On Labor Day
I remember my father most on Labor Day. He spent the majority of his working life as Membership Director for the Virginia Education Association. I remember the work, the road trips, the lobbying, and the dinner time rants about political disappointments. Virginia is not an easy place to be a labor organizer. #understatement
Wikipedia is quick to remind us that Labor Day was established as a Federal holiday in 1894. In other words, in 1894, the government of the United Stated attempted to tame the labor movement in response to the Pullman Strike. Workers, they said, control industry and not the other way around. Or so the story goes. Everything is much more complicated than that, of course. And the ongoing history of the Labor Movement in the United States is no exception.
I have been thinking a lot about Artificial Intelligence and how it will impact Labor Movement. Creatives were the first to really feel its effects. The SAG/AFTRA strikes were just the first response to what will be an ongoing attempt by the higher ups in the film industry to widen their profit margins through the strategic deployment of “algorithmic creativity.” Who needs actors when you already have their image? Who needs screen writers when you already have all the words on the Internet? Who needs a good story when all the stories have been told? All you need is the right algorithm and access to the information. It is going to be incredibly cheap to make a movie going forward. This same approach for public education and it’s not far off. Education will be reduced to the dissemination of information by machines at some point. We will call at the democratization of public education and “free access” information. But what it will really be is a money making scheme by the very few on the backs of the many. The American worker will no longer be necessary for the survival of the American economy. This will not mean, of course, that the working class will actually have access to those profits. Far from it. The oligarchs will control everything. The rest of us will be living on the scraps. We will be basking in the glow of our flatscreen televisions pining for the fjords of the good old days.
i’m intentionally painting a dark future because I want us to see the implications of what is possible. Will it be this dark? I certainly hope not. But I do wonder where the creative rebellion will emerge first. I don’t know that the Labor Movement is capable of doing that work. I wish my father were alive today so I could talk to him about it.
AI will be very helpful to those who want to be helped. Scott Galloway’s Thought Partner at https://www.profgalloway.com/what-does-ai-think/ provides valuable insights. He says,
Right now, the “smartest people in the room” think they’re “above” AI. Soon, I think they’ll be bragging about using it. And they should. Why would anyone hire a doctor, lawyer, or consultant who’s slower and dumber than their peers? Would you hire someone with a fax number on their business card? As Scott says: “AI won’t take your job, but someone who understands AI will.”
This morning I published ChatGPT’s HF Alky Operating Procedures at https://psmreport.substack.com/p/chatgpts-hf-alky-operating-procedures. I had ChatGPT write me a story about running a refinery. It was pretty good. At the start of the post I state,
'If you are a process safety expert AI will not replace you. But another process safety expert using AI will.'
Replace the words ‘process safety expert’ with any other thought leader, such as clergy, and the message remains the same.
(Come to think of it, ChatGPT will write a superb sermon because there is so much information available to it. My first pass at this was ChatGPT and the Perfect Climate Change Sermon at https://faithclimate.substack.com/p/chatgpt-and-the-perfect-climate-change. It was good. Expectations for sermon quality are going to rise exponentially.)
Comment on the labor movement: I think something is lost in the oppositional character of the various movements that go into business and industry. Industry really is people coming together to gain power. Owners band together as stockholders to further their cause. Managment come together together to push their power and get larger bonuses or pay. They company itself is a coming together to accomplish tasks no individual could do alone. Workers band together to secure their fair share safely. Consumers come together to be a political force that holds down prices, guarantees truth in advertizing so they get what they think they are getting, and to advance safety, Political parties are gatherings of like minded people who come together to sway society towards their values, and to regulate the other groups (Republicans want to regulate and limit the ability of workers, consumers, voters, or sometimes even managmet to come togehter. Democrats just want to ensure the power of consumesrs, workers and voters. I think it is helpful to advocate in terms of who is coming together for what purpose. It solidifies the right of workers to come together to be a unified power, when it is understood that unions uniting is exactly what the stockholders are are doing but with different goals. It justifies the workers union. It also claarifies a goal to gain even more power by allying with other groups. Unions join with a poliitcal power, consumers and voters to promot similar values. Management often join forces with owners , or they are often used as the stooge of owners. I think it would be a good argument for unions to say, we are coming together just like owners and management come together, but with these contasting causes. I don't know why they don't make the argument in that way,