Hundreds of workers mobilize to 'Stop Gen AI' and help each other survive AI automation

A mutual aid group has formed to confront the impacts of generative AI, class action lawsuits against the big AI companies yield mixed results for creatives and more in this week's Critical AI report.

Greetings critics, coders, friends and luddites — 

How are we holding up out there? Any one else feeling a few fleeting glimmers of hope breaking through the dark polluted skies? Increasingly rare stuff these days, gotta take it whilst we can. But we have a lot to get to, much of it concerning the ongoing fights against tech companies’ exploitation of creative workers, in this week’s Critical AI Report.

First up, we’ll meet new mutual aid group that’s formed to help creatives and knowledge workers and anyone else impacted by generative AI—tilted, aptly, Stop Gen AI—and its founder, cybersecurity expert Kim Crawley. We’ll look at the flurry of legal action around generative AI and what it means for writers, creatives, and workers. In two major legal cases, the judges ruled in favor of the tech companies against writers who’d brought lawsuits against them; but in a twist, those “losses” might actually be good news for humans. Plus a new report on algorithmic inequality in gig work, Tesla’s disastrous robotaxi launch, and more.

A quick note that a chunk of this report is for paying subscribers only, so if you can, chip in and help support this work—a massive thanks to everyone who already does! Because of you, I can:

-Complete in-depth reports on the impact of AI on workers
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-Report on the ground on the destruction of Waymos in Los Angeles
-Focus reportage and analysis on workers, creators, artists, students, rather than big tech’s bottom line
-Read more news and studies and testimonials about AI than is probably healthy for any human to do

If any of that sounds worthwhile please consider becoming a paid subscriber, so I can do more of it, and better. Thanks, and onwards!

Part 1: Stop Gen AI

This week, I published the first installment of my ‘AI Killed My Job’ series, focusing on tech workers. Since starting the project, I’ve heard dozens of harrowing, dark, and absurd stories from engineers, product managers, marketers, coders, and beyond, each of whom have seen their livelihoods transformed, degraded, or replaced outright by AI.

One person who wrote in with an account was Kim Crawley. Crawley is a cybersecurity expert, author and college instructor who’s been hit hard by generative AI. Beyond that, she, like many knowledge workers, finds the whole commercial enterprise—and the Silicon Valley companies behind it—to be an ethical blight. She reached out to tell me that she and some peers were starting a project to do something about it. They were organizing a mutual aid group called Stop Gen AI.

Screenshot of Stop Gen AI’s website.

It is, as far as they could tell, the first mutual aid group intended both to help workers survive as generative AI companies erode their livelihoods and to organize a resistance among those who want to push back.

“My initial idea was to start a mutual aid fund to financially support creative and cognitive workers made poor because our overlords think we can be replaced,” Crawley tells me on Signal. “You know and I know that it doesn't matter how shitty the autocomplete torment nexus is, our overlords don't care.”

They booked a domain, StopGenAI.com, began holding meetings, wrote a manifesto, and organized a joint PayPal account. In addition to soliciting funds from the public, they’d offer incentives—anyone who donates $10 a year gets an .@stopgenai.com email address of their choosing. And the group, which is rife with creatives, plans on offering a bundle of art, games, and other works on Itch.io, the platform known for hosting indie games. Donations will be distributed to both members and nonmembers, with people in need—those who are housing insecure, for instance—receiving priority.

Stop Gen AI soon ballooned to 500 members. Artists, academics, folks with mutual aid leadership experience, and an organizer with eSims for Gaza all joined up. Donations to the group are open now, and it’s planning to launch the bundle soon.

For Crawley, all this is personal. Before Stop Gen AI, she says, she was feeling depressed.

“I made a pretty good income from researching and writing about cybersecurity, especially in 2021, 2022, 2023,” she told me. “I certainly wasn't a millionaire, but I was making enough money that I didn't worry about my finances. Starting in 2024, my income took a real hit.”

Freelance writing gigs dried up, and her working teaching cybersecurity at a university became jeopardized. “I teach a Master's level enterprise cybersecurity course,” she says. “But for how much longer, who knows? Because I am very outspoken publicly about how much I deeply hate Gen AI. Meanwhile the rest of the faculty and my bosses have drunk the Gen AI kool-aid.”

Crawley worries about the environmental impacts of AI as well as the labor ones. She felt that civil society was not doing enough to resist the rise of generative AI.

“I approached a bunch of unions and guilds,” Crawley says. “They didn't seem to be doing much to counter the Gen AI menace. That's when I realized I had to take matters into my own hands and not wait for someone else to take the initiative.” Stop Gen AI has already yielded dividends for Crawley, though they’re eager to grow and desperate to bring the group to public attention—there is power in organizing, and in solidarity, she finds.

“Starting the group had greatly improved by mental health,” she says. “Because we're doing something. We're not just watching Gen AI make all of us poor and destroy the planet.”

It’s not enough just to raise awareness anymore, she says. “I want us to actually organize and fight.”

Crawley asks that any interested parties visit the group’s website, StopGenAI.com, where there are instructions both for joining, and for donating. Info about the StopGenAI email address is here. I’m also including the Q+A with Crawley at the end of the post, as well, for those interested in reading our whole conversation.

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The BITM News Brief:

• Some good tech news for a change — the modular, easily repairable Fairphone, which also attempts to ethically source its supply chain, has announced a long-awaited upgrade.

• If you’re in LA, go see Annie Dorsen’s Prometheus Firebringer, an acclaimed play that, as New York Mag put it, offers “looping interrogations into how the omnipresence of AI is already rewiring our brains.” It’s playing at the Redcat, tickets are here.

• New research finds that, as the University of Pennsylvania’s PR team puts it, AI is “Perceived More Negatively than Climate Science or Science in General.” The paper is here.

• “Tesla robotaxi incidents caught on camera in Austin draw regulators’ attention,” a great CNBC story by friend of BITM Lora Kolodny, with a headline that undersells the absolute menace Tesla robotaxis are to the people of Austin.

• Power Switch Action and Gig Workers Rising have a new report out examining algorithmic manipulation, inequality, and working conditions for Uber drivers based on the responses of 2,500 workers. The report finds that the app’s algorithm works to prevent them from reaching bonus goals, penalizes workers for holding out for better fares, and more. Per the report: “vast majority of surveyed drivers report getting squeezed and manipulated by Uber’s pay algorithm, and commonly report serious financial hardship and psychological distress as a result of their unpredictable pay on the app.” It’s worth spending some time with the whole thing.

• Scale AI, the company that just got a $14 billion acquihire investment from Meta, has a massive spam and security problem, as Sam Blum reports in Inc.

• Friend of BITM Charley Johnson asked if I’d share his new course with Blood readers, and I am happy to oblige. He sent me this one liner about it: “Tech hype hides power. Reclaim it in Systems Change for Tech & Society Leaders—a live course with systems change expert Charley Johnson.”

• Unfortunate headline of the week, presented without comment:

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Part 2: AI lawsuits galore

Two high-profile class action lawsuits levied by creators against AI companies were decided in court this week, and while both were initially reported as wins for the tech industry, the reality is much, much more complex—and even, in certain ways, promising for writers and creatives taking on the AI giants.