Accounting for Humanity

Over the last few weeks, my thoughts have been turning toward the idea of “going analogue” and what digital, mobile, and smart technology has done to our concept, and value, of time.

Most recently, I found my frustration hit its peak when, on opening a journal paper, I was confronted with “this is a long document, save time and have AI write a summary”. This prompt, in my ‘grumpy lady’ view is everything that is wrong with this wave of Clippy*-esque AI.

Now, to clarify, I do not have an issue with the technology making things more effective, my problem is the encouragement of the idea that you are somehow incapable of doing these things just as well yourself, or worse, that you shouldn’t be trying, or learning to do these things yourself. Looking at the journal paper incident; I downloaded the paper to read it, regardless of how long it was. Even then, if I was short on time, I would read the intro/conclusion and then decide myself if it was worth reading any further. If someone went to the effort to write this paper (and I know them, so I know that they did), I am going to honour that effort by putting in the effort to actually read it ALL BY MYSELF.

The problem here was that the Adobe AI did not even give me the chance to make the decision about whether I would read it or not myself, it just confronted me with its decision; a “no you’re a lazy stupid human, let me help you and summarise it for you”. Worse still is the insidious nature, and the reasoning for this pondering, of the prompt: that whole let AI “save you time” approach. But if my time is for work, and this is work, what then am I saving time for?

*Clippy being that infuriating little Microsoft paperclip who insisted on annoying you at every possible juncture in the spirit of “helping”.

I’ll sleep when I’m dead: The Trouble with “hustle” culture

For most of us, the beauty of technology is this idea that it makes a lot of things faster and easier. What can be better than getting those pesky tasks out of the way in record time, and without compromising the quality of the output right? It’s not just even about AI either, excel can do the math, word can do the spell check etc., etc. Imagine the days when you wanted to reach someone a quick question, you have to traverse the office to actually find them?

The argument for such innovation is arguably that by removing/hastening the time consuming yet non-critical work, time can focus on the the important stuff and thus, more is achieve during working hours. There was a time when the idea behind this was you then get more “quality” time outside work, i.e., more time spent with loved ones and/or doing something you enjoy. However, at some point this idea corrupted and split into two rather depressing ideas; first is that with technology you can do more work AND you can do it all the time, no matter where you are; and second, even if you get that “free” time, you spend it doom scrolling on social media!

I have worked in places where this concept of being “available” 24/7 was expected. Feeling the need to justify not seeing an email because I was asleep at 5am when it came through (the audacity of me). Worse still, I bought a “work only” phone that I would switch off when I left the office (the double audacity!!). With mobile technology and the internet, we are more connected than ever, we are forever visible, and part of me is beginning to think (in some ways) that this is an awful thing. There was a time when the idea of going into the (home or actual) office, booting up the computer and logging on to the internet to do work in the evenings or on a Saturday was inconceivable. Yet, as it becomes easier to “send a quick email”, “just jump on a quick call”, or “just give this report a quick read” on your phone, there is a growing idea that you should be simultaneously switching in and out of “work” mode.

As a counterpoint, yes this does introduce a much needed flexibility into the working day (not everyone was designed for a smooth running 9am-5pm). However, the problem becomes that we lose sight of just how many hours we are giving to work. The system moves from a rugby method (stop/start until you hit the total time) to an on call approach where you have no idea if you have worked 35 hours or 80. Our 7.5-8 hour working day has evolved into a ‘Co-pilot’ shadow forever lurking behind us.

What also becomes an issue is that your phone/social media is also exposing you to the idea that rest is for the weak. Let us say that you ignored the temptation to send that work email, opting instead to have a quick look on social media. Here you are introduced to an onslaught of content promoting the “hustle” culture i.e., if you’re not working, you’re losing. Social media is abundant with content guised as “motivation”, to get you working out more, putting the hours in and never stopping. You skipped the gym? You’re an awful human being. You wanted to spend the weekend with the kids? You don’t deserve that promotion. There is no time or patience for slowing down, rest is for the lazy and sleep for the dead. In this world you’ve got to keep on moving and “monetise, monetise, monetise”. Yet here is Adobe AI, actively trying to make me lazy by not allowing me to read a paper for myself because it’s “quite long”…

As the prominence of this concept of 24/7 hustle/grind grows, our main question forms: why?

