Cory Doctorow reminds us that AI doesn’t actually have to be better than us at our jobs in order to threaten our current livelihoods. It’s only necessary that our managers come to believe that an AI can do a just-about-adequate version of something akin to our work whilst costing less.

That’s the true cost of all the automation-driven unemployment criti-hype: while we’re nowhere near a place where bots can steal your job, we’re certainly at the point where your boss can be suckered into firing you and replacing you with a bot that fails at doing your job.