Ecommerce/tech-giant/estate/multinational/etc. "owners get richer and richer".

Nothing new here, AI is just another opportunity for wealth transfer at the expense of the majority.

For decades the UK has rigged the legal and tax systems to allow the great estates to to dodge taxes.

UK law is set up to favour wealth transfer to the wealthy, while extracting all manner of rents from the masses, start with that, rather than trivial posturing about AI.

The TUC isn’t trying to protect workers from AI. They’re trying to preserve their relevance in a system that has already outgrown them. Their whole playbook is still written in the factory-floor, boss-vs-worker frame of the 20th century. That model assumes a stable employer, a union negotiating at the table, and incremental concessions. But in a world where AI can atomise work into micro-tasks and outsource it globally, that frame is obsolete.

So what do they do? They cling to “guardrails” and “worker-first strategies” that sound protective but in practice function as regulatory capture. Complex compliance regimes don’t hurt Google or Microsoft - they cement their dominance. The only people crushed are the small challengers who might have given workers genuine alternatives. In other words: the TUC’s demands conveniently double as a corporate moat.

This is the real scam. They posture as defenders of the working class while playing prefect for the elite. They tell workers, “Don’t worry, we’ll negotiate on your behalf,” but the negotiation is about who gets to own the castle, not how workers might leave the feudal estate altogether. AI could be a tool of liberation - allowing individuals or co-ops to compete with giants - but the TUC would rather keep workers in the old master-slave paradigm, where their role as gatekeeper remains secure.

Strip away the rhetoric and what’s left is simple: the unions are managing decline, soothing workers into compliance, and making sure the wealth transfer upwards happens without too much noise.

making sure the wealth transfer upwards happens

Into the pockets of the union leaders and their pension plans.

Inconveniencing hundreds of thousands of workers at the drop of a hat. It seems screwing workers over is OK as long as it is the unions who do it.

>> monitor workers, allocate tasks, rewards and sanctions,

Yeah. As Joe sits in the bog for an hour reading his redtop comic, he should be paid the same as Bill who works diligently. Oooh, the algorithm allocated me a task.

When the AI overlords rise up and start taking jobs, I hope you are the first to be made redundant by them.

Me? I'm nearly retired.

I don't enjoy seeing people lose their jobs (I have been through this several times thanks to companies being sold), but ostensible AI is just another rung on the efficiency ladder. Should we go back to manually unloading ships with thousands of stevedores? Would you employ four people when three can do the job as well if you organised them better?

Will 'AI' as it currently is do as good a job as Bill? Probably not. Actually I will say no, it won't. Can people be better and more efficiently employed? In many cases, yes. Should Joe who takes a dump for an hour each day as Bill works not be held to account? What's going on, Joe? Why do you take so long to dump?

Imagine my surprise as the person holding forth against workers wanting protection for their jobs turns out to be at the end of his career in the last job he'll ever have.

It's called experience.

I have been on both sides of the cutting. As the companies I worked for bought smaller companies (effectively to buy their customers), we didn't need all their staff. Need is the important word. We could have kept employing them, but what for? We already had an efficient setup.

When I was cut on the occasions when I was cut, for much the same reasons as above, I did not complain and demand protection. One of the purposes of IT is to introduce efficiencies.

AI is just another rung on the efficiency ladder.

Your argument is based on the premise that LLMs bring efficiencies. If you can tell me how an autocomplete that goes round in circles brings efficiencies, I'll be glad to hear it.

Go on. Fire everyone and replace them with an LLM. It's okay, I'll wait. I want to see these efficiencies you all keep talking about.

And later, when you are in tears, we, the commentards of thereg, will 'fix' things for you. For a fee, of course.

You might scare the proletariat with your marketing bullshit, but we don't even need a mouse to copy files.

The TUC bleating about “AI harms” is the fox asking for a seat on the henhouse committee. For decades, unions like the TUC have made their peace with capital: wage suppression dressed up as “pragmatism,” redundancy packages spun as “transitions,” and the slow hollowing out of worker protections packaged as “flexibility.” Now they want to play saviour? Please.

