Evil Plans (Mwahaha!)

Tech overlords show their hands

Devil Gate Drive

Back in the day, everyone wanted to be Steve Jobs. Steve was a rebel, Steve was dynamic, Steve was successful. Steve was creative, Steve was a genius, Steve was cool.

Steve was also a massive arsehole. But we overlooked that because, you know, genius.

Now, they still want to be Steve but they think being a rebel is wearing a hoodie to board meetings, they are dynamic like a toddler emptying a toy box and they are successful financially but still look like losers.

They are not creative, they are not geniuses and they are not cool.

But they are all massive arseholes.

Let’s start with Satya Nardella at Microsoft. He has the turtle neck. He has the shiny pate. He looks like a bookish Dr Evil.

He’s initiated a programme to reduce Microsoft’s US workforce by 10%, offering exit packages to 8,750 employees. So, I guess they are evaluating where people’s roles are no longer required, where their skill set doesn’t match the requirements, restructuring the organisation to be more effective, right?

Nope. They are saying that if your age plus your years of service add up to 70 or more, it’s time for you to go.

Wha..how…come again?

Yep, basically. If you are a senior employee, you’re no longer wanted. If you’ve got salt-and-pepper hair, you’re toast. Or if you’ve got a bald pate like Satya, it’s curtains (although not him, obviously).

So they are jettisoning all that experience and institutional memory and tacit knowledge. Why?

Well, they’ll probably say that these people are complacent and a drag on the business, but the real reason is that they are the most expensive people in the organisation. You get way more bang for your buck jettisoning a senior US employee than anyone else in Microsoft’s global workforce. The return on brutality is amazing!

Oh, and it frees up a load of money for Microsoft to squander invest in AI. And anyway, all the costs of losing all that experience and knowledge won’t land for a few more quarters, probably after Satya has retired to spend more time with his bonuses.

The Devil Went Down To Georgia

Not wanting to miss out on the action, the other ersatz Dr. Evil, Jeff Bezos, is pushing AI Adoption across the business by aggressively monitoring how software engineers are using AI tools. AI usage is also being brought into performance and promotion discussions.

Amazon is setting some clear targets for AI adoption, with most software teams expected to triple their software code release velocity, and around 25 teams expected to increase it by 10-fold.

Amazon are a famously ‘hard-driving’ company (or ruthlessly exploitative of their workforce, you could say) and this is another ratcheting up of pressure. It’s not gone down that well with engineers, who have expressed concerns around centrally driven mandates, unclear success metrics, and the burden of self-reporting progress.

Still, if all these engineers are churning out more code, that has to be good right? I mean, it’s more productive, more efficient, isn’t it? And Amazon will need fewer engineers, but don’t say that out loud, or they might not work as hard to make themselves redundant.

Amazon expects 80% adoption of AI over time and advises managers to treat AI like any automation investment. So more code is good and more automation is good. What could possible go wrong?

I mean, it’s not like Amazon have recently suffered any major outtages taking down large swathes of the internet due to an automation snafu, is it?

Meanwhile, Jeff is busy sending his wife and her friends into space on his huge rocket so they can admire his enormous ego achievement, which is almost certainly definitely not a compensation for anything.

(You’re The) Devil In Disguise

Still, Satya and Jeff are practically senile by Silicon Valley standards. I wonder what the young thruster ‘Zuck’ is up to? I bet he’s showing them.

Yep, he’s going one step further than Jeff and tracking employees’ keystrokes, mouse movements and screens. Why? To gather real usage data on how employees interact with productivity software for Meta’s AI programme, so they can better design the AI that will replace said employees. It’s great, you can train your AI replacement without even knowing you are doing it!

Needless to say, it’s not gone down too well with the troops, who find it intrusive and creepy and want to opt out. Meta says they aren’t allowed to opt out but it’s OK because they are only going to use the data for AI training and not for performance monitoring, no really, definitely, you can trust us.

And why wouldn’t you trust the company who have never hidden internal documentation about how addictive their products are, or how they target minors, or how they help bad actors undermine democratic elections?

And Mark’s not done there either, he’s giving Satya a masterclass in how to get rid of people too. He’s also getting rid of 8000 employees, but across the global workforce. But he’s got a twist to it, and this is real evil genius stuff.

