We already live in an Electronic Sweatshop--AI is not the problem
History grants us the perspective to understand today, if we just remember it. Artificial Intelligence, in all its generative and agentic ways, is a remarkable technology that does require careful consideration. However, fear and panic about AI taking jobs is overblown. We already live in an electronic sweatshop.
Ever since a silicon chip could live in the wild, capitalists worked hard to displace worker power with technology. Barbara Garson wrote on automation and displacement after interviewing workers across industries and sectors for The Electronic Sweatshop back in 1988. Garson described the changes workers experienced after this substantial investment in expert computer systems that removed discretion from their jobs and left decisions to computers. McDonald’s, for example, spent millions of 1980s dollars to eliminate its last skilled position— — the french fry cook. It took skill to know when to pull the fries— now every fast food beep you hear is a job a fry cook never had.
But the change was deeper and broader than fast food. Companies and governments since the 1980s invested heavily to capture their workforce’s expertise to then run it on computers to make the next generation powerless to resist— a domestic offshoring of skills into technology lit by a dim green screen.
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[link:newsletter.aprogressiveway.com/fault-not-in-ai-but-capitalism|The Fault Lies not in AI]