Boy, that AI, it’s to blame for so many things isn’t it!
- AI causes layoffs!
- AI causes bad journalism!
- AI causes headaches for recruiters!
- AI causes ethics violations!
But here’s the truth, AI doesn’t cause any of this – people do.
All these things are human decisions. “AI” didn’t cause that layoff or any of these other things. It’s a handy technology, and just like the PC or mobile, it allows us to disrupt and change things, but it’s not “causing” anything.
And to be honest, most “AI-caused layoffs” are a barefaced lie. Just like most RTO mandates are clandestine layoffs, CEOs have realized that you can now have a layoff or hiring freeze and say “because of our use of AI” and your stock goes up instead of down. So that’s what they say. Speaking as a technology consultant whose team is involved in a lot of large AI implementations, except for large call center or “digital piecework” shops, no one is really using AI enough already that it’s truly laid off large numbers of staff, and certainly all developer layoffs attributed to AI so far are layoffs they just wanted to do regardless.
Every decade has its new technology silver bullet. In the after-times, we remind ourselves that there is no such thing as a silver bullet and it’s always more complicated than that. Then we forget and fall in love with the newest silver bullet, and the shinest teflon-coated hollow-point silver bullet is AI. But that’s just tech business as usual.
The core problem here is that personification of AI is very deliberately being used to shift blame and pass the buck.
Remember when Mark Zuckerberg went before Congress and kept trying to blame “the algorithm” for fanning political extremism, as if it wasn’t just software his company had built? This is the same playbook, scaled out, substituting in “AI” as the boogeyman.
Whenever any AI exec talks about AGI or “we the tech oligarchs are also scared of AI, it may be alive and coming to get us!” they are very deliberately trying to play a shell game of brandishing something that you all can identify as a blame-bearing entity in front of them so that they, their company, and their practices can have plausible deniability. No no, it’s “the AI” that stole all of your IP, or told you to drive your car off a cliff, not us. But the only reason you think it’s different than “a person at that company told you to do that” is the use of disinformation, wealth, and power to snooker you.
In many use cases, AI isn’t better, it’s just cheaper, and it’s only cheaper right now when trillions of dollars are being poured into defraying its cost. No one wants an AI drive-through – it’s slower and harder to fix mistakes. Companies only pitch it as the ‘better option’ when the alternative is an underpaid, burned-out worker. That’s a false choice.
This false choice is set up for you by companies that don’t care about your experience but want to save money. They’re the ones who only want to pay minimum wage, or have your support phone calls go to another country, or whatnot, and have already done that at the expense of you as a customer. The real option, doing it well in the first place, is always on the table. Don’t let them play you like a toddler and ask you “which of these two shirts you want to wear today.”
Over the millennia, people have always found a scapegoat for exploitation. First it was “the gods,” then “the laws,” then “the algorithm,” and now it’s “the AI.” Always keep in mind that all of these are only masks for one person – The Man. It’s not the mask taking the actions, it’s the people hiding behind them. Don’t get suckered into the shell game. Hold the real decision-makers accountable.
Demand better. Don’t be decieved into framing decisions and outcomes as being “caused by” AI. Journalists are the *worst*, they gave up on real reporting already in favor of “what someone said on Twitter,” and they are now happily replacing that with “ChatGPT says”, as if that’s thoughtful analysis.
the agile admin 