Let us be clear: workers are being displaced by AI in the workplace, but that displacement is not due to the actual ability of AI technology doing the jobs of workers to the same quality, or even to a sufficient quality. It is a market-oriented move by firms to brag about becoming AI-first, while finding cost-savings by laying off employees. And the workers who do remain in their jobs are left to deal with labor intensification, that is, a combination of doing more work with less time, the addition of other work tasks as a result either new technological processes, or taking on the task of other people who have been laid off. As one of us wrote in a recent book, “AI is not going to replace your job. But it will make your job a lot shittier.”

The nature of AI is that it is almost entirely a fascist project, not in a moral sense per se (though I think you could make that argument and I would if pressed) but in the sense that it is a tool meant to empower greater private corporate control over various spheres of life. It creates a worse environment for workers and a better environment for bosses, and in turn it empowers firms to take over more aspects of public life.

The balance of American experience is between public and private infrastructure. Public infrastructure principally serves a purpose for the public, private infrastructure serves a purpose to the shareholders and owners in the form of profit.

I have yet to see a way that largescale "AI" can be used for a public, pro-social end. I think that when we talk about fighting fascism, we have to understand that at least at this time, in this moment, the generative AI 'project' is undoubtedly a fascist one.

Google is transforming Search from a list of links into an AI-powered experience filled with conversational answers, autonomous agents, and interactive interfaces — a shift that could further reduce traffic to publishers across the web.

Cannot express enough how much you should get off of Google. I'm saying this for myself as well, to be clear -- I'm about halfway to setting up a Nextcloud and have plenty of self-hosted services already, but I need to get immich working for photos and a more stable cloud sync.

But I'm already off of the basic search in general, thanks to Kagi (which I cannot recommend highly enough -- it is both very good as search and refreshingly AI-critical).

Fuck Google, fuck genAI, fuck your LLM.

A Texas councilmember will propose “a total ban on all cellular and GPS-capable devices for all operations within city limits" and "a total termination of all internet services."

Fascist crashout. #BANDERAMELTDOWN