Classism Plays a Role in the Dissent Against Generative AI

A deeper examining of how innovation has historically "killed" industries

I find it fascinating to watch media proponents of AirBnb, Tesla, Netflix, DoorDash, Uber, and so many more "innovative" companies now decry the tech industry for bringing disruption to their industry.

Underneath the NIMBY (Not In My BackYard) attitudes is an incredible show of classism. We were fine when the tech industry innovated blue, pink, and grey collar work and use those innovations every day.

But as Big Tech comes for white collar jobs, it is now destroying humanity?

Mmkay. Think we may need a privilege check?

Innovation, disruption. Which side of the coin is generative AI, actually? And does it largely depend on who you’re speaking to?

And more importantly to me—could it be both, peacefully, at the same time: an evolution of humanity and the way we do things? Perhaps even a critique of how unnecessarily expensive white collar services like legal, PR, and yes, art and writing and narration and translation are to begin with?

Does Tech Kill Industries, Or Do They Kill Themselves?

What strikes me most about the situation is how deeply I believe that companies like Uber have innovated—despite the rather swift decimation of the taxi industry that had a government-regulated stronghold before it.

Uber broke wide open the gatekeeping of the taxi industry and fixed a massive problem I faced while living in a big city in my twenties, namely that you could not get a taxi in certain neighborhoods (poorer and more melanated neighborhoods, to be clear).

As early as 6 or 7pm, I could call a cab company and not get someone out for 45 minutes, if the bothered to show up at all. Meanwhile, I was waiting on a busy (cars) and less populated (walkers) street, with the option to risk public transportation, risk walking, or risk waiting. All bad options, in the end—and believe me, I had done all three many times and I knew with precision the calculations I was making on my life and safety with each option. Every woman did.

Uber made my life as a single woman in Chicago much safer through immediate response, transparency, choice of drivers, more ways to pay, and a ratings system that encouraged good behavior.

At the time, the media enjoyed reporting on how Uber and Lyft were killing the taxi industry. Headlines get clicks and all. But was it true?

The things that killed the taxi industry were:

• Gatekeeping - The taxi industry ran on city-regulated medallions that often cost $250,000 or more in larger cities. Career drivers invested in these and were stuck in the industry due largely to debt. These medallions were supposed to be an asset that a driver could sell for retirement, but Uber rendered it worthless. At any point, cities could have bought those back or otherwise compensated drivers and driving companies, but instead, they let the cab and driving companies go out of business and the career drivers shoulder the debilitating debt.

• High prices - The taxi industry could not compete on price, plain and simple. Uber lowered prices that were, in many ways, artificially inflated to begin with.

• Low service - The taxi industry believed it had a lock on rides. Companies had no problem saying they would send someone, but then sending their cars to cheaper and more popular destination points nearer to the taxi lot. There was a limited supply of taxis, and customers couldn’t do anything about it. Sometimes you just weren’t going to get a ride, even if you had called and reserved ahead, because there was cheaper money to be made elsewhere. When you got in the car, you could encounter rudeness, sketchiness, or actual dangerous driving on your way to your destination—with near-zero recourse. My now husband and I had many incidents with taxi drivers, but the scariest was when the guy took us on a completely unnecessary and way-out-of-the-way route to jack up our fare, then came after us down the street when my husband refused to give him more than split half the difference with him (after trying to forcefully lock us in the car—we were quick enough to escape, luckily).

The Playbook Remains the Same For All of Big Tech’s Innovations

The example of Uber and taxi companies is not unique. In almost every example of industries being “killed” by tech, you can point to the handful of ways that the industry undid itself that almost always fall into these three buckets:

• Gatekeeping

• High prices

• Low service

Publishing itself has an example of this in traditional publishing and the ebook revolution back in 2007-2011. As independent publishing became prominent in 2011, it was largely these three things that eroded traditional publishing’s stronghold on the entertainment industry:

• Gatekeeping - Independent authors were able to publish directly without being “approved” or selected by traditional publishers

• High prices - Independent authors were able to create a book with less investment, and thus were able to drive lower pricing

• Low service - Traditional publishing could not handle the number of books consumers actually wanted, nor the diversity of genres and characters that consumers actually wanted; independent publishing satisfied hundreds of underserved markets and continues to do so today

When this revolution came, I was on the independent publishing side of things. It was obvious to me how gatekeeping, high prices, and low service would lead to massive changes in traditional publishing—for the better, in my opinion.

