Is it ethical for a co-operative to use AI?

Here’s an interesting one. This week I was asked if it’s ethical for a co-operative to use AI. 

Aside from the pressing questions about energy consumption, mass copyright theft and exploitative work conditions for people in the global south processing AI training data, a very special consideration applies when it comes to co-operatives.

And it's not as simple as "do we want the robots taking our jobs", no.

Let's walk it through:

1. Despite the promises that it would liberate us from menial tasks, AI is fundamentally used for complex and creative tasks. Mostly under the guise of efficiency.
2. However the introduction of AI on those complex tasks separates actual workers from the process of production.
3. This reduces the technical/creative/analytical skills required of people to perform the work.
4. Which in turn means employers (intentionally or not), require less skilled workers. Maybe instead they just need half-decent prompt engineers.
5. Which in turn means employees can (and eventually will) choose from a much larger pool of lesser skilled workers.
6. All of which will mean cost savings for the employer, a weaker bargaining position for skilled workers, and a fundamental reduction in worker power. 

So next time you run something through ChatGPT to help you at work, reflect on this: are you making your own skills and competence redundant? Instead are you contributing to your own replaceability - not with an bot, but with someone less skilled and cheaper?

And if you're a co-op? Is AI ethical?

And if you're part of a worker-owned cooperative, then the questions you need to ask yourself are:

• Will introducing AI deskill your workers and is this tolerable?
• And when you get right down to it, is using AI aligned with your mission of creating sustainable jobs for your workers?

[FYI: The likes of Charles Babbage was raising this same issue over 200 years ago. He recognized that the introduction of machinery could reduce the skill requirements of many jobs, and that through automation machines could perform tasks previously done by skilled workers. This would achieve the effects listed here: deskilling those positions and making skills (and not people) redundant.]