Work Matters

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This Went in an Unexpected Direction

Yesterday I spoke to an AI agent on the phone. At least, I think it was an AI. It did not announce itself as such; it called itself “Dane.” But maybe it wasn’t an AI? It was so humanoid that I wasn’t sure, so I spoke to it as though it could be a human, albeit one who was extremely adept at mixing conversational speech with call center script. Aside from a general AI vibe I got from Dane, it did some specific things that made me think it wasn’t human. I thought about listing them here, but I don’t want to. And now I’m realizing, perhaps for the first time, that everything I post here is already being digested and catalogued by non-humans.

Which of course I already knew. Surely there have been web crawlers as long as there have been search engines, identifying keywords and indexing my blog alongside every other thing posted to the internet.

If you have a blog: have you ever learned that someone unexpected reads your posts? Once, years ago, I learned that a colleague or maybe a classmate of my husband had stumbled across my blog. Obviously, that has always been possible; my posts are public. I write because I want to be read. I do try to remember that my words are public, and I do self-edit my posts in some ways. It’s not as though this person did anything nefarious, or even (as far as I know) commented on my posts or kept reading for any length of time. (If you’re still reading, hi!) It still felt odd, though, as if someone were reading over my shoulder. (Why it doesn’t feel that way all the time, I don’t know. You’re reading it, aren’t you? And that not only doesn’t bother me, it makes me happy!) Looking “being read” right in the face makes me squirmy. The same feeling applies when I think about an AI scouring the web for ideas about how to be more human, and landing on this post, and tucking my thoughts away for future instruction.

I started out thinking this would be a Five for Friday post, but apparently I want to talk about AI some more. It’s a topic I think about many times a day. It’s a subject I don’t know a whole lot about. It’s something that terrifies and fascinates me.

Let’s start here: The environmental implications of AI are massive and horrifying. Full stop.

A while back, I had a friend who seemed obsessed with LLMs. She used them all the time, and our conversations often included her saying things like, “I asked ChatGPT and it said…” or “I just put all my thoughts about X into Claude and it suggested…” She seemed to derive real insight from her interactions with AI. Sometimes, when we exchanged everyday gripes or concerns, she suggested that I turn to one of the LLMs for answers or clarity.

I occasionally use Chat GPT, and I do so with tremendous trepidation. I do not like what it learns about me when I ask it for things. I do not like the humanoid quality of its responses. I do not like that it makes assumptions and intuitive leaps. I do not like the image, in my head, of all the resources it’s depleting just to give me a list of books that meet a series of very specific requirements.

At a work event for my husband’s practice, some of his colleagues were discussing AI and its various applications in the medical field. Providers ask AI to summarize patient visits, which can optimize their time doing paperwork and allow them to interact with patient instead of focusing on their computers. Surgeons operate robotic tools remotely. AI can help spot pre-cancerous polyps in endoscopy videos.   

Requests for my freelance work have declined in recent years. Occasionally, I decide that I want to earn more money and I look for jobs. Usually, my searches are for remote positions because I dislike wearing real clothes any more than absolutely necessary. My entire career has been in writing adjacent fields: editing, copywriting, content creation. Editing and writing are what I love to do; they are my primary skills. The job search engines turned up posting after posting after posting for various methods of training AI to edit and write.

(I use Google and Gmail every day. I click on words in my Kindle and in online content to see their definitions. I employ spellcheck in Word.)  

Two men at my neighbor’s barbecue chatted about their use of AI at work. One uses it to generate marketing copy. The other uses it to write emails to customers. They agreed that AI is so much cheaper and easier and more efficient than hiring an expert to do those tasks. They noted that the output isn’t quite as good. They each shrugged.

I disabled the predictive text function on my phone. I disabled Gemini in my Gmail accounts. I refuse to look at the AI Overview in my Google search results. I feel principled and righteous. I feel irritated because I have to do so much scrolling to find a reputable source for my inquiries and I misspell so many words when I text and I overlook emails from my mom because my inbox is so clotted with advertisements.

One of my writing friends recently told me that she was quitting ChatGPT cold turkey. She had been using it to help her brainstorm ideas, refine sentences, identify plot holes… but she’d been horrified by the number of articles she’d been reading about AI use in the publishing industry. She also felt her brain wasn’t working as quickly or as deftly as it had before she’d started using AI.

(Apple Maps tells me how to get to the airport and friends’ houses and medical offices. Siri tells me what to expect from the day’s weather. Presumably nearly every airplane I’ve ever been on utilizes autopilot.)

