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AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

simonwillison.net

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Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#61

Post by zsoltkacsandi »

antupis wrote: post #53
zsoltkacsandi wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Completely agree. There is a common misunderstanding/misconception in product development, that more features = better product. I’ve never seen a product/project manager questioning themselves: does this feature add any value? Should we remove it? In agile methodologies we measure the output of the developers. But we don’t care about that the output carries any meaningful value to the end user/business.

It’s more about operational resilience and serving customers than product development. If you run early WhatsApp like organisation just 1 person leaving can create awful problems. Same for serving customers especially big clients need all kinds of reports and resources that skeleton organisation can not provide.

Yeah, that’s a misconception too based on my experience.

I’ve seen many people (even myself) thinking the same: if I quit/something happens to me, there will be no one who knows how this works/how to do this. Turned out the businesses always survived. There was a tiny inconvenience, but other than that: nothing. There is always someone who is willing to pick up/take over the task in zero amount of time.

I mean I agree with you, in theory. But that’s not what I’ve seen in practice.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#62

Post by zozbot234 »

singularfutur wrote: post #10

This is not a technology problem. AI intensifies work because management turns every efficiency gain into higher output quotas. The solution is labor organization, not better software.

The driving force is not management or even developers, it's always the end users. They get to do more with less, thanks to the growing output. This is something to the celebrated, not a problem to be "solved" with artificial quotas.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#63

Post by co_king_3 »

maininformer wrote: post #5

I have found that attending to one task keeps me going for longer. I prompt and sit there. Scrolling makes it worse. It's a good mental practice to just stay calm and watch the AI work.

Isn't the point of AI that you can scroll endlessly while something else works for you?

If you're going to stay single-minded, why wouldn't you just write the code yourself? You're going to have to double check and rewrite the AI's shitty work anyway

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#64

Post by co_king_3 »

wiseowise wrote: post #33
yieldcrv wrote: post #21

this matches my experience it's good that people so quickly see it as impulsive and addicting, as opposed to the slow creep of doomscrolling and algorithm feeds

Hopefully it will be like an Ebola virus, so that everyone will see how deadly it is instead of like smoking where you die of cancer 40 years down the line.

Frankly, it seems more like the Crack epidemic to me.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#65

Post by bckr »

singularfutur wrote: post #10

This is not a technology problem. AI intensifies work because management turns every efficiency gain into higher output quotas. The solution is labor organization, not better software.

Labor organization yes! I don't quite know how to achieve it. I also worry that my desire to become a manager is in direct conflict with my desire to contribute to labor organization.

On a separate note, I have the intensification problem in my personal work as well. I sit down to study, but, first, let me just ask Claude to do some research in the background... Oh, and how is my Cursor doing on the dashboard? Ah, right, studying... Oh, Claude is done...

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#66

Post by co_king_3 »

mrtksn wrote: post #55
taosx wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't disagree with the concept of AI being another abstraction layer (maybe) but I feel that's an insult to a CNC machine which is a very precise and accurate tool.

LLMs are quite accurate for programming, these days they almost always create a code that will compile without errors and errors are almost always fixable by feeding the error into the LLM. I would say this is extremely precise text generation, much better than most humans. Just like with CNC though, you need to feed it with the correct instructions. It's still on you for the machined output to do the expected thing.…

> LLMs are quite accurate for programming, these days they almost always create a code that will compile without errors and errors are almost always fixable by feeding the error into the LLM.

What domains do you work in? This description does not match my experience whatsoever.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#67

Post by Xarovin »

I like working on my own projects, and where I found AI really shone was by having something there to bounce ideas off and get feedback.

That changes if you get it to write code for you. I tried vibe-coding an entire project once, and while I ended up with a pretty result that got some traction on Reddit, I didn't get any sense of accomplishment at all. It's kinda like doomscrolling in a way, it's hard to stop but it leaves you feeling empty.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#68

Post by co_king_3 »

wiseowise wrote: post #27
erelong wrote: post #2

Doesn't have to be that way, it's about managers being realistic and not pushing people too far

Managers don’t even need to push anything. FOMO does all the work. Overheard a couple of conversations in the office how one IC spent all weekend setting up OpenClaw, another was vibe coding some bullshit application. I see hundreds of crazy people in our company Slack just posting/reposting twitter hype threads and coming up with ridiculous ideas how to “optimize” workflow with AI. Once this becomes the baseline, yo…

Don't worry about these people.

These are internet cult victims.

Re: AI doesn’t reduce work, it intensifies it

#70

Post by falloutx »

ap99 wrote: post #38
falloutx wrote: post #22

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> And the initial gut reaction is to resist by organizing labor. Yeah like tech workers have similar rights to union workers. We literally have 0 power compared to any previous group of workers. Organizing of labour cant even happen in tech as tech has large percentage of immigrant labour who have even less rights than citizens. Also there is no shared pain like union workers had, we all have been given different inc…

I'm curious as to what previous group you're comparing yourself (and the rest of us) to. I'm also curious as to what you do, where you do it, and who you work for that makes you feel like you have zero power.

Just a regular senior SDE at one of the Mag7. I can tell you everyone at these companies is replaceable within a day. Even within an hour. Even the head of depts have no power above them, they can be fired on short notice.
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