#labour intelligence

[hrsourcer]

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#WorkforceData #HRTechStack #LaborIntelligence #JobsPikr

[1000rh]

In the twentieth century, few would have ever defined a truck driver as a ‘cognitive worker’, an intellectual. In the early twenty-first, however, the application of artificial intelligence (AI) in self-driving vehicles, among other artefacts, has changed the perception of manual skills such as driving, revealing how the most valuable component of work in general has never been just manual, but has always been cognitive and cooperative as well. Thanks to AI research – we must acknowledge it – truck drivers have reached the pantheon of intelligentsia. It is a paradox – a bitter political revelation – that the most zealous development of automation has shown how much ‘intelligence’ is expressed by activities and jobs that are usually deemed manual and unskilled, an aspect that has often been neglected by labour organisation as much as critical theory.

– Matteo Pasquinelli, The Eye of the Master: A Social History of Artificial Intelligence (2023)

[thepastisalreadywritten]

Pope Leo XIV explains his choice of name:

"... I chose to take the name Leo XIV.

There are different reasons for this, but mainly because Pope Leo XIII, in his historic Encyclical Rerum Novarum, addressed the social question in the context of the first great industrial revolution.

In our own day, the Church offers to everyone the treasury of her social teaching in response to another industrial revolution and to developments in the field of artificial intelligence that pose new challenges for the defence of human dignity, justice and labour."

[probablyasocialecologist]

Following prolonged negotiations with many of the biggest companies in video games, the Screen Actors Guild-American Federation of Television and Radio Artists (SAG-AFTRA) has called for a video game performer and voice actor strike, beginning on July 26. Try as they might, the two sides have been unable to see eye to eye on the issue of AI.  “The video game industry generates billions of dollars in profit annually," said SAG-AFTRA national executive director and chief negotiator Duncan Crabtree-Ireland in a statement to Aftermath. "The driving force behind that success is the creative people who design and create those games. That includes the SAG-AFTRA members who bring memorable and beloved game characters to life, and they deserve and demand the same fundamental protections as performers in film, television, streaming, and music: fair compensation and the right of informed consent for the AI use of their faces, voices, and bodies. Frankly, it’s stunning that these video game studios haven’t learned anything from the lessons of last year - that our members can and will stand up and demand fair and equitable treatment with respect to AI, and the public supports us in that." Workers can now strike at ten companies: Activision, Blindlight, Disney Character Voices, EA, Epic, Formosa Interactive, Insomniac Games, Take-Two, VoiceWorks, and WB Games.

July 25, 2024

[eaglesnick]

“You know you’re priced right when your customers complain—but buy anyway.” — John Harrison

Dynamic pricing is not new but it has not been widespread up until recently.

We all know about train fares being more expensive during peak times and parents know that holidays cost more during school breaks than at any other time of the year. Airline tickets are subject to dynamic pricing and there was a trend towards off-peak electricity tariffs at one time. This summer we saw tickets for Oasis concerts subject to dynamic pricing, resulting in massive spikes in the cost of a ticket.

Dynamic pricing is when a company changes their pricing to match demand and supply. Hence train journeys are more expensive during the rush hour than in the middle of the day when demand is lower. Holidays are more expensive during school breaks because demand is higher from families with children.

Few of us like this traditional method of dynamic pricing but we have accepted it as part of our way of life. The old fashioned dynamic pricing model was fairly unsophisticated and based on the time of day in the case of rail and airline tickets and specific weeks and months of the year in the case of holidays.

This is no longer the case. Artificial Intelligence allows companies to literally change prices in line with changes in demand every second if they so want. Some of the companies using AI to set prices are Amazon, Uber, Airbnb, Tesco, Ocado and Sky. Amazon is said to reset prices every ten minutes.

The days of “fixed pricing" are fast disappearing. Long gone are the days when a company added up all of its production costs to work out the cost per unit and then added a little bit more in order to make a profit. This was basically what is known as the objective or labour theory of value. This has been supplanted by the "subjective theory of value" (STV).

