Oncoming Training

“Three men stride across a cavernous textile factory floor of Texworth in the southern Indian city of Karur, handing GoPros and smart glasses to workers, including 40-year-old Shoba Kirubakaran. She’s packing yellow aprons decorated with chickens into plastic wrapping for the brand Designs By Danica. It’s the third time Kirubakaran says she’s been told to don a GoPro. It’s recording her every hand gesture, to train AI robots to take over this job.” These workers help train robots who could one day steal their jobs. (I’m pretty sure I’m doing the same every time I send an edition of this newsletter…)

+ An edtech worker’s account of what got left behind: How AI replaced me. “In the tech industry, it’s not good enough to just use AI. You have to believe in it, too.” This trend reminds me of an old Woody Allen line: “My father worked for the same firm for 12 years. They fired him and replaced him with a tiny gadget that does everything my father does, only much better. The depressing thing is my mother ran out and bought one.”