Do not kill the AI, kill the work.

16 de novembro de 2023

Using the comment I made on Órbita, the Manual do Usuário's Hacker News, discussing Gabriel Fernandes' text about not having to combat AI but rather combat work, I reproduce the comment here.

We should have already been working 6 hours or less since the proliferation of the internet. We should have had 90 days of vacation since the popularization of computers in companies. We should have had 1 year of maternity leave (or more). We should have had salaries adjusted according to the profits of the companies we work for. We should have had a lot of things already, but “late capitalism” is cunning, and it has been discovered that it is much simpler to individualize problems and people than to generate improvements in well-being.

One of the most evident symptoms that the capitalist system is very efficient in creating new ways to exploit workers is precisely the platformization of jobs. We took a recurring problem (CLT workers or equivalents fighting for more rights and unionizing) and turned it into an individual problem (now each person is an “entrepreneur”).

What does this platformization sell? You receive a fair value for your work without the government taking a bite out of your salary, and you have the freedom to work whenever and however much you want. What is the reality? The delivery driver, the app-based driver, the freelance programmer, and many others need to work +12 hours a day to achieve the same level of job security they had with CLT/contract/employment bonds.

From time to time, something happens in the world of work and forces companies to tighten their belts even more. The pandemic showed that remote work can be the reality for most professions. What did this generate in companies? Mass layoffs to create a state of terror among workers and force them to accept returning to an excruciating 3-hour public transport routine.

In addition, the LLMs put on the table that technology already has the potential to significantly improve our lives, to the point where most jobs can be done automatically, requiring only human review afterward. This should lead to fewer working hours and more leisure hours, but the opposite will happen (and is happening): more working hours, more freelancing, more platformization, and more terror, because, once again, companies have realized that it is simpler to create a terror environment that “you will be fired if you don't give 150% of yourself at work” and still profit even more, paying even less.

The problem is not AI, it's not the invasion of personal data, it's not company X or Y. The problem is capitalism. Until we (workers) realize this and think that we can patch up this system with a failed social democracy or mitigate the problem by choosing the companies we consume, we will only be sweeping the problem under the rug.