For the #AI sector, a 148-day news-cycle about how AI threatened writers’ jobs was a gift from the heavens

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship-236575979d5c?sk=28d4f52322040150651fea37a303b342

#critihype #EvilSorcerers

The real reason the studios are excited about AI is the same as every stock analyst and CEO who’s considering buying an #AI enterprise license: they want to fire workers and reallocate their salaries to their shareholders

https://doctorow.medium.com/how-the-writers-guild-sunk-ais-ship-236575979d5c?sk=28d4f52322040150651fea37a303b342

#NoWarButClassWar

@pluralistic I think they should fire their shareholders and reallocate their shares to the workers.

@cstross @pluralistic

Oh, smells communism

@alexanderniki @pluralistic Employee-owned corporations aren't communism. (And indeed, the largest department store chain in the UK is employee-owned.)

@cstross @pluralistic

Employee-owned corporations aren't communism. Your idea of firing shareholders (whatever «firing» means) and giving their shares to random people is.

@alexanderniki you really don't get irony, do you?
@cstross
looks like I really don't :)
@alexanderniki @cstross @pluralistic Random people is a weird way to characterize the actual people doing the labor.
@lispi314 @alexanderniki @cstross @pluralistic You heard it here first folks, Publix is literally communism
hey, that gave me a great idea! why don't we all start using AIs to decide what stocks to invest on, when to buy and when to sell? we'd all get very rich very fast, right? :-P
@pluralistic yeah. Great plan. I will tell you something that I learned working with automation and robotic tech at an automobile factory. The management side of things is not all that hard to automate. The real, physical labor part of the operation? That's not so easy. Takes some highly skilled technicians to keep that equipment making good parts. Could we build robots, or some form of automated equipment, to service the robots? Sure. How much money do you want to allocate to that? I hope that we can figure out some better solutions, in a moral and ethical sense, before we get better at the tech. But putting most of the populace out of work with AI, automation, what have you, is walking off a cliff logic. Unless you are also going to build robots to buy your cars.
@pluralistic
Here in UK we have something called Midsommer Murders which could easily have been written by robots
@pluralistic The problem is that producers can generate a terrible, unusable screenplay as a "first draft" and then pay writers discount rates to "rewrite."
@pluralistic
AI was just one of the reasons that the writers went on strike. Others included residuals from streaming platforms.
@pluralistic unfortunately this is simply not how reflections work
@pluralistic @squeevening This was how I learned the strippers are unionising. Good for them (genuine btw, text is not great at conveying emotion)
@Flaky @pluralistic @squeevening
This brings back an old memory of photographing a woman speaking about a new union she was a part of called PONY, Prostitutes of New York. This was at a college in Montreal in the mid '70s. I might even have the pics in long ignored and buried boxes of contact sheets.
@pluralistic tech when!!!!!!!!!!!!

@chrisisgr8 @pluralistic I feel like they(we) need to be hurt worse first. Most people I hear from are in denial about being workers. Anyone who is not old enough to remember the dotcom bust that is.

Maybe it'll start with tree contractors?

@ansible42 @pluralistic maybe! I can't get a job of any kind so i find the idea pretty engaging anyway
@chrisisgr8 @pluralistic
Code-cwa.org or you local wobblie/IWW.
@pluralistic is this available somewhere else? i don't have a medium account and would prefer not to get one, but i would love to read this essay :)