#fascist

With studies upon studies showing that actual measurable productivity gains through “AI” (which these days basically means chatbots) are really hard to come by and that “workslop” (meaning the extra work created for the rest of the organization by one person using “AI” lowering their work quality) eats up a lot of what might have been productivity gains many critics feel somewhat relieved: When the main narrative of “AI” (massively increased productivity) fails, this surely marks the end of this bubble and we might be able to get back to talking about actual problems.

I am not so sure.

Not because I think that some tweak to some LLM will make them suddenly that much more reliable or useful but because it was never about productivity really.

It’s something I alluded to in my “AI” talk at 2023’s Re:Publica: It doesn’t matter how good these systems are in reality, because that’s not what your boss cares about.

“AI” is a tool to disenfranchise labor.

That’s the job. If “AI” is actually more expensive than paying actual people actual wages that’s still a good investment for capital because it is about breaking up the structures, networks and organizations that help workers organize and fight for labor standards and fairer wages.

When CoCa Cola creates another bad ad using “AI” the fact that it’s garbage and expensive isn’t the point. It’s all just an investment into no longer needing to pay people for their expertise, work and time.

In December 2024 Ali Alkhatib wrote:

“I think we should shed the idea that AI is a technological artifact with political features and recognize it as a political artifact through and through. AI is an ideological project to shift authority and autonomy away from individuals, towards centralized structures of power.”

This is the macro-level view. It’s about Google, Microsoft and Amazon digging themselves even deeper into not only your personal life but also every economic workflow and process in order to charge rent using the established dependency.

But on a smaller (a bit short-sighted) level CEOs are looking towards “AI” not so much as actual replacement for labor but as the leverage to push down cost in the long term by crushing labor power.

So showing that productivity doesn’t measurably increase is winning the wrong game. It’s not an attack on our capabilities, skills or experience, it’s an attack on our collective and individual power.

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