#mid tech

archived NYT article with no paywall: X

excerpt from a great piece by a college professor:

AI may be a mid technology with limited use cases to justify its financial and environmental costs. But it is a stellar tool for demoralizing workers who can, in the blink of a digital eye, be categorized as waste. Whatever AI has the potential to become, in this political environment it is most powerful when it is aimed at demoralizing workers.

This sort of mid tech would, in a perfect world, go the way of classroom TVs and MOOCs. It would find its niche, mildly reshape the way white-collar workers work, and Americans would mostly forget about its promise to transform our lives.

But we now live in a world where political might makes right. In the wrong hands, mid tech is an anti-labor hammer.

AI is already promising that we won’t need institutions or expertise. It does not just speed up the process of writing a peer review of research; it also removes the requirement that one has read or understood the research it is reviewing.

AI’s ultimate goal, according to boosters like Cuban, is to upskill workers — make them more productive — while delegitimizing degrees.

Another way to put that is that AI wants workers who make decisions based on expertise without an institution that creates and certifies that expertise. Expertise without experts.