We need some kind of advocacy group / think tank / lobbying org with the express mission of driving policy conversations to ensure technology empowers people to work less. Right now we’re on the...
We need some kind of advocacy group / think tank / lobbying org with the express mission of driving policy conversations to ensure technology empowers people to work less. Right now we’re on the cusp of giant breakthroughs that could totally pave the way for a golden age of leisure and plenty. The elimination or reduction of our dependency on human toil. But we’ve already gotten all the market signals we need to know new productivity breakthroughs are always going to have the opposite effect. We’ve seen the pattern, going back to the Industrial Revolution. We know the playbook. We as a society must unite around the explicit goal of offloading human labor to technology — and not penalizing those who have done so by forcing them to replace it with more, different labor — or the cycle will keep accelerating.
We have a failure of political imagination. We can’t seem to conceive of a world where poor people aren’t spending their entire lives working, just to survive (let alone thrive). It’s just considered a given that humans must surrender their bodies and minds to the machinery of capitalism, unless they’re privileged enough to operate that machine and enrich themselves from its output. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. If AI isn’t liberating us, we’re doing it wrong.
Only someone who hasn't read any history could believe that is true in the long run. Increased productivity makes countries richer and the people in richer countries are obviously better off than...
Only someone who hasn't read any history could believe that is true in the long run. Increased productivity makes countries richer and the people in richer countries are obviously better off than those in poor ones.
But it is true that in gold rush conditions, people are going to be awfully busy.
I, as a technology worker, am spending way more time doing the fun, interesting, mentally demanding tasks than before AI. AI is helping reduce the time I spend doing boring, routine tasks. Is my...
I, as a technology worker, am spending way more time doing the fun, interesting, mentally demanding tasks than before AI.
AI is helping reduce the time I spend doing boring, routine tasks.
Is my productivity way up? Yes.
Is my work-day much more engaging than before? Yes.
Is my employer earning more money off what I do? Yes.
My experience over time has been that there have been several different major types of tech workers.
One of those types is those who work as few minutes during their working hours as possible
Another type is those who work intensely every moment of their working hours (and sometimes also work in their free time).
A third type are the folks who work intensely in periods, but also have breaks, sometimes alone, sometimes chatting with workers
Some folks avoid meetings, others try to sit in as many meetings as they can.
AI tools is changing how we work in the tech industry. How those changes manifest vary from type of tech worker to type of tech worker.
For some types, like me, suddenly my job is much more social, more collaborative, more engaging and it feels like I make more of a difference than before.
I struggle imagining how my workdays felt with the amount of time I used to spend writing meeting notes, reports, benchmark documentation etc. that were way, way too long and detailed because that's something that was demanded.
I struggle imagining how they actually had highly, highly paid folks take notes and transcribe things that were said or were recorded in audio/video. We used to do that ourselves, for hours every week!
Yes, many companies are using AI poorly, but those who're using language models to perform language tasks are making work better for many workers. Bad management with AI tools is still bad management.
I think a lot of office working folks have forgotten that many, many other jobs require you pay attention and perform job tasks all the time you're being paid for your time.
As always, productivity gains goes to the owner and overloads the remaining employees.
We need some kind of advocacy group / think tank / lobbying org with the express mission of driving policy conversations to ensure technology empowers people to work less. Right now we’re on the cusp of giant breakthroughs that could totally pave the way for a golden age of leisure and plenty. The elimination or reduction of our dependency on human toil. But we’ve already gotten all the market signals we need to know new productivity breakthroughs are always going to have the opposite effect. We’ve seen the pattern, going back to the Industrial Revolution. We know the playbook. We as a society must unite around the explicit goal of offloading human labor to technology — and not penalizing those who have done so by forcing them to replace it with more, different labor — or the cycle will keep accelerating.
We have a failure of political imagination. We can’t seem to conceive of a world where
poorpeople aren’t spending their entire lives working, just to survive (let alone thrive). It’s just considered a given that humans must surrender their bodies and minds to the machinery of capitalism, unless they’re privileged enough to operate that machine and enrich themselves from its output. It doesn’t have to be that way, though. If AI isn’t liberating us, we’re doing it wrong.Only someone who hasn't read any history could believe that is true in the long run. Increased productivity makes countries richer and the people in richer countries are obviously better off than those in poor ones.
But it is true that in gold rush conditions, people are going to be awfully busy.
I, as a technology worker, am spending way more time doing the fun, interesting, mentally demanding tasks than before AI.
AI is helping reduce the time I spend doing boring, routine tasks.
Is my productivity way up? Yes.
Is my work-day much more engaging than before? Yes.
Is my employer earning more money off what I do? Yes.
My experience over time has been that there have been several different major types of tech workers.
One of those types is those who work as few minutes during their working hours as possible
Another type is those who work intensely every moment of their working hours (and sometimes also work in their free time).
A third type are the folks who work intensely in periods, but also have breaks, sometimes alone, sometimes chatting with workers
Some folks avoid meetings, others try to sit in as many meetings as they can.
AI tools is changing how we work in the tech industry. How those changes manifest vary from type of tech worker to type of tech worker.
For some types, like me, suddenly my job is much more social, more collaborative, more engaging and it feels like I make more of a difference than before.
I struggle imagining how my workdays felt with the amount of time I used to spend writing meeting notes, reports, benchmark documentation etc. that were way, way too long and detailed because that's something that was demanded.
I struggle imagining how they actually had highly, highly paid folks take notes and transcribe things that were said or were recorded in audio/video. We used to do that ourselves, for hours every week!
Yes, many companies are using AI poorly, but those who're using language models to perform language tasks are making work better for many workers. Bad management with AI tools is still bad management.
I think a lot of office working folks have forgotten that many, many other jobs require you pay attention and perform job tasks all the time you're being paid for your time.