Presto Automations recently admitted that most of the orders taken by its AI drive-thru chatbot are actually assisted by off-site human workers.
A firm providing AI drive-thru tech to fast food chains actually relies on human workers to take orders 70% of the time::Presto Automations recently admitted that most of the orders taken by its AI drive-thru chatbot are actually assisted by off-site human workers.
I know the article is seemingly hopeful. But that's 30% of the time they don't need an employee.
In its most recent cost-cutting measures in November, the company laid off roughly 17% of its global full-time employees as well as reducing its monthly expenditures.
AI is not a revolution for the working class, and it never will be. I'm tired of having this argument that 'I don't understand AI' or that 'It's good for humanity.'
It's good for capitalists and that's fucking it. Cheap and compliant labor is all they fucking want. If they can replace you with a bot that will do the work basically for free, they will.
This isn't rocket science, nor is it unprecedented. This idea that "AI will save us" is about as true as "Arbeit Macht Frei".
AI will be used to undervalue your labor, and push you to beg to deregulate just to be able to survive.
That's the exact reason why "Luddite" is an insult. They were people who wanted technology to benefit everyone and they were labeled as backwards thinking for it.
It's true in a capitalist system for sure. Automation causes fewer people to be responsible for more profit, so fewer people see the benefit of it. Capitalists argue it will just cause prices to fall, but a) to what, if many people can't find a stable job, and b) prices are quick to rise but slow to fall, nobody wants to take a loss on what they paid for/forecast, and businesses implementing this tech certainly aren't expecting to have to lower prices. Less money getting you more value increases the value of money - also known as deflation, and something economists avoid as it's quite painful.
Automation itself can be good for humans though. I don't think people should be stuck doing a bullshit job nobody really needs just because we don't want to eliminate a job. Our goal as human society should be for people to have more and more choice over how they spend their own time. Even if we eliminate basically all necessary work from human existence, creative works have intrinsic value to the people who create them at the very least, and often value to many other people as well - AI will never eliminate that even if AI becomes very creative itself.
Mandatory work should be something we try to eliminate, and replaced by people generally being able to choose to do whatever they want within reason. This is not something that makes any sense in a capitalist system, so rather than attacking automation and keeping capitalism just because that creates a more equal income distribution, we should be working toward replacing capitalism with something better, and automation is a part of getting there.