In regards to a recent announcement by Amazon that they’d be laying off historical numbers of workers, only a few months after CEO Andrew Jassy announced AI adoption would be directly responsible for reductions in workforce:
Is artificial intelligence to blame for Amazon job cuts?
AI/LLMs are by design anti-labor technology. The feverish pushing of LLM adoption by all levels of management is exemplary of this: You are not asked to use this tech because it will enable better work and ideas, but because it is cheaper to your boss than your coworker’s salary.
The goals of capital are not interested in the lofty ideals of magically improving your day-to-day workload, or enhancing your ability to think, be creative, enact your will — these are marketing promises made by those who benefit from eliminating your role when your coworker’s output increases.
Your boss is not incentivized by utopian imagination, he is incentivized by showing his boss a lowering of costs so he can keep his job and lifestyle. The miraculous science fiction future AI shills often proselytize will not be realized in the halls of SaaS companies, because the incentives for that future do not exist in a capitalist framework.
Reject AI: reject its devaluation of your fellow workers’ labor and its destruction of our ecosystem. Look always to improve the world you live in, instead of inventing new ones where all the problems are solved by handwaving at unrealized technology.
Further reading
I’ve also written a bit more about the inherent anti-labor tilt of the AI project elsewhere on the blog :)