As AI companies rave about how their products are revolutionizing productivity, Senator Bernie Sanders wants the tech industry to put its money where its automated mouth is.
Suppose that at a given moment a certain number of people are engaged in the manufacture of pins. They make as many pins as the world needs, working (say) eight hours a day. Someone makes an invention by which the same number of men can make twice as many pins as before. But the world does not need twice as many pins: pins are already so cheap that hardly any more will be bought at a lower price. In a sensible world everybody concerned in the manufacture of pins would take to working four hours instead of eight, and everything else would go on as before. But in the actual world this would be thought demoralizing. The men still work eight hours, there are too many pins, some employers go bankrupt, and half the men previously concerned in making pins are thrown out of work. There is, in the end, just as much leisure as on the other plan, but half the men are totally idle while half are still overworked. In this way it is insured that the unavoidable leisure shall cause misery all round instead of being a universal source of happiness. Can anything more insane be imagined?
No, no, no. They'll just make it so that each of us is expected to do more since AI is "helping" us. Success under capitalism just leads to more work. The number has to keep going up. If they get their arms twisted they may give us a day off, but they will absolutely decrease the pay. My fear is that they would also go, "Oh, well, since you're not working 40 hours a week, even though it's the same work, so no benefits for you 🤷🏿♀️."
Interesting that the article never cites or states how much AI has improved productivity - but rather focuses on the 4-day work week. Kinda strange to only look at the end outcome and ignore the cause of expecting that outcome.
We should already be on a fucking 3 day with increased pay with how much productivity has gone up, instead we're just getting ass raped harder and harder while rich assholes keep getting richer and richer with no end in sight.
“Technology is gonna work to improve us, not just the people who own the technology and the CEOs of large corporations,” Sanders said. “You are a worker, your productivity is increasing because we give you AI, right? Instead of throwing you out on the street, I’m gonna reduce your work week to 32 hours.”
0% chance this wouldn't also come with a 20% pay cut.
We should've gotten a 4-day work week decades ago. Now it should be a 3-day work week at most and I'm being generous. The capitalists are always screeching about the low birth rate, but if people were working 3 days a week and making a decent living off that time, it would help the birth rate because then a household with two working parents could be scheduled on different days and alternate staying home with the child, plus have a shared day off every week.
Anyway, that's just a selling point to make to the capitalists. Whether or not it helps with the birth rate doesn't matter as much as the fact that we're owed shorter work weeks thanks to all the blood, sweat, and tears that labor has put into making the world as wealthy as it is now. What's the point of all this work if not to improve our standard of living? Technology making our lives better is hitting diminishing returns and now it's often not making our lives better or it's even making our lives worse.
No, personal computers made us productive enough for a 4 day work week. We’re down to like 24 hours per week now. I think many would enjoy four 6-hour days, while others may prefer three 8-hour days. And a rare few might want to work two 12-hour shifts.
Does anyone here actually see productivity improvements to their roles from using AI?
I'm a telecoms engineer and I see limited use cases in my role for AI. If I need to process data then I need something that can do math reliably. For document generation I can only reliably get it to build out a structure and even then I've more than likely got an existing document the I can use as a structure template.
Network design, system specification and project engineering are all so specific to the use case and have so few examples provided in public data sets that anything AI outputs is usually nonsense.
Am I missing some use cases here?
Also, if you do see productivity improvements from AI, why would you tell your employer? They want a 5 day working week but they know what they expect to be achieved in that week, so that's what they get.
Computerisation, the paperless office etc all were supposed to generate better quality of life for workers. It was how it was sold. The reality is that staff numbers were reduced with work and competitive pressures increasing rates of stress and depression.
I’m still waiting for self checkout, airport self service check-in, automated answer services for credit cards, and computerized healthcare systems to make food, airplane tickets, consumer goods, and healthcare less expensive.
Yeah, I just graced with a glorious 0-day work week. There is no chance ANY of this “productivity” will get anywhere near workers. It’s just a new, exciting way to centralize wealth and power. And if the models get as “intelligent” as the claim they will in 5 years, then with a helping of slavery to boot, ones they are “as smart or smarter” than humans, just without pesky things like rights…
Let's use technology to benefit workers," Sanders said.
That's Socialist thinking in a Capitalist country. He doesn't own the means of production to change the schedules. In a Capitalist country you need the market power to negotiate for it.
So call for unionizing because the opportunity is there.