Company after company is swallowing the hype, only to be forced into
embarrassing walkbacks by anti-AI backlash
Earlier this month, a popular lifestyle magazine introduced a new “fashion and
lifestyle editor” to its huge social media following. “Reem”, who on first
glance looked like a twentysomething woman who understood both fashion and
lifestyle, was proudly announced as an “AI enhanced team member”. That is, a
fake person, generated by artificial intelligence. Reem would be making product
recommendations to SheerLuxe’s followers – or, to put it another way, doing what
SheerLuxe would otherwise pay a person to do. The reaction was entirely
predictable: outrage, followed by a hastily issued apology. One suspects Reem
may not become a staple of its editorial team.
This is just the latest in a long line of walkbacks of “exciting AI projects”
that have been met with fury by the people they’re meant to excite. The Prince
Charles Cinema in Soho, London, cancelled a screening of an AI-written film in
June, because its regulars vehemently objected. Lego was pressured to take down
a series of AI-generated images it published on its website. Doctor Who started
experimenting with generative AI, but quickly stopped after a wave of
complaints. A company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will paint
it as innovative, and entirely fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment
taking hold among many of its customers.
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Tag - Work & careers
Research commissioned by Google estimates 31% of jobs would be insulated from AI
and 61% radically transformed by it
Almost two-thirds of British jobs could be “enhanced” with AI, Google has
claimed, with only a tiny proportion at risk of being “phased out” entirely.
Instead of worrying about job losses caused by AI, the focus needed to be on
making sure the millions of Britons who could work in smarter and faster ways
with AI tech got the support to use it, the company said.
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Tony Blair’s powerful thinktank asked ChatGPT how AI might affect public sector
jobs. Critics say the results were … wonky
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What will AI do to employment? It is, after “will it kill us all?”, the most
important question about the technology, and it’s remarkably hard to pin down –
even as the frontier moves from science fiction to reality.
At one end of the spectrum is the slightly Pollyannaish claim that new
technology simply creates new jobs; at the other, fears of businesses replacing
entire workforces with AI tools. Sometimes, the dispute is less about end state
and more about speed of the transition: an upheaval completed in a few years is
destructive for those caught in the middle of it, in a way that one which takes
two decades may be survivable.
More than 40 per cent of tasks performed by public-sector workers could be
partly automated by a combination of AI-based software, for example
machine-learning models and large-language models, and AI-enabled hardware,
ranging from AI-enabled sensors to advanced robotics.
The government will need to invest in AI technology, upgrade its data systems,
train its workforce to use the new tools and cover any redundancy costs
associated with early exits from the workforce. Under an ambitious rollout
scheme, we estimate these costs equate to £4bn per year on average over this
parliamentary term.
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The concept of a guaranteed income is gaining traction as a solution to the
impact of AI and way to encourage more rewarding and socially valuable work
When Elinor O’Donovan found out she had been randomly selected to participate in
a basic income pilot scheme, she couldn’t believe her luck. In return for a
guaranteed salary of just over €1,400 (£1,200) a month from the Irish
government, all the 27-year-old artist had to do was fill out a bi-annual
questionnaire about her wellbeing and how she spends her time. “It was like
winning the lottery. I was in such disbelief,” she says.
The income, which she will receive until September 2025, has enabled her to give
up temping and focus instead on her art. “It covers my living expenses, my rent,
food and day-to-day stuff.”
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The Fairwork trio talk about their new book on the ‘extraction machine’,
exposing the repetitive labour, often in terrible conditions, that big tech is
using to create artificial intelligence
* Meet Mercy and Anita – the African workers driving the AI revolution, for
just over a dollar an hour
James Muldoon is a reader in management at the University of Essex, Mark Graham
a professor at the Oxford Internet Institute and Callum Cant a senior lecturer
at the University of Essex business school. They work together at Fairwork, a
project that appraises the working conditions in digital workplaces, and they
are co-authors of Feeding the Machine: The Hidden Human Labour Powering AI.
Why did you write the book?
James Muldoon: The idea for the book emerged out of field work we did in Kenya
and Uganda on the data annotation industry. We spoke to a number of data
annotators, and the working conditions were just horrendous. And we thought this
is a story that everyone needs to hear. People working for less than $2 an hour
on insecure contracts, work that is predominantly outsourced to the global south
because of how difficult and dangerous it can be.
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We’re in the untenable position of regarding the AI as alien because we’re
already in the position of alienating each other
The idea that superintelligent robots are alien invaders coming to “steal our
jobs” reveals profound shortcomings in the way we think about work, value, and
intelligence itself. Labor is not a zero-sum game, and robots aren’t an “other”
that competes with us. Like any technology, they’re part of us, growing out of
civilization the same way hair and nails grow out of a living body. They’re part
of humanity – and we’re partly machine.
When we “other” a fruit-picking robot – thinking of it as a competitor in a
zero-sum game – we take our eyes off the real problem: the human who used to
pick the fruit is considered disposable by the farm’s owners and by society when
no longer fit for that job. This implies that the human laborer was already
being treated like a non-person – that is, like a machine. We’re in the
untenable position of regarding the machine as alien because we are already in
the untenable position of alienating each other.
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