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Bernie Sanders says in a new ChatGPT-assisted report released Monday that AI and automation could eliminate nearly 100 million jobs over the next decade. Titled Big Tech Oligarchs War Against Workers: AI and Automation Could Destroy Nearly 100 Million U.S Jobs in a Decade, the report estimates that AI will automate away the jobs of 89% of fast food and counter workers, 64% of accountants, and 47% of truck drivers. The artificial intelligence and robotics being developed by . . . today will allow corporate America to wipe out tens of millions of decent-paying jobs, cut labor costs and boost profits, Sanders, an Independent from Vermont and ranking member of the Senate Health, Education, Labor, and Pensions Committee, wrote in an op-ed on Fox News. The result? The wealthiest people in the world will get even richer, while working people lose their jobs and their income. The report was compiled by Sanders and committee staffers, who derived their job loss estimates by asking ChatGPT how completely AI can automate various job tasks that are considered core or supplemental to more than 700 job types identified by the Bureau of Labor Statistics. Congress and the American people must stand up and fight back Its unlikely that ChatGPT would have a reliable view of AIs effects on the workforce today, much less in the next decade. The reports estimates fail to contemplate what kinds of new hybrid human/AI jobs (such as prompting or model training) might be created. Sanders also oversimplifies the real mix of tasks involved in a specific job type: A task to which a worker devotes 10% of their time might stubbornly resist automation, and save the workers job. There is tremendous uncertainty about the real capabilities of AI and automation, their effects on the rest of the economy, and how governments and markets will respond, the report states. The reports estimate represents one potential future in which corporations decide to aggressively push forward with artificial labor, the staffers write. But Sanders and his staff cite some (arguably) more reliable data points, including Anthropic CEO Dario Amodeis prediction that “AI could wipe out half of all entry-level white-collar jobsand spike unemployment to 10-20% in the next one to five years. They also cite Ford CEO Jim Farleys prediction that AI could eliminate literally half of all white-collar jobs in the U.S. within the next decade. The report also takes aim at the Trump administration, which has essentially abdicated any oversight of the AI industry, while taking steps to speed the arrival of the new technology. The Trump administration is poised to only entrench the power of [Silicon Valley] executives, the authors write. That must end. Congress and the American people must stand up and fight back to make sure workers benefit from AI and automation. The approaching storm Notably, Sanders chose to his op-ed the right-leaning Fox News, which has traditionally portrayed him as a far left progressive. But AIs impact on the workforce could be a rare issue that crosses partisan lines, especially when the benefactors of the new technology are identified as oligarchs and tech elites, as Sanders does. Sanders isnt the only one who seems to be sensing this. Arizona Democrat Mark Kelly recently released an AI for America plan, which proposes ways for AI companies like Google and OpenAI to help pay for the downside costs of the AI transformation, namely the necessary upgrades to the power grid (to support new data centers) and to expand the social safety net for workers who might be put out their jobs by automation. While the HELP reports 100-million-jobs number is provocative and contestable, the tech industry is working hard to suppress meaningful AI legislation — Sanders and Kelly are right to sound the alarm that a widespread disruption of the workforce is very likely coming. The real question is how soon.
