Alex’s Reviews > Atlas of AI: Power, Politics, and the Planetary Costs of Artificial Intelligence > Status Update

This chapter was about labour, and time-keeping. We've seen how AI is used in a Fordian sort of way closely watching the time expended by the workers, in order to make production more effective. A Panopticon of sorts, if you will.

Or an Amazon warehouse.

An introduction to the concept of the Potemkin-village and the Panopticon. Both have a certain relation to Gen-AI. The Panopticon because both that and AI are ways to keep an eye on a multitude of workers and/or prisoners by extending the least amount of labour.
The Potemkin-village (colloquially known as an "image d'Épinal" in French) because everything is a facade and covering the labour of actual people.

"When a company introduces a new AI platform, workers are rarely allowed to opt out. This is less of a collaboration than a forced engagement, where workers are expected to re-skill, keep up, and unquestioningly accept each new technical development."

I think that's important to keep in mind.

I'm starting to see a pattern. The kind of pattern that is so obvious that we confused it for "how things are"

Oh fuck.

"The tech sector heavily publicizes its environmental policies, sustainability initiatives, and plans to address climate-related problems using AI as a problem-solving tool. It is all part of a highly produced public image of a sustainable tech industry with no carbon emissions. In reality, it takes a gargantuan amount of enery(...)"
Oh, so it's not even an original idea.