some content

Author: gbaz

_posts/2025-09-15-introducing.md

@@ -2,6 +2,8 @@
 layout: post
 title: Introducing the John Henry Committee
 tags: [meta]
+author: Committe
+date: 2025-09-15
 ---
 
 The John Henry Committee is a collection of tech workers and

_posts/2025-10-01-johnhenry.md

@@ -0,0 +1,15 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: King Ludd or John Henry
+tags: [inspiration]
+author: Gary
+date: 2025-10-01
+---
+
+Often those who are skeptical of the rollout of new technology are accused of being "Luddites," in reference to the often historically-maligned group of textile workers (swearing allegance to a mythical King Ludd) in the early 1800s who [smashed the looms](http://www.pynchon.pomona.edu/uncollected/luddite.html) at factories which exploited and degraded them. Some AI skeptics today have [taken up](https://medium.com/digital-architecture-lab/the-new-luddites-65c50851c4b7) [the mantle](https://www.dair-institute.org/projects/luddite-lab-worker-resource-hub/) proudly, while others resist the implications.
+
+Beyond King Ludd, there is another semi-mythical folklore figure who we belive can provide some inspiration for our current moment -- John Henry. As immortalized in the first folk song ever recorded, and one of the most-recorded folk songs in American history, he was the “steel driving man” who raced the steam drill in a battle of humanity against technology. But his victory came at a cost -- he drove himself so hard he laid down his hammer and died. The struggle against the consequences of technology and automation are nothing new to American workers. Just as rail workers built the infrastructure that connected America in the late 1800s, today workers in infotech labor on the digital infrastructure that connects the world. Just as workers like John Henry then, we are proud of our skills and our abilities, and just as then we are threatened by bosses who seek to replace us with automation. Most importantly, John Henry was not killed or displaced by machines. He died because of the bosses, and because of the speedup the bosses imposed on workers, through the threat of automation. Today, we believe this is the primary concern workers face – not that machines replace us, but that our employers use the threat of automation to degrade our conditions – making fewer workers do more work, through automation and speedups.
+
+As a myth John Henry has had many lives; first as a work song, used by railworkers to set the pace of their labor uniformly, and remind them to not let the boss drive them too hard, later as a blues song speaking to the hard lot of those forced to labor or starve, knowing from youth that “this hammer’s gonna be the death of me,” and at times a bluegrass romp, a love song, and even at the birth of country music. The story of John Henry was embraced by American unions in the 1930s, then by the American government in the 1940s during WWII. Recently, historians have discovered the figure the story was likely based on – which is also an important story about America. New Jersey born, John Henry was caught up at a young age by the prison system, received what “justice” a black man could expect, and summarily sent to Virginia to work digging the Lewis Tunnel on a chain gang.
+
+Too often, debates over new technologies, such as so-called “generative AI,” are posed in terms of those who support progress and those who are skeptics, or “stuck in the past.” We understand that workers have a variety of assessments of the future potential of AI and its viability, both technically and economically, and while many of us have strong views, we do not take a common position among them. What we all understand is that technology can be used to better society, and can be used to serve workers, making us more effective in carrying out work we take pride in. But technology can also be used to undermine our jobs and working conditions, to make our lives worse and the things we produce more lousy. What happens will be determined by who sets the parameters for its use – those who work and who know what they need to work better, or those in management who seek only to burnish their resumes and juice the statistics for board meetings. While John Henry is a hero in mythology, we take his story in the spirit it was first told and sung – as a cautionary tale, and a call to action.

