The most important thing to understand about the huge federal layoffs—which the Supreme Court just cleared the way to continue—is that they are a strategic attack on equality in *all* workplaces:
Equality at Work: Explainer — Unbreaking
How the administration is breaking the government, and what that means for all of us.
You should read every “here’s how AI will change your job” in the context of who has the power to change the conditions of work, and how that power is exercised. And remember that major changes to working conditions come about in one of two ways: as negotiation, and as coercion.
“While the upsides of adopting LLM technology to you as a worker might seem marginally useful now, that adoption directly contributes to that extraction, ultimately devaluing labor.”
Economics & labor rights in AI skepticism | Henry From Online
The personal site & portfolio of creative web developer Henry from Online
“It is very very disturbing that your response is always to lie.”
Diabolus Ex Machina
This Is Not An Essay
One way to know that “AI is coming for your jobs” is a bluff is to see it paired with “and cancer will be cured.” The same Ferengis pushing AI are also working to cut funding for medical research! No cure for cancer is forthcoming without working scientists.
The "AI jobs apocalypse" is for the bosses
As Anthropic CEO Dario Amodei forecasts mass job loss, Business Insider lays off staff and embraces AI
I’ve spent the last year reading, thinking, and talking with workers about AI and I’ve concluded that AI is not a technology—it’s an *ideology*, and it must be engaged with as such.
A Working Library
Toolmen
Even the best weapon is an unhappy tool.
Semi-regular reminder that my posts don’t originate in the likely place you’re reading them, but start on my site and ship themselves off elsewhere; here’s the story of how and why I’m doing that:
A Working Library
Coming home
Into the gap.
This is very good on several fronts, and also I want to underscore the bit about automation here: a big thread running through what’s happening in both tech and government right now is a concerted effort to deskill workers.
Why Meta's bleak 'AI vision' is winning out
And why OpenAI's position looks more precarious by the day
“I too have felt despair many times in my life, but I do not keep a chair for it; I will not entertain it. It is not allowed to eat from my plate.”
Maven Productions
Letter to a Young Activist — Maven Productions
“Do not lose heart. We were made for these times. I have heard from so many recently who are deeply and properly bewildered. They are concerned a...
Really important detail in this piece from an anon OPM employee: if you do not already have your coworker’s mobile numbers, or haven’t set up a secure backchannel to talk, do it now.
Slate Magazine
I Work in the Office Carrying Out the Government Purge. Here’s What I Want You to Know.
We’re as freaked out and angry as everyone else.