I worry about: My lack of marketable skills. The various ways AI might impact my child’s future: her career prospects, her critical thinking skills, her mental health. The longterm effects of the systematic mutilation of our environment. Doctors relying on AI to the point of missing symptoms or eroding their own skills. Deepfakes and AI scams and chatbot-fueled psychosis.

A professor friend of mine laments the increase of AI-generated work among her students. She uses AI to pinpoint whether an assignment has been completed using AI.

Sometimes I think that it’s shortsighted and stubborn to resist a technology that could offer real improvements in efficiency and scope of knowledge. Sometimes I feel like a side character in a dystopian story, being propelled inexorably toward the collapse of humanity.  

(Netflix recommends shows I might like. Google Lens helps me identify plants, and Merlin Bird ID recognizes the birds I’m listening to. Shazam tells me which song is playing on my Apple playlist of “summer songs.” My phone’s Clean Up tool removes blemishes from my photos. A robot vacuums my floors and another robot cleans my pool.)

Elevator operators, lamplighters, crossing sweepers, linotype operators, travel agents, video store clerks. I’m not the first person whose career prospects have dwindled or disappeared due to technological innovation. I won’t be the last.

There’s nothing new I can add to the conversation. There’s SO MUCH about AI I don’t know and haven’t considered. But it’s something I think about all the time and it’s something that has insinuated itself into all of our lives.

I don’t know if I can be against AI when I use it so frequently in everyday life. But I certainly don’t feel good about AI. Outsourcing our critical thinking to AI can lead to faulty conclusions (“cognitive surrender”) and stunt our capacity for analytical reasoning (“cognitive offloading”). Generative AI models and the data centers used to power them have clear, measurable environmental consequences (one estimate I read says the same query on ChatGPT uses five times the energy than a web search). There are the slippery moral, ethical, and philosophical issues of AI consciousness (or not). But AI can also increase efficiency, automate daily routines, facilitate learning, summarize and analyze vast amounts of data, and and and and.

I don’t want to contribute to the depletion of our water sources, the impairment of our ability to think, the decline of civilization. I don’t want to be left behind.

(My phone labels unknown numbers as potential spam. Canva’s AI tool alters graphics to my specifications. Google AI Mode generates a list of articles about AI.)

Some AI use may be “better” than others. But where’s the line?

I would be so very interested to hear about your thoughts regarding and experiences with AI. Do you use it at work? In your personal life? What worries you or excites you the most? This is a judgment-free zone; I feel like we are all grappling with how and when and why and at what cost.

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Some Like It Hot, Some Like It HOT, Some Don’t Seem to Care

Internet, would you be so kind as to weigh in on something for me?

You see, my husband and I are at opposite ends of an issue, and I’m not sure if it’s one of those things where there is a definite right and a definite wrong, or if it’s one of those things where there’s a fat grey area in the middle, or if it’s one of those things that no one really cares about at all.

But I care. I really do. And I need you to tell me if I’m caring meaningfully… or if it’s one of those things like “all of the sudden” vs. “all of a sudden,” where I feel Very Strongly about one way, to the point where the other way grates on me a little (I just finished a book that gave me a LOT to think about, and filled my head with horrible images and the woe of a hopeless, heartless, cruelty-filled world, and yet one of the things I remember the MOST is the author’s [incorrect, I maintain!!!] usage of the phrase), even though I am 90% certain that it’s simply a matter of preference or a matter of regional variation rather than a matter of right or wrong.

(See also: the difference vs. “flick off” and “flip off;” and the difference between “pants” and “de-pants.”)

Lest I get riled right off the subject, let us move back to my original request, which is for you to weigh in on something.

Specifically, I’d like you to weigh in on food temperature.

I’ve touched on it briefly before. But I want to discuss it again, and there’s a practical reason behind my request: I’ve recently joined a breakfast-making club at my new job (my policy at least for the first few months will be to say yes to everything, because I want to become part of the team as quickly as possible, and plus, who says no to a breakfast-making club?) and so even though my assigned Breakfast Day is a few weeks hence, I am already fretting thinking about what to bring.

(Let me assure you that I have no idea whether I used “hence” correctly back there. In fact, I’m leaning toward not correctly. But I like the way it sounds there, so there it stays.) (Behold! The deterioration of the English language is before you!)

