To think Morrisons should be boycotted over their AI adoption?

[RobynRB]

Today Morrisons announced 200 head office redundancies due to AI adoption. I say we should boycott them as a warning to other supermarkets and companies not to go down this route. I know we are told this is inevitable and everyone just seems to be rolling over and let it happen, but we should at least try and the only weapon we really have is voting with our pounds (while we still have them).
Because honestly if you believe that we're all going to be sitting around spending free money while AI does all the work you need your head looking at.

We should also all demand that a human serves us at tills rather than the self service ones..I hate it when I have a trolley of items and they wont open up any tills

My local Morrisons employs people with disabilities. I see more people that are either autistic or have other issues then in any supermarket I have ever been. And they sell wonky vegetables and fruits. On this basis I will alawys support them and I have great respect for them. I realise though it might just my local, I don't know.

It could also be utter bullshit. It could be that they are making redundancies to save money and the AI thing is just a smokescreen to make it look like they are being 'efficient' rather than just 'failing'. Apparently companies are doing this now because this way it keeps their share price up, whereas announcing redundancies usually gives off negative vibes.

Regardless of this case, I am sure once the unemployed level gets to a certain point there will be boycotts of companies who announce redundancies due to AI. And also probably damage to robots etc... it was pretty much laid out in 'Humans' years ago.
Never mind James Cameron tried to warn us in 1984.

What were the "200 head office" employees actually doing?

if you wanted more people employed then we needed to realise this years ago, basically the train has left the station and now theres no stopping it

then at somepoint society will have to switch to a universial basic income or have a whole new economic model, because why would any company employ people if theres no profits to be gained from it

@RobynRB I don't understand your point. Do you think that groceries should cost more money because head office is inefficient? If you want to spend more money on your weekly shop then you can always go to Fortnum & Mason

YABU. IMO we should go back to "Open All Hours" style shops where the shopkeeper has to get you the individual grocery items from behind the counter. And there should be individual greengrocers, fishmongers, butchers etc instead of supermarkets. This would provide far more jobs and more high quality food.

I don’t really see the point in protesting AI adoption. It’s a thing, it is phenomenally useful in some fields and will never replace other roles. You’ll never get a chatGPT gas fitter or surgeon (yes I know AI aids but it doesn’t carry out whole transplants etc). It feels like when people were moving from typewriters to PCs -newfangled magic, save the typing pool…

If a company isn’t using it properly for productivity gains but their competitors are… well, they aren’t going to stay competitive for long.

Having said all that, I think AI is probably the latest bogeyman to be wheeled out whenever job cuts are proposed -even when they actually have nothing to do with the job cuts.

ETA, I absolutely see the point of protesting it on ecological grounds - it’s dubious on that score.

The prices will not come down because they save money. And that's not the point. The point is, the only thing that will stop companies getting rid of people is people not buying from the ones that do. If we do nothing Tesco and the others see that it's fine so they do the same.

Hmm. See, to my mind the economy collapses first. Because say there's 5m unemployed, then we have a recession, which makes it even worse and pretty soon we have a depression. No way will UBI arrive in time for that. And where will this mythical UBI money come from anyway?

lets consider the end game of capitalism, you have no population limits, you have cheaper factories abroad, at the uk you have robots and majority of machines running the show, you would only need a handful of people.
then what for the economy ? at some point the locial outcome is the ubi, based on taxes from the mega corporations using all the machines and robots etc because otherwise how would society survive ?

I buy from small businesses instead. No chance of them replacing employees with AI.

Do we know that the head office was inefficient? Many corporations have used AI as an excuse to cut head counts only to later learn that they actually needed those staff.

I am worried about all the people who are being made redundant due to AI. I expect it will happen to me at some point. Will we be granted Universal Basic Income, or will we end up desperately competing for an ever-decreasing pool of vacancies?

I've been spending far less at Morrisons this year anyway, because I read that it's now owned by a US private investment group. I'd like to boycott Trump's government, even if I can only do so indirectly.

You reckon that the mega corporations will just pony up the taxes? Why do you think that the tech billionaires are buying islands and building bunkers? They know that society won't survive.

i can understand your points, however i belive your conclusions are wrong overall

If society won't survive, the "billionaires" won't either, since their money will be worthless.

In reality of course, these companies are investing in AI because they fully expect the economy to keep functioning, and to return higher profits. They're certainly not expecting to lose their customer base of ordinary consumers on ordinary incomes.

Ultimately, I don't think the tech billionaires and their descendants will survive either. They might be rich enough to employ their own doctors, for example, but if medical schools no longer exist, there will be no one to replace them when they retire or die. The collapse of civilisation would be bound to lead to new medical challenges, but very little medical research could be carried out.

The billionaires' passive income from investments will eventually dry up, as no banks will be borrowing their money and no customers will be spending or investing. But what would the billionaires spend their money on anyway? Few people will be around to produce much.

The few survivors, whether billionaires or ordinary people, will probably all end up subsistence farming. If anyone manages to produce any surplus, they will probably barter it, not sell it.

UBI would basically be the end. How would society cope when people know they are surplus to requirements?

Surplus to what requirements? They'd still be needed as consumers and they'd still need what's being produced.

What do you think of the Luddites OP? Do you wish they'd been successful?

What kind of life is it to be a consumer but nothing else?

Which is why it's nonsensical to suppose that mega-corporations are seeking to destroy the economy, given that it provides their wealth and the financial systems that recognise the value of that wealth.