this post was submitted on 12 Nov 2026
13 points (93.3% liked)
Machinist
1421 readers
47 users here now
From Newcomers to Old Timers, a community united by the Industry of Machining
Rules Don't post illegal stuff
Don't post Porn (no sexy aluminum surface finishes don't count)
Don't be an asshat (harassment, bullying etc.)
If you're going to post NSFW stuff, flag it as NSFW, It's ok to post shop Screwups (blood/cuts) just make sure to flag it as NSFW
and Finally make sure to have a good time :D
founded 3 years ago
MODERATORS
you are viewing a single comment's thread
view the rest of the comments
view the rest of the comments
I won't judge you if you take the money, but consider that you are making your own job obsolete. It's fucked if you do, fucked if you dont.
If you don't help, you keep your expertise but you may be obsoleted later. If you help, you're obsolete faster.
Are you close to retirement?
I'm not even close. But it really is a "damned if you do, damned if you don't" situation. I guess the real thing that's holding me up is that there are hundreds of thousands of other skilled people out there that (if I do this job correctly) could just get laid off. It sucks. I stand to gain a legit retirement, but leave many to be unable to do so. I know it's very self-centered to take the job, but fml Edting out horrible autocorrect
It's the prisoner's dillema. Someone will use AI, will it be you or someone that puts you out of that job? AI is a really toxic technology.
It really is. I'm admittedly good enough to the point if I train this thing to the best of my ability - either MasterCam is going to buy it or maybe thousands of machinists are maybe gonna lose their jobs. I fucking hate it. I also want to not work :(
Any way you could sabotage? Train it well, but with some systematic shortcoming that is hard to spot but would become bad at a scale? Ideally something that could be written off as a honest mistake on your end.
Obviously never talk about it or admit to it, as it's probably poorly received. But I think it's the most ethical option if you can think of a good way of doing it. You'd get the money, and if you do it well you could fight the system from within.
Obviously I don't know enough about this specific case to know if it's feasible at all.
If I poison this, it could quite literally take down the manufacturing ability of two continents.
Only if they fire humans to employ AI tools instead, in which case they shoot themselves in the foot in the long run in either case. Human skilled labour remains essential if we are to have any innovation or progress. Such reliance would also make manufacturers the slaves of whoever owns the models once humans are no longer skilled for the job, and the laws of enshittification means that everything would end up both worse and more expensive over time. Making AI perform as poorly is the ethical choice.
The challenge is to find a way where it cannot in any way be traced back to intentional sabotage on your part.
@simple_sabotage@mastodon.social is an account over at Mastodon with useful lessons from history. :)