How many other #deskjockey s thought it'd be the #deliverydrivers and #taxidrivers first, Huh?
Then the #warehouse #workers.

Before they came for the #administrators, #regulators, #judges...
Who'd have thought #ai would be implemented by megalomaniacs to replace anyone who actually keeps track of things and exerts control on their power early in the reprogramming phase?

(Anyone who's looked at the #history books tbh)

I do not watch BBC often - no licence, but I did watch ‘Fry on #AI’ yesterday. Good programs - although rambling and overlong. What struck me (#healthcare mainly) was her appearance to *not* understand the healthcare crisis in the #US and the #anger of those who are being denied treatment to maintain profits. AI is the tool. United ‘Healthcare’ - more claims #administrators/refusers than medical people employed in the US.

https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/m002r9c3/ai-confidential-with-hannah-fry-series-1-3-the-assassin-and-the-algorithm

#Insurance #Theft #Penury #Bankruptcy #NHS

Cybersecurity and me

It’s amusing to me that I helped some colleagues get OpenJDK installed. They were trying to do the for all users install and hitting up against the requirement that they don’t have administrator access to install software on their computers. So, I noticed the for me only option and got them to try it.

I wonder how many software vendors are going this route because they know their users are increasingly hitting this limitation.

It sucks for Cybersecurity because the whole point of their approving the administrator requests was so they can screen for malware, ransomware, and other potentially problematic software. It’s just so inconvenient to getting our work done to wait hours for an approval. Plus the uncertainty of getting it. (One person was on day two of getting approval.)

The natural response is already in motion to obtain an inventory of installed software and remove inappropriate installs. So, I wonder what the users will do to end-run this new approach. It’s the normal cycle. Administrators forbid something the users need to get their work done, so they figure out a way to do it anyway.

As a brand new professor in 2005, clean-cut, rule-following, accepting of statuses quo, I was groomed for a couple of years by a dean for Future Leadership (i.e., future dean, I guess). Thanks to consciousness raising (?) by some more experienced colleagues, I became involved with faculty (i.e. #labor) rights and very quickly decided I never wanted to be a university administrator.

I've watched administrators at two universities, for 20 years, talk almost compulsively about inclusion, democracy, resistance, "good trouble," etc.--whatever liberal buzz phrases are active any given week--while simultaneously working to reduce or prevent any labor organization having a meaningful say in university governance, subtly (usually) shafting minorities and those with disabilities, making absolutely sure they are not part of anything truly democratic, and of course protecting their careers and salaries. I'm hugely relieved I didn't go down the administrator path I was on for a little while. I don't think I could live with myself.

How do you talk about justice and equity, be righteously horrified by the Trump administration's attacks on minorities and democratic process, etc. while spending your days doing the opposite of all those things?

Most #administrators are not happy, from what I can see. OK, the minority who seem sociopathic and maybe even sadistic are happy, most seem fucking miserable. I just listened to a provost almost burst into tears as she described people no longer greeting her on the street, her kid in school getting cold looks from children of people she has laid off, etc. I almost said "there's an easy fix for that: donate 1/3 of your salary to save just one tenure-track faculty member's job, three staff jobs, or half a dozen adjunct professor jobs; you'll be very popular and you'll still make more than the highest-paid faculty member on campus." I didn't say that because she would never do that and I've already got a target on my back.

It's been amazing to me to see faculty become administrators and lose all diversity of thought, dress, and speech, becoming administrator clones with anti-labor and anti-democracy (in any sphere they inhabit) values, to all outward appearances. The lockstep is glaring when you notice it.

IDK if I have a point right now besides being happy I did not become a dean.

#highered #university #professor

SUNY Fredonia is in financial trouble. #administrators are trying to manage money as well as perceptions of their management. Not everyone is a fan of their approach.

#suny #highered