#thecominglaborapocalypse — Public Fediverse posts

When I read #AI and #bigtech or #meta headlines like this one I think #theComingLaborApocalypse of layoffs of the people who know how things actually work. Then I think, #Facebook and #Zuckerberg and this: Go For It! Let's see that Rome burn as Meta AI fiddles with the corporate IP, financials, and programming infrastructure.

Exclusive: Meta plans big layoffs as Al costs mount

The cuts could affect 20% or more of the company as Meta seeks to offset artificial-intelligence infrastructure spending and prepare for the efficiency brought about by employees working with Al.

https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/meta-planning-sweeping-layoffs-ai-costs-mount-2026-03-14/

@TheZeldaZone

If #AI were good … companies would [not be forcing] us to use it.

Very good point. The objective is to reduce labor costs, that is, to fire all knowledge and tech workers. It's not that it is better, it is that it is cheaper. Of course, this completely misses the point that someone has to generate the knowledge, the #writing, the images, as well as the raw #science data upon which to train the AIs, which requires people with experience doing the work.

This will not end well.

#BoostingIsSharing

#theComingLaborApocalypse #genAI #LLM #llms #chatGPT #gemini #copilot #grok #deepL #Midjourney #writer #author #writingCommunity #writersOfMastodon

@catsalad

The AI industry won't survive if we have to ask artists for permission!

That's like saying the automation and robot industries won't survive without worker's permission and paying them a royalty for jobs lost. Oh, wait…. Too late.

#ai #robots #automation #theComingLaborApocalypse

Labor Day Message: The ultimate goal of #automation and #ai is to replace labor, to reduce or eliminate having to pay more than once for a cost that is recurring weekly or biweekly. Of course, when nobody earns a paycheck, who will buy the products and services is merely a can to kick down the road, right?

#labor #laborday #economy #economics #union #theComingLaborApocalypse

Hat tip to @cbarbermd Can't say this better.
#theComingLaborApocalypse #AI

real answers about what A.I. is and isn’t currently capable of and, of course, how big a threat it is to human writers.

Because #writerscoffeeclub focused on AI this August, I am tooting this excerpt (with clickthru link) to a story contest between an #author and an #ai (#chatGPT). I suggest reading.

[Take a flying guess about what I think about AI writing or composing stories...]

Hat tip: @gruber

#boostingIsSharing

#Writing #Writer #WritersOfMastodon #WritingCommunity #Fiction #ThecomingLaborApocalypse #books #bookstodon

https://daringfireball.net/linked/2024/08/26/sittenfeld-chatgpt-writeoff

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 12 Nbr 15 FEV— Have you used any form of AI to help in creating your work? Do you have a red line? Where is it? Full Essay Version

I've been around long enough that I remember when the #Altair 8080 (the first commercial personal computer) got a full page ad in Scientific American. My BFF and I talked about it after school (11th grade, I think?) for hours. I had my own slimline phone on my own extension. I was a privileged kid. The #computer club had a teletype connection to a computer that ran #BASIC. We also had access to an #IBM mainframe assembler using #MIS (pencil in) punch cards. A friend built an #IMSAI 8080 with 256 bytes of memory and it played songs we could listen to by tuning to part of the FM band influenced by the frequency of bits passing through the memory buss.

Why do I bring this up? The first things we programmed (after ping-pong on the toggle switch lights, Star Trek, and later adventure games) where types of artificial intelligence. We've been "teaching" computers to "think" for us since we could rip them away from the greedy money grubbers who wanted to do things like accounting and payroll. Current concepts of AI rely on pattern matching against databases, in very simplified terms. Early #AI were procedural, and if it solved your math problem, spelled your word correctly, or found data in the noise, it was intelligent. It is inescapable that unless we write longhand or type on a typewriter, that we have used what someone terms AI.

Anybody remember Clippy?

The key to this question, and how I am going to take it, is to focus on the word "creating." To me, that highlights generating something. Text. Graphics. Though this implies #genAI (the current thing, something like #Diffusion or #ChatGPT). It also means graphic tools that I use to remove and add image elements to photos, or otherwise intelligently improve them in ways I could imagine but was previously incapable due to lack of talent, practice, or understanding of the unenhanced tools.

As for text, I remember once writing a chatbot psychologist. IF-THEN-ELSE. In BASIC, back in high school or it may have been in an equivalent language on a DEC-10 at university. It did not pass the Turing Test, but it could lift one's mood, which could help with me "creating" work!

I've no interest in using something like chatGPT to build a story from prompts. It would be the program's story, not mine. It would be a Cliff Notes version of an unwritten story, summarized, never provided a soul, before even being written. Because these things work by pattern matching and predicting what would be the next word (based on an average of everybody's writing or specific genres or authors), it would be pure statistical fabrication—not even fabulation, which implies creative fantasy. It would be a story with none of the emotion, feeling, or meaning I'd put into it. It would be phantom chatter masquerading as wit through statistical randomness. No enlightenment possible, except by accident.

