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For the longest time, IT workers were 'protected' from Marx's alienation of labor by the rarity of your skill, but now it's coming for you/us, too. Claude Code
by a_bonobo 1y ago
For the longest time, IT workers were 'protected' from Marx's alienation of labor by the rarity of your skill, but now it's coming for you/us, too. Claude Code is to programmers what textile machines were to textile workers.
>In the capitalist mode of production, the generation of products (goods and services) is accomplished with an endless sequence of discrete, repetitive motions that offer the worker little psychological satisfaction for "a job well done." By means of commodification, the labour power of the worker is reduced to wages (an exchange value); the psychological estrangement (Entfremdung) of the worker results from the unmediated relation between his productive labour and the wages paid to him for the labour.
Less often discussed is Marx's view of social alienation in this context: i.e., workers used to take pride in who they are based on their occupation. 'I am the best blacksmith in town.'
Automation destroyed that for workers, and it'll come for you/us, too.
- codr7 1y agoNope, not until AI is writing high quality, maintainable software; and no one knows if that's even possible yet.
- hudon 1y agoWhat caused textile machines to replace the manual labor wasn’t the quality of their output, it was quantity. In fact, manually made clothing was of higher quality than what was machine-produced.
- codr7 1y agoYes, but they still filled their purpose. AI slop code doesn't even work beyond toy examples.
- hudon 1y agoAfter the operating system and the spreadsheet, most software is toys.
- gibagger 1y agoA low quality fabric makes the fashion police come and arrest you. Low quality software kills people.
- nullandvoid 1y agoSafety critical (will kill someone if not bug free) code makes up <1% of what's shipped, safety clothes which must be of high quality else risk harm to someone make up a similarly small percent Both will stay manual / require high level of review they're not what's being disrupted (at-least in near term) - it's the rest.
- sarchertech 1y agoNearly all clothing is still produced in an extremely manual process. What was automated was the production of raw cloth.
- hudon 1y agoThis is a distinction without a difference. Even if you take a rudimentary raw cloth comparison like cotton vs heavy wool (the latter being fire resistant and used historically used by firemen, ie. “Safety critical”), the machines’ output quality was significantly lower than manual output for the latter. This phenomenon is a general one… chainsaws vs hand saws, bread slicers vs hand slicing, mechanical harvesters vs manual harvesting, etc.
- sarchertech 1y agoThat’s just not the general case at all. Automated or “powered” processes generally lead to a more consistent final product. In many cases the quality is just better than what can be done by hand.
- gibagger 1y agoThere are many corporate nightmare level scenarios out there. There is no need to reach loss of life situations to make my point. A large enough GDPR or SOX violation is the boogeyman that CEO's see in their nightmares.
- sarchertech 1y agoThat’s a misconception. The machines we’re talking about made raw cloth not clothing and it was actually higher quality in many respects because of accuracy and repeatability. Almost all clothing is still made by hand one piece at a time with sewing machines still very manually operated.
- hudon 1y ago“ …by the mid‑19th century machine‑woven cloth still could not equal the quality of hand‑woven Indian cloth. However, the high productivity of British textile manufacturing allowed coarser grades of British cloth to undersell hand‑spun and woven fabric in low‑wage India” [0] “…the output of power looms was certainly greater than that of the handlooms, but the handloom weavers produced higher quality cloths with greater profit margins.” [1] The same can be said about machines like the water frame. It was great at spinning coarse thread, but for high quality/luxury textile (ie. fine fabric), skilled (human) spinners did a much better job. You can read the book Blood in the Machine for even more context. [0] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Industrial_Revolution [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_loom https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Dandy_loom
- sarchertech 1y agoThe problem with those quotes is the lack of definition of “quality”. Machine woven cloth in many ways is better because of consistency and uniformity. If your goal is to make 1000 of the exact same dress, having a completely consistent raw material is synonymous with high quality. It’s not fair to say that machines produced some kind of inferior imitation of the handmade product, that only won through sheer speed and cost to manufacture.
- bluefirebrand 1y agoIn fairness to AI, many software devs are not writing high quality, maintainable software But in fairness to human devs, most are still writing software that is leagues better than the dog shit AI is producing right now
- baq 1y agoWhy wouldn’t it be possible if meat computers can do it more or less reliably? The construction of such a machine is a matter of time; whether it’s a year or a century is anyone’s guess. When it is eventually made, though… it’s either aligned or we’re in trouble. Job cushiness will be P2 or P3 in a world where a computer can do everything economically viable better than any human.
- codr7 1y agoSpeak for yourself, I'm not a computer.
- baq 1y agoYour opinion on the matter is not relevant whether you are or aren't one. Besides, if our brains aren't computers, what are they?
- crabmusket 1y ago> what are they? They are brains. I think it's on you to prove they're the same, rather than assuming they're the same and then demanding proof they aren't!
- alansammarone 1y agoTuring machines are universal. Anything that does anything is, at most, a Turing machine.
- sarchertech 1y agoTuring machines are not universal. They can compute anything computable, that’s a huge difference.