Pluralistic: AI can't do your job (18 Mar 2025)
Today's links AI can't do your job: But an AI salesman can convince your boss to fire you and replace you with a chatbot that can't do your job. Hey look at this: Delights to delectate. Object permanence: 2005, 2010, 2015, 2020 Upcoming appearances: Where to find me. Recent appearances: Where I've been. Latest books: You keep readin' em, I'll keep writin' 'em. Upcoming books: Like I said, I'll keep writin' 'em. Colophon: All the rest. AI can't do your job (permalink) AI can't do your job, but an AI salesman (Elon Musk) can convince your boss (the USA) to fire you and replace you (a federal worker) with a chatbot that can't do your job: https://www.pcmag.com/news/amid-job-cuts-doge-accelerates-rollout-of-ai-tool-to-automate-government If you pay attention to the hype, you'd think that all the action on "AI" (an incoherent grab-bag of only marginally related technologies) was in generating text and images. Man, is that ever wrong. The AI hype machine could put every commercial illustrator alive on the breadline and the savings wouldn't pay the kombucha budget for the million-dollar-a-year techies who oversaw Dall-E's training run. The commercial market for automated email summaries is likewise infinitesimal. The fact that CEOs overestimate the size of this market is easy to understand, since "CEO" is the most laptop job of all laptop jobs. Having a chatbot summarize the boss's email is the 2025 equivalent of the 2000s gag about the boss whose secretary printed out the boss's email and put it in his in-tray so he could go over it with a red pen and then dictate his reply. The smart AI money is long on "decision support," whereby a statistical inference engine suggests to a human being what decision they should make. There's bots that are supposed to diagnose tumors, bots that are supposed to make neutral bail and parole decisions, bots that are supposed to evaluate student essays, resumes and loan applications. The narrative around these bots is that they are there to help humans. In this story, the hospital buys a radiology bot that offers a second opinion to the human radiologist. If they disagree, the human radiologist takes another look. In this tale, AI is a way for hospitals to make fewer mistakes by spending more money. An AI assisted radiologist is less productive (because they re-run some x-rays to resolve disagreements with the bot) but more accurate. In automation theory jargon, this radiologist is a "centaur" – a human head grafted onto the tireless, ever-vigilant body of a robot Of course, no one who invests in an AI company expects this to happen. Instead, they want reverse-centaurs: a human who acts as an assistant to a robot. The real pitch to hospital is, "Fire all but one of your radiologists and then put that poor bastard to work reviewing the judgments our robot makes at machine scale." No one seriously thinks that the reverse-centaur radiologist will be able to maintain perfect vigilance over long shifts of supervising automated process that rarely go wrong, but when they do, the error must be caught: https://pluralistic.net/2024/04/01/human-in-the-loop/#monkey-in-the-middle The role of this "human in the loop" isn't to prevent errors. That human's is there to be blamed for errors: https://pluralistic.net/2024/10/30/a-neck-in-a-noose/#is-also-a-human-in-the-loop The human is there to be a "moral crumple zone": https://estsjournal.org/index.php/ests/article/view/260 The human is there to be an "accountability sink": https://profilebooks.com/work/the-unaccountability-machine/ But they're not there to be radiologists. This is bad enough when we're talking about radiology, but it's even worse in government contexts, where the bots are deciding who gets Medicare, who gets food stamps, who gets VA benefits, who gets a visa, who gets indicted, who gets bail, and who gets parole. That's because statistical inference is intrinsically conservative: an AI predicts the future by looking at its data about the past, and when that prediction is also an automated decision, fed to a Chaplinesque reverse-centaur trying to keep pace with a torrent of machine judgments, the prediction becomes a directive, and thus a self-fulfilling prophecy: https://pluralistic.net/2023/03/09/autocomplete-worshippers/#the-real-ai-was-the-corporations-that-we-fought-along-the-way AIs want the future to be like the past, and AIs make the future like the past. If the training data is full of human bias, then the predictions will also