In 2022, the Swedish digital bank and fintech giant Klarna laid off 700 permanent staff, hoping to replace the expertise and energies of hundreds of employees with a single, rational AI assistant that would apparently handle millions of different consumer conversations in dozens of languages.
Yet the bots didn’t work out; almost immediately, customers began complaining of constant glitches and of finding themselves stuck in ‘loops’ on the app, where they simply could not get the answer they wanted. Soon, Klarna had to admit their mistakes, returning to hiring human staff this year — but still took the opportunity to move to a precarious employment model where workers are given ‘remote and flexible’ zero-hours contracts for the sake of the company’s profiteering.
This is hardly the only instance of stories of corporate greed being enabled by AI hype, and new stories with familiar features continue to emerge daily. As such, the release of Emily M Bender and Alex Hanna’s The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want is a timely, welcome moment.
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Would do better with an excerpt:
Looks like it's advertising this book mentioned in the third paragraph, since the rest of the text mentions The AI Con in almost every one of paragraphs left