As an author, why would I even try to replace myself, or create the tools for others to try to do the same? I suspect people that do, do so as I wrote above because they are "incapable due to lack of talent, practice, or understanding of the tools." I'll add, also laziness, though I tar myself with the same brush as I wrote above.

Never discount greed. Authors cost money. Computers cost once.

In any case, the AI tools built into the software I do use barely save me time as it is. I can't start a dictation with the 1st person personal pronoun on any of my systems. Statistically, more people start dictation with "Hi" then "I," so I always have to correct that. Thanks to auto-incorrect, even the words I spell correctly (few enough as it is) get changed. In this very article, the tool insisted I had a "teletype connection to a commuter!" Not only do I have to be aware of my own tendency toward grammar issues and typos, I have to proof for AI typos, including chaining typos since the tools keep track of some meaning and can spawn a hellacious brew of misconception and embarrassment should it slip out to readers. I know what I mean to write. Sometimes I find myself overruled by my own tools.

Have I used AI? Not genAI. Procedural tools, yes. Not for willingly generating text.

Red line? Yes. No generating story or text. What's the point?

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#fiction #romance #fantasy #sf #sff #sciencefiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion #theComingLaborApocalypse

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 12 Nbr 12 — Someone asks permission to use AI to write a book in your style outside your usual genre. Do you allow it? CW: Rant

You do realize this is the equivalent of you asking me permission to replace me with a robot in my factory job, right? Or my job as a movie extra with a CGI puppet? Or my lawyer job as a lawyer? My retail job with a kiosk? Or my farm job as a farmer? Do you need more horror?

This is #genAI. It's #automation and it kills creativity.

The question makes me feel like I'm being asked whether I mind being turned into soylent green: Worthless.

This question asked of an author is so massively rude and uncaring that it makes me think the questioner either lacks empathy or may be sociopathic.

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#fiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion #theComingLaborApocalypse

#WritersCoffeeClub Ch 12 Nbr 05 — If [an] AI created a genuinely good story, would you read it?

I would not know the quality of an AI story directly, because I'd have no interest in reading (or subjecting myself to) such things to find out. However, were people I trusted, or the writing community, to claim I needed to read a "genuinely good story" created by an AI, I'd read it with trepidation and all due skepticism.

One day, AI will likely be able. They aren't now, but when they are #theComingLaborApocalypse will have made authors like me superfluous (hopefully with fewer typos and grammatical errors).

[Author retains copyright (c)2024 R.S.]

#BoostingIsSharing and #CommentingIsCool

#fiction #writing #writer #writers #author #writingcommunity #writersOfMastodon
#RSdiscussion

@markv Which will put dental hygienists on the endangered list. Will save dental offices labor costs on a buy once and done (minus maintenance costs) device... until the dentist bot takes care of that well paying job, too.

#theComingLaborApocalypse

#TheComingLaborApocalypse #AI #Robot #Dentist. Um. Not ready for this, but if you plan to grow up to be a dentist or dental hygienist, maybe that's not going to work out? Are Autodocs next?

#writing #author #writingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon #sf #sciencefiction https://newatlas.com/health-wellbeing/robot-dentist-world-first/

This takes automating trucks to take away jobs to a new level. Huge costs but you but you can stop paying for labor forever...

#theComingLaborApocalypse #sf #sciencefiction #writing #author #writingCommunity #writersOfMatodon https://newatlas.com/transport/cargo-conveyor-auto-logistics/

Over all, interesting. Pointing to auto-driving car deaths though fails to statistically compare to death by people-driving cars so is a dubious fact at best, and a Tesla debacle at worst (click through the link), so consider the author's agenda in writing this article whilst reading it.

#selfdriving #ai #autonomous car #waymo #tesla #theComingLaborApocalypse #engineering #sf #sciencefiction #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon https://www.slashgear.com/1605007/autonomous-driving-plateau-engineer-expert-explains/

@jwcph
Ironically enough, medical diagnosis was one of the first big applications of big AI. Anyone remember Watson AI and the computer that played on Jeopardy? Pattern marching on carefully trained data produced answers that were sound and could be curated by trained doctors. Note that someone that could understand and judge the result in my statement? It didn't make the bank IBM hoped for trust and privacy issues. Maybe doctors weren't happy with the idea of a tool that could replace them?

Generating and creating content from an indiscriminately trained AI isn't the same thing as a system like Watson. Because these systems mimics human creativity, people get suckered into thinking the results are the same as a human. They aren't. It's pattern matching and the AI judging the probability that the next word is the right word/meaning based on trained data. It's not understanding. Not even close. Alone, it can generate probable answers, but it takes a trained human to determine what's crap. Especially true if the answer is obscure—is it something good nobody thought of, or simply a technobabble hallucination?

#theComingLaborApocalypse #ai #generativeAI #chatGpt #WritingCommunity #WritersOfMastodon

@GottaLaff
The article points out that prices might go up, they might employ fewer workers, or they might automate those unskilled jobs. There's no free lunch, but if workers can't make a living, the system was going to fall apart anyway. Learning skills, a trade, or a profession is still the way to go no matter your age. At least until they automate or AI that away, too.

