Do you miss your old working life, the one before artificial intelligence (AI) muscled in? Many do.
Job hunters complain of the lack of the human touch as algorithms screen their applications and interviews are conducted by robo-recruiters.
Some lament that generative AI has intensified work rather than given them room to breathe.
In one study, “employees worked at a faster pace [and] took on a broader scope of tasks” due to AI. Others spurn it altogether, opting out of automated shortcuts because it makes them lazy-brained and contaminates their thinking.
READ MORE
Almost two-thirds (65 per cent) of white-collar workers regularly yearn for their old working life, according to consultancy Adaptavist. About a third would ditch GenAI for inhibiting creativity, its research finds, while a similar proportion worry about misuse. Almost half say the need to fact-check AI slop is adding to the slog – contrary to the grand promise that the future of work would dial down the drudgery.
While only a survey, the sentiment chimes.
Putting together a coherent report at the touch of a button seems easy, but verifying it and pruning the dross is a time suck. Just look at the proliferation of AI-generated LinkedIn posts. It’s not just that they have become formulaic but also interminably long. The alternative to checking is ridicule and even sanctions, as demonstrated by lawyers and consultants upbraided for including hallucinated cases in their legal arguments and reports.
The impact of the technology on creativity is worrying. Research into creative writing among the general population rather than professional novelists finds that GenAI may inspire more plot twists, but overall leads to a duplication of ideas and a homogeneity of stories.
Another study on innovation by the Wharton School at the University of Pennsylvania found similar results – while the ideas improved, the diversity weakened, leading one author to warn that “if you rely on ChatGPT as your only creative adviser, you’ll soon run out of ideas, because they’re too similar to each other”.
Employers’ flip-flopping AI policies have also discombobulated staff. First encouraged to use the technology to automate tasks and experiment widely, employees are now being asked to rein it in to control costs as tech companies switch to token-based billing.
This is even before moving on to fears over job losses, ethical and environmental issues. Is it any wonder some crave a pre-AI workplace?
In May, former Google chief executive Eric Schmidt was booed by graduating students while delivering his commencement speech to the University of Arizona, warning them not to spurn the AI revolution.
“When someone offers you a seat on the rocket ship, you do not ask which seat, you just get on. Graduates, the rocket ship is here,” he said.
Brian Merchant, author of Blood in the Machine, has drawn parallels between the 18th-century protests of the Luddites and modern resistance to AI. Both are commonly misconstrued as technophobes.
Aer Lingus job cuts and Ryanair’s profits plunge - what is happening in the Irish aviation sector?
But students’ reaction to the ex-Google boss and the yearning for a pre-AI world do not necessarily mean outright rejection – rather an objection to how it is used. Why should a graduate strap themselves to a rocket without asking questions?
Jason Dressel, chief executive of the History Factory, which works with brands on heritage and archives, says nostalgia speaks to a desire for “stability, agency and economic confidence” while “navigating rapid change. AI intensifies that feeling because it is reshaping not only how people work, but how their contribution is valued”.
As with all nostalgia, however, the risk is casting the past in rose hues. AI’s incursion into art and writing certainly increases cultural homogeneity and blandness built on stealing creators’ work to train large language models.
But many consumers do not care, and film, television and publishing executives were perfectly capable of putting out banal and repetitive content before AI came along. Not every creation is an experimental work of genius.
While there are very serious concerns about how young people will learn how to do their job when the basic tasks can be done by AI, is it really the case that the apprenticeship model in banks and law firms of making graduates repeat a monotonous task 1,000 times was the best way? Or could older executives’ affection for their distant youth be muddying their view?
Scrutinising the past is a useful way to clarify the bits of work we want to keep and which to ditch – but only if we are honest with ourselves. – Copyright The Financial Times Limited
