Where do YOU draw the AI line?

An employee at an unnamed immigration law startup resigned after the company mandated Claude use and repositioned itself as an 'AI-First' platform, citing ethical concerns about data sourcing, model training bias, environmental damage, and financial speculation. The employee, who had been with the company since its early days as a fully-remote startup, also cited four rounds of layoffs and a lack of salary increases as contributing factors.

Where do YOU draw the AI line? On Monday, I came back to my day job from a weeklong vacation wherein we did birthdaversary stuff and packing / moving related activities. I rarely if ever talk about work here but one of the first things out the gate when I logged in was that I apparently missed a companywide meeting on how Claude use is now mandatory for all departments, and I was going to have to watch the missed session on how to implement it into my workflow. On top of that, the company has repositioned itself as an "AI-First" solution and, well I kinda snapped and put in notice. Today's my last day at the company. Please forgive the bad photoshop Full disclosure, this had been brewing for a while but the AI pivot was a 'final straw'; what started as a fully-remote, small immigration law startup got bought by a much larger company with a huge offshore office that proceeded to slowly dismantle everything I cared about in the intervening years. After four different rounds of layoffs including one coming up in a few weeks that I only know about because someone accidentally screenshared their slack without realizing it 1: where people who literally made the whole thing work were unceremoniously axed, I knew my time would be limited in the long run. As a sidenote, layoffs are always brutal, but the one that broke me was a remote coworker 2 whose country has erupted into an ethnic conflict so he spent months on the run STILL WORKING remotely from hotels and trains not missing a single deadline, and his thanks was to be let go as soon as his baby was born. So from the tone deaf "renaming the all-hands meeting to 'Town Fiesta'" the week of our largest layoff round ever, to the 'pivot to AI, spend unlimited on tokens' 3 at a time where the company hadn't had salary increases in years, the offshore office was getting ready to protest Pax Silica and our European employees were being hit with unprecedented heat waves, like. Shit. I used to think Silicon Valley the show was too on the nose but the world just keeps on trying to "yes, and..." the fiction and this is one of the few instances of "yes, and..." I'd like to stop. Usually very pro "yes, and..." in this house It's probably some sort of violation for me to post a slack image but I can at least share the text of the goodbye note that I gave the team yesterday: Hey all Never sure how to start these so, as some of you might be aware, I've chosen to call it and tomorrow is my last day with COMPANY NAME REMOVED . I just had a very productive exit interview with HR. This was a tough decision for me to make, but an important one and I have to admit I never would have imagined the adventure I'd go on by quitting Apple on a whim to work at a tiny little startup called STARTUP NAME REMOVED . There are far too many of you to thank and that I'll miss, I don't want to clog up the channel with @ tags. My primary reason for leaving is that the pivot towards being an “AI-First” platform is not something I'm comfortable being involved with. As an artist outside of work, I could talk all day about the ethical concerns of the data sourcing, the racist bent of the model training, the damage the data centers are doing to the environment, the impending financial bubble from non-standardized token costs and uneven speculation despite unlimited token spend plans from companies who financially cannot afford to provide annual salary increases , the cognitive decline from extensive LLM use, the myth of "productivity gains" as opposed to forever-work from employees, the list goes on.I am not anti-technology as a person; I was born in the Silicon Valley and grew up with the tech industry so I of all people know that nothing is 'perfect', but we are at a nexus point where “this is the future, get in line” on AI as it exists only serves to financially benefit some of the worst people in our society while literally cooking the already beleaguered planet to do so, and I find that picking our battles is kind of important even if that causes me potential job scarcity. I understand why COMPANY NAME REMOVED feels it needs to make this pivot as a business as much I also understand that me staying would be a net negative for everyone involved. Anyway sorry for being a downer; I will miss so many of you that I work with closely and wish you all the best in the future I've recently entered my era of "cat photos only" on linkedin so add me there if we're not connected already. And like, I am really sad about leaving I worked with some incredible people all of whom deserve significantly more money than they're being paid who I did not want to say goodbye to - but I think it's incredibly important to push back on the "AI is inevitable" mindset that so many people in the tech industry are just accepting - including those who hate it I got messages from people all over the company in so many departments who are thrilled I spoke up about this because they hate it but feel trapped into getting in line or being screwed out of a job and like, fuck dude. I get it. If there's one thing I want people who experiment with this technology and think "hey maybe it's not that bad" to think about, it's this and I'll keep saying this till it stops being true : AI does not lead to productivity increases; it leads to forever work and employee burnout https://blog.curiousquail.com/the-obvious-end-result-of-ai/ . Anyway, thanks for reading. As always, here's your end-of-post cat. His name is Smokescreen Chip and the cardboard he's lounging on is protecting a puzzle-in-progress. Not the first time this has happened, either Seeing a conversation between a different person and the CEO about me while said person was oblivious that it was up in the middle of a meeting is gonna live with me forever lmfao ↩ fnref-1 Because of the exchange rate and market, his pay was CRIMINALLY low and there is no way his salary could even register as a line item worth cutting, his value which was high to the team aside. I only know this because they fucked up his paperwork at acquisition and offered him his YEARLY salary per month. I still wish he'd signed it, gotten one or two checks of the significantly higher rate and ridden off into the sunset but he was too honest for that and told them about the mistake. ↩ fnref-2 This is probably the third or fourth 'pivot to' strategy they've done since 2023, I'm sure it'll go great ↩ fnref-3