AI can’t replicate human labor, but it sure can approximate it at 1/10th the quality for 1/1000th the price.
For anyone who’s like, “why wouldn’t I just get the ebook and use my screen reader then?” remember that these companies have poured billions into DRM tech to make sure people can’t access ebooks outside of their proprietary apps. I wouldn’t put it past them to disable “3rd party” screen readers as well.
It’s not like that worked though, there’s a bunch of amazon ebooks on libgen
I’m all in favor of automating shit like fast food work etc. but seeing this tech take over creative fields is absolutely despicable.
They’re doing this to middle management as we speak especially since some frontline work areas have consistently reduced staffing through automation or outsourcing or both which basically eliminates a prescribed span of control for managers and directors. If they can’t justify the positions beneath them then they can’t justify themselves to the organization. As always it’s the snake eating its own ass
Imo, the goodness of automation is fully dependent on the security of the workers displaced by the automation process. I think there’s a tendency to assume that prioritizing the automation of jobs starting with the jobs whose conditions are worst, but in reality automation is only used to weaken workers’ bargaining power. High turnover and regular “restructuring” hides the natural cruelty of maintaining the reserve army of labor behind the abstraction of a market (which is all that markets are really good for anyway) and the capitalists get to have it both ways. They know that mass layoffs are inciting incidents for labor solidarity, so instead of replacing entire teams with machines, they bring the machines in, cut people’s hours, and let them quit one at a time over months. Or maybe they build a new factory that’s fully automated and close one that isn’t so everyone blames “China stealing our jobs”. There are so many tricks to hide the cruelty.
I think we can find some solace in the existence of bullshit jobs. The idea that there is still fat to be cut from the system in order to keep everybody employed. But who knows how long that will last as everything becomes gig work?
I kind of hope this means the indie scene grows even larger when all the creative types get kicked out of the bigger studios in favor of shitty AI material. Maybe get a successful United Artists sort of thing going on for other industries.
It’s insane to me that people aren’t openly rebelling about the reallocation of wages to owners’ bank accounts.
I think it was learning about the automation -> destitution of workers, as in the Luddite example, that lifted me out of middle school Ron Paul libertarianism…
My grandmother pulled that shit with me and I lost it. This is a woman who worked for 20 years, and retired early with a $6000/month state pension for teaching grammar in a community college.
She said “it’s not a big deal, ours is way higher and it needs to be because who’s gonna pay for it!”.
