RE: https://mas.to/@carnage4life/116576274811692686
Hearing this from a lot of designers too.
Welcome to the club. This is every job in tech now besides CEO.
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@juter they're killing the pipeline from both ends. No juniors, because "AI can do that work" then removing any semblance of pleasure from senior work by saying "your job is to fix this slop"
Time to unionize?
@toychicken When you invent the plane, you invent the plane crash too. I don’t think unionising will make a blind bit of difference, sadly.
@juter well, the air travel industry is incredibly regulated and heavily unionised, precisely because people don't like dying in fireballs. Why the hell shouldn't we regulate and unionize to protect ourselves against having the value of work destroyed? None of this is inevitable.
@toychicken Nothing’s inevitable but some things are incredibly unlikely. We don’t live in a world of organised labour anymore, and even if you could get something going (and I’ve seriously considered organising a designer’s union) it wouldn’t have the teeth for a long time.
Regulation is a different matter and strong agree on this. Labour should be all over this, but in a constructive way that doesn’t pretend AI isn’t valuable but does protect people and their rights.
@juter there's a lot to unpack. "AI" as a phrase has become meaningless. It's the product not the process. Let me draw some analogies to the 19th century. Did many people benefit from cheap cloth, industrialised food, flat pack furniture? Sure. But we're still dealing with the disparity between the product and the process. Did many people die because of poor working conditions, loss of work and environmental issues? Also true. 🧵
@juter As it happens, I think you're wrong about the current state of unions. Sure, it's not like the 70s with big industrial unions, but more and more people are realising that collective action is critical to ensure that any benefits from tech are not provided at a cost we can't afford - particularly to people's jobs and to the environment. There are many reasons to be hopeful. 🧵
@juter If we say that the 19th century industrial revolution replaced the value of physical labour, then AI is going to replace the value of mental labour. Much like 19th century Lancashire, there'll still be _jobs_. But, as we're seeing now, we pay overseers (senior designers / coders?) to ensure the quality of the few unskilled operators that don't know how to do the craft, and are basically expendable and cheaper than hiring skilled craftspeople. 🧵
@juter Were there unions at this point? Not really. Luddites and framebreakers were characterised as 'fearful' and 'violent' - but most of all as being 'against progress'. But unionise they did, and won important victories. Workers rights, human rights, environmental rights. Rights which are still constantly under threat, and are being fought for with words and blood around the world. Legislation doesn't just "happen", people have to actually fight for it 🧵
@juter Do I think we can put the genie back in the bottle? No, of course not. There are already real benefits realised, and much more potential. However, look at what we lost in industrialisation of physical labour. Mechanisation of craft skills; pollution of the planet; theft of the commons; displacement of people. These are not the past, we're still living with this. 🧵
@juter Now imagine what an unchallenged AI future looks like.
* Don't make art or music, just ask AI
* Don't code, just ask AI
* Don't buy a book, subscribe to AI
* Don't work with a friend, do it with AI
* Don't love a human, get an AI girlfriend
* Don't think, don't learn, don't practice... Just ask AI.
You won't be able to afford to do anything else.
🧵 (almost done, I promise)
@juter more to the point, when the last industrial Revolution happened, the ruling elites assumed that they could employ children, use slave labour, that horrific workplace related deaths and injuries were acceptable losses, basic amenities and human rights were optional.
The only way to fight this was through the threat of withdrawal of Labour, and the only way to survive that is collective action.
