AI Forever Work Woes Continue Unabated

Photo unrelated; met a pretty metal seagull at the first beach we tried in Connecticut upon moving here years ago. Face of a villain. Absolute icon.

In the last two weeks or so I've seen an increasing number of AI-focused tech people who are coming to this "I use AI every day and my workload isn't reducing" realization - I'm not really in a mood to start picking on specific people or link to the blog posts or screenshots because I don't know that it does any good (and this is my own fault for looking at Linkedin) but like, they say this while also simultaneously committing to keeping up with using it under this "I must not be using it right" mindset and like...

Dude. Dude. You're so close.

But then there's this other side where it's more of a "This seems bad but I don't know what to do about it" and like...I'm legitimately not sure what the answer for them is! I sure as shit wish I had it!

When someone says "If I don't use it in my job, I'll be left behind" the answer is "probably", especially if your bosses are already in the pocket! But then again, I just quit a job for an "AI use is now mandatory for all staff" pivot so maybe I'm not the best judge on this. I knew if I stayed in that job I would not use the AI and I would either be fired for blatant disregard of policy OR be "left behind" by people working longer hours and making awful decisions about the product (and their own health / time management) thinking they're getting more done. (Fun fact - they're having more layoffs tomorrow!)

It's nice that people are starting to more readily realize that "AI makes me more productive" is just a myth and any amount of gains you personally make will signal to your boss¹ that this new 'increase' is the status quo and the expectation rises for you to keep attaining that.

You shipped X things per month pre-AI, you ship Y things with AI so Y output is now the standard. There is no pay increase. Y output isn't sustainable for you? We'll say goodbye and find someone who can do Y output. Come to think of it, maybe we'll write an agent to do Y.

Do not get me wrong; reducing menial tasks to free up people to do more creative or interesting work sounds great on paper, but the AI of our world isn't doing our chores for us²; it's being used to replace artists, replace engineers, replace musicians, replace critical thinking, all while setting the world on fire, destroying communities, making morally bankrupt tech oligarchs richer, shoring up racial biases, etc etc - but none of those negatives are often even considered by these people in the tech sphere who have been down the AI rabbit hole and are just starting to think it might be bad. They're concerned with their jobs and there's only so much horse water leading that can happen. But back to the point, what "task reduction" so-called AI can do for us in the workplace presently just makes it so there's a greater expectation of doing more work for the same pay. It's always been the road to forever work and/or burnout.

It's fucked up, and I don't have an answer short of "quit and find a place that won't hang their hat like this" but there's only so many jobs period, let alone jobs that aren't woefully infiltrated by this shit.

Total sidenote but now is the best possible time to write a "Left behind" Kirk Cameron parody series about people like me who refuse to touch the stuff and are hunted by angry god robots who want to [checks bluesky] uhhh deny our health insurance claims.

Anyway, thanks for reading. Here's your end-of-post cat; her name is Alphys and if you tried to explain machine learning to her she'd bite you.

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