Notices by Brian Merchant (brianmerchant@mastodon.social)

Did AI kill your job? If so, I want to hear about it.

The response to my recent story on the AI jobs crisis has been pretty overwhelming. I heard from so many people hit by AI I decided to collect and organize such stories to better understand the phenomenon.

Share yours at: AIKilledMyJob@pm.me

Therapists at Kaiser went on a hunger strike in Los Angeles to protest "factory" like working conditions and the automation of healthcare. I went down to the picket line on the last day to talk to the workers, some of whom hadn't eaten for 100 hours.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/therapists-went-on-a-hunger-strike

Flyover Country is a vision of a bleak, poverty-stricken America, where precarious day laborers and "criminal" migrants and detainees work day in and day out assembling iPhones.

I read it again after Howard Lutnick's "little screws" comments, and it punched me in the gut all over again.

This is the vision they have for moving electronics manufacturing to America, to the extent they have a vision at all.

So, I went to post the story, but, since Terraform used to be a part of VICE, and VICE went bankrupt and got sold off to private equity vultures, it was basically unreadable.

Thus, I arranged to republish it at Blood in the Machine, one of the nice things you can do as your own personal blog overlord—and when Cory Doctorow (@pluralistic) was kind enough to get us Terraform editors to force VICE to rewrite author contracts so they own the rights from day one!

After Trump was elected the first time, there was also a lot of talk about making iPhones in the US. At the time, I was co-editor of the sci-fi outlet Terraform, so I asked @timmaughan to imagine what such a future might really look like.

With his permission, I'm republishing the story in full:

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/flyover-country

Full story is at the newsletter, pls sub for 100% guaranteed human-powered writing + journalism

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/

Here's how one artist, Reid Southen, told me he feels about the AI Studio Ghibli trend:

I realize that language is strong, and for a long time I have been skeptical of this notion that 'AI bros hate artists' or such—but seeing the response to this critique, which on the other site really actually has too often been literally 'Fuck Miyazaki', what other conclusion are we to come to?

OpenAI is using Studio Ghibli-style memes as an ad hoc promotional campaign for its new image generator—despite Ghibli founder Hayao Miyazaki's famous hatred of AI. Sam Altman even made his X avatar a 'Ghiblified' portrait.

Disgracing Miyazaki is part of the point: It's more proof to the industry's biggest boosters that they have won—that they're free to use, appropriate, and commoditize art however they see fit.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/openais-studio-ghibli-meme-factory

Hello all. As many of you know, I've been writing BLOOD IN THE MACHINE: The Newsletter for months, but I've been on the fence about going all-in. Recent events have made the call easier.

Elon Musk, the Silicon Valley oligarchs and their AI are taking over. I want to do all I can to push back. I hope you'll join me, and I'm asking for your support.

https://www.bloodinthemachine.com/p/the-tech-oligarchs-and-their-ai-are

@starchy @pluralistic love it — and me too!

Did a long investigation for WIRED looking at how studios are already using AI to degrade and kill jobs in the video game industry

https://www.wired.com/story/ai-is-already-taking-jobs-in-the-video-game-industry/

It’s pub day for Blood in the Machine, the book I’ve been working on for over five years. It tells the story of a chapter in history too often papered over—how workers rose up at the dawn of the Industrial Revolution when entrepreneurs used machines to take or degrade their jobs.

https://www.hachettebookgroup.com/titles/brian-merchant/blood-in-the-machine/9780316487740/?lens=little-brown

This is a good example of what AI systems like ChatGPT excel at—giving managers and administrators the ability to automate top-down, controversial and harmful decision-making while shielding themselves from accountability. They're a sort of authoritarianism accelerator

https://www.popsci.com/technology/iowa-chatgpt-book-ban/