> My dad was a banker for four decades and he was mostly the master of his fate, which is untrue about most retail bankers today except maybe Jamie Dimon.
I know the Dimon point is partly a joke but it is a reminder that we're not cogs in a machine run by anonymous forces, we are cogs in a machine that is ultimately run by some humans, fo…
> My dad was a banker for four decades and he was mostly the master of his fate, which is untrue about most retail bankers today except maybe Jamie Dimon.
I know the Dimon point is partly a joke but it is a reminder that we're not cogs in a machine run by anonymous forces, we are cogs in a machine that is ultimately run by some humans, for the benefit of those humans. One way to think about the AI tool in the study is not as a way to help the individual scientists but as a way for their bosses to commodify some piece of the scientist's work through standardization and automation. And the tools in the study weren't even fancy LLMs, which are even more confusing because they mimic human speech!
Yes, there’s a good history of economists looking at alienation of labour - interestingly, Adam Smith, who is often considered as Marx’s polar opposite, had similar concerns about the wellbeing of workers - although he was generally pro-automation.
250 years ago, the majority of work was closer to the Amazon warehouse worker, than some mythical period where the majority of people worked in hand crafts.
The majority of mill workers were formerly agricultural labourers, but weavers. Although the weavers certainly had something to say about being replaced.
Absolutely true. And yes the broader point is true, that it's a polarisation in how the power dynamic shifts, management gets easier, and that too creates a rift in expectations about what a job should/ ought to be.
> My dad was a banker for four decades and he was mostly the master of his fate, which is untrue about most retail bankers today except maybe Jamie Dimon.
I know the Dimon point is partly a joke but it is a reminder that we're not cogs in a machine run by anonymous forces, we are cogs in a machine that is ultimately run by some humans, for the benefit of those humans. One way to think about the AI tool in the study is not as a way to help the individual scientists but as a way for their bosses to commodify some piece of the scientist's work through standardization and automation. And the tools in the study weren't even fancy LLMs, which are even more confusing because they mimic human speech!
Yes, there’s a good history of economists looking at alienation of labour - interestingly, Adam Smith, who is often considered as Marx’s polar opposite, had similar concerns about the wellbeing of workers - although he was generally pro-automation.
250 years ago, the majority of work was closer to the Amazon warehouse worker, than some mythical period where the majority of people worked in hand crafts.
The majority of mill workers were formerly agricultural labourers, but weavers. Although the weavers certainly had something to say about being replaced.
Absolutely true. And yes the broader point is true, that it's a polarisation in how the power dynamic shifts, management gets easier, and that too creates a rift in expectations about what a job should/ ought to be.