According to the subjective theory of value a products worth (price) is not determined by how much it costs to produce but by how much people are willing to pay for that good at any given moment. At its worst this means that ALL goods and services should be sold for maximum monetary return regardless of the cost of production. No wonder supporters of neo-liberal economics favour STV.

At one level this doesn’t really matter. Oasis concert tickets may have doubled in original price due to dynamic pricing but not being able to afford a concert ticket is not a matter of life or death. It is however, symptomatic of a growing social problem.

The assumption of neo-liberal economists and their support of STV pricing is that individual choice is paramount in all economic transactions. For the neo-liberal societal values do not exist, there is only individual choice. Mrs Thatcher, the woman who championed neo-liberal economics in the UK, famously said: “There’s no such thing as society”. Many Tory's still believe this to be true but they are demonstratively mistaken.

During Covid we all stood at our doors every Thursday night clapping and banging pots to applaud the bravery of our dedicated health professionals. Yes, we did this as individuals but also as a society. When the England football team were progressing through the stages of the European cup we watched each game as individuals but also as a nation. The same is true of the recent Olympic and Paralympic games.

Ironically, some of our most ardent neo-liberal Tory MP’s have been recently admonishing us for not being proud of our English identity. Robert Jenrick, a contender for the leadership of the Conservative Party said yesterday that English identity had “started to fray” due to mass immigration and public institutions “dismissing our history”.

Sorry, the neo-liberals cannot have it both ways. Either there is an entity called English society, with its own history and set of values, or we are just individuals all acting according to our own individual needs. The fact that latter view is obviously mistaken does not deter the advocates of dynamic pricing. For them the goal is maximisation of profit regardless of social cost.

A thousand reasons why dynamic pricing is good for the consumer will be rolled out as more and more companies adopt this system of pricing, but the bottom line will always be making more profit. And in a system where pricing is determined by what price the individual is willing to pay rather than the actual cost of production, in the end it is only the rich who benefit.

South West Water has recently introduced the cruder form of dynamic pricing to their customers. They will be charging more for water use in summer than in winter. Consumers were given no choice about this and they have yet to be told what the charges will be. This “trial" will last for 2 years.

This is the spin:

“These pioneering trials are designed to make sure that water bills are fairer and more reflective of individual consumption patterns and are part of our wider commitment to making customer-first decisions in everything we do.” (CornwallLive:19/09/24)

Note the emphasis on “individual consumption". To my mind water is a public good, a societal necessity. As such I want to see pricing evened out over the whole community. Under dynamic pricing  the rich can consume as much water as they like because they can afford to pay, while the poorer members of society will have to suddenly become use conscious. While the rich fill their swimming pools and have the lawn sprinklers on day and night, the poor will have to think twice about how often the toilet is flushed, how often the washing machine is used and can they afford to shower everyday. The poor pensioner will be calculating whether or not they have enough money to water their beloved garden.

Ok, my pensioner being unable to afford to water the garden is a hypothetical scenario. The cost of music venue tickets isn’t, neither are the prices you pay for an Uber, a holiday let from Airbnb, the food you buy from Tesco or Ocado. Even the price of a pint is now affected by dynamic pricing.

“A campaign group representing pubgoers has criticised the move by Stonegate, Britain’s largest pub company, to raise the price of pints during its busiest trading hours in some of its venues by 20p..."  Financial Times: 12/09/24)

If the price of a British pint of beer is now subject to dynamic pricing then nothing is sacred!

More seriously, when the market economy becomes the market society, when those in power promote the value of maximising profit for the few at the expense of the happiness and well being of the many, then, as a society, we lose all sense of humanity, morality and common decency.

There has been much theoretical discussion of late about the threat of Artificial Intelligence to humanity. I would argue that maybe we should be more concerned about those  humans using AI to enrich themselves at the expense of the rest of us.

[bogreader]

i also find it so funny when radfems/terfs are like "women are just inherently more emotionally intelligent and empathetic than men" because i can barely name one woman in my life who isn't/wasn't emotionally immature lol. i think we're all kinda fucked on emotional maturity bc capitalism doesn't want us to really have feelings or empathy or emotional connection with each other because if we did we'd all be on board to overthrow capitalism already

[thoughtportal]

What is AI? A dominant view describes it as the quest "to solve intelligence"—a solution supposedly to be found in the secret logic of the mind, such as in its complex neural networks. Matteo Pasquinelli argues, to the contrary, that the inner code of AI is shaped not by the imitation of biological intelligence, but the intelligence of labour and social relations. Here he is interviewed by Richard Hames, audio producer at Novara Media.

