This is the script of my national radio report yesterday on how the
mistreatment of employees by Big Tech puts us all at risk. As always,
there may have been minor wording variations from this script as I
presented this report live on air.
- - -
So yeah, if you don't yourself work in tech you might think that how
tech companies treat their employees is an issue for those employees
and their families and this doesn't really matter to you. But that's
not really the case especially now, and especially with the Big Tech
Internet firms, because how their employees are treated may in some
cases be putting services that we all depend on at increasing risk,
creating risks directly to ourselves as well.
You may recall that it's been fairly legendary how well some Big Tech
firms like Google for example pampered their employees. Free food,
lots of other perks in addition to good salaries and stock options and
more. And it was partly this that led to such a big education push for
students to learn how to program, to learn to code, because those were
going to be the jobs of the future! But that's all becoming pretty
problematic now. And a big reason why is the truly staggering amounts
of money that Big Tech is spending now on generative AI systems to
stuff down on our throats on our desktop computers and phones and
seemingly in every app and service.
That's even though these AI systems continue to often be inept at best
and sometimes actually even dangerous. The firms are shoveling out the
hype about their chatbots and Search AI Overviews because they're
desperate not to be left behind and have wasted the billions they're
spending on power hungry data centers, and they've mostly yet to find
ways to make actual profits on this stuff.
And that's because by and large most people don't want AI systems
reading their private documents and emails and offering to generate
useless gobbledygook for them in return. And the firms often make it
difficult or practically impossible to turn the unwanted AI features
off.
With so much of their resources being poured into these AI systems, it
should be no surprise that Big Tech is increasingly on a binge to lay
off employees who aren't directly contributing to the AI efforts (and
sometimes even laying off employees working on AI), often replacing
those employees with AI systems even to write code.
And the employees who remain are often finding working conditions
rapidly declining. One of Google's two original founders recently said
that employees should work 60 hours a week for optimum development of
AI systems. AI systems, we should note, that might be used to replace
the employees that created them.
In addition to all the layoffs, some of the longest serving employees
of these firms, the ones who have the critical experience and
institutional knowledge so crucial to keeping legacy systems operating
and to help guide these firms in ethical directions, are fed up and
resigning.
At Google and various other Big Tech firms some remaining employees
have been working to try form unions for protection, and as you might
imagine that isn't being typically greeted with enthusiasm by various
of these firms, and a lot of employee morale at some of these firms
has collapsed.
And all this really matters because it's motivated, skilled, long-term
employees who are so crucial to keeping these systems running
properly. While the firms put all their eggs into AI that hardly
anybody seems to want, the basic functions of legacy services like
email, account recovery when innocent users are locked out of their
data, and much more -- so much is just left to swing in the wind.
It almost seems like these firms would be just fine with virtually no
employees, and with their dandy AI running the whole show,
irrespective of how much it screws up users and how much users hate
it. Maybe that's not where they're actually heading, but frankly, more
and more, it sure feels that way.
- - -
L
- - -
--Lauren--
Lauren Weinstein
[email protected] (https://www.vortex.com/lauren)
Lauren's Blog: https://lauren.vortex.com
Mastodon: https://mastodon.laurenweinstein.org/@lauren
Signal: By request on need to know basis
Founder: Network Neutrality Squad: https://www.nnsquad.org
PRIVACY Forum: https://www.vortex.com/privacy-info
Co-Founder: People For Internet Responsibility
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