Fauxtomation

Now’s a good time as any to re-up Astra Taylor’s very good piece from 2018 about the “automation charade.” There is a lot of handwringing going on about how AI and related technologies are going to eliminate jobs, but as Taylor notes here, that claim has been made before, and usually doesn’t play out the way people expect. “Jobs may be eliminated and salaries slashed but people are often still laboring alongside or behind the machines, even if the work they perform has been deskilled or goes unpaid.” That said, If you’re reading this blog, you’re more likely to be working on the systems that do this deskilling than you are to be deskilled yourself (at least in the near term): which begs the question, what are you going to do about it?