We spend a lot of time talking about AI's technical capabilities: what it can do now, what it might do tomorrow, what it will never do. But AI is only secondarily a tech phenomenon; it is primarily a *financial* phenomenon, hundreds of billions of dollars in investment capital in search of a return.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The return on that capital only comes from one place: workers' wages. AI - as a financial phenomenon - represents that AI will a) replace, and/or; b) frighten workers to the point where more of the revenues generated by firms that buy AI tools will be returned to executives and shareholders, at the expense of their workforce.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
This is why AI bosses are so eager to cite statistics - conjured out of thin air, without any backing - about how AI is about to replace *the majority* of workers:
news.harvard.edu/gazette/story…
And it's why tech companies that are peddling AI tools boast so brazenly about how many programmers' work can be replaced by AI:
linkedin.com/posts/andy-jassy-…
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Will your job survive AI?
Christina Pazzanese (Harvard Gazette)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
After all, tech workers were - until recently - the princes of labor. Despite infinitesimal union density in the tech sector, tech workers were in such high demand that they could tell their bosses to go fuck themselves - and keep their jobs. Those bosses knew that a worker who quit during the morning scrum could have a better job with a rival firm before evening cocktails.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
While tech bosses cultivated a chuminess with these workers, treating them as peers (temporarily embarrassed founders, not employees) and sitting down for "town halls," they clearly *hated* this and wanted nothing more than to put these arrogant pismires in their place.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The *instant* tech labor's supply caught up with demand, these bosses mass-fired their precious tech workers, canceled town halls ("Not a good use of my time" -M. Zuckerberg), and told workers that the "sweet spot" was a 60-hour work-week:
pluralistic.net/2025/04/27/som…
Facebook announced a 5% across-the-board layoff and doubled its executives' bonuses - *on the same day*. They fired thousands of workers and then hired a single AI researcher for $200m:
appleinsider.com/articles/25/0…
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Meta lured AI exec away from Apple with blockbuster $200M pay package
Malcolm Owen (AppleInsider)Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Whatever else all this is, it's a *performance*. It's a way of demonstrating the efficacy of the product they're hoping *your* boss will buy and replace you with: *Remember when techies were prized beyond all measure, pampered and flattered?*
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Cory Doctorow
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*AI is SO GOOD at replacing workers that we are dragging these arrogant little shits out by their hoodies and firing them over Interstate 280 with a special, AI-powered trebuchet. Imagine how many of the ungrateful useless eaters who clog up your payroll *you* will be able to vaporize when you buy our product!*
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Which is why you should always dig closely into announcements about AI-driven tech layoffs. It's true that tech job listings are down 36% since ChatGPT's debut - but that's pretty much true of *all* job listings:
apnews.com/article/ai-layoffs-…
And the major decline in tech hiring isn't the result of hiring far fewer programmers - the tech companies have mostly cut back on hiring marketers, administrative assistants, and HR staff.
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Cory Doctorow
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The whole fucking economy is in freefall. It's so bad that Trump just fired the country's head labor statistician and pledged to replace her with a flunky who wouldn't produce numbers "that made him look bad":
youtube.com/watch?v=twNjon4tp8…
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Senator Elizabeth Warren: Firing of BLS commissioner is 'dangerous'
YouTubeCory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
The tech industry has changed. During the lockdowns, tech companies trumpeted their hiring sprees a performance of growth, staged for pandemic-panicked investors. Now, tech companies trumped their layoffs as a performance of AI's technical excellence, aimed at potential AI customers *and* credulous investors stampeded by FOMO.
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Cory Doctorow
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Hey, German-speakers! Through a very weird set of circumstances, I ended up owning the rights to the German audiobook of my bestselling 2022 cryptocurrency heist technothriller *Red Team Blues* and now I'm selling DRM-free audio and ebooks, along with the paperback (all in German and English) on a Kickstarter that runs until August 11:
kickstarter.com/projects/docto…
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huntingdon
in reply to Cory Doctorow • • •Sensitive content
Cory Doctorow reshared this.