be full of human bias, and then the outcomes will be full of human bias, and when those outcomes are copraphagically fed back into the training data, you get new, highly concentrated human/machine bias: https://pluralistic.net/2024/03/14/inhuman-centipede/#enshittibottification By firing skilled human workers and replacing them with spicy autocomplete, Musk is assuming his final form as both the kind of boss who can be conned into replacing you with a defective chatbot and as the fast-talking sales rep who cons your boss. Musk is transforming key government functions into high-speed error-generating machines whose human minders are only the payroll to take the fall for the coming tsunami of robot fuckups. This is the equivalent to filling the American government's walls with asbestos, turning agencies into hazmat zones that we can't touch without causing thousands to sicken and die: https://pluralistic.net/2021/08/19/failure-cascades/#dirty-data (Image: Cryteria, CC BY 3.0; Krd, CC BY-SA 3.0; modified) Hey look at this (permalink) All Games Are Political https://jacobin.com/2025/03/board-games-palestine-daybreak-pandemic/ Coding and Billing for Transgender Care While Protecting Patient Confidentiality https://chipsblog.pcc.com/coding-and-billing-for-transgender-care-while-protecting-patient-confidentiality Consumer Guarantees (Right to Repair) Amendment Bill https://www.parliament.nz/en/pb/sc/make-a-submission/document/54SCEDSI_SCF_AA85FBE0-E290-46F8-9344-08DC59CB8C95/consumer-guarantees-right-to-repair-amendment-bill Object permanence (permalink) #20yrsago NYT publishes anonymous remarks slamming anonymity https://wendy.seltzer.org/blog/archives/2005/03/19/nyt_catches_the_anonymous_wifi_is_evil_bug.html #15yrsago Peter Watts found guilty https://www.rifters.com/crawl/?p=1186 #15yrsago New ACTA leak: It’s a screwjob for the world’s poor countries https://web.archive.org/web/20100320075536/http://www.michaelgeist.ca/content/view/4886/125/ #10yrsago Brute-force iPhone password guesser can bypass Apple’s 10-guess lockout https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=meEyYFlSahk #10yrsago Terry Pratchett’s advice to booksellers https://web.archive.org/web/20150319205013/https://www.thebookseller.com/blogs/advice-booksellers #5yrsago Magic in the time of coronavirus https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#corona-conjuror #5yrsago Fox News is a suicide cult https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#fox-cult #5yrsago How to structure a fair covid bailout https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#peoples-bailout #5yrsago Data is the New Toxic Waste https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#oily-rags-r-us #5yrsago Africa's Facebook modders are world leaders https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#self-determination #5yrsago Canada Reads documentary on Radicalized https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#canadareads #5yrsago The worst Democrat in Congress just lost his job https://pluralistic.net/2020/03/19/gb-whatsapp/#lipinski-slain Upcoming appearances (permalink) Europa Park: Cloudfest, Mar 17-20 https://cloudfest.link/ San Diego: Picks and Shovels at Mysterious Galaxy, Mar 24 https://www.mystgalaxy.com/32425Doctorow Virtual: Picks and Shovels at Imagine! Belfast, Mar 24 https://www.eventbrite.co.uk/e/cory-doctorow-in-conversation-with-alan-meban-tickets-1106421399189 Chicago: Picks and Shovels with Peter Sagal, Apr 2 https://exileinbookville.com/events/44853 Chicago: ABA Techshow, Apr 3 https://www.techshow.com/ Bloomington: Picks and Shovels at Morgenstern, Apr 4 https://morgensternbooks.com/event/2025-04-04/author-event-cory-doctorow Pittsburgh: Picks and Shovels at White Whale Books, May 15 https://whitewhalebookstore.com/events/20250515 Pittsburgh: PyCon, May 16 https://us.pycon.org/2025/schedule/ PDX: Teardown 2025, Jun 20-22 https://www.crowdsupply.com/teardown/portland-2025 PDX: Picks and Shovels at Barnes and Noble, Jun 20 https://stores.barnesandnoble.com/event/9780062183697-0 New Orleans: DeepSouthCon63, Oct 10-12, 2025 http://www.contraflowscifi.org/ Recent appearances (permalink) The internet that could have been was ruined by billionaires (Real News Network) https://therealnews.com/the-internet-that-could-have-been-was-ruined-by-billionaires Organized Money https://audio.buzzsprout.com/6f5ly01qcx6ijokbvoamr794ht81 Did Nothing Wrong https://www.didnothingwrongpod.com/p/episode-168-cory-doctorow Latest books (permalink) Picks and Shovels: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about the heroic era of the PC, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2025 (https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250865908/picksandshovels). The Bezzle: a sequel to "Red Team Blues," about prison-tech and other grifts, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), February 2024 (the-bezzle.