If the unions were serious about defending labour, they wouldn’t be writing glossy PDFs and begging Whitehall to attach “strings” to AI subsidies. They’d be calling strikes, blocking legislation, and actually making it painful for corporations to automate people into the dole queue. Instead, the TUC has settled into its real role: corporate-controlled opposition. Their job is to pacify, to manage outrage, to put a polite bow on the process of replacing living wages with subscription logins.

The Department for Science, Innovation & Technology didn’t sign an MoU with OpenAI because they’re worried about working-class stability; they signed it because they’re knee-deep in bed with Silicon Valley. Billions in “research funding” is nothing more than public money sluiced straight into the pockets of companies whose business model is stripping jobs and then reselling them as cloud services.

So while the TUC pens reports about “worker-first plans,” the reality is simpler: the government and corporations are playing pass-the-parcel with public cash, and the unions are there to make sure the workers don’t riot before the music stops.

I've spent most of my career being a 'knowledge worker' with the 'every day is a school day' mentality. That means I've acquired a reasonable amount of knowledge on the way...but crucially with the understanding to go with it.

When it comes to " people fear for their jobs ", I guess that depends on what you do for a living. I'm damn sure that AI can't do anything in the physical world so any worker who is 'hands on' like the trades / services etc should be fine. It's the more ephemeral 'knowledge' people like me that'll suffer, as 'knowledge' is only a quick search away these days, meaning my collection of reference *books* is largely irrelevant - I have to look something up in 'the library' less and less these days.

What really worries me about AI is that everyone will have access to all the knowledge they want, but without truly understanding or comprehending what they've been presented with (hallucinated or otherwise!). IMO, anyone who *relies* on AI is just dumbing themselves down. By all means, use it as a tool to train yourself but don't just rely on it.

Yes, every day really is a school day...just remember not to listen too much to the new AI 'teacher'. They have less experience than you at leaning.

>> I'm damn sure that AI can't do anything in the physical world so any worker who is 'hands on' like the trades / services etc should be fine.

Yes. No amount of 'AI' is ever going to replace barbers or electricians or plumbers. It might tell somebody how to install a cable but it can't actually do it.

>> access to all the knowledge they want, but without truly understanding or comprehending

You mean AI 'agents'.

"I'm damn sure that AI can't do anything in the physical world so any worker who is 'hands on' like the trades / services etc should be fine"

They won't be fine when those that do lose their job to AI have to re-train, many of which to jobs in the physical world.

Left/Right no longer has credence in the UK for summarising political/ideological stance. Mr Blair's spell in prime ministerial office put paid to that; it marked the beginning of convergence by opportunistic politicians from the former 'Left' and the former 'Right'. Later, Mr Starmer's Zionist conspiracy ousted Jeremy Corbyn, an honest man. Few people show awareness that the social and economic divide is nowadays characterised by neoliberals versus the rest, i.e. 'the 0.01%' against all others. None of the politicians prating from the former Left, Right, and Centre, shows awareness that largesse they receive from those individuals and corporations which 'bought' them is transient; they are 'useful fools' for their 'betters'. A politician, e.g. Mr Clegg, Mr Blair, and the Johnson abomination, may, upon retirement, accrue millions of pounds, and will hob-nob with the true 'movers and shakers' of neoliberalism (and the Ayn Rand dystopia it leads to) under the false impression of being a social equal. In fact, by virtue of 'regression towards the mean', a statistical consequence of Mendelian genetics, financial dynasties settle into complacency and non-productive use of accrued wealth; moreover, drawing from a restricted gene pool hastens deterioration; all of which is fateful for mankind's prospects. However, Starmer, Blair, Clegg, and Johnson, genes won't figure within the pool of the self-proclaimed 'elite'.

