To think Morrisons should be boycotted over their AI adoption?

We should boycott Waitrose for their shitty HR practices.

I think Morrisons, who have been teetering on the brink for years, will be just the beginning.

Unless you're prepared to eventually boycott a huge percentage of companies, it's pointless.

Did AI tell you that?

Ironically you are completely incorrect to attempt to use the word ironically here. He was trying to hold back the tide. He drowned. The end.

Ironically you are completely wrong about what Knut was trying to achieve

@noblegiraffe absolutely this. Humans make mistakes, but the key difference is they can also be held to account for them.

I keep thinking about all the instances where workers using/being replaced by AI have made massive fuck-ups. Like the lawyers who use AI-produced evidence which includes fabricated information and mess up their cases. The police who banned those Israeli supporters based on a fake incident given to them by AI. Amazon sacked a bunch of workers last year, replaced them with AI and then the AI fucked up and their servers went down.

AI makes horrendous mistakes. We know it does. We know that making mistakes can't be programmed out of it. So it seems like a massive error to be handing over all these jobs to it.

This isn't Luddite thinking and fear of progress, this is genuine concern that 'progress' is actually deliberately introducing random but severe incompetence into vital systems.

I always felt Morrisons was the supermarket of nobody's choice. I think most people would only use it if it was on their doorstep and others were miles away. If there was a mozza alongside a branch of the other five big shops then nobody would choose to exclusively use it.

So yeah I'll happily boycott it.

Tech improves, basic jobs become redundant. It's on people to upskill to stay employable. I certainly won't boycott a company for making a rational commercial decision.

Username checks out

I really do not think this is the case. AI is already very advanced in my field but it simply cannot replace humans and it won’t be able to in future either. It can’t do feelings for one thing. Bevause it’s machine-based. It can pretend to do feelings but it can’t actually do them. Nor can it do human creativity, child-rearing, building domestic extensions, effective and safe psychotherapy, gardening, loads of things.

The fact we aren’t sending people down the pits any more is a good thing overall. It was dangerous, dirty work that gave people industrial diseases also.

I can't imagine that boycotts will be effective. I think King Canute stood more of a chance when he commanded the tide not to come in.

If we had the collective will, and the means to express it effectively, to prevent dystopian trends in capitalism, we wouldn't be in the situation we are currently in, sucking in environment-destroying tat from China and stealing skilled health workers from developing countries while employment and productivity in the UK stagnate.

Good idea. Then we can all give up work and spend a full day doing the weekly shop!

I can't see how individual shops provides more high quality food.

My local greegrocer is convenient (Open All Hours Turkish food shop) but his veg isn't any better than Sainsbury's.

The food that comes from the farm will be the same, the wholesaler will be the same, the amount of time in the container from Australia/Kenya/Morocco will be the same...

Other retail companies do this every week. Trust me. They just don’t announce it in this way.

Looking at the people on LinkedIn saying they’re at risk, they’re not admin roles at all.

i think the AI reference was just a smokescreen to make them look modern when in fact they’re just cost cutting because performance is poor

I get it’s annoying with a trolley. But self checkouts are an amazing invention for people with a few items and who don’t need help except when there is some muppet letting their toddler put their goods through

Trust me. If Morrisons go down the pan then a company like Tesco are not going to go 'ooo errrr it must be because customers didn't like their supposed AI adoption' and run away from AI with their tails between their legs.

The general consensus in the industry is that business shying away from it will be left behind, so I agree with PP the horse has bolted. Learn to embrace it.

Also, I agree with PP Morrisons are not cutting edge enough to have actually replaced colleagues with some super duper AI technology. I wouldn't be surprised if it's a cost cutting excuse to some extent. They are struggling.

The effect of AI on jobs is going to be seismic. It will completely remove job opportunities from all sectors, particularly low entry jobs for office work. I see it like when the coal mines were closed. Whole industries are going to be decimated. And because the pace of change in this area is so fast there won’t be enough jobs created to offset it.

So what are we all going to do? On unemployment benefits?

The answer is to get into a line of work that AI can’t do, but given time, those type of jobs will be done by robots. They have already suggested that robots can be care givers to the elderly.

Humans are being made redundant. Scary times.

I can't see that it's going to be anything other than shit, though. AI has taken many of the creative jobs that people actually enjoyed, and now it's coming for the admin jobs which people don't necessary find fun, but at least tend to be clean, safe and conducive to a good work-life balance. Jobs requiring a high level of knowledge and/or research skills will also be under threat soon. I fear that many degrees will become worthless. AI will write the assignments for the students, mark them and take over most graduate jobs.

At least clinical staff will be safe for now, and AI will let the rest of us be hairdressers, agricultural workers, care assistants, caterers, drivers, cleaners, and refuse collectors. Unfortunately, the country won't need 30 million of these.

Ai is here. You can't stop it. You will have to boycott all large companies moving forward if that's your plan.

It's a done deal, King Knut. Worry about the things you can change, because you can't change this.

I agree with you OP but sadly people won't boycott if they can save a few pence. Most people are all talk complaining about the government or society and take no responsibility for their role. I've spent years refusing to shop anywhere that doesn't have staff on a till or queueing like a fool while others do self serve. I don't think I know anyone else who does this and if I tell people I get an eye roll. My colleagues buy everything from Temu or Shein and say how the city centre has gotten dangerous with all the boarded up shops and isn't it awful there are no jobs for young people. They see no irony. If people had pushed back, i mean really refused to embrace these changes when they began we wouldn't be where we are now. Collectively we are getting what we deserve and it's scary and depressing.

I bet the roles were mundane back office jobs that are easy to replace. Likely the remaining staff are increasingly adopting AI to do the non-value add tasks that Morrisons have realised are easy to automate.

there is nothing anyone can do about this, other than ensuring they are in roles and skills that don't become irrelevant and easy to replace with a bot.

So terrible that they weren't happy about being relegated to unskilled workers (the ones that actually kept a job) with lower wages and worse working conditions, being charged more and being unable to afford to live. Just as well the government treated them as radicalised terrorists and squashed them down, framing the discourse as them being stupid peasants who were frightened of machinery, eh?

I would do but I’m going to the mill later to smash up some looms, and I’ll need a sandwich on the way back.