Comment by keybored

10 months ago

Tech CEO writes about hypothetical worker strikes and protests caused by AI. Accompanied with AI stock photo with moronic placcards.

I’m learning that every topic that people read should be about AI. Also the hypothetical ones. One I barely read one month ago was some pseudo-psychological self-care piece about how to soothe ourselves as we have to deal with the inevitability of AI changing our very self-identity. They do insist too much not to raise concerns about their intentions. Oh, and very regular commenters on the Web are also very weirdly insisting that if some specific percentage of “your code” or higher is not AI then some bad stuff is about to happen to you. Also whispers about management demanding... yes their very own percentages for how much AI code output. Could tech CEOs be motivated to write about every hypothetical thing that is not a thing yet (but will be immediately surely, probably tomorrow)? Of course it’s not my place to be cynical. Everyone who writes about AI has good intentions until proven otherwise.

Now, any CEO is comfortable with writing about protests against job loss in an American context. Because they just are flashes in time.

> Bias is a little different. America did flood the streets after George Floyd in a more sustained manner, for many months, but major reforms stalled out once marches faded and partisan lines re-hardened.

Do you remember when Occupy Wallstreet changed America and put the 99% in charge? Me neither.[1] America has these heroic uprisings spread across years. Then what happens? The out of touch people in power listen a bit more attentively?

[1] In hindsight (three minutes later) that’s unfair and hyperbolic. What could have more realistically happened was that some organizing came out of it that would have survived to this day. Organizations that might have changed names and members and “leadership” (as everyone calls it now) but that anyone with a slight interest in the matter could point to and say, oh yeah that’s a product of Occupy Wallstreet, right there.

> How do we help the displaced?

Of course the chosen focus is on helping the displaced. Do they deserve handouts and from whom? But this misses the mark, right? If AI hypers like himself are correct then “helping” becomes at best outdated, outmoded. I’m sure the powers would be would love the dichotomy of helpless displaced people getting either help from the government or the “AI winners” (he uses scare quotes for reasons).[2]

But if AI job displacement becomes massive this is a dead end. Displace enough people without making new jobs and jobs themselves become outmoded. Remember that people don’t strike or protest “for jobs” because they intrinsically want a wage job... they want to live and survive and this is the means they have to do that. So what if jobs are gone, then what? Then the means of AI should be socialized. If AI displaces jobs we don’t need jobs any more. Because we can just use AI. If we own the AI... not if dozens of billionaires own them. Some CEOs might disagree on this point.

[2] The right-wing libertarians are the ones who love Universal Basic Income.

> Two historical moments that resemble this pattern: When automated textile frames wiped out skilled jobs in the U.K. in the early 1800s, the Luddite riots turned violent enough (including killing a factory owner) that Parliament dispatched roughly 12,000 troops to restore order, which concluded with over a dozen executions.

Noteworthy that he chose a violent crackdown example (sorry, restoring order) with no mention of any fruits that were won.

I have no doubt that he will report any violent occurrences of restoring order as dispassionately as he does here on this hypothetical piece.

> Do protests even matter?

> I need to dig in more, but the short answer seems to indicate yes, in a few ways. They seem make the people who attend them more politically motivated, at least for that issue. As a result, if enough people go to them, then they can swing elections.

Political scientists are funny. The kind of people who make ostensibly democratic participation into rat maze experiments.

The link just seems to be about whether or not protests can affect elections. Like they specifically and narrowly studied that. That’s a bit boring?

I don’t think the Vietnam War protests just helped impact elections. Are you kidding me? The anti-war movement up until Reagan forced that administration to make their Central America interference clandestine. Well, it was bad enough that they did it. But popular resistance was strong enough that they forced them to at least do some things differently. Imagine a repressed or apathetic society where the government just supports anti-democratic paramilitary groups in foreign countries out in the open. That’s worse in a sense.

There’s some anecdote about Kissinger and Nixon in a car where Nixon says that he’s afraid that the crowd could kill them. That’s a bit more than swinging an election.

I’m sure that Apartheid South Africa was crushed in part because of protests and boycots. Although it wasn’t on my news back then.

... But what do we get according to this article? Swinging an election. Wow. That sure will motivate Americans with their two-party system where either party serve slightly different sets of corporate sectors.

Notice these people. These people who insist that you protesting and organizing and working to change things, well it might move the needle electorally. That’s what they want you to think. That that’s all the political power you have. You can change the ballots that are presented to you. And you can persuade fellow voters. That’s it. Now go home.