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The proletarianization of tech workers (doctorow.medium.com)

submitted 1 year ago* (last edited 1 year ago) by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

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https://archive.ph/hMZPi

Remember when tech workers dreamed of working for a big company for a few years, before striking out on their own to start their own company that would knock that tech giant over?

Then that dream shrank to: work for a giant for a few years, quit, do a fake startup, get acqui-hired by your old employer, as a complicated way of getting a bonus and a promotion.

Then the dream shrank further: work for a tech giant for your whole life, get free kombucha and massages on Wednesdays.

And now, the dream is over. All that’s left is: work for a tech giant until they fire your ass, like those 12,000 Googlers who got fired six months after a stock buyback that would have paid their salaries for the next 27 years.

We deserve better than this. We can get it.

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[–] [email protected] 15 points 1 year ago (2 children)

I was listening to a podcast about AI. I think it was one of Ezra Kleins. And he was telling a story that he heard, bout those weird virtual reality games from the 90s or early Aughts. And people shat on those games because they were awful and clunky and not very good so that shitting was well deserved. But one guy was like "yeah, that's all true. But this is the worst it's going to be. The next iteration isn't going to be worse than this."

And that's where AI is now. Like, it's powerful and already a threat to certain jobs. GPT 3/4 may be useless to software engineering jobs now (I'd argue that it's not - I work in a related field and I use it about daily) but what about GPT 5? 6? 10?

Im not as doom and gloom on AI as I was six months ago, but I think it's a bit silly to think that AI isn't going to cause massive upheaval across all industries in the medium to long term.

But also, for the record, I'm less worried about AI than I am about AI in the hands of Capitalism.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

I love how people always argue this point, "oh it sucks and can't replace x". Computer animation sucked once as well, but look at what can be done with it now.

AI sucks in its current state. It will evolve and improve, and put poor little uneducated admin people like myself completely out of work. I'm learning what I can, but I'm not very bright, and neither is my future!

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 year ago

But also, for the record, I’m less worried about AI than I am about AI in the hands of Capitalism.

Let's just say it, AI in the hands of the 1% who use it to become the 0.001%.