> Her objections run from the immediate to the apocalyptic: the water and power consumed by data centres, what the technology is doing to people’s capacity to think, and research suggesting advanced AI could pose a risk of human extinction.
> Boyle is an outlier, and knows it. She no longer owns a smartphone, has deleted her social media accounts and now lives in a converted Toyota 4WD.
> She followed up in writing to Haagsma, setting out research on AI’s labour market and extinction risks and asking the league to pause its adoption.
> By mid-June, Boyle had told her managers she would not have Copilot on her laptop, would not put her work through AI systems and would not direct her team to use it. She wrote that the change was causing her significant distress and that she felt unsafe at work.
> Boyle is now living in a 1986 Toyota Troop Carrier with her cat, carrying a flip phone and handing cards to strangers on their screens that read: “I’m open to talk, want to have a conversation?”
She’s a kook who thinks she’s Sarah Connor. Your employer using Copilot is not a threat to your safety, you don’t get to tell your employer what they can install on their laptop, you don’t get to stop your colleagues from using AI, and if you write to the general manager warning them about the apocalypse you aren’t going to find them very responsive.
There are thousands and thousands of people who have been pulling shit like this for every topic under the sun, from contrails to fluoride in the water for generations. We don’t give them publicity because we understand the proportionality of their grievances and react accordingly. This is only making the news because the topic of this person’s fixation happens to be AI.
AI boosters on this site will be very mad that this person exists, but I'm glad there are people that stick to their principles. Principles that aren't just "productivity" or "efficiency". People can and should have other motives that are just as if not more important.
There will be plenty of "AI Boosters" lining up to take that job. If you think about it, she did exactly what the "boosters" wanted: get out of the way.
In this case this person was "responsible for getting five- to 12-year-olds to play football in the Hunter region".
She would have the occasional exposure to children, market to them, gather statistics and survey them. She asked if she could not expose this group to AI and the answer was "no".
Perhaps they can't or refuse to consider ethical arguments surrounding it? It's just tech as-is to them, without externalities (which is disingenuous).
Feels like a language limitation to me. It is hard to describe succinctly the complexities of AI use that preserve a human element or recognizes externalities. The wording is not immediately obvious and require subtlety that I rarely see in HN, unless it's about the tech itself and it's minutae.
Curious to see if HN could have any kind of thoughtful conversation on it but so far I haven't seen one.
Workers should get to decide individually if they want to use AI or not. It's the only fair solution. Unions need to fight for job guarantees not restrict their own members from using tech when they want to.
In what world does including AI “improve our workplace for all”?
All I see (as a software developer) is bad developers producing way more bad code which just increases my workload as I need to review it, which in turn they will just feed back into the hallucination machine so I just end up remote prompting something until it is “good enough” and I will fix it properly when I next work on that part of the code base.
Managers push everything to AI and to Southeast Asia trying to get things done cheaper without realizing how much technical debt they are taking on. Worst part is that if this continues actual good workers, like myself, will be fired for slowing down progress and in decade either so will be the bad developers as then the managers can just prompt the code or whole software industry will collapse under all this bad code.
Either way I see no improvement for anyone except the Epstein class.
> The AFL’s refusal to allow Boyle a choice is not unlawful. Employers in Australia can install software on the equipment they own, are exempt from privacy law when handling employee records
I really hate how the excruciatingly overdue reckoning for tech elites and income inequality is turning into this religious schism over AI and datacenters.
We're going to smash the looms rather than figure out how to share them, again.
The underlying issue is really capital ownership, what classifies as capital, protections around it, and how much leverage capital provides on a society and democracy (that part being the most important, IMHO).
Who owns the looms and what they do with them isn’t inherently an issue if all loom owners can do is buy an extra Yacht. Instead they can enforce ungoverned law on society through a combination of disproportionate influence in government and through market forces where private policy (especially at large) become nearly undifferentiated from law (the policy that benefits them becomes so widespread and normalized that alternatives are for all intent and purposes impractical or unreasonable, therefor private policy within a capital ownership domain is law or they’re a monopoly so their policy is the policy).
