“The structure of industry and the balance of economic power matter. The worst excesses of the Industrial Revolution were eventually countered by a labour movement demanding that workers be treated better and receive more of the proceeds. Where employees have no power, they can expect to be squeezed or displaced. Where workers are more important and understood as essential and better represented, AIs may be deployed or developed in an augmentative fashion.” (Wu, Age of Extraction)

This past week, Meta laid off another 8000 employees who found out via 4am emails. AI was cited as the reason. Yesterday, Webflow laid off a significant portion of their workforce, many who seem to report being locked out of their laptops with no explanation. Again, AI was cited as the reason. Cisco announced earlier this month that despite year-over-year revenue being up 12%, they were letting go of 4000 employees. Because AI.

The year isn't even half over and the tech industry has already seen around 150,000 layoffs in 2026. Amazon, Pinterest, Paypal, Intuit, Dell, Oracle, Cloudflare, Salesforc—the list goes on and on. And while AI might not have been the stated reason for all of these layoffs, it's certainly being used as a justifying reason for many of them. What was once thinly veiled as 'efficiency cuts' are now being outright touted as the result of companies going all in on AI. But whatever you want to call it, the point is that these companies do not care because they have no reason to. The only thing that matters to them is shareholder profit.

White collar workers have long resisted the idea that we need unions because we wanted to see ourselves as more important—more valuable to the companies we worked for. We told ourselves that we weren't just labourers, we were co-creators with the companies. It's all bullshit.

Tech workers need unionization and AI platforms need government regulation. These things need to be non-negotiables in our societal participation in AI.

“I would suggest that convenience is the most underestimated and least understood force in the world today. As a driver of human decisions, it may not offer the illicit thrill of Freud’s unconscious sexual desires or the mathematical elegance of the economist’s incentives. Convenience is boring. But boring is not the same thing as trivial." — Tim Wu, The Age of Extraction

This is an interesting argument about what is driving the takeover of tech in our lives. The platforms that win the attention game are the ones who make things easiest. Wu describes the concept of 'couch lock,' a stoner term for the inability to move once you get comfortable, as a way of understanding this. Shifting your attention off of a platform, let alone leaving it altogether, becomes a chore.

This makes me wonder about the things that are intentionally slower and more deliberate, things that maybe take a bit more effort. How do you get people to choose inconvenience?

Okay, I've been a bit quiet with serious reading because I got fully hooked on Dungeon Crawler Carl. I think I read all of them in less than two months (finished #8 today). Now I wait for the next one...

There's been a lot of standout moments for me, some absurdly hilarious, some genuinely moving, and others deeply profound. Here's a bit that is currently sitting with me from the most recent book, a Parade of Horribles, in which the AI—spiralling a bit in a sort of existential crisis—is reflecting on what it has observed about human behaviour in the face of overwhelming odds stacked against them:

"I’m searching. Oh, how I’m searching, trying to answer that question. Is there such a thing as fate? You know what I’m finding? You’re unpredictable on a micro-level, but on a macro, long-term level you’re just like any other algorithm. But you know what I’m also finding? Deliberate actions, times when you’ve finally had enough, when you say I am going to make a change—that’s when your possibilities really open up. It’s an important lesson. No, I don’t understand motivations, certain types of emotions, but I do understand that."

I kind of love this idea that to an alien, or artificial super intelligence, we are still always capable of surprise. No matter how rigged the system might seem, or how out of options we might feel—it's not over. We choose life.

There's another line, repeated multiple times in the last couple books, "survival has more than one meaning." This is just as important. Choosing life is about more than just living, it's also not losing something essentially human in the process. Preserving the value and sanctity of life matters. How we survive matters.

“The companies insisted on their right to use facial-recognition systems to identify a stranger on the street without first obtaining the individual’s consent. As one lobbyist in the talks told the press, ‘Everyone has the right to take photographs in public… if someone wants to apply facial recognition, should they really need to get consent in advance?’”

Alongside reading the Age of Surveillance Capitalism, I've been blitzing through the Dungeon Crawler Carl series (currently on book 5). I like to have a fun read going at the same time as something more serious.

And it's been a fun read. Genuine laugh-out-loud moments and captivating plot point moments. It's one of those series I find myself sneaking in reading almost every free moment I have. So, kudos to Matt Dinniman.

However, I have also found the world building and larger story very motivating. It's the story of resistance and pushing back against a machine and system that only wants to break you. There was one part in the second book that I found myself reflecting on.

“If it used to be okay, but it’s not okay anymore, then maybe you should do something about it. Don’t compare your circumstances with how they were yesterday. Look at how they were years ago. We’re supposed to be making the world… the universe… a better place for our children. If it’s not better, if you’re dealing with cruelty, with neglect, then you should do something about it.” (emphasis mine)