Posts tagged AI
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.
AI is now giving big business the power to bust labor unions
June 9, 2023 // All that has now been eclipsed by AI. Why keep an eye or an ear trained on employees, or purchase software to read their posts and Facebook pages, when a centralized AI can detect union-friendly phrases and behaviors in every Amazon warehouse automatically in real time and at zero cost? Disconcertingly, union-busting AI relies on exactly the same scientific breakthroughs that yielded the germ-busting AI. Before AI, researchers categorized molecules as vectors that either contained or did not contain certain groups of chemicals. This was no different, and no more efficient, than Amazon’s SPOC software categorizing employees on the basis of their perceived temptation to form a union.
Opinions | The WGA strike is part of a recurring pattern when technology changes
May 31, 2023 // Once again, writers and other workers in Hollywood are facing technological change, this time regarding the use of artificial intelligence in projects covered by the WGA’s Minimum Basic Agreement (MBA). The WGA has proposed that any MBA material be produced by a person, with writing credits to a human, and that no AI be used in the production of literary material for a film. The goal is to secure the jobs and pay of writers, with both initial minimum payments during production and residuals for back-end exhibition. The WGA, which has stronger residuals security and higher payments with studios than with streamers, is looking for closer parity, especially with streaming’s rise in popularity since the coronavirus pandemic. Could AI help script a sitcom? Some striking writers fear so. In a recent example of where the agreements have fallen short, Netflix forced the WGA into arbitration by withholding residuals, ultimately owing $64 million in backdated payments while still refusing to shell out $13.5 million in interest.
Push to unionize tech industry makes advances
April 28, 2023 // Organizing efforts are coming for office workers just as many tech companies are shedding staff, potentially giving employees new incentives to consider unions. The union pushes also come at a moment when workers in tech, as in many other fields, are feeling insecure about their future in the face of rapidly developing and increasingly capable AI-powered bots.