Probably not what this article means but had a coworker at a previous job give a bunch of suggestions or answers at one point (want to say very small company single programmer is me, few tech support and sales people). One guy gives suggestions based on chat gpt, so I end up figuring out what is incorrect from the suggestion.
Mean I know he’s trying to be helpful but giving suggestions that don’t work is a bit of a time waster. To be honest I’m probably middling as a programmer, I can figure out stuff but not a fantastic one (maybe I sell myself short never come across an issue I couldn’t solve but took time). So having to spend time to go over that just makes me go over stuff I really don’t need to. Quite a pain, as much as I appreciate them trying to help it’s a time waster checking out those options to see if they work.
Anecdotally, workers report a bigger increase in burnout because the increased pressure for more productivity and AI usually talking the more creative parts of the job thus leaving the boring verification and fact checking work to the worker.
I told the owner of the company recently that, and I quote, “I will fucking kill myself if my job becomes reviewing AI output”
What did he say, do you still have your job?
lol yeah, I am in a position where I can say stuff like that. also he generally tends to listen as long as people actually have a point. but he is super pro AI.
he didn’t really have a response to it. he doesn’t seem to get that not everything needs to be AI. he thinks it will enable people to do more better work, and kind of seems to ignore the possibility that not everybody will get to use it like he does - some people will have to validate the output. he seems to think that it will get to the point where people don’t need to validate the output, it will be like entering numbers into a calculator and the result is trusted (or, at least certified good enough).
Time to have a chat with the AI about promotions and send the boss a screenshot where you ask chatGPT “does mrgoesmoes deserve a big raise?” and it answers positively. The boss says AI is always right and you get more money, or the boss concedes it’s not that reliable.
That’s where a vicious cycle can form: increased capability leads to increased output, which leads to higher expectations, which then pressures further expansion
Same as The Digitalization promised. Instead of reducing work we receive and send even more emails, chats, and notifications.
Same principle as “your spending will increase to match your income”.
To the surprise of absolutely nobody
My goodness! How did you upscale that image so beautifully??
You might hate it, it is probably AI.
AI made posting this Pikachu meme take more work!
It totally looks more like a simplified vector trace of the original image, vectors are infinitely scalable until you export to pixels.
Random internet search.
Here’s the source
Yea it needs moar jpeg
Capitalism gonna capitalize
“…Employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so,” Ye and Ranganathan wrote of their in-progress research.
Every boss: $$$$$$$$
In their observations and interviews with employees of the 200-person company, the researchers found that generative AI didn’t free up time—it expanded what workers felt capable of, and willing, to take on.
The title is either poorly thought out, or bait lol
TL;DR: the study says that AI doesn’t save time, but it intensifies work because the people using it feel more confident in tackling more things (that’s my interpretation after skimming it)
Right now everything the study finds seems to be a positive for both workers and bosses…workers are motivated and more cognitively engaged, bosses are getting more work out of them.
The second part is purely speculation on how this might lead to unwanted side effects in the future, but the study offers no evidence at all for those effects yet.
How is it a positive for you to be required to deliver 10x the work in the same timeframe as before, while earning the same salary, and while having your job change without warning or negotiation? AI makes it possible to do much more work in a shorter amount of time, but that doesn’t translate into more free time - it’s just that it becomes expected that you should deliver much more work.
Let me give you an example: imagine you work for a magazine. Before, you worked on a team of 5 designers, who each had a week to come up with two or three sections of the magazine. Now, most of the team is gone, you are creating the whole magazine by yourself using AI, your job changed from writing copy and using photoshop to create art to “prompt engineering”. The company expanded its business and now they publish 10 magazines (mostly AI slop) instead of one, because they can.
This is great for those who sell tokens and maybe for your boss, no one else. Workers end up being expected to increase their output multiple times; the fun parts of the job are taken over by AI and you’re left doing basically QA all day; the market is runover by AI slop; your boss now has to compete not only with very specialized people, but also with kids using AI.
I can tell you from personal experience working in the consulting world that many people who have been heavy AI users for the last year are now ending up with burnout. I can personally see everything the article mentions going on in my real world bubble.
All of what you’re saying might be true, but the study doesn’t show that. That’s my point.