But I think you’re right, as always we’re going to focus on the adjacent issues vs addressing the root of the problem. The issue is what wealth inequality affords one, when it is capable of infringing on rights and livelihoods of others, not that they necessarily have to share the other luxuries and rewards of their attained wealth. I care not how many luxuries in life Musk has, I may be envious from time to time but whatever. I care a lot more when things he does or says has unrealistic influence and affects me directly, just because he sits atop a mountain of capital and we pretend that mountain of capital somehow was bestowed upon him from divinity that he should have such influence. I’m picking on Musk because he’s the richest and has clear examples of this, he’s by no means alone… it’s that class of wealth at large.
Pretty sure you misunderstood this person. I don't think they are advocating for the smashing of looms, rather fear that the movement that could redistribute the benefits of this new technology will go down that dark road again.
I also think the reckoning is overdue, maybe it will never come to be.
What reckoning? The reckoning for large scale IP theft, scaling up what they call "ghost work", the usage of natural resources and land which power data centers with no return to the people that depend on those and the already existing predatory and disgusting business practices that they have always partaken in. (I assume)
> Her objections run from the immediate to the apocalyptic: the water and power consumed by data centres, what the technology is doing to people’s capacity to think, and research suggesting advanced AI could pose a risk of human extinction.
> Boyle is an outlier, and knows it. She no longer owns a smartphone, has deleted her social media accounts and now lives in a converted Toyota 4WD.
> She followed up in writing to Haagsma, setting out research on AI’s labour market and extinction risks and asking the league to pause its adoption.
> By mid-June, Boyle had told her managers she would not have Copilot on her laptop, would not put her work through AI systems and would not direct her team to use it. She wrote that the change was causing her significant distress and that she felt unsafe at work.
> Boyle is now living in a 1986 Toyota Troop Carrier with her cat, carrying a flip phone and handing cards to strangers on their screens that read: “I’m open to talk, want to have a conversation?”
She’s a kook who thinks she’s Sarah Connor. Your employer using Copilot is not a threat to your safety, you don’t get to tell your employer what they can install on their laptop, you don’t get to stop your colleagues from using AI, and if you write to the general manager warning them about the apocalypse you aren’t going to find them very responsive.
There are thousands and thousands of people who have been pulling shit like this for every topic under the sun, from contrails to fluoride in the water for generations. We don’t give them publicity because we understand the proportionality of their grievances and react accordingly. This is only making the news because the topic of this person’s fixation happens to be AI.
AI boosters on this site will be very mad that this person exists, but I'm glad there are people that stick to their principles. Principles that aren't just "productivity" or "efficiency". People can and should have other motives that are just as if not more important.
There will be plenty of "AI Boosters" lining up to take that job. If you think about it, she did exactly what the "boosters" wanted: get out of the way.
Yes, I'm sure AI boosters are in shambles.
They will be, if they can't find accountability sinks.
https://www.commonplace.org/p/reining-in-the-unaccountabilit...
In this case this person was "responsible for getting five- to 12-year-olds to play football in the Hunter region".
She would have the occasional exposure to children, market to them, gather statistics and survey them. She asked if she could not expose this group to AI and the answer was "no".
If not then why do they get so upset here on every similar thread? Complaining about "anti-AI"
Perhaps they can't or refuse to consider ethical arguments surrounding it? It's just tech as-is to them, without externalities (which is disingenuous).
Feels like a language limitation to me. It is hard to describe succinctly the complexities of AI use that preserve a human element or recognizes externalities. The wording is not immediately obvious and require subtlety that I rarely see in HN, unless it's about the tech itself and it's minutae.
Curious to see if HN could have any kind of thoughtful conversation on it but so far I haven't seen one.
They’re accelerationists, they think it’s their moral duty to convert everyone to their way of thinking because their brains have been fully enwormed.
Strawman for a third time, might as well keep them coming!
Yet, here you are, commenting :)
In jovial mood, not in shambles though.
