Volpeon These people don’t want to automate work, they want to automate existence. They fantasize about hitting a button and something happening, because experiencing — living! — is beneath them, or at least your lives and your wants and your joy are. They don’t want to plan their kids’ birthday parties. They don’t want to research things. They don’t value culture or art or beauty. They want to skip to the end, hit fast-forward on anything, because human struggle is for the poor or unworthy.
These articles were effectively fan fiction for managers and bosses demanding we return to the office — ridiculous statements about how remote work “failed young people” (it didn’t) or how employees needed remote work more than their employers because “the chitchat, lunches and happy hours” are so important.
Had any of those reporters spoken to an actual worker, they’d say that they value more time with their families, rather than the grind of a daily commute softened with the promise of an occasional company pizza party — which usually happens outside of the typical working hours, anyway.
[Companies] neither know nor care what the customer wants, barely know how their businesses function, barely know what their products do, and barely understand what their workers are doing, meaning that generative AI feels magical, because it does an impression of somebody doing a job, which is an accurate way of describing how most executives and middle managers operate.
