Anecdotally, workers report a bigger increase in burnout because the increased pressure for more productivity and AI usually talking the more creative parts of the job thus leaving the boring verification and fact checking work to the worker.
AI promised to free up workers’ time. UC Berkeley researchers found the opposite.
Submitted 17 hours ago by NomNom@feddit.uk to technology@lemmy.world
Comments
WanderingThoughts@europe.pub 11 hours ago
mrgoosmoos@lemmy.ca 5 hours ago
I told the owner of the company recently that, and I quote, “I will fucking kill myself if my job becomes reviewing AI output”
BennyTheExplorer@lemmy.world 5 hours ago
What did he say, do you still have your job?
DrunkenPirate@feddit.org 15 hours ago
That’s where a vicious cycle can form: increased capability leads to increased output, which leads to higher expectations, which then pressures further expansion
Same as The Digitalization promised. Instead of reducing work we receive and send even more emails, chats, and notifications.
MalReynolds@slrpnk.net 12 hours ago
Same principle as “your spending will increase to match your income”.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 16 hours ago
To the surprise of absolutely nobody
7112@lemmy.world 15 hours ago
Eggyhead@lemmings.world 15 hours ago
My goodness! How did you upscale that image so beautifully??
etchinghillside@reddthat.com 14 hours ago
Capitalism gonna capitalize
moobythegoldensock@infosec.pub 15 hours ago
“…Employees worked at a faster pace, took on a broader scope of tasks, and extended work into more hours of the day, often without being asked to do so,” Ye and Ranganathan wrote of their in-progress research.
Every boss: $$$$$$$$
irate944@piefed.social 15 hours ago
In their observations and interviews with employees of the 200-person company, the researchers found that generative AI didn’t free up time—it expanded what workers felt capable of, and willing, to take on.
The title is either poorly thought out, or bait lol
TL;DR: the study says that AI doesn’t save time, but it intensifies work because the people using it feel more confident in tackling more things
errer@lemmy.world 11 hours ago
Right now everything the study finds seems to be a positive for both workers and bosses…workers are motivated and more cognitively engaged, bosses are getting more work out of them.
The second part is purely speculation on how this might lead to unwanted side effects in the future, but the study offers no evidence at all for those effects yet.
justgohomealready@sh.itjust.works 5 hours ago
How is it a positive for you to be required to deliver 10x the work in the same timeframe as before, while earning the same salary, and while having your job change without warning or negotiation? AI makes it possible to do much more work in a shorter amount of time, but that doesn’t translate into more free time - it’s just that it becomes expected that you should deliver much more work.
Let me give you an example: imagine you work for a magazine. Before, you worked on a team of 5 designers, who each had a week to come up with two or three sections of the magazine. Now, most of the team is gone, you are creating the whole magazine by yourself using AI, your job changed from writing copy and using photoshop to create art to “prompt engineering”. The company expanded its business and now they publish 10 magazines (mostly AI slop) instead of one, because they can.
This is great for those who sell tokens and maybe for your boss, no one else. Workers end up being expected to increase their output multiple times; the fun parts of the job are taken over by AI and you’re left doing basically QA all day; the market is runover by AI slop; your boss now has to compete not only with very specialized people, but also with kids using AI.
I can tell you from personal experience working in the consulting world that many people who have been heavy AI users for the last year are now ending up with burnout. I can personally see everything the article mentions going on in my real world bubble.
orbitz@lemmy.ca 2 hours ago
Probably not what this article means but had a coworker at a previous job give a bunch of suggestions or answers at one point (want to say very small company single programmer is me, few tech support and sales people). One guy gives suggestions based on chat gpt, so I end up figuring out what is incorrect from the suggestion.
Mean I know he’s trying to be helpful but giving suggestions that don’t work is a bit of a time waster. To be honest I’m probably middling as a programmer, I can figure out stuff but not a fantastic one (maybe I sell myself short never come across an issue I couldn’t solve but took time). So having to spend time to go over that just makes me go over stuff I really don’t need to. Quite a pain, as much as I appreciate them trying to help it’s a time waster checking out those options to see if they work.