AI has the potential to revolutionise the way we work (for the better)... but it probably won't
corporate greed, old-school views of productivity, and an unwillingness to try new things will keep holding us back
IS AI GOING TO TAKE YOUR JOB? WILL HUMANS GO THE WAY OF HORSES? IF YOU’RE NOT USING AI AT WORK, ARE YOU A BIG OLD DUMB DUMB WHO’S GOING TO FALL BEHIND?
The chat around AI is a bit negative, to put it lightly. And no wonder: in the wrong hands (ie greedy bosses, cheats, and people who don’t care about other human people) the potential of AI does not look good. Already, we’re seeing companies using AI as a replacement for humans in an attempt to cut costs. BuzzFeed is now publishing AI-’written’ travel guides while film studios are refusing actor and writer requests to be paid fairly and instead considering the use of AI to fill background scenes and write scripts.
Already, we’re on the path to an AI hellscape, which is a shame, because if the world weren’t so greedy and stuck in its old ways, AI could transform the world of work for the better.
Imagine this: rather than using AI to ‘replace’ people, we place more value on the work humans are best at. Think communicating with other humans, creating art, dealing with emotions, coming up with weird and brilliant ideas. Then, we invest in AI to take on the rubbish admin stuff that is measured in quantity rather than quality, that we view as ‘productive’ but is ultimately not the best use of human skills. Data entry, taking meeting notes then packaging them up in a presentation, sorting through emails, trawling through code to fix a bug.
With all that stuff taken out of our jobs, we might realise that there’s a lot less to do. And from there, we might start to wonder if we should be spending as much time at work. Maybe we could just work in the mornings, or make four-day working weeks the standard. Maybe we wouldn’t have strict working hours at all, instead focusing on the end result delivered rather than the time spent at a desk.
This would require a change in the way we value work. Someone’s worth might not be so easily proven in terms of tasks accomplished or products made. We might have to start paying people depending on the humanness and effort of their work. Or we’d realise we’re saving so much time and money by outsourcing the basics to AI that we can go ahead and give everyone universal basic income, freeing up people from worrying about money and instead doing something that matters. Maybe we’d see the end of bullshit jobs.
If AI took the worst parts of your job and left the interesting human bits behind, wouldn’t that be nice? Wouldn’t it be cool if every part of our jobs felt meaningful, interesting, and engaging? And if because we cut out the rubbish and let AI do that, we had more time to do the stuff that makes life joyful, like getting creative just for fun, and sitting with our legs in a nice cold stream, and spending time with the people we love, and listening to a cat’s little snuffling snores as they sleep?
Alas, all these imagined scenarios are not going to happen. Why? Many reasons! As a collective, we humans love to suffer and think suffering is a necessary part of being acceptable people. We’re greedy, and simply having money and good things is not enough, we want to make sure that we have more than someone else. Those of us who have moved up the rungs of bullshit jobs to get a title with the words ‘executive’ and ‘director’ in want to cling on to that with the tight grip of a baby trying ice cream for the first time (am I the only one that’s seen at least four videos of this over the weekend?). The richest of the rich don’t care about the magic of art and humanity; they see only the bottom line and thus believe that sacking people and getting AI to do rubbish facsimiles of both is the way forward. Those in charge can’t stand the idea of the people below them working less and being happier because they had to struggle, goddamnit, and so everyone else needs to struggle too.
Just look at the difference in the way we view the use of AI between different people. When the bosses of big businesses trial AI to do work, they’re innovative and forward-thinking. When an individual worker discovers they can use AI to drastically cut down their workload, they’re seen as lazy or cheats. Often, they’ll hide their use of the tool because they fear punishment… or being given more work because their boss believes their day needs to be ‘filled’.
In short, as a society we think money and productivity are more important than happiness and wellbeing. Thus we’ll sacrifice one for the other, and use AI as a tool to do that. We’ll weild AI as a weapon, threatening that jobs will become scarcer so people will scrabble to work more and work harder, rather than less and smarter. You should be grateful, we’ll be told, that you even get to work considering your boss could easily replace you with AI. We’ll keep worrying about money. We’ll keep working too hard. We’ll say AI is bad to avoid the truth, which is that the people are bad and we’re all too stubborn to use AI for good, because that would mean change and change is scary.
ANYWAY, let’s have some work-related reading recs…
I wrote about loud labourers for Stylist and you should read it!
Also great this week on Stylist: how to actually say sorry at work, because sometimes it’s necessary
Pre-pandemic, I wrote about bosses monitoring workers’ activities, not expecting how big and common an issue it would become. Now an expert is pointing to the use of AI for employee-monitoring and even for deciding who gets fired. Bit worrying.
Also worrying but important: the dangers posed by working in ever-increasing heat
On the death of not just the girlboss, but the career woman