I recently finished reading Emily Bender and Alex Hanna’s The AI Con: How to Fight Big Tech’s Hype and Create the Future We Want. They are experts in the field who say that the AI hype is absurd and we can choose the technology we want. That’s true.

They also take a swipe at what they call AI Doomers, saying that they are just the flip side of the AI boosters. That’s true up to a point. I’m not concerned with sentient AI ruling us or anything else out of some sci fi novel.

But I think there’s a big caveat here, which is that the stated intentions of the terrible people pushing AI–the techbros, the capitalists, the fascists–is to throw millions of people out of work and center all profit for eternity among themselves, part of a larger effort to undermine democracy and create Rule by Techbro. Moreover, because they pour money into politics, they are blunting any real response to them, as the Democratic Party is showing. On top of that, they have total control over higher education now, with provosts and presidents bowing to their masters and pushing technologies that will make the job-focused modern university completely irrelevant, since those are the very jobs that AI automation will eliminate.

So, you know, it ain’t great. That’s not because of the AI but because of the horrible humans behind it. A friend also sent me this article about the federal government–and of course Trump’s boys love AI–pushing pro-AI propaganda on the general population through the Department of Labor.

If AI could save you five hours a week, the government wants to know: “what would [you] do with that time?” Would you spend “More time with family? Finally launch that Etsy shop? Fix the garage once and for all?” That’s the hopeful opening of a new AI literacy course from the Department of Labor.

“Just keep it in mind. That’s your WHY for being here.” Late last month, the department launched the course titled “Make America AI-Ready” with a goal to, in the course’s own words and emojis, “make AI feel less like a mystery and more like a tool you actually want to use. ” The Trump administration has largely supported the needs of the AI industry. It installed Silicon Valley executives in the White House, repeatedly tried to preempt state AI laws and pushed for hundreds of billions of dollars in AI-related infrastructure investments.

But of course this is the real upshot of AI: For example, the course kept reminding students of the potential time-saving benefits of AI, which could allow them to do more things outside of work. However, early research evidence suggests that’s not happening for most people. In some occupations, like software development, people say AI’s introduction has led to “work intensification,” where workers end up working on more difficult tasks while AI takes on simpler ones.

You don’t say! You mean that supposedly labor-saving technologies actually make our work lives harder? Wow, that’s only the story of every hype cycle about saving labor through technology at the workplace. The real hope here is a left-populism around AI to protect our jobs, protect our environment, and shut out these fascist scumbags from power forever.