What can pop culture from 45 years ago tell us about the future of work?

In the past few months, I’ve written about anxiety over AI and optimism about it. One of my WPO members used Chat GPT to help her develop a plan for her company during one of our meetings. She said she felt like she had cheated whereas I, on the other hand, assigned the members to use AI to create their plans.

It can feel complicated and overwhelming to embrace new technologies.  It can feel like cheating or giving into a dystopian future. And that’s where The Muppet Show, specifically an episode from 1979 comes in.

Why watch The Muppet Show in 2024

The other night my family was having flatbread in front of the TV for dinner. It’s a Friday night tradition that we did on Monday because it’s summer and sometimes you need a little break from routine to realize how important the routine is.

When we don’t have time for a full movie (or can’t decide on one) my boys (7 and 9) can usually agree on The Muppet Show. It’s a quick 25 minutes or so with enough zaniness, gags, music, and noise to engage them and enough nostalgia to keep us parents interested.

The Muppets talked about AI?!

Well, yeah. The episode that came up was episode 407 with Dudley Moore. The summary is here. Dudley Moore, the guest on The Muppet Show, tells Kermit he won’t be needing accompaniment from Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem, the house band (which, it must be said, is an amazing name for a band), because he’s brought with him a Music and Mood Management Apparatus or M.A.M.M.A.  The apparatus looks like a 1970s robot. Kermit even jokes that it’s a rip off of Star Wars’ R2-D2.  What makes it unique is that it can play any type of music.

Dudley Moore brings it on stage and dismisses the band who immediately get angry that they won’t be getting paid. Later a couple of members of the band confront Moore about M.A.M.M.A. Floyd says when it’s paycheck time “Old Man Frog will wonder why he’s paying legal tender on us.”

Does this sound familiar?

The parallels to current anxiety about AI and in particular last year’s writers strike were so clear.  In both cases artists negotiated with management and ultimately got the outcome they wanted. The strikers last year prevailed through labor negotiations. The Electric Mayhem prevailed because Gonzo accidentally blew up the robot.

What lessons can we draw from this?

There are several things that I found illuminating by the conflicts in the 45 year old episode of TV and those of workers today.

  • New technologies come with change and with change comes conflict. I told my nine year old that I was writing this post and he wanted to help. He told me his thoughts, unsurprisingly he was on the side of the Electric Mayhem.  “I think that the band is completely right and AI is cutting down on people’s jobs and then it’s bad for the economy. If the people aren’t earning as much then the it affects taxes and people won’t be able to pay for food. Some companies won’t change when they have AI on their sides. The technology shouldn’t be putting people out of business.”

When I asked him what to do about it, given Dudley Moore’s point that we need to harness new technologies for our benefit, we were both stumped. These are difficult things to reconcile.

  • We were grappling with new technologies then, it’s no surprise that we’re grappling with them now.I can see how this would not ease concerns or anxieties but to me, the fact that these struggles are not new is actually comforting.  M.A.M.M.A as presented in the show is like an early synthesizer which were used in the 1960s and 70s in music but were poised to really dominate the music scene in the 1980s.

It makes sense that a musical show in 1979 would be concerned with the rise of synthesizers and address it in an authentic but funny way. And while musicians are still arguing about whether these technologies put people out of work or more musicians into work – it’s still a debate, meaning we still haven’t figured out what it all means.

For some reason that makes it easier to know we just might simply not have the answers yet.

  • The changing nature of work and labor is probably as significant as any one technology.  I mentioned in last month’s blog that I never thought I’d be an entrepreneur. I expected I’d get a job and work a 9-5 and get a nice paycheck in return. But the nature of work shifted around me.  By the time I started my company 7 years ago, a 9-5 didn’t serve my needs as someone with small children.  Since the pandemic brought us all home and out of public spaces, the way everyone works has changed. Technology responds and sometimes drives those shifts.

The bad and the ugly

With those shifts come very real concerns about new technologies – the rise of disinformation, especially given the fragility of our democratic institutions, the lack of inclusivity and the danger of perpetuating existing biases are all dangers that come to mind and for which we haven’t found a solution.

There are a bunch of other examples of pop culture, where humanity doesn’t fare as well as Dr. Teeth and the Electric Mayhem. Blade Runner (1982 and 2017), Westworld (1973 and 2016), and Battlestar Galactica (1978 and 2004) just to name a few represent other versions of machines infiltrating humankind and the devastating consequences.  They too were relevant decades ago and more recently.

The good?

One thing that struck me about the M.A.M.M.A episode was its relevance to the nature of work.  I also watched it right after a revelation that one of my WPO members had and shared with the group.

Jim Collins spoke at the WPO Entrepreneurial Excellence Forum in May. He gave all the attendees his monograph, Turning the Flywheel and the members who attended, including me, were motivated and energized to figure out our own flywheels.

I chair three chapters for WPO and not all of my members could attend. With that in mind, I brought some insights back to my chapter meetings after the conference to try and distill the essence of the talk into something they could use to create something useful for them.

The problem is that Jim Collins has spent 30 years explaining the flywheel and even with the videos and resources on his page, it was hard for the group to get started.

Enter AI

That’s when my member took a shortcut. She asked AI to create her flywheel for her. She had to prompt it with information about her company and direct it to Jim Collins’ work. Some AI tools were familiar with the work, some weren’t. It wasn’t foolproof. But it worked. And it was exciting.

So exciting that I brought it to my other groups who loved the concept. Some of them had never used AI before but with a concrete application got to see it in action.

And then many of them decided to bring Jim Collins’ work back to their teams so together they could tweak and revise it. So Jim Collins doesn’t have to worry about his paycheck.

The future

The success of the WGA and SAG-AFTRA strikes are just the beginning of the conflicts over the technology because the question is not just, as Floyd says, “why would they pay legal tender on us” but what work will look like with AI driving major areas of the economy if these concerns aren’t addressed.

As a student of pop culture, I wonder what other insights we can draw from previous anxious times, both warranted and unwarranted. I wonder where looking back at where we were wrong could show us some opportunities to go right.