He’s announced the cuts but he’s not saying who is going to go until next month! So now everyone is scared shitless that they are going to get the boot. Brilliant, isn’t it? I almost feel an evil cackle coming on.

It’s actually even more delicious because only some of the layoffs are going to be disclosed in May, with more on the way ‘later in the year’. People’s nerves will be absolutely fried by the time the last of these happen. And they don’t even know when the torture will end!!

You have to hand it to Mark, he’s certainly showing the youthful dynamism, the toddler-in-the-toy-box energy, that drives the Valley forward. We’re lucky to have him, really.

Squeeze Box

This would all be senseless cruelty if it wasn’t being done for a reason. And that reason is AI. Of course it is.

These companies are heavily invested in it. No, really, I mean they are spending billions on it, on building data centres and developing models. So much money that even they, the most profitable businesses ever seen on the planet, need to make cuts to find the money they are ploughing into it.

Still, I’m sure they know what they are doing. I’m sure it’s all going to be worth it.

They say that we’ll be able to use AI to do the tedious, repetitive stuff, the work that is just execution. Then we’ll be free to concentrate on higher level work, we’ll have time to do the reflection and pondering that leads to creative breakthroughs.

Because that’s what’s happened in the past, with all this technology and automation, isn’t it? It’s freed us up to do better work and have more leisure time to rest and refresh.

Sorry, what? We’re working longer hours than ever now? We suffer from excessive cognitive load because of all the choices technology forces us to make and the ‘always on’ availability it enables? More of our work is busywork, dealing with the overload of messages and information that we are subjected to, running incessantly just to keep up and we are not any more productive? Burnout is at an all-time high and continuing to rise?

Ah, no, but this time, the benefits of the technology will be shared with us. They won’t see the extra time the AI tools free up as a reason to load us with even more work to ratchet our targets up by even more, I’m sure.

I mean, it’s not like they’ll be expecting us to 10x our output, is it?

Pardon? Oh, yeah, sorry, silly me. It’s not output, it’s ’software code release velocity’.

Oh…

Shit.

Burn

In an opinion piece in The Guardian, Prof Devi Sridhar (chair of global public health at the University of Edinburgh) writes about how digital communication can push us into that ‘always on’ state and generate feelings of exclusion or rejection. Given that our top two needs are belonging and connection, these are extremely harmful to us.

She explains that studies show short text-based interactions are more stressful than in-person ones because they lack nuance and are prone to misinterpretation.

Also, the ‘two ticks’ feature, to show a message has been read as well as received, also causes more stress. A delayed or ignored message can trigger the pain areas of the brain causing social pain, whilst others feel pressurised to respond because they know they’ve been seen to have read it. This constant availability can overload the brain’s decision making system, leading to cognitive fatigue and emotional exhaustion.

Furthermore, sudden ending of communication, whether deliberate ‘ghosting’ or circumstantial, can also feel incredibly painful because it activates our biological alarm systems.

Whllst Prof Sridar is writing about this in a generally context, clearly, much of that digital communication is experienced at work, where it is inescapable. It is also imposed upon us by our employers, which confers responsibility for it on them.

All this technology has been rolled out with little consideration given for how it will affect employees, other than how more productive it will make them or how much it can replace some of them. It’s been a massive experiment, the technology simply let loose into existing organisational structures. Now we are seeing the consequences, and they are not good. Productivity may have increased but at the cost of burning out more people, faster.

And now we’re going to repeat the same process with AI, where the potential for harm is even greater.

I wonder what would happen if we designed the technology around the people, rather than forcing the people to bend to the demands of the technology?

I think it would be transformational. But I’m not sure it’s going to happen.

After all, evil overlords have to lord over us evilly. It’s sort of what they do.

Even if they do resemble cartoon characters, but with less depth and personality.

Relax

Some of you may have noticed there wasn’t a newsletter last week. Well, this is ‘weekly-ish’, that’s the promise I made.

Actually, I wrote one but it didn’t quite come together to my satisfaction. My thoughts were even more half-formed than usual and the connection so tenuous as to be invisible. I could have rewritten it last Friday, but it was my birthday and so I played golf and spent time with family and friends. I suggest you do the same - well, get outside, be active and spend time with people you love. It’s good for the soul.

P.S. Tim Cook is retiring. But he never wanted to be like Steve Jobs anyway.