the reduction of intellectual labor
In my first student job, my team was responsible for scanning any incoming bills for the company. A software then detected all the different positions and numbers, and then our job was to verify the text fields and if necessary, correct them manually (a 6 could sometimes become a 0 or 8, etc.) before sending them off to whatever finances/controlling SAP setup they had.
So was it very similar to work in the TV Show “Severance”? Yes. I was validating numbers for four hours a day.
In my current job, I’ve been doing the work for so long now that everything runs on autopilot. It’s mostly product management necessitating data entry, document management, handling deadlines, sending out autogenerated emails, or using previously approved bits of text. I click buttons and copy in words or slightly edit a template. No intellectual labor needed at this point, really. Everything that actually necessitates it is short-lived, rare, or concluded. It’s what bothers me greatly and is unsatisfying; I wanna use my brain, work on problems, write things, discuss matters with people, analyze and create things myself. Not just as an outlier, but as a core part of the job.
What I am currently seeing at my workplace is that even the intellectually demanding jobs requiring expertise opinion here will be reduced to the workslop that I do. That’s their plan.
Ideally, instead of writing a report, it will (mostly) be generated by AI. The stuff the report is based on is documents that other companies have created with the help of AI that they submit to us. If we receive a report (which is also likely partially or fully AI generated), we’re gonna have AI summarize it and suggest points to comment. When we comment on the report, AI will pre-generate a text. In meetings, they’ll probably discuss a draft AI generated instead of working together to create that draft.
And some people actually push for that and are excited.
I think they are misguided and don’t know what they’re actually wishing for. This is abolishing what makes their job interesting, memorable and varied, and they don’t even know yet what else they’d fill their time with. And let’s be real: Almost no workplace will just let you leave early for the same pay as long as the work is done, especially not this one. You’ll be reduced to clicking buttons, copy pasting text, pressing enter, and editing pre-generated text… and waiting.
From experience, I can tell you that’s not satisfying at all if you want (or got used to getting) more stimulation from work. It’s not mentally engaging, and how easy and repetitive it all is makes even the easiest task feel like it’s not worth even focusing on. It’s a huge hurdle to get started at all. You sit there for hours needing to waste time. It might be cool the first 1-2 years, but it starts to negatively affect you at some point, especially on office days (and even more so when it’s exclusively on-site with no WFH!). You can see it right now with so many people in IT getting sick of working with AI and feeling disillusioned because all they do is generate and watch. Many people wanna iterate and create by themselves, not be a robot’s manager.
I talked to coworkers about it and they just laugh at it. One told me that it’s true that AI will eliminate intellectual labor, but then we can just go do physical labor like painting walls because AI won’t be able to do that.
I don’t wanna paint walls for a living! I don’t want us to have went to university for degrees and even doctorates just to waste away at the desk as we autogenerate everything and just observe AI for legal reasons and the option to stop it or readjust it in case something is wrong. I wouldn’t even have any qualifications for the sort of physical labor I’d likely then have to do (though, I wonder sometimes if I should just throw in the towel and start training to become a welder).
I am hoping so badly to one day do more intellectual work that necessitates written reports and in-depth analysis or critiques of things, “deep work”, consultations and meetings with experts on the field in the same company or on conferences… being a what’s often referred to as a “knowledge worker”. But now, AI possibly jeopardizes that or at least greatly limits it, maybe decimates it to a few exceptions and opportunities. The actual day-to-day tasks won’t be like I need them to be.
I’m simply more academically inclined, yet I was never able to live that. I was never able to live the campus life and fully focus on learning and classes and summer school, labs, exchanges, trips and discussions with peers and professors and all that… and now I can’t give up my full-time job at 30 to do that. I have to do a part-time degree alone at home with none of that and no one else to talk to or bounce ideas off of, no networking, no campus life, can’t even reach the professors.
I wonder if I’ll ever get out of this career hole, even after my degree(s). At this point, they seemingly want a university degree for bullshit work like preparing envelopes, generating stupid PowerPoint slides or putting appointments into someone’s Outlook calendar as if that’s what people really got a Bachelor’s for. And now my workplace is on its way to let people with a doctorate press “Enter” all day like they’re sitting on slot machines and call that scientific work because an expert pressed the button and had possession of two eyes to catch any obvious discrepancy. We’ll call it progress when the bots just talk to each other and we only get summaries.
Anyone I talk to about this is trying to calm their fears and mine with the idea that either this is still going to take a decade, or that it’s gonna fail because of the quality and hallucinations.
Both isn’t helpful for me because I disagree with the pace of progress (or the idea that a simple delay is enough), and I have learned the hard way recently that the people here do not care about quality anymore if it means getting to play with AI and having less work. They are encouraged by leadership to be this way because putting AI into everything and potentially finding cost-cutting options is more important under the guise of “exploration” and “supporting innovation”.
They also put too much confidence into their willingness to keep checking the AI output thoroughly every time or their ability to catch plausible sounding hallucinations, so in their eyes, the error rates are easily made up for by their supposed spidey senses. I also see some people say that no one will force you to use AI, but I assume they will at some point, or you at least can’t afford to always take longer than your coworkers who do use it. Not that you’d care about speed or “efficiency”, but your boss probably does.
If only it would exclusively take over office workslop like useless emails and calendar management, but no… instead, I look at what’s ahead and office work possibly will instead just become even more monotonous, repetitive and soul-sucking if it all succeeds like planned and the costs and token limits don’t prevent the worst of it. My last hope is the true costs being too high.
I recognize that mentally enriching work is a privilege, but I at least need work that doesn’t turn my brain into a depressive pulp. I know, princess-and-the-pea levels of complaining when others on this world die in Cobalt mines and sweatshops, but I can’t help it. The alienation of labor is reaching intense levels, and I’m tired. So much feels like a bullshit job now while I am begging to use my brain.
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