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AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

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Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#151

Post by latexr »

AuthAuth wrote: post #137
latexr wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think you might’ve missed this part from the post: > AI-generated slop his non-technical boss is generating It’s his boss. The type of boss who happily generates AI slop is likely to be the type of person who wants things done their way. The employee doesn’t have the power to block the merge if the boss wants it, thus the conversation on why it shouldn’t be merged needs to be considerably longer (or they need to qu…

Why would he merge any code from his non technical boss? Writing code obviously isnt his role so I dont know why he would expect his code to be getting merged all of a sudden. Just straight up tell him this isnt useful please stop.

> Writing code obviously isnt his role so I dont know why he would expect his code to be getting merged all of a sudden.

Because people don’t act rationally most of the time, and there are many who slurp the LLM hype to believe they can do anything with it better than humans. And there are plenty of bad bosses who believe whatever they decide is right and must be done.

> Just straight up tell him this isnt useful please stop.

We’re reading about a story second-hand. It is naive to think we have the solution for this person, that he should “just” refuse or do whatever. We’re not privy to every detail from the situation, and should not assume the developer on the other side is an idiot. From the story as told it seems he is frustrated by the situation, don’t you think if he could simply refuse, he’d had done it already? Don’t think of others you don’t know as automatic imbeciles, we don’t know the full story.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#152

Post by pjc50 »

cowpig wrote: post #89
pjc50 wrote: post #82

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's amazing how US business culture has reinvented Soviet Stakhanovism.

What do you mean by this? My understanding is that Stakhanovism is kind of the opposite of US work culture in that it lionizes the worker and social contributions

> Stakhanovism is kind of the opposite of US work culture in that it lionizes the worker and social contributions

Lionizes the worker for their output. Just the same as quota or target driven systems. It's the same kind of lionization as "employee of the month" schemes, i.e. a sham to encourage people to work harder.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#153

Post by nicbou »

everdrive wrote: post #108
ryandrake wrote: post #30

My management chain has recently mandated the use of AI during day-to-day work, but also went the extra step to mandate that it make us more productive , too. Come annual review time, we need to write down all the ways AI made our work better. That positive outcome is pre-supposed: there doesn't seem to be any affordance for the case where AI actually makes your work worse or slower. I guess we're supposed to ignore…

This must be how conspiracy theorists feel. How could a whole class of people (the professional managerial class) all decide at once that AI was a wonderful too we all must adopt now, and it's all going to make all of us more productive and we're 100% certain about it? It boggles the mind. I'm sure just it's just social contagion, hype, and profit motive, but it definitely feels like a conspiracy sometimes.

Collective hysteria does not need to be planned. Sometimes things just fall into place, just like the conditions for a hurricane.

It seems to me like too many yearly bonuses are tied to AI implementation, due to FOMO amongst C-levels. The hype trickles down to developers afraid that they won't get hired in the new AI economy.

I don't think there's a conspiracy, just a storm front of perverse incentives.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#154

Post by rsynnott »

ryandrake wrote: post #30

My management chain has recently mandated the use of AI during day-to-day work, but also went the extra step to mandate that it make us more productive , too. Come annual review time, we need to write down all the ways AI made our work better. That positive outcome is pre-supposed: there doesn't seem to be any affordance for the case where AI actually makes your work worse or slower. I guess we're supposed to ignore…

> My management chain has recently mandated the use of AI during day-to-day work, but also went the extra step to mandate that it make us more productive, too. Come annual review time, we need to write down all the ways AI made our work better.

Bloody hell. That feels like getting into borderline religious territory.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#155

Post by rsynnott »

everdrive wrote: post #108
ryandrake wrote: post #30

My management chain has recently mandated the use of AI during day-to-day work, but also went the extra step to mandate that it make us more productive , too. Come annual review time, we need to write down all the ways AI made our work better. That positive outcome is pre-supposed: there doesn't seem to be any affordance for the case where AI actually makes your work worse or slower. I guess we're supposed to ignore…

This must be how conspiracy theorists feel. How could a whole class of people (the professional managerial class) all decide at once that AI was a wonderful too we all must adopt now, and it's all going to make all of us more productive and we're 100% certain about it? It boggles the mind. I'm sure just it's just social contagion, hype, and profit motive, but it definitely feels like a conspiracy sometimes.

