Posts tagged AI
Will AI Benefit or Harm Workers?
August 25, 2023 // Recent breakthroughs in artificial intelligence (AI)—particularly generative AI products such as ChatGPT, which had 100 million monthly active users in just two months—have resurfaced headlines of robots taking jobs. While the scale of disruption caused by the adoption of AI in the workplace remains unknown, the developers and users of AI should consider the impact this has on workers. Moreover, policymakers also have the capacity to shape the ways in which AI will affect workers—either through their action or inaction. Responding to the challenges and opportunities posed by AI, Majority Leader Chuck Schumer (D-NY) recently launched a SAFE Innovation Framework that named security, including worker security, a key component of his policy objectives. Alongside this, the Biden administration is also in the process of developing its National AI Strategy—which, as the Center for American Progress has previously called for, must contain a plan to address economic and job impacts from the use of AI.
Summer of labor: Why unions win pay hikes and new clout
August 10, 2023 // This year’s bargaining sessions tell the story. The mere threat of a strike won longshoremen, UPS drivers, and other blue-collar workers big pay raises. The 11,000 members of the Writers Guild of America, by contrast, have been on strike since May. Last month, the actors union joined them on the picket line. It’s the first time the two have jointly struck the studios since 1960 and the most closely watched labor action of the year. Almost 3 in 4 Americans say they’re aware of the strike, according to a Los Angeles Times poll released Aug. 3. Among the issues are revenues from web streaming and the use of AI to generate actors’ likenesses.
LA Strikes Embody Widespread Anxiety Over Worker Pay, Rise of AI
July 31, 2023 // The city has almost accidentally become a microcosm for worker unrest. Actors and writers—on strike simultaneously for the first time since 1960—have paralyzed Hollywood. Cleaners and cooks are sporadically picketing outside hotels, including the Beverly Hilton, the longtime venue of the Golden Globe Awards. Thousands of UPS drivers could strike next week if the Teamsters rank and file don’t quickly approve a tentative agreement announced Tuesday, following in the footsteps of port workers who walked off the job last month. Los Angeles Unified School District teachers also went on strike this year, winning a 30% pay increase after more than 400,000 students were out of class for three days. And in May, performers at a North Hollywood bar formed the first strippers’ union in the US in nearly three decades. Companies say they’re being unfairly blamed for the rising cost of living while they try to find common ground with unions—a dominant source of worker angst that has also resulted in California having the highest rate of homelessness in the nation.
Actors and writers unions are fighting technological change. Expect change to win.
July 24, 2023 // Other issues relating to technology involve establishing standards for use of AI, which holds out the possibility that Hollywood may someday do away with actors altogether. The actors and writers can negotiate for better pay and more residuals (that’s likely what ultimately happens here) but the automation and efficiency being promoted by streamlining, digital, and AI are here for good. Show business was long assumed to be resistant to the type of automation that cost factory worker jobs. Machines cannot do what actors and writers can do. The unions are realizing that may no longer be the case.
Hollywood actors’ union SAG-AFTRA votes to strike. ‘We are the victims here.’
July 14, 2023 // The studios said the union walked away from an offer that included “historic” increases in pay and residuals, as well as a “groundbreaking” proposal for AI protections. The group said its offer included a requirement for a performer’s consent for the creation and use of digital replicas or for digital alterations of a performance.
Workers Plan to Quit But They Will Have to Compete With AI for New Jobs
July 11, 2023 // Company leaders should also prepare themselves and their workforce for the future. A third of employees feel their company won’t be economically viable in 10 years on the current course — consistent with the 39 per cent of CEOs who responded similarly earlier this year to PwC’s Global CEO Survey. Leaders must reorganize to uplift their employees, either by increasing wages or providing training to strengthen skills that AI can’t replicate.
Labor’s AI Concerns Get an Airing at White House Meeting
July 5, 2023 // Workers shared stories of employers who used AI to track and monitor pace of work, leading to an increase in stress and raising privacy concerns, it said. Labor representatives told officials they must be involved in conversations around how AI will be implemented, given its serious workplace consequences. The White House emphasized the need for collaboration between the government, employers, and unions to effectively implement AI.
“They’re Scared”: 5,000-Plus Demonstrators Rally in L.A. to Support Writers Strike, Pressure Studios
June 23, 2023 // The event ended with some sharp words from Dougherty, the Teamsters Local 399 leader whose profile has skyrocketed during the strike due to her unwavering support of the writers and the fact that many of her members have refused to cross their picket lines. “The studios and the tech companies wanted to push you guys down and try and break you. But guess what? We’re not gonna let that happen. None of us. No fucking way.” Pointing to the La Brea Tar Pits museum, she called the setting for the rally “fitting,” as it showcases some extinct species and, “I think what we need to do with the AMPTP is make them fucking extinct.”
American workers are becoming less productive. That’s bad news for the Fed
June 16, 2023 // At its most basic level, labor productivity is a measure of the value of the goods and services produced by a company compared with the amount of labor used to produce that output. Productivity moves in the opposite direction to wages and so if it remains depressed, there will be upward pressure on labor costs — and ultimately on inflation, said Lisa Shalett, CIO of Morgan Stanley Wealth Management. That’s a big deal to Fed officials who have spoken publicly about their fears of a wage-price spiral — the feedback loop that drives inflation higher as people make more money and go out and spend it. “The crosscurrents for the Fed are complex. Big bets about the pace of the hiking path are ill advised,” said Shalett.
Hollywood’s hot strike summer
June 13, 2023 // SAG-AFTRA members overwhelmingly voted to authorize a strike of its own should it not reach a deal by the end of the month. "We are collaborating together more than we ever had in the past," Duncan Crabtree-Ireland, executive director for SAG-AFTRA, tells Axios. "There are a lot of issues we have in common — and even on issues where we don't — we want to support each other." G/O Media, Ziff Davis, Wirecutter, the Miami Herald, the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette, the Palm Springs Desert Sun, the Washington Post, NBC News and others have engaged in strikes or walkouts. Unions at the New Yorker, Vox Media and Wired threatened strikes but ultimately resolved their disputes with management.