Cory Doctorow at Pluralistic:

As has been the case since the Industrial Revolution, the project of automation isn’t just about increasing productivity, it’s about weakening labor power as a prelude to lowering quality.

Also:

The point of using automation to weaken labor isn’t just cheaper products – it’s cheaper, defective products, inflicted on the unsuspecting and defenseless public who are no longer protected by workers' professionalism and pride in their jobs.

And:

When techies describe their experience of AI, it sometimes sounds like they’re describing two completely different realities – and that’s because they are. For workers with power and control, automation turns them into centaurs, who get to use AI tools to improve their work-lives. For workers whose power is waning, AI is a tool for reverse-centaurism, an electronic whip that pushes them to work at superhuman speeds. And when they fail, these workers become “moral crumple zones,” absorbing the blame for the defective products their bosses pushed out in order to goose profits.

Cory connects:

  • The 19th Century Luddite movement — the Luddites get an unfair bum rap in this one. The Luddites were right and they were not anti-technology.
  • The recent incident where the Chicago Sun-Times included AI hallucinations in its list of recommended books for summer. The writer unfairly gets the blame.
  • And how AI is enabling Amazon to start treating tech workers as badly as warehouse workers.