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Bosses say AI boosts productivity – workers say they’re drowning in ‘workslop’
(www.theguardian.com)
this post was submitted on 14 Apr 2026
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Before AI, most executives probably skimmed the summaries of written work where such summaries existed. Where summaries didn't exist they probably either didn't do the reading, sent it back to get a summary, or had to schedule some meeting with whoever produced it.
Now, they probably simplify that last step into generating an AI summary.
I can see this being interpreted as making them more productive, and in some cases that might even be true. I doubt there's an analysis of how often the AI summaries are poor quality (compared to human-written summaries). I doubt there's an analysis of how much time is wasted (and by whom) if the AI summaries mess up something important. I doubt there's an analysis comparing the benefits of having a team present its work/be questioned on its work vs. having AI simply summarize whatever they've produced.
There are also probably some superficial time savings in the form of "AI, write an email to this subordinate asking them to do XYZ." That also may save some real time in some cases, but produce externalities or extra work for other people that your executives simply don't see.
I don't think the previous approach of skimming the documents would have uncovered the errors either. What is different now is that now not even the author-human knows what's in the documents.
Another problem is that a human author's tends to notice when something is unknown while an LLM will most of the time just fill the information gaps with plausible text strings.
Bold you to assume that executives do anything productive.
I think a large amount of skepticism is warranted, but MLs of all people should recognize that there is a real benefit from good leaders and effective organizations.
Under capitalism, we keep the good leaders and effective organizations right next to the unicorn stables and leprechaun pens.
Do you genuinely believe there are zero good managers or executives in capitalist countries? This is underestimating your enemy.
"good" and "effective" are not synonyms in that context
Any "leader" who thinks that this makes them more effective is not a good leader.
I seriously can't imagine feeling like this iteration of AI makes you dramatically more productive and not immediately succumbing to existential apocalypse.
Like, imagine if whatever it is that sustains and justifies your existence within capitalism was replaced with a dog shitting on its own feet and you and everybody else says "This is at least as good as your output if not better!" How long do you think you'd be getting credit for the dog shitting on itself? How do you bear witness to what is in front of you and not ask "What the fuck is it that I've been doing all this time?"
These people pole vault over those questions and decide that it even further justifies their privilege over the actual workers. "Yes, the commoditized and infinitely replaceable dog shitting on itself that replaces my entire productive output proves without a shadow of a doubt that I am an irreplaceable genius."
In an alternate universe this whole thing is an experiment that runs for 5 years in order to determine who is too brain broken and has to be purged from society.