Looking at influencer culture, the obvious idea would be to achieve (financial) success, to be like them, visions of the “ideal”. There is also the merging of the old and new ideas, you can have success/money in a way that gives you more time to enjoy life and be #blessed (I know we’re long passed that era but I am woefully behind on popular language). However, most of us by now know that what we are seeing is a smokescreen, snapshots of a manufactured image so, is it still about adopting technology to have more time to enjoy life?

But if life is all about the hustle, then what is this pursuit of extra time for? Are we saving time to work more, or to die having never enjoyed the apparent spoils this eternal toil brings? As a society we have found ourselves at a juncture that fails to make sense, our concept of work has morphed into a lifestyle and identity, it’s not longer part of life, it is our life. Time is money and money is what we should all want so time inherently becomes financially valuable. Time wasted is money lost…

Yet riding high on the AI wave is the concept of having AI do everything for you. How does one hustle if AI is doing everything for me? If I contribute nothing, how can I expect to earn anything in return?

“Free” time?

For most of us, particularly in what feels like a continually worsening environment and (let’s be honest) disgustingly growing wealth gap , the all consuming work mode is about survival (my argument is not about this, that is a whole other significant issue/injustice). For a lot of us it’s not “hustle culture”, it’s working extreme hours/multiple jobs just to make ends meet, not to post “content” online for the “likes”.

However, let us look at this “hustle culture” concept again. As noted, the idea is to get rich/famous. We should be aspiring to be like the super rich and to do that we need to be “on it” 24/7, no breaks.

The hope of course is that there will come a point where you can stop and enjoy all that “free time”, but once in you’re in this race, time is money, there is no “free” time. Time is monetisable, if you aren’t monetising you’re losing. “Wasting” time then is truly a luxury (and actually yes, those times when you actually get to enjoy life are priceless), so why then, when we’re done “hustling” for the day, or if we take option B and have AI do all our work to “save time”, do we sit down and spend all that hard earned time endlessly scrolling on social media?

Welcoming the Conundrum: Time is worthless and priceless

Here in we find the problem, we are being taught that time is so valuable that we should be using every fraction of it for monetisation but, at the same time, we spend hours needlessly scrolling through social media, the so-called “doom scrolling” and “brain rot”. If productivity is key, surely this is the worst use of our time?

The truly more bizarre part of it all is this. We work ourselves to the bone, sacrificing almost everything to sit and watch other people doing the things that we used to enjoy online (or arguably pretended to do those things “for the likes”). The time we worked so hard to earn is given over to nothing, or worse, it becomes guilt as we convince ourselves that we are either not working hard enough or that we do not deserve to spend time on enjoyment.

Even for those who try to reclaim their time we find another issue, the monetisation of hobbies. Hobbies are vital for mental health, they are that chance to escape from all the stresses of life, reading a book, painting, going for a run, etc. They are supposed to be things just for you, you should not be made to feel guilty for not either monetising them or sharing them with the world for “content”.

So here we are in this strange technology-induced predicament. Social media tells us we should be hustling, inspiring, rising and grinding, insert random “motivational” (note: often not actually that motivational) quote to seize the day. Furthermore, you’re not really seizing the day unless everyone knows about it, I don’t want to go for a run in the park, I want to watch you on TikTok going for a run in the park (though I lie, I don’t like running and I don’t use TikTok, but you get the idea). So once we’re getting our minds around this, suddenly in walks AI offering to do all of this for us to save time. We don’t have to go a run, AI can make a video of you going for a run, AI can write that report, AI can read that other report, AI can schedule those meetings for you. Great! Now we have adequately shown that we are not required for our job as AI can do a mediocre/acceptable enough effort we can enjoy those 12 hours of “free” time, so what better way to celebrate that catching up on all those “for you” reels/TikToks and imagine what it must be like to do all those fun things we could be doing instead of watching them through a screen…Thanks AI!

-Disclaimer-

I say this often but, I am very aware and supportive of AI, my rejection is of the abuse/misuse of AI. I know that GenAI can be great to enhance accessibility but I do not agree with it being used to steal/replace creatives. AI can also be exceptionally useful in the workplace, I am aware of some great developments in archival transcription AIs (I’m trying one out at the moment, it’s not perfect but it does provide a good baseline for me to then properly transcribe afterwards). Also yes, there are amazing examples of AI saving lives through detecting cancers well before any human could. I am not anti-AI, I am anti-anyone claiming humans can’t/shouldn’t do things ourselves when possible.