[nando161mando]

CAPTCHAs tech companies exploiting free labor to train AI vision for defense contractors military drones and autonomous weapons

[pebblysand]

i need y'all to understand that as someone who knows waaaay too much about the war in iraq, alastair campbell's comeback to the forefront of public life with his Goddamn Podcast is making me sick to my stomach.

that's all.

[istherewifiinhell]

Rewatching jacob gellars Pinocchio video to rewatch tng measure of a man to watch metropolis to read rossums universal robots to better argue about why modern tf lore sucks.

[1000rh]

Why […] do we even use the term artificial intelligence, rather than, perhaps, speaking of “human-task simulation”?

– Erik J. Larson, The Myth of Artificial Intelligence (2021)

[allthebrazilianpolitics]

At the ILO, Lula advocates taxing the super-rich to pay for energy transition and create 'Global South's AI'

'Income concentration is so absurd that some people have their own space programs,' says the Brazilian president

The world has a record number of billionaires and, therefore, taxing the super-rich is the best alternative to financing the energy transition, particularly in developing countries. That’s the idea proposed by President Luiz Inácio Lula da Silva (Workers’ Party) on Thursday (13) during his speech at the opening ceremony of the International Labor Organization (ILO) in Geneva, Switzerland, which focuses on social justice.

“We have never had so many billionaires before. Three thousand people have about USS$ 15 trillion. It surpasses the GDP of countries like Japan, the UK, Germany and India together, and is more than the estimated cost for developing countries to lead in a climate change scenario,” he stated.

“Income concentration is so absurd that some people have their own space programs. They are, certainly, trying to find a planet better than Earth, to avoid staying among the workers who build their wealth.”

Lula said that “We don’t need Mars; the Earth is our home,” highlighting, however, that “the planet can’t take it anymore.” The Brazilian president also said that COP30, to be held in November 2025 in the city of Belém, will be an opportunity for the world – which is used to voice opinions on Amazon – to “listen to what the Amazon has to say about itself.”

In addition to defending a global coalition against hunger and poverty and for the end of permanent seats at the ILO, Lula said that the world needs a “new social contract that places the human being at the center of public policies.” He also talked about the use – and dominance – of artificial intelligence tools.

“We need a Global South’s AI project,” the Brazilian politician said, stressing that these tools are the use of personal data by private companies. "Changing this situation is a revolutionary task,” he concluded.

Continue reading.

[cheetour]

If you haven't been following Janelle Shane's AI Weirdness blog since 2014 like me, you're seriously missing out on some intelligent, critical writing about AI and predictive text generation, but more importantly: THIS MONTH'S NEWSLETTER IS AI-GENERATED CHRISTMAS STUFF AND LOOK AT IT

"Please generate an illustration where each of the 12 days' gifts are represented in a grid, each day's gift clearly labeled as an aid to someone learning the 12 Days of Christmas carol."

"Please generate a grid with illustrations of each of Santa's reindeer on plain white backgrounds, with the name of each reindeer printed clearly below it."

and, finally, the famous lyric from Jingle Bells feat. a horde of swarming faceless children:

(full post and more info here!)

[love222hate]

all the friends ive ever had issues with (except crash) ive LOVED their mum so so much. i ran into my chi chi's mum today and we had a lovely little chat about egyptian cotton bedsheets and her being fired. i love her so much she is so sweet 😭💔

[t0rschlusspan1k]

Not my usual content, but... yes, I'm tired of AI. FunkyFrogBait is absolutely a phenomenal content creator and I've been following them for a while. I don't think anyone could make a better job than they did in dissecting the issue. And they're incredibly funny and creative too.

Bonus:

[vortexofadigitalkind]

They Shut Down the Last Factory While We Slept - A Scarcity Engine Prequel