If the Tech Industry is Coming For Independent Publishing (And I Think It Is, Among Other Industries), It’s Driven By Consumer Wants

Based on my experiences with tech innovation as both a consumer and a supplier, I'm open to the idea that innovation in my own field is due, and even that it could better humanity as a whole.

And it wasn't easy to get here. Like anyone else, I have had to reckon with being part of an old guard of gatekeeping, slow production, and inflated prices. I have had to reckon with the larger and dehumanizing system of hypercapitalism that keeps asking us to go harder, better, faster, stronger.

I have been thinking more recently about why innovation is coming for my industry at this moment in time. And I’m headed back to the framework:

• Gatekeeping - I believe the independent publishing industry as it stands resembles so much of what traditional publishing looked like years ago. Due to a mix of algorithm changes and exclusivity, there are fewer ways to make serious money without writing in a popular genre and with paint-by-number books. The new gatekeeper is actually companies like Amazon and others that use the streaming business model. If you don’t write a certain kind of book, you aren’t going to be visible enough in Amazon’s rankings. There is also a question of gatekeeping around free time, education, and investment that it takes to build a skillset of storytelling or art to begin with, and then more years in the industry to understand how to navigate it well enough to publish a book for profit. It’s interesting to me—independent authors have in many ways become the industry we sought to break over a decade ago. And if you know my work, I am staunchly for authors finding more revenue streams, supporting competition among platforms, and embracing direct sales of all kinds, in large part for this reason.

• High prices - The cost of producing a book independently has exploded due to competition and inflated service provider prices. In fact, generative AI is first going to force the service providers around independent publishing to evolve before it forces evolution for authors themselves. Editing, cover art, translations, and audio narration are all industries that had swiftly bubbled up in pricing for several years (reminding me of the Jeff Bezos quote, “your margin is my opportunity”). These production costs are dropping quickly, making independently published books cheaper to produce again.

• Low service - Independent authors have long been unable to provide good service to their readers for years in reasonable part because of the enshittification of the industry chokepoint, Amazon. Direct sales and building a fandom is one way for authors to counter this, and is a route that many are taking. But generative AI further puts accessibility into readers hands. When a reader/writer can tell the story they want to read more easily, and without the intensive cost of education plus free time and labor to put toward building skills, that is accessibility that levels the playing field for low-income, disabled, and low-privileged people, plain and simple. Of course, professional authors can boost service to their readers too. So many of us are one-person shops, trying to do all the things across production, marketing, and sales, and shouldering the burden of all the costs to look like bigger companies than we are.

While I have some questions about where I fit in amidst this new industry and economy that is forming in place of what I knew, the one thing I know is that my way of life is not actually threatened.

Every Change Comes With Good and Challenge

Generative AI is going to change the publishing industry, and it will change how I personally have to do things. Some of those changes will be good, and some of them will be challenging.

It’s not any different than, say, buying a bigger house, though. It’s a celebration, but also, you have more space to clean and tend to, more bills for heating and furniture, and a new neighborhood to get used to.

Another example: many parents would agree that the birth of their children is the best, most incredible thing that happened to them. But you may get your head bitten off if you point this out to them in the middle of a 3am feeding after six straight months of 3am feedings.

Growth mindset in general requires that you can take the challenge with the good. Because there is always going to be a downside to every good thing in your life.

Evolution always requires good + challenge.

You create the new by destroying the old.

My belief on the innovation vs. disruption argument is that generative AI is necessarily both; they are absolutely two sides of the same coin, working in perfect harmony, if only we would let them.

What To Do For Truly Decimated Industries

I do not have answers—that is way above my pay grade—but I do have some thoughts and observations about the way innovation decimates some industries.

