AI Replaces Labor

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Clarissa

August 28, 2026

AI has improved dramatically. I can ask it, for example, “where did Pierre Bourdieu talk about the embodied state of cultural capital?” and it immediately reminds me of the source. And then pulls up a link to the .pdf. I’d find it myself but it would take longer. I haven’t worked with Bourdieu since my Master’s thesis, so of course my memory is tenuous. Now I’m rediscovering him, and it’s a great joy.

Going back to my point, I’m not hiring any student researchers any more because AI does it faster and with zero drama. Of course, if I came across a student who’d be genuinely interested in the research and would want to have conversations about it, I’d hire in a flash. But that is almost never a thing.

I hired student researchers for almost two decades and it was never worth the trouble, the handholding, and the drama. These were all male students, by the way. Zero female students ever applied.

So I’m now one of the evil employers who uses AI to get rid of human labor.

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5 responses to “AI Replaces Labor”

cliff arroyo

August 28, 2026

“zero-initiative, weak and pliable personalities”

Not the reputation of Ukrainians in Poland at all, probably not least because it took initiative to travel to another country with a different (if similar) language and work or study.

A year or so ago I was in line at a bakery which had a sign on the door looking for someone to work Saturdays. Ahead of me, a lady with an “Eastern” accent asked about it and expressed interest since, as it emerged, she was working full time during the week and wouldn’t mind on Saturday too…

What is interesting is, in comparison, how few russians go abroad for temporary or longerm work…. it’s not like living standards for most are very high but the only ones who go abroad for work are those who already have (locally) high paying jobs at home.

But then, after a period of some loosening, the government has reverted to type and hammers portruding nails back into the board….

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1. Clarissa
  
  August 28, 2026
  
  After 1990, post-Soviet women ran headlong into the new capitalist economy, while their husbands headed to the couch to marinate in sadness and depression. N and I are very unusual in our respective environments in that our fathers both immediately found their place in capitalism, started businesses, and began making money. Among my friends and classmates throughout the ’90s, Dads either didn’t work or held on to their Soviet jobs with non-existent salaries. People reacted with shock when I would tell them that my dad works while my mom stays at home.
  
  Things definitely changed since then.
  
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  1. cliff arroyo
    
    August 28, 2026
    
    “husbands headed to the couch to marinate in sadness and depression”
    
    I’m not going to say that didn’t happen in Poland (especially for those working in factory towns when the factory closed) but it wasn’t the predominant pattern.
    
    But being closer to the west and having easier access to exit visas Polish men had been going to Germany and England and Sweden for short term work since the 1980s (or even the 1970s). And these were not necessarily working class at home, private business owners and university students were also likely to work on a farm or do (often off the book) construction for a few months every few years or so…. Even in the 1990s some students would go to Germany to do agricultural work in the summer to pay for their studies the rest of the year (universities here have nothing like summer semesters, they sit empty from sometime in July to the last weeks of September).
    
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    1. Clarissa
      
      August 28, 2026
      
      I guess it had a concentric effect, with the biggest damage concentrating at the center. That’s why Russians still haven’t recovered, while Ukrainians mostly have, and Poles did that a while ago.
      
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      1. Clarissa
        
        August 28, 2026
        
        A case in point:
        
        https://x.com/The_Real_ITDUDE/status/2093370740108136477
        
        Girls are still more aggressive in Russia.
        
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