[devsda]

The commencement/graduating speeches including AI in the video at the end are infuriating. The message from people giving those speeches is literally "deal with it" and how tone deaf do they have to be to patronize those booing students with "I understand your fear".

The graduation episode where the AI readout missing some student names and then the college saying "we used AI to readout and some names were missed. We will not redo and you will not see your name on stage" is the worst.

I believe the main value of AI comes not from its productivity gains but because AI will increasingly become a tool for evading responsibility and accountability for actions in economic, social and worse even military functions.

[rhubarbtree]

I suspect there is an unspoken factor here, which is that business leaders are not impressed by the WFH silent quitting attitude of junior staff, they’re happy to replace them with AI, and they don’t have sympathy because “yet another thing is hard.”

I’ve seen the silent quitting attitude in a workplace and it is toxic. OTOH young people have had a lot to deal with, and social media is damaging their mental health. OTOOH quit social media and try to address some of the issues you have. It’s very hard to know where the balance between sympathetic arm-round-the-shoulder and tough-love-develop-some-grit should lie.

[dv_dt]

I believe that most people naturally want to work, to contribute and build in groups. They want to do it and should expect to do it with reasonable boundaries and benefits for their labor. Silent quitting is a response to ever increasingly extractive work relationships for fewer and fewer benefits and increasingly irrationally low levels of compensation.

[rhubarbtree]

Not sure I agree. People seem to lose sight of what the default is, and how fortunate they are.

There are many systemic problems in society, but it’s rarely your direct employer’s fault.

[keybored]

I think Silent Quitting is some chattering class concoction feels-wrapping the observation that most workers have the incentive to work as little as possible.[1] Just like employers have the incentive squeeze as much productivity from their commodities (labor).

What was the first instinct of the venerable business leaders (spoken a bit too publicly)? Great, we can get rid of labor. Do they need any excuse or reason beyond maximizing profit? They don’t. It’s just incentives.

[1] And some workers can genuinely benefit from doing more than that, even as wage workers. “Some people have jobs; others have careers” as Chris Rock paraphrasedly said.

[silver_silver]

This reads like an avocado toast critique. Businesses which respect their staff, particularly junior staff, are few and far in between. Why should anyone not “silently quit” when the attitude of their employer is to extract as much value for the lowest cost before a round of layoffs?

[rhubarbtree]

Well, the workplace I referred to was very kind and supportive of staff. Even people who left later sent messages saying it was the best treatment they’d ever had.

So not the reason in this case.

And I personally know another company that seems similar.

[silver_silver]

It would be toxic in that environment but I’ve never personally been lucky enough to work at an outfit like that, so I find it difficult to believe the reactive version isn’t more common than the spontaneous you describe

[throwthrowuknow]

because they do it even when they have a good job with ample pay and respect

[rhubarbtree]

Certainly true in this case.

[pjc50]

>> "we used AI to readout and some names were missed. We will not redo and you will not see your name on stage"

This is .. not quiet, but extremely noisy, quitting of the bargain by the management/authority class.

This is how we get the low trust dystopia where all the remaining human workers have to put up with a camera watching them at all times (backed by AI, of course) doing Taylorism on their eye movements.

[adithyassekhar]

Why do you assume it’s the juniors who are silent quitting?

[rhubarbtree]

Was in the case I was referring to, and in similar cases I am familiar with.

[tonyedgecombe]

Yeah, the general trend I’ve seen is people becoming more cynical about the workplace the older they get.

[ramon156]

OTOOOH its very naive to think that "quitting social media" is the solution.

The earth is rotting from us leeching from it, there is no future for these juniors, and we're on the verge of more war and destruction, fascism, et cetera.

There is nothing for them to build towards, other than the typical House, wife and kids, which will be in the same boat.

Knowing this, if someone comes up to you and says "yeah, well, you should just accept it", obviously people are not going to support this

[pjc50]

Also, it's not enough to quit on your own: all the voters and CEOs around you will still be on social media, making decisions it influences. Just like quitting alcohol won't prevent you being killed by a drunk driver.

[throwthrowuknow]

that attitude is a direct result of having your neuroticism farmed by social media

[rhubarbtree]

Catastrophising for sure, and unhelpful in that it obscures some of the more real issues young people face: unaffordable housing, student debt, employment market shifts, mental health problems caused by social media.

[arowthway]

I know calling anti-AI people luddites was considered a shallow strawman in 2024 but now I can't help but feel this position of "we should maybe slow down the developement and adoption of new tech to protect jobs / social order / the old way of life" fits luddism well?

[sweezyjeezy]

I agree - but it's too easy to just 'call Luddism', and use the insult to not engage with all of the shared issues that make the comparison apt. Issues like:

- no serious plan for mass unemployment

- the risk of an underemployed middle class leading to violent outcomes as it has in the past

- (many) humans wanting to be useful, to have purpose in life and a place to put their natural ambition

- concentration of economic power in the hands of an ever-shrinking pool of people, from a couple of countries making up 20% of the world population

Luddism came from a place of genuine suffering and fear, which was not misplaced - the industrial revolution lead to amazing new jobs, but not for the Luddites themselves. With AI it's not even clear if those new jobs will come - it seems like the goal is a world where humans will not need to worry about thinking anymore.

So is wanting this to slow down really such a ridiculous notion?

[keybored]

I don’t know. I haven’t seen anyone who is brave enough to deserve to be called a (Neo) Luddite.

People that have negative opinions about technological progress at least have the will to form an opinion backed by arguments. Contrast that with the faith order of dismissing negative opinions simply because they are negative about tech. Are technologist tech professionals? Or tech priests? (No wait, priests have to have a theological education where they are taught to make arguments. So can’t be that either.)

[danaris]

The Luddites were able to destroy the mechanical looms because they were right there, in the buildings they worked in, doing the work in front of them. And, of course, because they were fairly straightforward and moderately fragile mechanical devices.

It takes much more bravery—and much more than bravery—to first figure out which datacenters are actually hosting Gemini (or Claude, or ChatGPT, etc), then travel across the country or across the world to where they are, break into what's likely a guarded building, and finally...I guess blow them up? With explosives that are almost certainly illegal just to possess, in contrast to the tools that could be used to break the looms.

And even if they were able to succeed in all this, that would be one datacenter. For one LLM. And its owners would simply be able to route around the damage, and (at least from the sounds of things) there'd be three new datacenters to replace it already scheduled to finish the next week.

So tell us about how much "bravery" it should require to deserve the title of Neo-Luddite.

[keybored]

Any fighting back. Equipment sabotage not needed.

[danaris]

And what, exactly, does "fighting back" look like in this case?

Because people are already taking steps to try to poison the AI training data.

They're trying to create their own art and culture in spite of the machine.

They're protesting the political forces that are enabling the techbros.

They're unionizing in numbers not seen in decades.

What would actually count as "brave" to you, if this isn't it?

[keybored]

How great then.

My reply was aimed at this board.[1] The people who are unhappy about it but “can’t” to anything about it because there are no Sprint points to be awarded for “smashing the machines.” So they resign themselves to technological determinism. Nothing can stand in the way of Progress.

But really this is a subversion or reversal of the stupid, idiotic, decades-old meme of the Luddite-as-insult. It takes no courage, or even thought (see my original reply), to chant that Progress is More Good when that Progress is being lead by the most powerful Capital forces and their collaborators. So that’s why I dismissively replied that I haven’t seen anyone, HERE, that deserves such an honor as to be called a Neo Luddite.

And is it really material if I have in actuality seen one, or two, or five, on Here that deserve this name, when the point is so rhetorical?

[1] https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=48119414