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I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons, not for practical reasons. Just like every other office technology before, AI is going to replac

I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons, not for practical reasons. Just like every other office technology before, AI is going to replace workflows like that (and this: https://xkcd.com/763/ https://xkcd.com/763/) but it won't have an end effect on the total number of office workers, because they weren't really needed in the first place, and ebb and flow due to cycles of elite overproduction, not productivity.

ido 1y ago
> I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons The powers that be are not competent/powerful enough to engineer a society-wide conspiracy like that. A lot of waste (especially in big organizations, and the bigger the organization the more capacity for waste) happens, and the more the income is detached from production (e.g. governments get tax revenue regardless of how well they spend it) the less people care about efficiency. But for the most part people get hired because somebody thought that makes business sense to do so.
- dlcarrier 1y ago
  I think it's the opposite. The powers that be are not competent/powerful enough to engineer a company that prioritizes productivity over relationships. It's human nature to prioritize relationships over everything else, and it would take a lot of micromanaging to do otherwise, except that micromanaging itself is susceptible to human nature, so managers who try end up micromanaging relationships, not productive work.
protocolture 1y ago
>I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons, not for practical reasons Disagree. The receptionist recording something in excel manually, vs building an automation for it is a finance issue. Its opex vs capex. When people make huge assumptions about the future of technology, they tend to miss that lots of people dont want to fork out the capital to buy robots or build new tools, when it works "just fine" having karen enter it manually.

ido 1y ago

> I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons The powers that be are not competent/powerful enough to engineer a society-wide conspiracy like that. A lot of waste (especially in big organizations, and the bigger the organization the more capacity for waste) happens, and the more the income is detached from production (e.g. governments get tax revenue regardless of how well they spend it) the less people care about efficiency. But for the most part people get hired because somebody thought that makes business sense to do so.

dlcarrier 1y ago
I think it's the opposite. The powers that be are not competent/powerful enough to engineer a company that prioritizes productivity over relationships. It's human nature to prioritize relationships over everything else, and it would take a lot of micromanaging to do otherwise, except that micromanaging itself is susceptible to human nature, so managers who try end up micromanaging relationships, not productive work.

protocolture 1y ago

>I'm convinced that most office work exists for social reasons, not for practical reasons Disagree. The receptionist recording something in excel manually, vs building an automation for it is a finance issue. Its opex vs capex. When people make huge assumptions about the future of technology, they tend to miss that lots of people dont want to fork out the capital to buy robots or build new tools, when it works "just fine" having karen enter it manually.