Laundry and Dishes

Joanna Maciejewska | AI Fails | Luddite Renaissance | Literacy

Photo by Carlos Torres on Unsplash

I want AI to do my laundry and dishes so that I can do art and writing, not for Al to do my art and writing so that I can do my laundry and dishes.

| Joanna Maciejewska

…

I’m like Maciejewska. I’d be happy if AI would do the drudge work in my home. Not just smarts in the washing machine, but put the shirts on hangers, and place the underwear in my bureau. Fold the towels.

Self-driving car? Sure, let it take itself in for a tune-up, pick up groceries, or gas itself up. Vacuum itself. Clean the windows. Fine. Great.

But I don’t want AI to be typing this sentence ‘for me’ — better said, ‘instead of me’.

But the hundreds of billions being invested into AI is not intended to automate my home, giving me back time for my work and passions. It’s intended to drive higher productivity in the workplace, meaning more profits for shareholders by cutting more of the money that flows to labor: the rank-and-file workers. That is the only end state that would justify the massive influx of capital into hyperscaling AI. It has to be a return on investment of tens of trillions, doesn’t it? Otherwise, it’s a bad business decision.

But they aren’t really saying it out loud.

---

It’s your support that keeps me at work here at workfutures.io. To all my paid supporters, thank you.

---

AI Fails

Buried in a Financial Times article¹ about the vibes in business about the roll-out of AI in the business world is a startling factoid:

Recent research led by Aditya Challapally, who studies how enterprises are applying generative AI at Microsoft and the MIT Media Lab, found 95 per cent of generative AI pilots in the workplace failed.

This was because the current generation of AI tools lack features such as long-term memory and customisation, which would make them easier to plug into existing company systems.

“When we spoke to executives, they would often say the internal tool was very successful,” said Challapally. “But when we spoke to employees, we found zero usage.”

The cognitive dissonance is shocking: the execs brand some pilot a success, and the worker bees who are supposedly being more productive courtesy of the pilot simply ignore the tool.

And how much did it cost?

The FT piece, by Melissa Heikkilä, Chris Cook, Clara Murray, has some intriguing stats.

The biggest US-listed companies keep talking about artificial intelligence. But other than the “fear of missing out,” few appear to be able to describe how the technology is changing their businesses for the better.

That is the conclusion of a Financial Times analysis of hundreds of corporate filings and executive transcripts at S&P 500 companies last year, providing one of the most comprehensive insights yet into how the AI wave is rippling through American industry.'

'“When it comes to AI adoption, many companies aren’t guided by strategy but by ‘Fomo’,” said Haritha Khandabattu, senior director analyst at consultancy Gartner. “For some leaders, the question isn’t ‘What problem am I solving?’ but ‘What if my competitor solves it first?’”'

Shouldn’t any productivity initiative start with a problem statement? Like shortening the time to solve customer help calls? No, these idiots want to brag to their golfing buddies about their AI project.