What happens when engineers stop thinking of their interests as fundamentally aligned with the companies' owners and management, and develop their own class consciousness? Tech companies are not pursuing automation purely out of intellectual interest; they are trying to solve looming labor problems that can no longer be ignored.
All of this is the backdrop for these companies moving away from human customers and human workers, towards AI solutions, invisible infrastructure, and business, government, or military contracts. The ideal for a tech company in 2023 is either docile humans ready to consume what they've been given, or better still, no humans at all.
Good to read this in conjunction with Ted Gioia’s post “Has TikTok Already Peaked?”