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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#621

Post by Nasrudith »

paulhebert wrote: post #221
cattown wrote: post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

Right, the AI companies don’t even try to pretend it’s good for the average person. The message could be “we’ll all do more by working less.” Instead it’s, “some people will lose their jobs while everyone else works the same amount or more”

To play devil's advocate: Why exactly would you expect to get paid more just because there was a big investment in more expensive tools? You're not working any harder, the machine is. Getting paid more is always nice of course.

Any pay rises have been more of a side effect in the past of complexity and therefore needing more skilled labor to say operate a bulldozer or backhoe than it does for any individual with a shovel. Productivity may boost the economic ceiling of 'how much they can pay before they literally start losing money' but more assembly lines didn't mean big pay raises. A backhoe didn't mean that ditch diggers suddenly got paid 50 to 100 times what they were previously from other's expenditures because they could dig that much more. And that is before the back-and-forth of induced demand and supply vs demand causing the price of the labor to drop with more efficiency.

AI's whole thing is to provide for easier operation and trying to deskill the operations. (Key word: trying, currently knowing what the hell you are doing is essential for filtering good outputs from bad).

Re: Can we have the day off?

#622

Post by sph »

fg137 wrote: post #296

I never understand why software engineers are so excited about AI as a whole. If you are excited about the technology, sure. But if you are excited about the increase in productivity, unless you are a manager, I don't really understand it. Like, why? You are not working one hour less than before. If anything, it's more likely you'll get laid off and have trouble finding your next job.

> I never understand why software engineers are so excited about AI as a whole.

I think it's mostly young graduates that have not been ground down by the wheel of labour just yet, and old/ex engineers that are able to build something after years of being out of practice.

Hard for me to be excited about being asked to do more for the same pay, to be measured on idiotic metrics, to compete with overconfident but inept people, when I'm reaching my 40s. I am at the peak of my engineering skills and the bottom of my patience.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#623

Post by movpasd »

mil22 wrote: post #333

Effective working hours are not set by absolute productivity - they are set by an equilibrium between two forces: 1. Competitive market dynamics. If you only work four days a week, other employees and companies who are willing to work five days a week will do so and get ahead of you, and you are more likely to get fired or to go out of business. This force pushes us all to work longer (and harder) so we have more mon…

Attraction towards equilibrium is real, but that equilibrium is not a given. It comes from intrinsic biological constraints, individual preferences, cultural norms, ideology, habits and expectations. Even fixing individual preference, the aggregate preferences is structurally mediated (collective or individual bargaining, labour laws). Through all those factors there's path dependency and friction towards equilibrium.

The point is: "a society's willingness" is doing a _huge_ amount of work in that framing. This willingness is precisely what is up for debate when we discuss work days.

The whole of humanity is one big system of self-feedbacks. Equilibria are only reached with respect to constraints (otherwise there is only one equilibrium, which is heat death!). The more you zoom out, the more "givens" come up for their own analysis.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#625

Post by jameslk »

> So can I just take Friday off? From here on out, I’ll work Monday, Tuesday, Wednesday, Thursday, and then take Friday off.

Yeah, if you switch to working as an independent contractor, you can work any amount of time you want. If you run your own business, you can work crazy hours or none at all. The world is truly your oyster

I'm not being facetious either. That's exactly what I did, and I got what I asked for

We can all talk about supply and demand here, whether companies should be forced to do X or Y, and how Keynes got his 15 hour work week prediction so wrong, ad nauseam. But if you truly want something beyond the talk, like a more flexible work schedule, there's real ways to get it right now

Re: Can we have the day off?

#626

Post by dannersy »

cattown wrote: post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

It is honestly offensive to me that this isn't plainly obvious to everyone. AI has never, ever, and never will be, about making life better for the average human. It has always been, and always will be, about wealth consolidation and control. Does anyone think it is coincidence that now local models are more useful the market has suddenly made it massively more expensive to buy your own hardware? Companies are just giving up making consumer hardware because they can can just focus on hyper-scalers. They want to control compute as well, there is no liberating aspect to any of this.

Businesses, especially tech ones, are not altruistic. The idea that tech companies are out to make anyone's life better is a joke and a sentiment that should have died decades ago. The evidence is of predatory business practices and leveraging the worst aspects of our brain chemistry to keep us hooked on apps that make us less happy, keep us stupid and less informed, and buying more.

Even more confusing are the people who are welcoming AI with open arms as just another skill to learn, _surely_ they'll be the ones who come out on top, right? It has all the stink of the countless Americans believing they too will become billionaires and everyone else are just suckers as they are all one healthcare problem away from bankruptcy.

We don't learn.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#627

Post by NietTim »

fg137 wrote: post #296

I never understand why software engineers are so excited about AI as a whole. If you are excited about the technology, sure. But if you are excited about the increase in productivity, unless you are a manager, I don't really understand it. Like, why? You are not working one hour less than before. If anything, it's more likely you'll get laid off and have trouble finding your next job.

I've never had this much fun at work. There was nothing more that I disliked in my job than months long projects with everything already planned out in advance. It made work extremely predictable and boring, the project was already fully thought out, all that needed to be done was the boring bit of writing all the code that you already know how to write, all the fun of exploring different ideas and implementation directions was already done.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#629

Post by 63stack »

theptip wrote: post #247
cattown wrote: post #33

This article is kind of playful, but I think there’s a serious point here that’s not discussed enough. We’re being asked to usher in huge productivity gains by introducing AI to our workflows, but we’re not asking how does it help us? Not a lot of us stand to directly gain from our employers becoming more productive. I know everybody is afraid of getting fired and replaced with AI or whatever right now. But we should…

I think it’s pretty naive to ask your employer for a day off. As experienced by companies, the market is more competitive than ever. Whoever slows down will get eaten by some hungry upstart that is willing to work 996 to eat the incumbent’s lunch. It’s a Prisoner’s Dilemma. The only way to get this outcome is to coordinate at a level higher than individual market participants. In other words, get your government to i…

"the market" is literally the arena of competition, it's not a surprise it's more competitive than ever

Re: Can we have the day off?

#630

Post by November_Echo »

testing22321 wrote: post #582
yladiz wrote: post #495

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Which European countries?

Australia no problem. Most liberal welfare in the world

> Australia no problem. Most liberal welfare in the world

Jobseeker is a maximum of $26k per year, but for most people it's going to be around $21k [1]. What else are you using supplement that because that feels like it would be close to the poverty line.

1: https://www.servicesaustralia.gov.au/how-much-jobseeker-paym...

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