Little Empires Everywhere: AI & Coercion
By Anonymous
"AI is inevitable." This is what our billionaire owner told us at the end of our last all hands call. The company-wide meeting last month came on the wake of a complete restructuring of my department (the third since my arrival) and had one purpose — to make it clear we are an AI-first company and any misalignment with that will result in us losing our jobs.
Many things have changed in the last seven weeks since my previous article. My toxic boss was promoted to VP. I've been moved under someone who: 1) was a peer, 2)has zero experience in my field, and 3) is anxiously micromanaging everything her team does because she was promoted beyond her capability. The company also fired two-thirds of one of our core teams and called it empowerment, saying they removed the "limitations of process."
The various processes they are "freeing" us from are quality controls.
They fired all the experienced employees on that team explicitly because they were too "precious" about their work and too strict about the brand guidelines, which made them "slow" and "inefficient," and "difficult to work with." A few days after they were fired, we had a department meeting to discuss what would be expected of the rest us going forward.
The meeting lasted 15 minutes, with a deck composed entirely of AI generated slides and no questions or feedback allowed. My team was primed in advance to make sure we showed support and kept an eye on the chat to make sure no one asked any problematic questions.
In the meeting we were told to use AI for everything:
Creating and optimizing marketing collateral
Compliance checks
Technical fixes for the websites (they fired a bunch of developers this week)
Coding
Legal review
Researching and writing loan product information
Emails, messages, social media posts, images, etc. etc. etc.
Two weeks after that we had the all-hands meeting, where we were told, "AI is inevitable." The billionaire owner went on to explain that we didn't need to worry about AI replacing us, but we did need to worry about being replaced if we refused to adopt it.
When ChatGPT dropped in 2022, my original team was the first in the company to adopt it. Fueled by the billionaire's teenage kid telling them AI could do our jobs and enabled by an AI zealot on our team, we began using it to write.
Or at least, some of us did.
The team was divided. I was among the few who have professional writing and research backgrounds, and we were horrified at the immediate and unquestioning acceptance of a biased, hallucinating robot trained on stolen information by some of the most corrupt men on the planet writing all of our content for us.
Those of us who objected, objected openly and loudly. For months. I submitted a written report outlining my ethical concerns: the racism, sexism, and other biases built into the models; the copyright questions around AI scraping content; and my concerns about quality, security, and accuracy.
Eventually, my boss at the time told us AI was the future and if we weren't on board, we needed to find new jobs.
This is how people with power manufacture consent.
This is what coercion looks like and it is one of the pillars of empire.
In a recent interview, Google's CEO, Sundar Pichai (worth $1.5 billion) insisted people are very happy with AI search, according to "internal data." When pressed about the rising negative public perception of AI and the environmental and social concerns around data centers, he just reiterates people are happy with it.
The billionaire class (many of whom are getting extensively wealthier in the AI craze) have put out many such statements and reports.
Google says look at how many people are using this tool, that means they like it and want it, while simultaneously pushing workers to integrate that tool, making it increasingly difficult to opt out of.
Insisting that folks are happily using a tool that you are currently giving them no choice but to use, is manufacturing consent.
Consent has recently been a dominant topic in conversations about American society and politics. The #metoo movement, the abolition of Roe v. Wade, the Epstein files, and other high profile actions have drawn our attention to the topic on a large scale.
This is important. And I want to broaden the topic a bit.
American society hasn't taught folks about consent because coercion is maintaining the empire.
Consent isn't just about physical touch between persons. Consent is about all the ways our bodies are constantly being exploited and used under the empire and coercion as entirely normalized in American business culture.
Our work culture has been proven time and again to be harmful to our bodies. Everything from the active abuse in service and retail, to the stress, manipulation, and sedentary lifestyle that office workers are used to, to the explicit exploitation of any care worker, immigrant laborer, or prisoner forced to work for $2 an hour is a normalized part of our economic and political system.
Once you understand consent, you begin to see the coercion. Once you begin to see the coercion, you understand how little in our society we've consented to.
Not only can I not refuse to use AI without losing my livelihood, but I must also be visibly pro-AI in my company or my alignment will come into question. This means if you were to look at it from the outside, it would look like I've consented to using it.
Technically, I am "free to leave."
Functionally, I am a disabled trans person who is currently using the limited security of this job to provide accommodations to myself under a fascist regime that is actively trying to erase me.
Overt discrimination against trans folks is becoming a matter of law in various states. I am one of the most socially vulnerable people in my company right now. And whether they realize it or not, they are coercing me against my will.
Consent under duress is not and never will be actual consent. Within a company or under the empire.
“Little Empires Everywhere” is an article miniseries at Audacity. Our anonymous writer shares how they are navigating a hostile corporate environment in real time. Stay tuned to see how they fight for fair conditions while still trying to remain employed until better opportunities come.
