this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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Cory Doctorow is an idiot writer? Do you know of him and you've reached this conclusion, or you don't know who he is and just throwing shade?
I am curious. How much follow-up do you do after your automations 1 year later to see how the profit and loss picture of the department has worked out after your work is done?
(Not that that's the point; I think you'll get very little sympathy here for "I help the already-rich to keep more of the productive output of the world and make sure workers keep less" even if you can make an argument that you can do it effectively.)
I've been following Doctorow for decades now (BoingBoing) and yes, he's an idiot in this situation.
I'm still working with the organizations I started automating for more than a decade ago. I'm sitting in the office of one of them right now. It's worked out great, nobody is complaining about the fact that this office space now has people at separated desks instead of crunched together like they were when I started. If it makes you feel any better, I almost exclusively do this for government and public organizations (I'm at a post-secondary education institution right now) though I really don't care.
Stopping or stalling productivity improvements is stupid, that job is effectively useless if it can be automated, it's nothing more than make-work to keep it. We should pass laws to redistribute wealth to solve that problem, not keep them in useless jobs by preventing automation.
You're still working simultaneously with dozens of different organizations? Maybe I'm misunderstanding something.
Like a lot of things, the devil is in the details. Almost everyone's firsthand experience with consultants coming in and enacting "efficiency" is that it's bad for both the employees obviously, but also bad for the business. I'm not saying that's the impact of what you're doing, just what most people's experience is going to be.
So there's a central question in AI: Once the machines can do everything for us, does that mean everyone eats for free? Or no one eats? What would your answer to that question be?
No, I have worked with a dozen or so organizations, but I've done multiple jobs for each. I'm a freelancer.
As for your second question, I'd like to see a basic income implemented for all citizens in my country. I've talked to my local politicians about it multiple times. It's something that people now know about, which is good progress in my opinion. I don't expect it to happen soon, but hopefully we'll get there before we start to have too many social problems.
As AI gets better we will need UBI.
That's what I'm saying and people call me radicalised for that 😅
Yes.
Everyone eats for free... but the machines don't need to eat, so why produce any food at all. That soy and corn getting used to feed caged animals for human consumption? Turn it into biofuel to power the machines. The hordes of hungry protestors?... more biofuel.