Mastodawn

Both Meta & Microsoft have said they're shedding staff explicitly to free up cash flow to invest in AI;

on one level this is unemployment linked to technology, but its a bit different from *actual* technological unemployment - the latter sees people losing jobs due to the deployment of technology to do their jobs. Microsoft & Meta on the other hand are sacking people to take a (bigger) punt on a business strategy that is yet to prove its transformation of productivity.

#AI #workers
h/t FT

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Dr Susi Arnott

@ChrisMayLA6 So humans are progressively shut out of economic as well as semantic loops, the algorithms talk to and copy each other... A weaving machine so perfect it no longer needs thread, nor makes cloth? https://thesinisterscience.wordpress.com/2021/01/11/frederik-pohls-mass-consumer-1-the-midas-plague/

Frederik Pohl’s mass consumer (1): The Midas Plague

fig. 1. Interior illustration for ‘The Midas Plague’ by Ed Emshwiller, Galaxy Magazine, April 1954. 1. There is something I find repellent about the idea of the book review. To my mind …

the sinister science

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Kim Spence-Jones 🇬🇧😷Apr 24

@SusiArnott @ChrisMayLA6
Whatever you think of Pohl’s story, “The Midas Plague” seems an entirely apt description of the late stage capitalism we are currently suffering. Its greed will destroy everything, just as King Midas’s did.
#enshittification