#theComingLaborApocalypse #economy #economics #wages #labor

I know Amazon warehouse jobs are notoriously dehumanizing, but they pay the bills for those desperate for jobs. Let's just replace more people so they can't make a living without providing for them, right? Labor is expensive. If this works, you can buy your own warehouse bot! Yay. #theComingLaborApocalypse #dystopia #writingCommunity Ideas #writingCommunity #labor #basicIncome https://newatlas.com/robotics/humanoid-robots-work-amazon/

Introduction to R.S., Author, Novelist Updated 03/22/25

First, a few words:

"One thing you learn from watching TV, movies, anime, and reading best sellers, to pulp, to fanfic: No story is perfect. There's always hopeful contrivance and caricature in plot or character, a little or a lot... but it works. We like it. It gets bought, published, produced, noticed, sometimes loved despite the warts.

"Authors and playwrights of all levels... take heart. Complete your project and go on to the next. Complete is the superpower you can have, perfect doesn't exist."

And something that works for me: Are you blocked by your internal censor? Do you worry you're revealing your embarrassing true self? Say what I say to myself:

I am not telepathic.

Repeat that: I am not telepathic.

Louder: I AM NOT TELEPATHIC!

I DON'T know what the reader is going to expect.

I DON'T know if the current scene is going to frighten, trigger, or be too explicit for my audience...

Because I DON'T have anyone looking over my shoulder, clicking their tongue, and saying, "Tch, tch, tch!"

I am going to take a deeeeeeep breath, now,
clear my mind,
and write the flapping scene—
full stop.

Who is R.S.?

• I am a formerly published feminist SF author and a prosaist—which is what a poet is to poetry, but for prose.
• I write #fiction stories that often address issues of gender at least peripherally. I'm aiming to short list for an Otherwise Award.
• My genre tags are #sf, #sff, #sciencefiction, #fantasy, and #romance.
• I'm a fan of rhetoric and elocution; I'm a prosaist, remember? Humor makes life and writing tolerable.
  
• My community is #author, #writer, #writingCommunity, and #writersOfMastodon.
• I hosted the #EngenderedWriting hashtag. See: #EngenderWritingQ.
• I post often to various writing hashtags, which are variously called games, prompts, or challenges: #pennedPossibilities, #wordWeavers, #ScribesAndMakers, #writever, and #writersCoffeeClub,
• If you become confused about my gender, that's intentional. I write gender fiction, so if I revealed mine, it would add subtext to my stories. If you know or learn it, please keep it to yourself. Thanks!
• #ActuallyAutistic, which explains how I can overly focus, seem obtuse, or end up running down rabbit holes. No worries. It's actually a superpower.
• This link (https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/110470537747067765) leads to a list of shorter stories I've written to post exclusively on Mastodon (#microfiction #flashfiction #tootfic). I retain the copyright on those stories.
• My Markdown Reference: https://eldritch.cafe/@sfwrtr/114741821407500330

I'm building a network of authors by entertaining you, and by sharing what I've learned through decades of doing it the hard way. My motto: There Shall Be Content! I want to help our writing community by helping authors overcome what keeps them from completing stories. I'm learning self-publishing as a business. I want to push back the loneliness that's part and parcel of this solitary profession.

I follow serious authors, which means people diligently writing or working at completing stories or articles or anything containing words with the intent to publish, whether that's #fiction, #nonfiction, #scripts, #comics or #manga, or #games. I will read your profile to check for content before following. You need not courtesy follow in return for a follow.

I boost posts that announce authors' work and publications. I want my followers (largely artists, authors, and photographers) to see your work. We're all creatives here, trying to be professional. Everyone needs to promote their work; I want to help you. Don't repeat too often. Since I follow so many people, my timeline is full. Don't feel bad if I miss something. Private mention @[email protected]!

I'll follow an #artist upon seeing interesting artwork, #photography or hand-drawn/painted #art. I am partial to #charcoals and #pastel, appreciate #sketch art, but love #watercolor. If wowed, I'll discuss what's great in reply, or #critique if you're close and I I can help. I commission cover and interstitial art. I do fine art photography and some wedding and event photography.

Life and Everything Else: I have a weird sense of humor, which follows since many of my characters are snide and cynical.

Favorites: My clicking the favorite button means something caught my attention, was particularly apropos to the idea, was entertaining, or somehow pithy. If I reply to your post, I've definitely noticed something!

Hot Buttons: Feminist issues are my bread and butter. So too labor issues, like jobs being automated out of existence without ensuring former employees can support themselves. If you want to use #genAI, #chatGPT, or AI to replace writers or artists, or jobs, you're barking up the wrong tree, buster! I post those road apples under #theComingLaborApocalypse.

I believe Boosting is Sharing. I appreciate when people boost my posts when they affect them.

#BoostingIsSharing