Black and White Pepper: Spice Up Your Life: AI and Wage Equity

One thing I've learned about being different and about life in general: you don't always get to choose. Humans, we, we're like black and white pepper, slightly different but mostly serving the same function, and in a pinch one can act as a substitute for the other. Circumstances are what they are and you can only choose how you view them. What everyone needs is perspective, and a belly laugh. So pick your nose, and pick your friends, but don't ever--and I'm very serious about this--pick your friends noses.

If you can gain that perspective, that headspace, you'll be happy till the day you die because your outlook will literally shape your plastic brain and your choices and your physical health.

The "Savvy OT"

I once met a savvy occupational therapist who told me something that sounded like a riddle: "Knowing your limitations is the key to your independence." At first, it sounds backward. We’re taught to "ignore limits" or "break boundaries." But in the real world, if you ignore the fact that the stove is hot, you get burned. If you ignore your physical or cognitive limits, you spend all your energy fighting a losing battle against the floor. By identifying exactly where the "walls" are, you stop banging your head against them and start looking for the door. That is where true independence lives—in the strategy, not just the struggle.

The Philosophy of the "Pantry"

This echoes the wisdom of Thomas Aquinas. He argued that while our will naturally desires happiness, our intellect is what identifies the tools to get there. For Aquinas, "free choice" isn't just picking randomly; it’s the intellect discerning the best path through the facts at hand.

If the "fact" is a limitation, the "choice" is how to bypass it. Today, that intellect has a new partner: Artificial Intelligence. You might afterall only have white pepper in the pantry, so how are you going to use it?

How AI Enables

AI doesn't remove the limitation; it renders it irrelevant.

* For the visually impaired, AI acts as eyes, describing the world in real-time.

* For those with mobility challenges, AI-driven smart homes and voice-to-action tools turn a "limitation" of movement into an "independence" of command.

Aquinas believed we are limited by our physical senses, but AI is effectively expanding the boundaries of what our intellect can "touch." It doesn't change the ingredients, but it radically expands the choices we have in how we process them. It’s a "brain plasticizer," helping us rewire our lives to find the "good" that Aquinas talked about, even when the physical path seems blocked

An Equitable Wage to Bridge the Gap: AI and Human Limitations

A favourite quotation of mine is “Grub first, then ethics” by Bertolt Brecht. Of course you cannot find a happy headspace about AI if you've got an empty stomach.

So how about a little wage equity? Until we all catch up, AI is empowering a few people to do the jobs of many, what if there were limitations on replacing people with AI in the office, what if we had not a basic income, but a little job security by putting limits on the outputs required by people in offices, what if we freed up some time for earners to spend money on things that are good for their health and development like education, the arts, and of course eating out! That could put some more money in the economy and help independent businesses.

What if wage equity temporarily included the output increase that is expected from people. I'm not talking about Basic Income, I'm not talking about paying people not to work: it's my belief that everyone should work, whether they get paid for it, or do not, because work is good for your health, but afterall so is eating