A-Infos (en) France, OCL CA #350 - Thank you for changing your job - by Célia Izoard - Letters to the humans who are robotizing the world - Book reviews (ca, de, fr, it, pt, tr)[machine translation]

In our report, we discuss the new conditions of exploitation at work 
brought about by the rise of the electric car, particularly with the 
company Tesla, led by Musk. It is the first to build gigafactories and 
develop new "processes" such as the one-time molding of the car's body 
and the hyperconnectivity of the vehicle thanks to super onboard 
software and a multitude of sensors. Faced with this "industrial 
revolution," some even speak of "Teslism." In addition to the material 
conditions of production and the extortion of surplus value, Tesla is 
developing the exploitation of "data" to implement autonomous driving. 
Here is a book review on the subject. The passages in quotation marks 
are taken directly from the book.

Through these letters addressed to engineers and researchers working on 
the robotization of the world (humanoid robots intended to provide "home 
help," autonomous vehicles), Célia Izoard aims to question the social 
impact of their professions and highlight the far from negligible role 
scientists play in the advent of technologies which, contrary to their 
promises of "liberation" from work, are actually contributing to making 
us increasingly dependent on industry, degrading our lives and the 
little autonomy that remains in our professions. In the book, autonomous 
vehicles are used as a paragon of automation to illustrate their harmful 
effects on society and the environment. Because yes, as one might 
expect, replacing a human, who only needs their senses and experience to 
drive, with machines is a complex, expensive operation, and not very 
environmentally friendly: sensors that are too many to know what to do 
with, onboard cameras, radar and lidar (laser radar), an onboard 
computer to process it all, 5G and its thousands of relay antennas to 
transmit this data and provide information on the environment, data 
centers to store it (1)... all underpinned by the electrification of 
networks and machines and the waste of resources that all this represents.
Research on this subject was funded "because the US military prefers to 
send robots to war in the Middle East rather than GIs. It's more 
acceptable to public opinion." And also because billionaires, including 
Musk, have joined the project with the fantasy of no longer "wasting 
their time in traffic jams in the San Francisco Bay Area." And last but 
not least, to save on driver wages and reduce logistics costs "in the 
last mile, the one where economies of scale are not possible."
Yet, at a time when mining companies are seriously considering the 
social acceptability of reopening mines in mainland France (very useful 
for the development of the electric and autonomous vehicle industry, 
among other things) and the accompanying rhetoric, "industrialists have 
packaged this mega-industrial project in rhetoric, which was then taken 
up by politicians and then journalists, as if it were self-evident." 
Instead, we're being talked about road safety: "We're going to create 
the most experienced driver of all time." The eco-energy transition, 
with the idea that electrification would be clean, sustainable, and 
neutral. Car sharing (no more owning a personal vehicle; there will be 
fleets of vehicles available for each of our short journeys). These 
arguments are briefly and effectively dismantled in the book, one by 
one. Added to this is an attack on the so-called neutral techno-science, 
represented in this case by two researchers from the LAAS (2) in 
Toulouse. This famous science, the responsibility for whose applications 
is constantly passed from scientists to politicians, without any debate 
or discussion ever taking place on the advent of this or that 
technology. "We, the 'public', 'users', 'ordinary citizens',[are]faced 
with a fait accompli. Or more precisely (...) the debate did not exist, 
because technology is not supposed to be political." She dismantles the 
neutrality of science in a few lines, which are worth quoting at length: 
"You defend the unconditional freedom of the scientist (...). What do 
you think of the freedom of others? The activity of the LAAS researchers 
has an enormous impact on the way people live, work, and communicate. 
The face of technology in this world is infinitely more decisive for our 
daily lives, for our fate as workers, than the fact of electing, from 
time to time, representatives of this or that side - who all share, 
moreover, the same enthusiasm for technology and industrial growth. 
Electronics in cars, for example, is something that everyone is subject 
to. It is directly responsible for the fact that most people can no 
longer hope to repair their own car, and that even the local mechanic is 
dispossessed of his know-how in favor of the "suitcase" designed by 
engineers for each model. For generations of users, this represents a 
considerable loss of autonomy, both material and financial; for 
generations of mechanics, it represents a daily deprivation of 
creativity and freedom in work. (...) Automation has the characteristic 
of capturing "technical know-how, often artisanal, to "routinize" it and 
lock it into a system that the operator only has to follow - it is a 
transfer of technical prerogative from humans to machines.»
In some sectors, this project has already seen the light of day, with 
varying levels of automation: for example, the adoption of autonomous 
transport trucks in the mining industry, which allows it to operate at 
lower costs and without having to worry about negative externalities on 
human health. We are still a long way from its deployment in civil 
society, with the replacement of our internal combustion vehicles with 
fleets of more or less autonomous electric vehicles, but while we wait 
for its realization, "this project already has a role: to postpone 
urgent decisions, to swallow up all practical reflection on public 
transport policies, to earmark all funding for ecological mobility."
The purpose of the book is both to denounce the absurdity of such a 
model, and more broadly, of the automation of professions, but also to 
highlight the role of certain humans whose jobs contribute to the 
creation of such a world. What emerges as a political proposal is to 
start with work and the rejection of it by those who have the means to 
fight against the deployment of these technologies. Deserting engineers, 
land naturalists, geologists against the mining industry (SystExt), soon 
archaeologists against extractivism... We probably won't make a 
revolution out of these desertions, but perhaps at least we will slow 
the deployment of the mega-machine.

Jolan

Notes
(1) "According to the head of Intel, an autonomous vehicle could 
generate around 40 terabytes of data, the equivalent of 80 computer hard 
drives, for eight hours of driving."
(2) LAAS: Systems Analysis and Architecture Laboratory

https://oclibertaire.lautre.net/spip.php?article4453
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