Tara McMullin

It is often only in the interludes that we come to realise just how much our busy lives are an active conspiracy against the very things that supposedly give our existence a deeper sense of meaning and purpose.

That is, they understand the purpose of chatbots and generative models to be the ability to force other people to see a particular version of reality. It is a tool of power that masquerades as a tool of knowledge.

Compensation, lack of involvement in decision-making are key workplace stressors

When it comes to the impact of different factors on employee stress levels at work, low salaries (56%, up from 49% in 2019), long hours (54%, up from 46%), and lack of opportunity for growth or advancement (52%, up from 44%) are most commonly reported as very or... See more

Anything that we playbook becomes more legible to AI.

So we must burn the playbooks .

This is the real Butlerian Jihad, not destroying the machines, but destroying the playbooks that would turn us into machines.

It doesn’t have to be the way it is is a playful statement, made in the context of fiction, with no claim to “being real.” Yet it is a subversive statement.

Subversion doesn’t suit people who, feeling their adjustment to life has been successful, want things to go on just as they are, or people who need support from authority assuring them that... See more

Over the course of the last century, the number of workers employed as domestic servants, in industry, and in the farm sector has collapsed dramatically. At the same time, ‘professional, managerial, clerical, sales, and service workers’ tripled, growing ‘from one-quarter to three-quarters of total employment.’ In other words, productive jobs have,... See more

That we can write the prompt or query is not an emblem of our freedom but of our surrender. We give up on what we think the words mean and let the machine process them in alien and opaque ways.

While being underrepresented is a fixed state that requires coordinated action to remedy systemically, being underrecognized is an ongoing, active state that we can change from moment to moment. Intuitively, it has an agent. That’s what makes this word an actual call to action. It puts the onus on the folks with the power to act, and it makes the... See more