Email or username:

Password:

Forgot your password?
R E K's posts Post Back to profile
R E K

"The productivity myth suggests that anything we spend time on is up for automation — that any time we spend can and should be freed up for the sake of having even more time for other activities or pursuits — which can also be automated. The importance and value of thinking about our work and why we do it is waved away as a distraction. The goal of writing, this myth suggests, is filling a page rather than the process of thought that a completed page represents."

4 September at 15:34 | Open on merveilles.town
10 comments
R E K
Your friendly 'net denizen

@rek I really like the framing. Thanks for sharing that.

4 September at 16:25 | Open on social.coop
marc

@rek In conjunction with lowered tech literacy and systems becoming more complex, I find this worrying on a societal level. Democracy requires a good level of understanding on how things work, and without it these myths become more powerful and misleading.

Thinking of AI as sentient vs a stochastic parrot makes a huge difference in how we design policy and laws around regulating the technology.

4 September at 18:45 | Open on fosstodon.org
RS, Author, Novelist

@rek

techpolicy.press/challenging-t

The cited article deconstructs the propaganda used by the industry and people who promote #genAI and similar #aI tools thoroughly, though it's a bit long winded. Of most interest is the Learning and the Creativity "myths" promulgated by those promoting ai tooling by downplaying the human contribution as mere biological automation. Both include the word "labor," which is what industry aims to replace. Creators cost big money. Labor is a recurring cost. People require food and a place to live and they turn to creating to create personal wealth. Automation of any stripe needs be paid for only once (essentially). There is a value judgement here—usually made by those that employ labor, not by those that perform labor. As a creator, I am wary. I've yet to see AI writing tools that can help me save money, but I'm aware that if I find them they might replace labor from proofreaders and editors who do their jobs frighteningly well. I actually value their learned experience and creative suggestions.

@rek

techpolicy.press/challenging-t

The cited article deconstructs the propaganda used by the industry and people who promote #genAI and similar #aI tools thoroughly, though it's a bit long winded. Of most interest is the Learning and the Creativity "myths" promulgated by those promoting ai tooling by downplaying the human contribution as mere biological automation. Both include the word "labor," which is what industry aims to replace. Creators cost big money....

4 September at 19:07 | Open on eldritch.cafe
Coyote of Humidity

@rek This needs to be boosted 1000x

4 September at 15:37 | Open on hulvr.com
cathos

@rek That's a helpful framing. I feel like these tools and tendencies make it easy to forget that the *why* of our actions is often the point, and that the *why* that comes before and during the doing is different from the end result.

4 September at 16:07 | Open on merveilles.town
poetaster

@rek today i balked at a build... 'what's the point? I already know where it's headed...' bit lower lip. Built. Discovered something unexpected. Pleased. Automate that!

4 September at 16:36 | Open on mastodon.gamedev.place
Tirrimas
Cavyherd

@rek

It's part and parcel of the whole Abrahamic dissociative mindset. First we dissociate from Nature. Then we dissociate from our bodies. Then we dissociate from our minds.

5 September at 15:49 | Open on wandering.shop
Andres Moreno

@rek

This is why the proof is always more interesting than stating the theorem.

With the theorem we get a closed form. The proof, on the other hand, is pregnant with possibilities--this is where the real insight lives.

Thus, proving a result in mathematics is rooting around in a maze of many paths, and this rooting around builds intuition which is the true learning, not the final result.

8 September at 16:00 | Open on fosstodon.org
Go Up