384
Departing Meta staffer posts biting anti-AI video internally amid mass layoffs
(www.motherjones.com)
this post was submitted on 22 May 2026
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So how does this differ from any innovation? This viewpoint feels "anti-innovation" not "anti-AI". Computers put a lot of people out of jobs, but we don't wish they would go away.
My take: I don't hate AI, I hate the AI industry.
I've worked with classic AI for a very, very long time, I was even writing sentence parsers back in the 90s. AI overall is fascinating and can do wonderful things in science, medical, and other fields, especially ML-based tools. A good example would be MRI scanning, or tools I've worked on that scan for inappropriate medication use to save lives.
Some job loss with each phase of innovation is expected, but it's this blown up "AI can do everything" without errors BS destroying way too many jobs than makes sense that kills the industry for me.
The difference between this and computers or any innovation and what its prior is the pace of change which determines the social cost. Few would object to innovation if the innovation replaced them as they retired from the workforce instead of forcing them to bear the social cost mid-life. A family, a community, a region that goes through serious deskilling event is't a happy place. All sorts of real measurements of misery and illness go up. So this process isn't popular and frankly it shouldn't be acceptable. The situation we find ourselves in North America, prior to the AI shift, is to a large extent the result of a string of such events. A situation where nearly half the population wants to see the other punished. AI is promising to do a massive shift and quicker than many previous events, including at the uppet end of the payscale.
So yeah, it's not the technology, the innivation. It's how our capitalist systen rolls it out. At what social cost, borne by whom, and whom reaping the upside. AI promises a fast, painful change at a time when everyone is already struggling, without welfare to soften the blow, while concetrating the benefits in fewer hands. Benefits that also translate to power, economic and political. So people rightfully reject this proposition. The tech is getting tarred with it.
The system we have pretty much guarantees it won't be done right and you know it. I can safely assume that. Then I don't have to be too bothered by the distinction. If there's two options in theory but only one in practice, then why bother uhm-akshually it myself? No point - "fuck AI" is good enough. Don't mean I won't (have to) use it and navigate the landscape. I just bought a couple of R9700s for local inference for family and friends, to fuck AI.
AI can bring enormous societal benefit in non-capitalist systems. The AI we have today. That won't be us though. We're in for pain.
I agree that we’re in for pain, given that capitalism runs the show, but there is a world where AI takes mostly all of the jobs, where we use renewable energy, and capitalism crumbles by necessity. If everything is automated, and electricity becomes essentially free, then all necessities become essentially free. Of course, it is much more likely that the oligarchy prevents that from happening and we have no jobs and we have to pay for everything that costs them nothing.
I guess what I want to say is that the technology shouldn’t be villainized; the villains should be villainized. The solution isn’t to get rid of AI, it’s to get rid of the ultra-wealthy and work towards a society not run by late stage capitalism.
Agreed, but...
This bothers me, because this has the connotation of "this time it's important because it impacts me".
Automations against low level jobs were just as quick, they just may not have impacted the people you knew.
Doesn't have to bother you. People experience material changes first and foremost, which means they have to be affected by them. We're in this context, have much more information about the pace and impact since it's hapoening to us as we speak, in a high information environment where we hear our bosses talk in no uncertain terms about it. I don't know if its effect would be worse than deindustrialization. I don't personally put the previous events as less important, but I won't blame impacted people who do.
Why should "this bothers me" matter? It's a fucking logical argument. You either understand it or you don't. Your fucking FEELINGS have nothing to do with anything.