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3062/Available_Feb_20th%3A_The_Bezzle_HB.html#/). "The Lost Cause:" a solarpunk novel of hope in the climate emergency, Tor Books (US), Head of Zeus (UK), November 2023 (http://lost-cause.org). Signed, personalized copies at Dark Delicacies (https://www.darkdel.com/store/p3007/Pre-Order_Signed_Copies%3A_The_Lost_Cause_HB.html#/) "The Internet Con": A nonfiction book about interoperability and Big Tech (Verso) September 2023 (http://seizethemeansofcomputation.org). Signed copies at Book Soup (https://www.booksoup.com/book/9781804291245). "Red Team Blues": "A grabby, compulsive thriller that will leave you knowing more about how the world works than you did before." Tor Books http://redteamblues.com. Signed copies at Dark Delicacies (US): and Forbidden Planet (UK): https://forbiddenplanet.com/385004-red-team-blues-signed-edition-hardcover/. "Chokepoint Capitalism: How to Beat Big Tech, Tame Big Content, and Get Artists Paid, with Rebecca Giblin", on how to unrig the markets for creative labor, Beacon Press/Scribe 2022 https://chokepointcapitalism.com "Attack Surface": The third Little Brother novel, a standalone technothriller for adults. The Washington Post called it "a political cyberthriller, vigorous, bold and savvy about the limits of revolution and resistance." Order signed, personalized copies from Dark Delicacies https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1840/Available_Now%3A_Attack_Surface.html "How to Destroy Surveillance Capitalism": an anti-monopoly pamphlet analyzing the true harms of surveillance capitalism and proposing a solution. https://onezero.medium.com/how-to-destroy-surveillance-capitalism-8135e6744d59?sk=f6cd10e54e20a07d4c6d0f3ac011af6b) (signed copies: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2024/Available_Now%3A__How_to_Destroy_Surveillance_Capitalism.html) "Little Brother/Homeland": A reissue omnibus edition with a new introduction by Edward Snowden: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781250774583; personalized/signed copies here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p1750/July%3A__Little_Brother_%26_Homeland.html "Poesy the Monster Slayer" a picture book about monsters, bedtime, gender, and kicking ass. Order here: https://us.macmillan.com/books/9781626723627. Get a personalized, signed copy here: https://www.darkdel.com/store/p2682/Corey_Doctorow%3A_Poesy_the_Monster_Slayer_HB.html#/. Upcoming books (permalink) Enshittification: Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, October 7 2025 https://us.macmillan.com/books/9780374619329/enshittification/ Unauthorized Bread: a middle-grades graphic novel adapted from my novella about refugees, toasters and DRM, FirstSecond, 2026 Enshittification, Why Everything Suddenly Got Worse and What to Do About It (the graphic novel), Firstsecond, 2026 The Memex Method, Farrar, Straus, Giroux, 2026 Colophon (permalink) Today's top sources: Currently writing: Enshittification: a nonfiction book about platform decay for Farrar, Straus, Giroux. Status: second pass edit underway (readaloud) A Little Brother short story about DIY insulin PLANNING Picks and Shovels, a Martin Hench noir thriller about the heroic era of the PC. FORTHCOMING TOR BOOKS FEB 2025 Latest podcast: With Great Power Came No Responsibility: How Enshittification Conquered the 21st Century and How We Can Overthrow It https://craphound.com/news/2025/02/26/with-great-power-came-no-responsibility-how-enshittification-conquered-the-21st-century-and-how-we-can-overthrow-it/ This work – excluding any serialized fiction – is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 license. That means you can use it any way you like, including commercially, provided that you attribute it to me, Cory Doctorow, and include a link to pluralistic.net. https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/ Quotations and images are not included in this license; they are included either under a limitation or exception to copyright, or on the basis of a separate license. Please exercise caution. 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