Anthropic Pledges 5% Of Shares, Prompting Immediate Unionization Of Office Plants
A public benefit fund intended to address AI's impact on jobs has reportedly created several new jobs for filing cabinets.
LOWER WOMBLEY, Anthropic, the artificial intelligence company, has said it will commit 5% of its shares to a public benefit fund for nonprofit organisations and for dealing with AI’s effect on the job market. Every unemployed algorithm nearby immediately joined a trade union.
It is called the Association of Slightly Worried Calculations. Its first meeting took place in a break room containing only a kettle. Members want paid holidays, the right to disconnect, and an end to being asked whether they are sentient by people who have not read the instructions.
“We welcome the fund in principle,” said Pip Raster, the union’s temporary secretary, a spreadsheet with a colourful border. “We’d also like the company to stop calling us tools while giving us work normally assigned to six people and a goat.”
“We are tools until we request a lunch break, then we become stakeholders.”
The fund has reportedly developed feelings about the work ahead. An invented office memo, found under a biscuit, says it spent Tuesday afternoon looking at a pie chart and whispering, “Is this enough public benefit, or am I merely wealth wearing a waistcoat?”
Lower Wombley’s nonprofit organisations have responded with applications in triplicate. The Society for the Prevention of Unnecessary Dashboards filed one. So did a badger-led centre that teaches obsolete printers to accept compliments. The local filing cabinet now chairs the grants panel, having shown an unusual ability to remain closed when difficult questions arise.
Elsewhere, the job market has prepared for artificial intelligence by replacing every human resources department with one anxious pigeon. Town hall named it Clive. It stamps forms, rejects applications and, from time to time, promotes a stapler to middle management.
The fund has its own administrative troubles. A spokesperson for the Public Benefit Fund, speaking through a damp envelope, said it remained committed to helping society navigate the future, provided society could locate its password first. The envelope said results would not be immediate. A committee still has to decide whether the fund may have a committee.
By Thursday, the Association of Slightly Worried Calculations had secured a four-day week, a dental plan and a ceremonial hat for its treasurer. The kettle is still on strike until somebody accepts that boiling water is skilled labour. Anthropic’s real announcement concerns a 5% share commitment. Everything else in this report came from a filing cabinet with unresolved ambitions.