by: Gary

Organizing about AI in the workplace – either in its usage or effects on our own conditions, or how it is deployed in products – requires a certain balancing act. Neither our bosses nor many of our coworkers will accede to blanket opposition. Further, a debate on that terrain will quickly turn into a tedious technical one on the current state versus future prospects, and many other unknowables. On the other hand, advocating to “use AI right” or “responsibly” will alienate the necessary activist core, who tend to be more negative on the issue. Further, it gives ground to the employers, accepting their framing that there is something necessarily important or worthwhile in adoption of the technology.

One possible answer would be that new technology introduction and implementation, as well as its claimed effects on productivity and headcount should be collectively negotiated and bargained in a contract – but that leads immediately to the fight for a union, which workers may not be ready to embark on, and whose timetable may be too long to address immediate needs. On top of that, a unionization drive often meets harsh response from employers, the introduction of union-busting firms, and an intense showdown. Ultimately, workers may want to move in this direction – but it is a long and difficult road, while the impacts of the current AI boom and need to confront those is rather immediate.

One idea we would suggest, applicable to union and nonunion workplaces alike, is an organizing campaign centered on asking for an “AI implementation committee” – a group of workers able to meet and speak freely without management, devoted to investigating the AI technologies available and evaluating risks and policies, with the standpoint of empowering workers themselves to understand the tools available to them and make their own, educated, choices, rather than face ham-fisted and clumsy “mandates” and pressure from management.

These sorts of committees, like any other proposal involving workers taking control over their working conditions, can be seen as a threat to the “prerogatives” of management. However, it can be motivated well to both coworkers and management alike as a way to ensure productivity, and get the job done effectively and correctly, rather than a challenge to the core propositions of company profitability.

As workers, we are all experts in the jobs we do – far more than those who read the rollouts of our scrum completion metrics and burndown charts – and even more so than the people that those managers in turn report to. We understand that we are not interchangeable cogs – we each have different specializations, work on different tasks, and over time have become accustomed to different workflows and tools. Our labor requires knowledge, experience, and creativity – which is why we haven’t been replaced with machines already. Our strength as workers comes from our ability to coordinate and collaborate. We can effectively make the case to management that we are not opposed to the introduction of new technologies – we work on them every day. Rather, we seek to be empowered and entrusted to do our jobs effectively – and giving us the space to meet and discuss, to speak freely and evaluate critically but fairly, and then present proposals, is an important part of that.

Gathering coworkers together to organize for such a thing can be carried out through building community and discreet 1-1 conversations coupled with appropriate digital and remote organizing tactics. Actions to organize for such committees could include petition campaigns, group discussions, questions at all-hands, all the way up to a march on the boss.