Weekly 7

For this week's readings, we read Astra Taylor's article "The Automation Charade."

With the rise of ChatGPT and the integration of AI technology within various softwares follows a growth in the sentiment that our jobs will be or are already being replaced by automation. For my experience as a designer, AI has been a supplement and a way to make our workflows easier, although there is quite the discussion on Twitter, Instagram, and Tiktok among other forms of social media that perpetuate the belief that the job of the designer will soon be replaced too. Both in my own experience and as described in this article, automation has not replaced human labor yet. Rather, the nature of our work is changing. As mentioned, food service workers are becoming bystanders who assist with technical difficulties and do everything the machine cannot easily do: answer questions, bring food to customers, clean tables. More and more, everyone's work will start to revolve around technology in some capacity. More and more of us will become tech support, troubleshooters, and maintenance.