It's social contagion. "Management", as a class, is actually fairly vulnerable to this; this is only the latest of a long, long line of magical things which will make everything more productive. Remember Six Sigma (as a white-collar cult, rather than as a manufacturing methodology)?

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#156

Post by vrighter »

ryandrake wrote: post #30

My management chain has recently mandated the use of AI during day-to-day work, but also went the extra step to mandate that it make us more productive , too. Come annual review time, we need to write down all the ways AI made our work better. That positive outcome is pre-supposed: there doesn't seem to be any affordance for the case where AI actually makes your work worse or slower. I guess we're supposed to ignore…

yep, they have to justify the spend. Where I work they've literally disabled our ability to disable it via group policy. Statistical manipulation

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#157

Post by bitlax »

nradov wrote: post #141
mallowdram wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are vast, unexplored sums of knowledge that LLMs can't automate, mimic or regurgitate. This is obvious simply from meme-culture. Try asking Chat GPT to derive meaning from Kirk's shooters casing engravings. Listen to the explanations unravel. Once you attach the nearly limitless loads of meaning available to event-perception (use cognitive mapping in neuroscience where behavior has no meaning, it simply has tas…

No one — human or LLM — actually knows the meanings of the phrases that Tyler James Robinson wrote on his cartridge casings. There's lots of speculation but he isn't talking, and even if he was we wouldn't know whether he was telling the truth. If you want us to take you seriously then you'll have to come up with a valid example instead of posting a bunch of pseudo-intellectual drivel.

> No one — human or LLM — actually knows the meanings of the phrases that Tyler James Robinson wrote on his cartridge casings.

But of course we do! The right-wing groyper theory crashed on the rocks so we're left with a deranged leftist who killed in the name of his leftism.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#158

Post by mallowdram »

bitlax wrote: post #157
nradov wrote: post #141

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No one — human or LLM — actually knows the meanings of the phrases that Tyler James Robinson wrote on his cartridge casings. There's lots of speculation but he isn't talking, and even if he was we wouldn't know whether he was telling the truth. If you want us to take you seriously then you'll have to come up with a valid example instead of posting a bunch of pseudo-intellectual drivel.

> No one — human or LLM — actually knows the meanings of the phrases that Tyler James Robinson wrote on his cartridge casings. But of course we do! The right-wing groyper theory crashed on the rocks so we're left with a deranged leftist who killed in the name of his leftism.

No, memes subvert politics in general. They're references of nihilistic chaos that dissolves left and right.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#159

Post by nilkn »

Zagreus2142 wrote: post #140
nilkn wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know you don't want to hear this, but I also know you know this is true: you would genuinely need to look at the full dataset that team collected to draw any meaningful conclusion here. Your single example means pretty much nothing in terms of whether the tool makes sense at large scale. Not a single tool or technology exists in this entire field that never fails or has issues. You could just as well argue that bec…

> I know you don't want to hear this, but I also know you know this is true I wasn't sanctimonious to you, don't be so to me please. > you would genuinely need to > look at the full dataset that > team collected to draw any > meaningful conclusion here I compared notes with a couple friends on other teams and it was the same for each one. Yes it's anecdotes but when the same exact people that are producing/integratin…

If you truly think the team responsible for this made a bad call, you need to go look at all the data they collected. Otherwise, yes, you're just sharing a couple anecdotes, and that is problematic and can't be brushed off or ignored. While it's possible that the people integrating the service just ignored negative feedback and are apparently pathological liars (as you accuse them of being), it's also possible that it's actually you who is ignoring most of the data and being disingenuous or manipulative about it. You are demonstrating a lot of paranoid, antagonistic thinking about a team that might just have a broader good-faith perspective than you do.

Re: AI-generated “workslop” is destroying productivity?

#160

Post by scrumper »

stiglitz wrote: post #109
scrumper wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was that manager. I dunno about your senior leader but with me it was coming from a healthy place. After a few months of ra-ra from the C suite about how we were now an AI-first company (we're a tech consultancy building one-off stuff for customers) and should be using it in all our customer projects, I asked the question, quite reasonably I thought, "so am I going to offer lower prices to my clients, or am I going…

Another possibility: your teams are working less now.

Yes true, that is a possibility and something that's quite hard to police remotely. It doesn't feel likely, everyone's working kind of the same, booking the same hours and overtime is no different, but I can't rule it out.

It'd mean that hundreds of people would all be goofing off silently. I'd expect at least overtime bookings to decrease and they haven't - even with our strong incentives to not book o/t.

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