History Doesn't Repeat, But It Rhymes

We've been here before. Multiple times.

• Pre-industrial revolution: Work outsourced to enslaved humans.

• Post-Civil War: Indentured servants became the preferred labor model.

• Early 20th century: Assembly lines filled with unskilled, regimented workers.

• Late 20th/early 21st century: Manufacturing shipped to developing countries with lower wages.

• Now: Replace overseas knowledge workers with AI.

The through-line? It's always been about lowest cost. Every time. Quality? Secondary. Human dignity? An afterthought.