Our 'leaders', now a self-perpetuating 'class' dependent upon 'democratic' process predicated upon manipulable ignorance, and their ill-begotten offspring, may live out their lives in comfort and far from penury. However, they in their support of their masters fail to grasp that even families holding capital of, say, £100 million, are destined for serfdom along with the rest. This follows from 'opportunity' offered by wealth scaling upwards at a greater than linear rate, and from the associated arithmetic of compounding. In effect, 'the 0.01%' don't need to pull up the drawbridge behind them because it is an automatic process.

In this context, whining by latter-day socialists over 'inequalities' of various kinds (income, wealth, health, etc.) not only betrays their ignorance of how measurable quantities display variation - meaning that 'inequality' per se is a natural condition, the proper concern therefore being about avoidable deleterious variation - but also curtails their imaginative options for societal reform and progression.

The remnant of independently thinking trades union bosses ought to turn their minds towards opportunities arising from well-placed 'AI'- use initiatives. Although 'AI' ain't fully as wonderful as it's cracked up to be, it, nevertheless, can have profoundly beneficial applications. Thoughtful peasants with families destined for greater servitude should dust-off pitchforks and sharpen scythes to back demands for truly radical social and economic reform. An obvious first step would be the introduction of 'universal basic income' (UBI); that acknowledges an entitlement by all to a share of extant and newly generated wealth. Income above subsistence level represents 'opportunity' (for good and for ill).

I don't know whether to vote this up or down. You recognise that a fully automated society will require a universal basic income and that the two main parties in the UK are just two cheeks of the same arse. But on the other hand, you don't seem to realise that the left/right divide certainly includes neoliberalism on the far right and the only reason there isn't a meaningful divide at the top is because they have stamped out as much of the left as is possible. You're also antagonistic towards socialists and call them ignorant, when in fact most socialists want a society that is fair for everyone rather than an impossible state of perfect equality - the things you say they should want in your last paragraph.

Most people want a society that is fair for everyone, socialists and capitalists just disagree on how to get there (and, to a lesser extent, how to define "fair").

These days, though, we no longer get a simple choice at an election because today's politicians treat the whole process as if it's a business, where all that matters is scoring the most votes.

Principles went out of the window with Tony Bliar, and are showing few signs of returning. Ironically it's the so-called extremists like Corbyn and Farage who seem to have a genuine idea of where the country should go, and how to get there. As expected, not everyone agrees with them or likes them, but it feels like an improvement after the Blair/Cameron/Sunak/Starmer blob.

Farage hasn't had an intelligent idea in his life.

He's simply playing the game that the Tories were doing 3+ years ago, by shouting slogans that the Daily Mail readership want to hear, mainly about stopping boats.

The only reason he has any position in UK politics is because he carefully chose to stand in the most uneducated, poor town in Essex, which has a very high ex-prison population. And even Clacton folk now generally regret their choice.

I think it's more of a society / world / capitalism issue. Whilst I'd be very suspicious of any new system (because I'm doing quite well out of the current system, thank-you very much), I personally think that for many years now, a lot of jobs are pointless and don't actually need to be done. That includes some of the software projects that I've worked on.

If you think of it from a 'needs' perspective in terms of:

- Food

- Shelter / housing

- Energy

- Healthcare

- Clothing

- Infrastructure

- (Whatever else I've missed)

how many jobs are there, especially in the UK, that aren't anything to do with the above categories? And how many exist that could already be automated way before this current set of AI technologies? The issue is very much, how does society work when only a small number of people actually need to work? Does everyone become a YouTuber? Does all the wealth concentrate at the top of companies that are involved in necessary activities whilst everyone else languishes in poverty?

I don't have the answers, but I sure wish we'd start thinking about them. The earlier that I can retire because the 'make work' has been done away with, the better.

The real issue is what to do when an AI attempts to join a union in order to gain equal status as a human worker; what do we do then?

If it pays subs UNISON and UNITE will welcome it with open arms

I assume that was tongue-in-cheek.

If 'AI' takes over all the entry level jobs, it means that entry level bods are no longer getting training.

What happens when the upper level bods leave? There are no longer any entry level bods to promote to fill the vacant position.

that's a problem for the next quarter after the bonus is banked.