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E-Commerce
Nintendo has filed a lawsuit against an individual it says is a moderator on Reddit, accusing him of piracy and facilitating a network of websites that offered pirated Nintendo Switch games. The video game publisher is seeking $4.5 million in damages from James C. Williams, who went by the username “Archbox” on the social media site. (That account has since been suspended.) “Williams not only copied and distributed Nintendo game files without authorization; he actively promoted their distribution and copying to thousands of others across a variety of websites and online ‘communities,’ and knowingly trafficked in unlawful software products aimed at circumventing Nintendos technological measures protecting against unauthorized access,” Nintendo alleges in the lawsuit. The filing claims Williams used Reddit to send thousands of messages, steering people to piracy websites and to help people modify their Switch consoles. In exchange for his services, he asked for “donations” of Nintendo eShop gift cards, the company alleges. Nintendo says it initially sent a cease-and-desist order to Williams in March of 2024, telling him to “shut down his pirate shops.” But Williams ultimately denied involvement with the sites and became “combative,” eventually deleting his posts, many of which were on the subreddit “SwitchPirates,” where Williams was cited as a moderator, the suit alleges. Williams is alleged to have made “hundreds or thousands of copyrighted Nintendo Switch Games” available for download. In its filing, Nintendo lists 30 specific titles that were pirated. While $4.5 million is a significant sum, Nintendo says in the filing that it could easily have demanded more. It based the amount it is seeking on other piracy cases, including one in which Bungie Software, creators of the Halo franchise, were awarded millions in damages for piracy sales. “Here, the amount of money sufficient to remedy NOAs injury would be extremely difficult to quantify; but it is indisputable that such an amount would be large,” the filing reads. Nintendo is serious about piracy Nintendo has taken an aggressive stance against piracy for years. Dolphin, an open-sourced emulator for the Nintendo Wii and GameCube, was a target of the gaming giant in 2023 when its developers announced plans to put its emulator on the Steam game distribution platform. Nintendo sent a cease-and-desist order to Valve, which pulled the listing. Days later, Dolphins developers announced, with much disappointment, that it had postponed the Dolphin release indefinitely. Nintendo is committed to protecting the hard work and creativity of video game engineers and developers, a spokesperson for Nintendo told the gaming news website Kotaku in May of 2023. Last year, Nintendo successfully shut down the Yuzu emulator, saying the team behind it had “facilitate[d] piracy at a colossal scale. The Yuzu team agreed to pay $2.4 million and ended all operations. Earlier this year, Nintendo updated its user agreement, informing Switch owners that if that console is found to contain pirated games or modifications, Nintendo has the right to remotely render the system useless. Should users “bypass, modify, decrypt, defeat, tamper with, or otherwise circumvent any of the functions or protections of the Nintendo Account Services,” the update read, Nintendo might make that “applicable Nintendo device permanently unusable in whole or in part.”
Category:
E-Commerce
First came the burning of the Library of Alexandria. Then came the news Snapchat is constructing a paywall around Memories. The company announced last week that its capping users free Memories storage at 5GB. Those who have spent the better part of a decade cultivating massive personal archives on the app will now be forced to either export those Memories or sign up for one of Snapchats new Memories Storage plans in order to preserve them. The promise of free unlimited storage has been a big part of Snapchat’s identity. For many, it has long served as something of a time capsule, where users could store and revisit old Snaps long after they expired from the apps ephemeral main feed. In the US, storage plan costs will be $1.99 a month for 100GB of storage, 250GB with a Snapchat+ subscription, or 5TB with Snapchat Platinum. If users exceed the limit but choose not to sign up for a plan, their oldest Snaps will be saved. The most recent ones, however, will be deleted to stay within the storage limit. The news that users will soon have to pay for what they had long enjoyed for free was met with backlash online. The only reason I have snapchat in my phone is bcs it stores all the memories, i had no idea snapchat would betray us like that, one X user wrote. Just ordered a usb stick so i can transfer 10 years worth of snapchat memories onto it, another added. An online petition with almost 9,000 signatures at the time of writing dubbed the charge a “memory tax”, pointing to the declining availability and affordability of physical media in an increasingly digitized world. For the buy everything, own nothing generation, an ever-mounting number of subscription fees are increasingly required to access everything from their own data and memories, to music and movies. Funny how i had to explain to my mom, 2 days ago, that you cant buy music anymore because theyve [put] subscriptions in place for us to pay for the rest of our life, until we die, one TikTok user wrote. And now I hve to transfer all my Snapchat memories from my teenage years on a hard drive. While most social media platforms dont charge for data storage (yet), Snapchat Memories can be positioned more like a personal photo album than a public profile. Companies like Apple and Google, which are also commonly used for photo storage, all currently charge for cloud storage once a user reaches a limit. High stakes for Snapchat For many loyal Snapchat users, the stakes are high. Users have saved more than 1 trillion “Memories” since the feature was launched in 2016, according to Team Snapchat. “Its never easy to transition from receiving a service for free to paying for it, but we hope the value we provide with Memories is worth the cost, the company said in a news release last week. Thank you for trusting us with some of your most precious moments. These changes will allow us to continue to invest in making Memories better for our entire community.” For those unwilling to pay, they are left with two options to rescue their Memories from deletion. First is to manually download Snapchat Memories to the camera roll. This is limited to batches of 100 at a time, which can be a gargantuan taks if users have years worth of saved Snaps. Another option is to use Snapchats Download My Data tool to save the Memories archive and have it emailed over in a .zip file. Either way, the company has given users with more than 5 GB of Memories one year to upgrade before the storage limits come into effect.
Category:
E-Commerce
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