Doing the work

“Now, no technology is inevitable—it’s the result of a series of human decisions. Opposing the use of a technology that will harm you and your peers does not mean you ‘hate the future’—just, perhaps, that you would like more input into how that future will unfold. And what, exactly, the future of work is should be up to all of us; especially, you know, the ones doing the work.” Excellent post from Brian Merchant about how labor organizing—including organizing explicitly against automation—is really about influencing the conditions of the work. And, critically, it’s only with the active involvement of workers that we can assure that whatever automation arises does so with the workers’ well-being in mind. Tech workers leery of the way AI is showing up in the workplace would do well to heed the other workers already moving ahead of them.