Very few cases of major new technology actually lead to the complete and/or swift decimation of an industry. What happens more often is the slow erosion of an industry, as is seen with Airbnb and hotels, traditional publishing and ebooks, and more. And in many cases, the industries end up serving different markets and ultimately coexisting peacefully.

But when they do decimate industries, my observation is that there are three key things that drive the decimation:

1. The economics of the consumer whose life is largely benefitted when an industry innovates

2. The inability of an industry to adapt, either because of a high investment that can’t be escaped, or a refusal to change (but usually both)

3. A tech company that gains power, that then starts the process of enshittification or becomes a chokepoint on the supply chain

Each of these three bullet points is a lever that the industry can pull to survive and thrive as Big Tech enters the space.

For #3, nearly all my work in the publishing industry is and always has been driven by reducing Big Tech power. The only way a company becomes a chokepoint is when it is left unchecked by competition. And the only way to combat enshittification is having alternatives—again, competition. My entire company, Writer MBA, is built on teaching people how to make more money outside of Amazon, which is currently a chokepoint on all authors, traditional published or independently published alike.

But I’m finding myself in favor of a few things related to the earlier two points as well.

For #1, I want the consumer to be happy. I want the economics to be a win for the consumer. I remain a believer in some version of free markets, despite the many challenges involved on the macro level. I’m also of the belief that asking the consumer to change what they want is wildly unfair, and calling the consumer an aider and embedder of the decimation of an entire industry is also unfair.

To be clear, I also want the economics to be a win for the creator and for the distributor (a retailer or platform, for example). I do not want anyone to win at the expense of another player, which is the challenge of unchecked capitalism in any given ecosystem.

Again, Writer MBA works toward this by pushing authors to multiple direct sales channels where they can control their own careers.

For #2, I believe we place too much financial burden on small businesses and individuals that are actually decimated by the changing of guard and thus, the changing of rules. We expect these small businesses and individuals to absorb all the costs of the rules changing (and rapidly), which is usually financially life-ruining to them.

As I said in the case of taxis, I feel it was on the government that built the gates of the industry to buy back those expensive medallions, which would have re-distributed the unreasonable financial burden to the entire populace that benefitted from the innovation. Of course, that did not happen. But it should have.

In the case of white collar work and generative AI, the largest investment is the skyrocketing price of education and the sketchy financing that enabled it. Student loan forgiveness in an unpredictable and fast-paced world is one corollary that would ease the burden; universal base income (UBI) is another. I have long been a supporter of both, but I am disappointed in myself for not seeing my own internal classism before. We have needed UBI for decades longer than I have supported it. It has always been our collective burden to take care of each other, especially in the face of unpredictable technological advancement.

Finally, for the second part of #2, I believe it is important for each industry faced with a tech innovation to meet the consumer halfway in adapting. The tech industry did not create the problem that generative AI solves—it only created a solution. The industry itself ultimately created the problem. And the problem is so frequently rooted in the dynamics of the industry—the chokepoints, the enshittification of platforms, the lack of competition at some levels alongside the over-abundance of competition at other levels.

And frankly, I’m all for welcoming a new wave of Big Tech that can break up the power that the previous wave of Big Tech has over any industry.

Historically, we keep building behemoths and knocking them down with new behemoths in a way that re-levels the playing field.

We Are Mad at Hypercapitalism

Generative AI is not the enemy. There are dozens of huge ways that this technology could move humanity forward positively, especially when it comes to environmental preservation, health care, and social services.

As we sling blame at everyone who personifies generative AI—from the tech industry, to software engineers, to consumers, to each other—could it be that the real issue is the way hypercapitalism ultimately distributes financial burden when technological innovation comes a knocking?

I don’t pretend to have all the answers or solutions. I want to dig into the challenges more, and have developed a reading list for myself:

• Hypercapitalism: The Modern Economy, Its Values, and How to Change Them

• The Inevitable: Understanding the 12 Technological Forces That Will Shape Our Future

• Chokepoint Capitalism: How Big Tech and Big Content Captured Creative Labor Markets and How We'll Win Them Back

• The Age of Access: The New Culture of Hypercapitalism

• The Age of Resilience: Reimagining Existence on a Rewilding Earth

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