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🤜 Welcome back to Dog Jail Biz Beat, where we pummel fresh, dripping insights out of the day’s biggest business news.
This week, we take a look at the future of work through the lens of a 1984 sci-fi classic. And stick around for a chat with Bing AI about our country’s nascent Papadia industry.
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One Big Graph
Seeking new sources of cash, Silicon Valley investors are now openly courting Saudi Arabia. Just don’t pry about their once-illicit love. Vox asked 79 firms how taking the monarchy’s money aligned with company values. None chose to publicly comment.
The House of Saud’s oldest besties, however, have long since transcended shame. At a Saudi-hosted conference in March, Andreessen Horowitz co-founder Ben Horowitz said:
Saudi has a founder. You don’t call him a founder, you call him, “His Royal Highness.”
“He’s got a very exciting plan to execute,” Horowitz added. And how!
Arrest Report
💀 DEATH ROW: Exercise bike-maker Peloton. In a letter to shareholders, the beleaguered company stressed that they’re so much more than fancy bikes no one buys anymore: they’re also an app!
🚔 IN CUSTODY: $1.3B in unsold Yeezy shoes. Adidas said that “options were narrowing” on what to do with the antisemitic deadstock haunting its warehouses — technically the second Hitler x Adidas collab.
🐑 AT LARGE: Banking weirdness. Shares of smaller banks took a beating this week despite little change in their fundamentals. Possible explanations include panicky investors, sleepy depositors, and, uh, opportunists trying to trigger bank runs for profit.
The Beatdown
The union representing Hollywood’s writers called its first strike in 15 years last week, bringing the production of many TV shows to a halt. (Don’t worry, comedy fans: Gutfeld! will reportedly keep airing.)
The use of AI-generated text emerged as a key sticking point in the failed negotiations between writers and studios, making the work stoppage potentially one of the first skirmishes in the coming Robot Job Wars.
SO WHAT: Writers not wanting to write might not sound like news to anybody who knows one, but the incident shows how the future of work could be determined. Working in one of America’s most organized industries, Hollywood writers can force owners to the bargaining table — a response too few workers have considered when wondering if AI will take their jobs.
The strike challenges some of the biggest dumb-dumb takes about AI — misconceptions that Hollywood itself has helped promote.
BEAR WITH ME HERE: Famously, James Cameron has said that The Terminator was inspired by a literal fever dream he had in Rome. According to biographer Rebecca Keegan, the director “dreamed of a chrome torso emerging, phoenix-like, from an explosion and dragging itself across the floor with kitchen knives.”
The image has certainly left its mark on the collective unconscious. Today, technology is often treated like an unstoppable force that we can, at best, try to accommodate by submitting to its violent designs without too much pointless squirming. Or, as Sergeant Kyle Reese, Tech-Com, DN38416 put it:
It can't be bargained with. It can't be reasoned with. It doesn't feel pity, or remorse, or fear. And it absolutely will not stop… ever! Until you are dead!
In various ways, The Terminator’s (five!) sequels have complicated the determinism of the original movie and its time-loop meet-cute. The feeling, however, remains. The future has plans for us, whether we like them or not.
Fortunately, the real world isn’t like the pictures. Technology doesn’t make decisions — people do. And the way that they make them is through a series of complex negotiations between individual actors. There’s a good chance you’re making a bargain like this today: one where you agree to exchange your labor for cash. Whether robots ruin your job or not will depend on who sets the terms of that deal.
THE BOTTOM LINE: AI isn’t threatening your job, management is. If you want some say in the matter, join a union, dummy.
Too Long, Didn’t Read
Still chasing the Theranos scandal’s original high, the New York Times published a 5,000-word profile of convicted founder Elizabeth Holmes on Sunday. Out of respect for our readers, Dog Jail recommends skipping the Holmes story and reading this newsletter 10 times instead.
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