_posts/2025-10-03-stories.md

@@ -0,0 +1,47 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: A Few Workplace Stories
+tags: [stories]
+author: Committee
+date: 2025-10-03
+---
+
+*These are a few modest stories some of us have shared about encounters with
+AI at our workplaces. Do you have your own story to tell? [Contact us](/contact) ,
+and we'll publish it in the next round!*
+
+### An Engineer
+AI usage was added as a section in promotion documents. Within 2 days
+a Junior developer presented a solution that did not need AI but had
+it. They cannot explain why it is needed over an alternate
+solution. Eventually they admitted it is because the company wants AI
+in solutions and they don’t think it is needed either.
+
+### An Engineer
+I shared the big AI points of climate impact, surveillance, job
+threats, impact risks with some friends and asked if they wanted to
+help with protests or talking to others. A few said they were too
+busy. One said they didn’t want to risk their job. Three said they did
+not want to put their visa status at risk. If I lose my job, I have
+friends and family nearby to rely on if I cannot find another job
+soon. With AI being used to fuel layoffs, longterm unemployment seems
+likely. It also seems likely most hiring is being done to work on AI
+in this field. In this country we also have less social services to
+fallback on than ever. And if you are on a Visa getting deported to
+your country of origin is almost a best case now, with worst cases
+including deportation to the wrong country, imprisonment in a
+detention facility, or disappearing. I cannot argue from a place of
+privilege that they should risk their lives for this. But this added
+lever is being used: deportation, social service cuts, AI are all
+being used to scare workers and take away their security.
+
+### A Dataworker
+A dataworker sits down and looks over the jobs available on the various platforms they work on. They only get paid for the moments they are actively in a job. If the job is not rejected. The hunt has to be fast to get the good paying work. FOMO (fear of missing out) keeps them at their computer for long hours, even when the work is not there, and earnings are not happening. They chose a job based on a few lines of text and a payment amount. The job requester could be lying about the hourly rate, they may not give good instructions, it’s all a gamble, every job, every day. The worker does not know what this work is going towards, and in many cases, not even the identity of the job requester. Is this facial recognition going to help ring cameras, or predatory military operations? Is identifying hate speech for moderation, or building a harmful chat model? The struggle between making money and keeping morals is ever-present, and seldom with all the necessary information.
+
+When it’s all done, and the day's goal has been met, they wonder how much of the work will be approved and when. Maybe they work a little longer for a buffer. Just in case. Just in case they don’t get paid, and just in case they don’t get paid for a month. But not too big of a buffer. Every unapproved job is a risk of rejection and harm to their account. Their livelihood could be taken away with no cause for recourse and no societal support when it’s gone. After all, they are not employees, they are not even called workers. They are participants, subjects, and contributors. Never workers, never protected, only exploited.
+
+
+### An Engineer
+I recently conducted an interview for a role—the candidate was asked to talk about a project they’re proud of, and they talked about a GenerativeAI setup they did. It made the interview very difficult because the actual technical task was minimal, and hence I couldn’t really get a sense for the candidate’s abilities. Furthermore, it was obvious none of the possible downsides of the technology were addressed, there was no effort to watch for hallucinations, drift etc., it was just assumed if the information looked good for a few days they could put it into production and never revisit. Crazy on so many levels:
+* The hype means the only acceptable projects to talk about now involve GenAI if you are looking for a job.
+* People are not actually taking the same kind of care and perspective around GenAI projects that they would around their normal coding.

_posts/2025-10-05-dream.md

@@ -0,0 +1,21 @@
+---
+layout: post
+title: Your Bosses Have a Dream...
+tags: [inspiration]
+author: Ben
+date: 2025-10-05
+---
+
+Your bosses have a dream. It is a vision of the future. It is a world of limitless productivity. It is a technology, this dream—a technology that can take any person and automate away all their drudgery, that can multiply their power to deliver, that will eliminate all barriers to success, that will make you go fast, faster than that even. It is a shared dream. They are all talking about it. Their bosses are talking about it. Their bosses’ bosses, the board, everybody.
+
+It isn’t even a dream—it’s already here, or if it’s not here already, it’s just around the corner. How could it not be, haven’t we been able to achieve the unachievable, haven’t the chips been getting smaller, haven’t we doubled our transistors every two years and won’t we keep on doubling them? It’s already changed how they work, your bosses, it’s made things so much easier. It writes emails. It summarizes their meetings. It gives them the pertinent information from all the documents they’d have had ordinarily to pretend to read.
+
+Sure, maybe it’s not helping you—but have you done the work to get up to speed? Have you figured out how to use them for the better, because we know these things work. Again, it is already helping them. And there are so many stories of people who could do things they never could without it. Somebody was right up against the edge of physics, so close they could see the other side. And, if it wasn’t the future, why would everyone they know be saying it was? If it didn’t work would they be selling it?
+
+They couldn’t do your job, of course, your bosses, with it, but it’s close. Look, it’s close. It can do so many things already. This weekend your bosses made websites, a mobile app, they planned their vacations, they almost got it to make a reservation for them at a restaurant. This stuff is crazy. And it will only get better. Aren’t you worried about your job? You should get to know it, use it. You need to. Otherwise you will be left behind.
+
+It’s not working for you? But don’t you see you need to figure out how to make it work? Your bosses need you. They need you to get them some success stories. They need to show we are all in. We are all in on productivity. You’re not sure you’re moving faster, and you’re worried now that things are slipping through, errors, time bombs. Won’t we be held accountable if something it does goes wrong? You have to figure it out, your bosses say. You can do it. It’ll get better, anyway, so we’ll be ready.
+
+Your coworkers are getting forgetful? They can’t seem to do the things they used to do without the tool, and they’re not much faster? And even when they’re faster, you have to clean up after them more—redo things the right way, and redo them again. You feel crazy—that’s just because you haven’t adapted to the new paradigm, everything is going this way, this is just how we do things now. Your job is to keep an eye on things, make sure nothing goes awry. Constant vigilance, you can do it, right?
+
+Your bosses have a dream. It’s a world where there is no more expertise, no craft, only execution. They imagine a world where the only special skill is care and feeding of the machine. Some believe in it sincerely and would be shocked to have it explained that in their dream the only people with any agency are managers, everyone else is a drone, interchangeable, cheap, devoid of skill. It’s not a real dream, it’s a delusion. They cannot eliminate expertise, the technology is not and will never be that good, they can only devalue it. Some know this is what they’re doing: getting you to take less pay or put out more work at the same quality because of the imagined “help” you’re provided. Renting out your humanity cheap to fill the void at the heart of Generative AI. For them, it doesn’t matter whether it works or not—it only matters whether you are willing to devalue yourself in the light of the onslaught.