#platformcapitalism — Public Fediverse posts
Live and recent posts from across the Fediverse tagged #platformcapitalism, aggregated by home.social.
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Fear and Loathing of AI (Part IV): Automation Doesn’t Kill Jobs — It Cheapens People
By Cliff Potts, CSO, and Editor-in-Chief of WPS News
The popular story about automation is that it destroys jobs.
That story is comforting, because it suggests a clean line: a job exists, a machine replaces it, the job disappears. Tragic, but understandable.
What actually happens is worse.
Automation rarely eliminates work outright.
It cheapens the people who do it.The quiet downgrade
Most jobs don’t vanish overnight. They are degraded.
Pay drops.
Expectations rise.
Staffing thins.
Monitoring increases.Workers are told they should be grateful, because “AI makes you more productive now.”
Productivity, however, is not shared.
It is captured.The job remains, but dignity erodes.
From skilled labor to managed output
Before automation, skill carried bargaining power.
After automation, skill becomes assumed.AI-assisted work quickly shifts from:
- expertise → throughput
- judgment → compliance
- craft → metrics
Once the machine is involved, human contribution is reframed as a cost center rather than a value source.
The worker doesn’t disappear.
The status of the worker does.The speed-up without the pay
Historically, when tools made work faster, workers fought for:
- shorter hours,
- higher wages,
- better conditions.
AI flips that script.
Now speed gains are treated as justification for:
- heavier workloads,
- constant availability,
- reduced compensation per unit of work.
You are not paid more for producing more.
You are expected to produce more for the same or less.This is not innovation failure.
It is policy choice.Surveillance masquerading as assistance
AI is often introduced as a “helper.”
In practice, it becomes a manager.It tracks:
- keystrokes,
- output rates,
- response times,
- behavioral patterns.
What begins as assistance quietly becomes supervision.
Automation does not just change what you do.
It changes how closely you are watched while doing it.The moral inversion
When work becomes cheaper, people are treated as more replaceable.
That inversion is always justified with the same language:
- efficiency,
- competitiveness,
- inevitability.
But none of those are natural laws.
They are decisions made by those who benefit.Automation does not have ethics.
Institutions deploying it do.The real danger
The greatest risk of AI-driven automation is not mass unemployment.
It is a world where:
- work still consumes most of your life,
- pay no longer reflects effort,
- and dignity is treated as a luxury benefit.
A world where jobs exist, but people inside them are hollowed out.
A line worth drawing
AI can reduce drudgery.
It can assist judgment.
It can remove unnecessary friction.But if productivity gains are not paired with:
- stronger labor protections,
- shared gains,
- and limits on surveillance,
automation becomes exploitation with better branding.
Automation doesn’t kill jobs.
It kills leverage.
And without leverage, workers don’t disappear.
They endure.
For more social commentary, please see Occupy 2.5 at https://Occupy25.com
#ArtificialIntelligence #automation #economicInequality #futureOfWork #Labor #Occupy25 #platformCapitalism #productivity #technologyCritique #workerRights #workplaceSurveillance #WPSNews -
Controls [from the archives, 9 May 2021]. Originally performed and recorded for the Modular World 1st anniversary show (8-9 May 2021) which was a massive livestream event of 33+ hrs during the pandemic lockdowns.
During the lockdown years, Modular World became one example of a fairly niche thing gathering people together worldwide to make experimental art online - when it was not possible to organize the usual small local performances - to create something positive and reach more people than they ever could individually. As the pandemic finally, thankfully, subsided, however, it seems that people went back to the enclosed local communities, and these types of global online communities lost their drive.
Also the rapidly accelerating #enshittification cycle of the past few years has buried the visibility of these kinds of communities from all major social media platforms. Of course, as Cory Doctorow ( @pluralistic ) has been pointing out for years, the enshittification of these platforms started much earlier. But somehow amid the pandemic, this niche scene still seemed to flourish, and it was only after Silicon Valley lined up to kiss the ring that the aggressive changes to the algorithms really seemed to change things.
Maybe this is correlation more than causation, but as activity at such niche scenes is often also created by fairly principled DIY-oriented people, it seems that many (myself included) have struggled with justifying why we keep feeding these platforms. This disillusionment is further exacerbated by the rise of the AI-slopmachine that will rip off all the non-commercial work from these platforms just like everything else. Online activity that gathers enough momentum to actually keep things active has in these types of niche scenes been very much dependent on instagram and youtube. Over the past few years, the visibility of this type on stuff that doesn’t try to optimise for the alorithm has plummeted.
Perhaps all of this has resulted in events such as the Modular World shows reaching fewer and fewer people. As wonderful as the promise of #Fediverse is, so far it seems that we’re very far from reaching the critical mass where it would actually start reaching new people. If the utopian enclave remains enclosed, it eventually dwindles away.
But we can try! I’m posting these weird little Johannes Karkia mini music videos and performances here bit by bit. It’s a transfer of archive, posted on insta & youtube over th years, and also new work now & then.
But also Modular World does still exist! Go check out their channel: https://www.youtube.com/live/07ErB3AjlAo?is=qr9q2pXlhWm7Hie2 (Full performance of this piece, and interview with MW’s Johno Wells there on the Modular World youtube channel and on the Johannes Karkia youtube channel [link in the bio above], audio track also on Bandcamp).
#enshittification #fediverse #modularsynth #modularworld #anniversary #liveshow #electronicmusic #modulartechno #covid19 #pandemic #darkwave #eurorackmodular #community #surveillancecapitalism #platformcapitalism #algorithm #bigtech #siliconvalley #kissthering #socialmedia #utopianenclave #utopianism