You're still doing the thing where you make defensive comments though, just now pretending it's about something tangential
Workers should get to decide individually if they want to use AI or not. It's the only fair solution. Unions need to fight for job guarantees not restrict their own members from using tech when they want to.
I don't appreciate the celebration around acts of individualism rather than collectivizing to improve our workplace for all.
In what world does including AI “improve our workplace for all”?
All I see (as a software developer) is bad developers producing way more bad code which just increases my workload as I need to review it, which in turn they will just feed back into the hallucination machine so I just end up remote prompting something until it is “good enough” and I will fix it properly when I next work on that part of the code base.
Managers push everything to AI and to Southeast Asia trying to get things done cheaper without realizing how much technical debt they are taking on. Worst part is that if this continues actual good workers, like myself, will be fired for slowing down progress and in decade either so will be the bad developers as then the managers can just prompt the code or whole software industry will collapse under all this bad code.
Either way I see no improvement for anyone except the Epstein class.
I think parent comment is saying this person should have organized with their coworkers who had similar complaints rather than resigning individually.
Which is understandable. The problem is not solved by resigning. The problem is solved by changing their employer's policy.
I don't think I would enjoy AI powered communism more than AI powered capitalism
Does Australia have privacy provisions similar to the gdpr?
From the article:
> The AFL’s refusal to allow Boyle a choice is not unlawful. Employers in Australia can install software on the equipment they own, are exempt from privacy law when handling employee records
Gdpr doen't apply to work you do for your employer, on employer's equipment either AFAIK
I really hate how the excruciatingly overdue reckoning for tech elites and income inequality is turning into this religious schism over AI and datacenters.
We're going to smash the looms rather than figure out how to share them, again.
The underlying issue is really capital ownership, what classifies as capital, protections around it, and how much leverage capital provides on a society and democracy (that part being the most important, IMHO).
Who owns the looms and what they do with them isn’t inherently an issue if all loom owners can do is buy an extra Yacht. Instead they can enforce ungoverned law on society through a combination of disproportionate influence in government and through market forces where private policy (especially at large) become nearly undifferentiated from law (the policy that benefits them becomes so widespread and normalized that alternatives are for all intent and purposes impractical or unreasonable, therefor private policy within a capital ownership domain is law or they’re a monopoly so their policy is the policy).
But I think you’re right, as always we’re going to focus on the adjacent issues vs addressing the root of the problem. The issue is what wealth inequality affords one, when it is capable of infringing on rights and livelihoods of others, not that they necessarily have to share the other luxuries and rewards of their attained wealth. I care not how many luxuries in life Musk has, I may be envious from time to time but whatever. I care a lot more when things he does or says has unrealistic influence and affects me directly, just because he sits atop a mountain of capital and we pretend that mountain of capital somehow was bestowed upon him from divinity that he should have such influence. I’m picking on Musk because he’s the richest and has clear examples of this, he’s by no means alone… it’s that class of wealth at large.
What reckoning? This is not related to tech elites in the least, but simply a consequence of capitalism.
If your think smashing this generations looms will get you there, your mistaken. See what it took for communism to take hold, and plan for that
In the case of the US, 1929 and WWII bought significant changes. Then Reagan started the path back to the XIX century.
This must be the most utterly trivializing summary of the 20th century I have ever seen in my life
Pretty sure you misunderstood this person. I don't think they are advocating for the smashing of looms, rather fear that the movement that could redistribute the benefits of this new technology will go down that dark road again. I also think the reckoning is overdue, maybe it will never come to be. What reckoning? The reckoning for large scale IP theft, scaling up what they call "ghost work", the usage of natural resources and land which power data centers with no return to the people that depend on those and the already existing predatory and disgusting business practices that they have always partaken in. (I assume)
"Tech elites" are so deeply intertwined with capitalism that they might as well be synonymous.
It’s hard for me to understand why this was downvoted since it’s plainly a simple fact.
A significant fraction of HN users are either are "tech elites" themselves or have paychecks that depend on them.
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