How Solidarity Can Change What A.I. Means for All of Us
Collective worker voice has to shape A.I. implementation
I don’t know about you, but I am so bored by the hyperbolic A.I. discussions that seem to be everywhere. Things I’ve read or heard the past few days: the new technology is making all students dumb. A.I. will be the downfall of higher education. Anyone who is using A.I. is garbage. Alternatively, anyone who isn’t using it is a fool. I find these messages to be misguided.
No one knows what A.I. means.
The new technology isn’t a solution for everything, but it is helpful in lots of ways. It could cause the collapse of our environment, and it might have the answer to humanity’s biggest crises. It won’t take away all jobs, but it could take away many.
The good and bad possibilities are overwhelming. A reality that includes generative A.I. is weird and bumpy, and we don’t actually know what’s going to happen.
What I can say and see for certain is that our current world, where workers have very little power, creates a more terrifying future than one where workers have a voice and the ability to shape how A.I. is implemented and adopted.
A.I. offers new opportunities for exploitation
I’ve worked in software for over a decade as a marketer. My experience in this industry taught me that software engineers rule the world. The companies I worked for or consulted paid their software engineers incredibly well and did everything they could to protect their time and make sure they were satisfied employees. The world revolved around software engineers. A.I. has stopped that revolution in its tracks.
Take Google, where founder Sergey Brin just told his workers that they should be aiming for a "sweet spot" of 60 hours/week. Brin returned to Google to oversee its sweaty and desperate "pivot to AI," and like so many tech execs, he's been trumpeting the increased productivity that chatbots will deliver for coders. But a coder who picks up their fired colleagues' work load by pulling 60-hour work-weeks isn't "more productive," they're more exploited, reveals Cory Doctorow in his article The Enshittification of Tech Jobs
What Doctorow points to is the scariest part of the A.I. boom for me—the new opportunities for the most wealthy to exploit everyone else.
An article came out last week titled, Everyone I know is worried about work. It was a hit…for good reason. In it, the author considered the experience of job seekers posting desperately on LinkedIn.
What I hear in so many people’s anguished LinkedIn posts is a disconnect between the world they thought they were in versus the one they actually are. They sound aghast that the jobs, companies, and industries that were supposed to provide both meaning and security haven’t kept up their end of the bargain.
They thought they were working in companies with values, morals, and ethics. Turns out, the logic of the market prevails every single time. And as we reach the upper limits of this system, it’s all becoming more brazen, the bottom line less obscured. Welcome to collapse.
The outcomes of A.I. in an economy like America’s, where power is so concentrated, are terrifying for everyone who isn’t the 1%. No one is protected, not even the primarily white, male group of engineers that used to be the only well-paid people left with good jobs.
The zero-sum approach that some workers are taking will end badly
The commentary that makes me the most annoyed is from the workers who are telling other workers to get on board. I see a lot of this on LinkedIn from marketers who are desperate to figure out how to make themselves valued in a world that has always undervalued them.
The post usually goes something like “Marketing jobs are DEAD. Here’s how to succeed in an A.I. world.”
What upsets me about this narrative is the illusion that adopting the new technology will protect you. It won’t. In a world where workers don’t have power and have to contort themselves to feign competency about a new technology that no one knows the outcomes of, no one is safe.
The worker’s voice has to shape the implementation
Technological revolutions are not linear, and they are shaped by humans. There are periods of explosive innovation and uncertainty, and slower periods of establishing processes and deployment. There is time for us to figure out what we want from A.I., but workers’ voices have to be part of the conversation.
A recent National Bureau of Economic Research paper showed how the deployment of A.I. technology in Denmark didn’t require negative impacts on the labor market. It highlighted that A.I.’s impacts are determined by firm implementation.
There are no inevitabilities. A.I. doesn’t have to be the end of everything good. However, the nature of the current U.S. job market does not favor workers. My sense is that large companies and employers are cutting jobs before they even fully know which skills they are replacing with A.I., just to “get ahead of the competition.” Whatever that means…
To ward against A.I.’s worst potential, workers must collaborate, not succumb to the alienation that the ownership class is hoping for. We need to recognize that we are connected to one another.
For example…
If my husband, an engineer, loses his job to a robot, not only will my family be impacted, but:
Our childcare center and its workers will be impacted when we take our child out of their care because we can’t afford it.
The local businesses that we shop at are impacted because of our tightened budget.
The barista at the coffee shop is impacted by my grumpiness caused by the stress of economic precarity.
The land that I live on, this little patch of earth that I love and care for, is impacted if we have to sell our house, and I can no longer care for the hazelnut tree, lavender plants, tulips, and on and on.
The farmers that we get our CSA from are impacted when we don’t renew our membership.
These impacts have ripple effects on the other people who interact with these businesses, caregivers, and farmers in my ecosystem.
There are significant economic and environmental impacts of an adoption path for A.I. if workers don’t coordinate and make their voices heard.
We should not be operating with a “ship up or ship out” mentality that only works to serve the most powerful. Instead, we need to adopt a collaborative imagination. How might we together decide what A.I. is and isn’t for? How can we use our collective power to ensure that those with the fewest resources don’t get replaced but instead are buoyed by fellow workers…fellow humans? How can we account for and lift one another up to collectively protect all workers from the exploitative desires of a few?
A few approaches to consider:
Broaden ownership. Greater adoption of employee ownership has several economic benefits, but it also wards against some of the worst outcomes that A.I. promises because workers share ownership.
“Automation tends to spark fear because it threatens livelihoods. It’s a faceless process that makes workers feel disposable, as if they are no more valuable than the machines poised to replace them. Offering striking workers an ownership stake changes the equation entirely. Equity transforms the perception of automation from a force to be resisted into a tool that can benefit everyone. Workers become partners, not mere employees. When technology improves productivity, they stand to gain from the success, rather than worry about obsolescence,” shares Colin Birkhead in The Hill.
Strike. I’m not suggesting that workers strike over A.I. adoption generally, but instead that action be taken when adoption is irresponsible and doesn’t involve worker voice.
Advocate. In the last legislative session, Colorado considered but ultimately didn’t pass a bill that would have more closely regulated the use of A.I. by businesses. There will be more of these and I suggest all of us help shape and pass smart A.I. legislation.
How else might we strengthen worker voices in concert with A.I.? We aren’t going to resist adoption…but what can we do to make sure that adoption isn’t at the cost of human livelihoods?