It is surprising! I would have thought it is at least 6 hours per day.
Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
71–80 of 233 posts
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#72This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…
Don't worry. They'll find some freak that actually enjoys it and is even willing to be paid less!
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#73This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…
The vast majority of jobs are not full-filling or enjoyable. Because there were way more job seekers than jobs.
Programming was one of the ones which was, because there were fewer programmers than openings. Now that's flipping, thus naturally, the enjoyment is going to be sucked out of it.
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#74For me, AI can sometimes create a false sense of productivity. It's similar to how in the past, people would spend time creating the perfect setup with notion templates, pomodoro timers and productivity tools, or tweaking their environment for maximum productivity, instead of actually doing productive work.
But now it's happening at the company level: "We're going to add a chatbot to increase productivity! Now MCP tools! Then agentic workflows! We’ll add skills, and now productivity will go up! Maybe loops will do it?"
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#75i've seen a number of articles claiming things like "devs self report they'er +x% more productive with AI, but actually they're -y% LESS efficient!". and i think that this is explanation for why. as a boss (or researcher) i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output per hour that i'm paying you; as a workers, i'm going to measure productivity based on amount of output relative to the amount of effort i…
> so what may be happening is that bosses see that output is at 80% (productivity down!)
If an initiative produces only 80% of the previous results and you’re paying large token bills on top of the same wages, the AI is going to get cut off.
> i've seen a number of articles claiming things like "devs self report they'er +x% more productive with AI, but actually they're -y% LESS efficient!".
Are you thinking of the old METR evals? Their more recent evals showed an actual performance improvement.
The old report is still circulated as bait for AI skeptics.
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#76This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…
> customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. It sucks for the employees, otoh it might be the only way we're going to beat Baumol's Cost Disease. In the past few decades productivity has exploded, but service employees have largely failed to increase productivity in any way because it's harder to automate these tasks. It's the reason the c…
Education and healthcare are both ridiculously overpriced in the US for reasons that have little to do with service costs. Questionable financial systems behind these services are much more to blame.
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#77This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…
> customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. It sucks for the employees, otoh it might be the only way we're going to beat Baumol's Cost Disease. In the past few decades productivity has exploded, but service employees have largely failed to increase productivity in any way because it's harder to automate these tasks. It's the reason the c…
As a former first responder, I'm interested in hearing more about how AI-powered ambulance services would work. (related question: will the 911 dispatchers be AI?)
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#78You pay per token, even on subscription models the limit is tokens.
If I was valued at 1 trillion dollars, and I was in the hole enough to sink a couple small countries' GDP, maybe I would slowly start to optimize to maximize token usage.
I want to sell tokens, how do I sell more tokens? Not by doing the same work in less tokens, that's for sure.
This is like if you pay me by the hour and then excitedly tell me that you keep paying 10k a month and it's great. I will most certainly not work faster, in this hypothetical, if you tell me you love spending money because it gives you a dopamine rush. I would probably spend a couple more hours REALLY thinking about the task, maybe writing some docs nobody will read, maybe considering multiple options, doing benchmarks, doing research, and then later maybe ill do the actual task as well.
Im not saying these AI companies are scamming us, but the incentives are there and extremely clear. The only thing currently holding it back is that there is some vague kind of competition.
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#79This really hit home for me: In some cases, workers are also being asked to automate the parts of their jobs they enjoy most, Hinds said on the podcast, pointing to customer-service employees who enjoy building relationships but are increasingly expected to supervise AI agents instead. "That's what gives you joy and meaning at work," she said. "That is very dangerous." What's a 20% productivity gain if I constantly f…
It's like if your career switched from solving puzzles to filling out TPS reports.
For me it feels less like filling out reports, and more like mentoring an intern who can search for stuff really quickly but forgets everything at the end of the day due to anterograde amnesia.
Except the intern is trapped inside an iron lung and must communicate entirely by text. And also has zero real creativity or self-motivation.
Re: Workers are spending over 6 hours a week botsitting AI, fueling job frustration
#80I don't know what they're complaining about. AI has freed us from the drudgery of craftsmanship, letting us focus on the important stuff—managerial and administrative work!
(There's a reason why I call it the MBA's stone. It transmutes all knowledge work into a problem of management.)