I’m sorry. Recently laid off myself and management avoided directly saying AI was the reason, but other statements (C-suite talking about whether AI can do other work months before the layoffs, in front of me) convince me that was the reasoning.

The alternative prediction is that this is in fact sustainable and AI companies will in fact have revenue to keep the bubble inflated for a lot longer, just in the worst way - by extracting the value of human-created reliability and trust from the market:

CEOs have also bought into AI almost to a person, and are using it to replace workers, results be damned. AI can’t do the things they believe it can, but to them, if they can fake satisfying a need with AI for $5, that is preferable to actually satisfying a need with a real employee for $10.

The CEO is happy because his company saved $5 and he’s met his stock option incentive target, the AI companies are happy to pocket that $5 instead of the employee getting $10. Maybe they even raise the customer’s price to $12 as AI rent-seeking starts rising, and both companies get $6 each. Win-win, life will go on, just worse for everyone else.

Per the local government’s ordinance summary, this is a criminal ordinance and it’s effective 30 days after passage, signature by mayor and publication in the City’s newspaper. So soonest will be late March.

I agree the question is whether the cops will enforce, but regardless, it should be done. And it gives a clear tool to local leaders to (hopefully, finally) flip the switch and start testing Constitutional boundaries by arresting ICE for criminal acts, since whatever Stephen Miller says, ICE does not have “absolute immunity” to break the law, much less violate the Constitution.

PC costs certainly aren’t helping, but there’s an entire cross-section of income and age demographics whose only computing device is and has always only been their phones.

I was curious so I looked it up. This site suggests 1 in 7 households in the US “either lack a computer at home or rely solely on a smartphone for internet access”, heavily weighted to lower-income states like Mississippi, West Virginia, Arkansas and Louisiana: https://www.benton.org/blog/computer-ownership-and-digital-divide

Yes, that’s the biggest hypocrisy that can’t really be explained without partisan intent. Talk radio is almost entirely right-wing and always has been. AM signals - too low quality for profitable music stations, but far-reaching and the natural home of low-cost talk networks - have always been heavily weighted to right-wing content.

That wide reach is the chief reason why, despite the GOP always favoring the rich in their actual politics, they started heavily gaining support in all rural areas around the country from the 90s onward. In many rural areas, the AM station with Rush Limbaugh was the only - or one of only a few - they could tune into.