AI is yet another chapter in this story of technological utopianism to degrade labor by rhetorically obscuring it.

What AI is is an ideology—a system of ideas that has swept up not only the tech industry but huge parts of government on both sides of the aisle, a supermajority of everyone with assets in the millions and up, and a seemingly growing sector of the journalism class. The ideology itself is nothing new—it is the age-old system of supremacy, granting... See more

What if the questions were instead: What kinds of labor markets are being designed around AI? What is shaping the choices about adoption? Who has bargaining power in those decisions? How will the value created by as yet unfounded promises of productivity growth be distributed? Who has power and how is it wielded to promote certain interests and... See more

The AI illusion distances users from the reality of content moderation, much like factory farming distances us from the treatment of egg-laying chickens. This collective willful ignorance allows exploitation to continue unchecked. The AI narrative is a smokescreen that obscures a deeply unethical labor practice that trades human well-being for a... See more

The MIT Technology Review tested this themselves by creating an account on Remotasks and noticed a timer on the top left of the screen, noticeably 'without a clear deadline or apparent way to pause it to go to the bathroom.' This has been interpreted as an 'inactivity timer' that pushes the task back to the task pool on the platform for someone... See more