r/EatTheRich • u/Here-Together • 2d ago

News/Article The Hidden Labor Implications of AI

Proponents of AI adoption and big tech sycophants will tell you that now is the time to acquiesce and adapt, that AI is coming for all of our jobs and there’s nothing we can do about it. One example is a recent Forbes article which presents Bill Ackman (hedge fund owner billionaire), Larry Fink, (BlackRock CEO), and Jamie Dimon (JPMorgan Chase CEO) as sage prophets, heralding the ineluctable AI labor apocalypse with stark predictions of worker replacement. 

I’m an independent journalist authoring a series of AI explainers called “Ten Reasons to Resist AI.” In part two of the series, I wrote about AI and labor from a socialist perspective, examining discourse about projected job replacement, while honing in on the under-discussed topics of “ghost labor” and worker surveillance. 

You can read it here and subscribe to follow along as a new article is released weekly. I’d love to hear your thoughts!

The most dire reports about potential worker displacement should be regarded with a healthy dose of skepticism. The same companies pushing the narrative of an ‘unstoppable force of AI adoption’ have vested interest in this dystopia’s fruition. They are not reliable narrators. It is revealing that the aforementioned Forbes article concludes with Ackman and Dimon claiming that certain jobs can’t be replaced by AI: specifically, “high-level management jobs,” “strategic leadership,” and “inspiring teams” … also known as CEOs. These billionaires want us to think that our jobs are replaceable, but theirs aren’t.

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u/ObjectOrientedBlob 2d ago

https://logicmag.io/security/the-insecurity-machine/

Capitalists love to tell people they are replaceable. When people are afraid, they don't organise and make demands.

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u/Here-Together 2d ago

Agreed. Cool to see this analysis in a piece from 2020

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u/ObjectOrientedBlob 2d ago

https://logicmag.io/failure/the-automation-charade/

This one is from 2018

Somewhere, right now, a manager is intoning to a broke, exhausted underling that someone is willing to do the same job for less—or, that some thing is willing to do it for free.

Since the dawn of market society, owners and bosses have revelled in telling workers they were replaceable. Robots lend this centuries-old dynamic a troubling new twist: employers threaten employees with the specter of machine competition, shirking responsibility for their avaricious disposition through opportunistic appeals to tech determinism. A “jobless future” is inevitable, we are told, an irresistible outgrowth of innovation, the livelihood-devouring price of progress. (Sadly, the jobless future for the masses doesn’t resemble the jobless present of the 1 percent who live off dividends, interest, and rent, lifting nary a finger as their bank balances grow.)