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Can we have the day off?

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Re: Can we have the day off?

#651

Post by moduspol »

throw0101a wrote: post #255
moduspol wrote: post #199

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Computers and the Internet ushered in huge productivity gains. Despite many people losing their jobs as a result, it's tough to argue society isn't better off. I think that's the key difference with AI, though. It's not like I'm losing my job, but at least I have a robot at home that cleans the house and does my laundry. People are having their livelihoods threatened while their utility bills go up because of datacen…

> Computers and the Internet ushered in huge productivity gains. “You can see the computer age everywhere but in the productivity statistics.” — Robert Solow * https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Productivity_paradox * https://www.brookings.edu/articles/the-solow-productivity-pa... Connectivity/the Internet gave a bit of a boost during the 1990s, but the numbers pearked around 2004: * https://www.milkenreview.org/articles/…

I mean productivity generally, not economic productivity as measured by market cap growth or GDP.

Nobody is operating businesses now without electronic cash registers, POS systems, accounting systems, etc. It's way more productive to use computers and the Internet than to try to accomplish the same stuff without them.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#652

Post by Cthulhu_ »

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…

The only ones getting a paycheck off of this is those that work for the hardware manufacturers, unfortunately.

Mainly because in software development (at least for what I do), productivity does not translate into significant company gains. I work for an energy company, nothing is super revolutionary, and a new feature or capability takes a long time to translate into measurable revenue, if at all.

The energy crisis had a much bigger (positive) impact on the numbers than AI or anything I personally did. (although I have to add, they also did a major re-architecture of their back-end after the '22 energy crisis and did some smart buy-in, so as the other energy companies' websites struggled, ours churned along just fine and we got a lot of new customers/contracts)

Re: Can we have the day off?

#653

Post by account42 »

Nasrudith wrote: post #621
paulhebert wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 sh…

We expect that because the company is only allowed to exist at the will of society at large.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#654

Post by ForHackernews »

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…

Unions unions unions unions unions unions unions unions unions.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#655

Post by Cthulhu_ »

xnx wrote: post #492
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…

> But we should be seriously asking in our next all hands meetings if 10x’ing our productivity can get us some days off. Pretty sure if you ask this that they'll give you all your days off.

Depends on whether you or your ancestors demanded some worker protection rights so they can't just fire you.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#657

Post by NietTim »

maplethorpe wrote: post #650
NietTim wrote: post #627

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 dir…

I'm not really following. Why is the problem you mentioned no longer a problem? Did your workplace change the way it plans projects now that AI is here?

Planning is the same, implementation time is just way shorter, so we can spend more time on things that are fun. The barrier to see if some outlandish idea works is also nonexistent now, you can generate a (non production ready, of course) MVP in an hour, where before it would take a few days.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#658

Post by poulpy123 »

Under capitalism is a question of either the benevolence of your employer (rare but it may happen), or your capacity to impose a day off

In turn, your capacity to impose a day off is a question of either your personal power or of class struggle.

Of course when you arrive at the question of the class struggle, the discourse becomes funny

Re: Can we have the day off?

#659

Post by CalRobert »

Until we fix the artificial scarcity of necessities (particularly housing), peer competition ensures that people will work as hard as they practically can in order to outbid their peers for said necessities.

We could have abundance, but then people might not have to maximize their efforts to produce wealth for capital holders.

My wife and I work full time so we could outbid other people who wanted our house.

Re: Can we have the day off?

#660

Post by keybored »

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…

The top comment explains the point of the article in plain terms. I’m not sure how many levels of jokes we are on.
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