[tarkin2]

I theorise that many social ills come from workers having less pride in their skills and achievements, and a greater sense of social alienation, due to automation.

If you spend countless hours at work, and you partially define yourself by your work, and you realise you are easily replaceable then I cannot imagine this comes without mass social malaise that manifests itself elsewhere.

When you know you're essentially babysitting the workhorse to ensure it doesn't go off the rails, I can't see job satisfaction, and the social consequences of such, increasing.

[emacdona]

> When you know you're essentially babysitting the workhorse to ensure it doesn't go off the rails

I don't have data to support this (other than, I guess, my LinkedIn feed), but my impression is that the management class is pushing AI _way_ harder than the worker / craftsperson class.

And if that's true, I think it's perhaps because it's something they understand: you tell AI to do something, and (with varying degrees of success and less complaining)... it does that thing.

To the extent that I've seen craftspeople adopt AI, it's been because they recognize its usefulness as a tool to further their craft. I don't meet many craftspeople that enjoy watching any[one|thing] do their work for them.

[selicos]

I agree with this. The stack seems to become:

LLM worker > Harness, Agents w/ skills > Human oversight/input

This is similar in structure to many teams I work with, something like:

Dev/SE/etc > PO > Manager/Director

Or whatever your current org structure relates. The LLM worker and Harness/Agents compact down to one human layer.

Now with MOE LLMs, the LLM layer is breaking into like:

LLM worker > LLM router > Harness, Agents w/ skills > Human oversight/input

Does that mean the Human element can be condensed to a single Manager with the right skills? A Director above them? Is the VP above them directing the agents?

Is this another variation of Conway's law, where orgs design systems that copy their own communication structure? Seems like that is how my Manager/Director approach it. Then again, they are making slide shows and obviously AI assisted reports, not something that needs to be stable and responsive for the entire product lifetime.

But to your point, the manager sees it as a structure to manage to increase productivity. The craftsman sees it as a tool to further their craft. Each is driven by a different methodology and use case. Can that mesh unless specifically directed to throw AI at no joy work?

[delecti]

> I theorise that many social ills come from workers having less pride in their skills and achievements, and a greater sense of social alienation, due to automation.

Welcome comrade. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Marx%27s_theory_of_alienation

I agree entirely. Even in an idealistic fully egalitarian post-scarcity society, to truly be happy I think most people would need to do work that they can feel a sense of accomplishment about. The problem is that work at most jobs is increasingly just toil. Any possibility to scrape some tiny flakes of satisfaction out of the toil gets removed, often for no good reason.

[stringfood]

I'll be in my woodshop!

[danaris]

There's been a fair amount of research done on this, and while Marx's alienation theory isn't totally out there, what makes the most difference for workers is autonomy and purpose. We need to feel like we have some control over what we do, and like what we do is meaningful.

That's easier with things like farming, but it's totally possible with highly-automated jobs; you just can't have managers treating us like we're machines.