Pluralistic: The real (economic) AI apocalypse is nigh (27 Sep 2025) – Pluralistic: Daily links from Cory Doctorow
pluralistic.net

CWs: Cory Doctorow, newsletter, mentions of his upcoming book that he’s selling.

  • Almacca@aussie.zoneEnglish
    402·
    5 days ago

    Further: the topline growth that AI companies are selling comes from replacing most workers with AI, and re-tasking the surviving workers as AI babysitters (“humans in the loop”), which won’t work. Finally: AI cannot do your job, but an AI salesman can 100% convince your boss to fire you and replace you with an AI that can’t do your job, and when the bubble bursts, the money-hemorrhaging “foundation models” will be shut off and we’ll lose the AI that can’t do your job, and you will be long gone, retrained or retired or “discouraged” and out of the labor market, and no one will do your job.

    I’ve been reading David Graeber. How many of these jobs are bullshit jobs that don’t need doing in the first place?

    • Valmond@lemmy.world
      2·
      2 days ago

      Maybe we should figure out which jobs aren’t bullshit jobs.

      With our efficiency there would be loads of people left out, maybe we should reinstate jobs like artists (real ones, not bullshit artists)?

    • dylanmorgan@slrpnk.net
      16·
      5 days ago

      Probably quite a few, but don’t let the fact they’re bullshit jobs fool you into thinking they don’t matter. The middle manager making $100K a year is spending that money on food, clothing, and other items that are produced by people who don’t have bullshit jobs.

      • Almacca@aussie.zoneEnglish
        15·
        5 days ago

        You’re right. These bullshit job kinda need to exist as people need to eat, and that’s difficult without a steady income. We really do need to start talking seriously about a UBI.

    • slaacaa@lemmy.world
      6·
      5 days ago

      This is exactly right, and a lot of AI sceptics don’t see it. It doesn’t matter if the AI can’t do your job. If company execs are convinced it can, or they think this is a good excuse, they will fire you. When/if the bubble bursts years later, they are already at their next gig, nobody will care that they were wrong.

    • Jtotheb@lemmy.world
      6·
      5 days ago

      We’re really about to have AI turn a few bullet points into a report for another AI to summarize with a few bullet points instead of getting rid of reports that only exist to keep uninvolved leeches “in the loop”

      In this ‘hypothetical scenario’ all the reports are also taking place within a college advancement office, an institution that employs hundreds of people to solicit gifts from wealthy people that can be invested in wealthy people’s companies so that future college costs can be offset by the dividends paid out by the constant growth of these propped up businesses. Enshrining the current world order instead of imagining a world where heads of businesses don’t make so much extra money that it’s worth wining and dining them in an effort to get them to share a bit of the money they took back with you (for you to give back to them) (and their friends want some too of course) (hypothetically)

    • olbaidiablo @lemmy.ca
      3·
      5 days ago

      Sounds like I don’t have much to worry about in that I do building maintenance. AI isn’t doing my job for a long time.