(I would also like you to know, apropos of nothing, that I am making dinner while writing this post. I’m making tacos, if you must know, because they are easy and delicious. And I am pausing in between sentences to eat freshly grated extra sharp cheddar cheese. My husband and I are at odds when it comes to cheese, too, just to be completely forthright with you. He prefers sharp while I prefer extra sharp, despite the fact that I shredded up some extra sharp for our chili last week and he didn’t know the difference. I even TOLD him that I’d done it and he ADMITTED that he didn’t notice the difference, and yet he still maintains that not only is sharp superior in flavor to extra sharp, but that it melts better, too. I am choosing to see this as very charming instead of infuriating and so have shredded two piles of cheese on the cutting board for tonight’s tacoing. The extra sharp is for me.)

(Perhaps this post would stick a little more closely to the point if I weren’t constantly pausing to stir the taco meat or stuff my face with cheese.)

So: food temperature.

The other day, I was thinking out loud about breakfast foods I could bring for my first breakfast-making club assignment, but I kept hitting on one major issue: heat.

My office is a good 30 minutes from my house, so I ruled out anything that needs to be eaten whilst piping hot. Which is… everything. Bacon. Eggs. (Ack. Especially eggs.) French toast. French toast casserole. Pancakes. Waffles. Grits. Oatmeal. (Gag.) (Are there… other breakfast foods?)

Because I firmly believe that food-that-is-meant-to-be-hot should be hot. HOT. Not warm. Not lukewarm. Not room temperature. Not cold. HOT.

That is why I do not eat cold pizza or take bites of Chef Boyardee ravioli from the can. (Double gag.) That is why I prefer to heat leftover soups and spaghetti on the stove rather than in the microwave. That is why Thanksgiving is so stressful for me: so many meant-to-be-hot items that all need to be ready (and hot) simultaneously.

But my husband avers that I am in the minority when it comes to food temperature. He, after all, doesn’t need a bowl of soup to be visibly steaming in order to enjoy it. (How? HOW does he enjoy it?) And he thinks that I am wrongly – stupidly, even – ruling out a whole list of food that most people would find completely palatable at room temperature.

To that I say ew.

(You are beginning to feel sorry for my breakfast club, aren’t you?)

But I am willing to acknowledge that my food quirks are not universal. And if I AM in the minority, well, why should my entire breakfast-making club have to pass on some perfectly good lukewarm French toast casserole just because I believe it needs to be hot or not at all?

Anyway, what I want to know is, how important is food temperature to you? Is there a range of acceptable hotness? Do certain foods have a wider hotness-spectrum than others? Which foods MUST be served piping hot and ONLY piping hot? You can extend your answers to non-breakfast food, if you like – I’d be interested anyway.

And, as long as we’re thinking about food, what would you like to eat at work on a Friday morning? (Gluten free suggestions and links to recipes would be VERY welcome.)

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Someday I Will Have Time to Blog Again

Some of the discomfort-causing aspects of the New Job are expected: I don’t know the people I’m working with, so I’m trying to get used to them. I don’t know how to work in an office, so I’m getting used to that. I don’t really know what I’m doing (it’s a new field and a totally new way of writing and communicating with the target audience), so I’m trying to learn as much about my new company as possible.

But many of the discomfort-causing aspects of the New Job are unexpected. And rather silly.

For instance, meetings. For many of the past umpteen years, I never had more than two meetings a week. (And those, of course, were typically over the phone and with people I knew, about subjects I understood.) But my new company is meeting-heavy, at least so far. It makes sense for this company – there are multiple moving parts and it’s critical to understand what’s going on in other departments. I’m telling you that because it seems like you might be shaking your head and tsking softly and thinking to yourself that meetings are stupid. I tend to agree: meetings are usually stupid. But so far, I haven’t been to a meeting that didn’t seem useful.

But there are so many aspects of meetings that are unusual to me. There’s a special meeting-scheduling program that this company uses, and so I’m learning to use that. And even though the scheduling program’s purpose is to find open slots in the schedules of multiple people, I feel weird and intrusive scheduling a meeting in a spot without at least asking the other person if it’s okay. And it seems weird to just assume that we’ll meet in someone’s office. Shouldn’t I ASK, before I just say, “Hey we’re meeting at this time whether you hoped to have time for a bathroom break between meetings or maybe some time to do actual work and by the way, it will be in your personal space”?

And then IN the meetings, I never know what to do. Is it okay to bring a bottle of water? Sometimes it seems that other people do this; sometimes they don’t. I can’t determine what the beverage-bringing rules are.

And if you’re meeting in someone’s personal office, is it acceptable to set something on her desk? Like, your notebook? No? It’s not okay, right?

And using the phone? So weird. I haven’t used anything but a cell phone for… a decade, I’m pretty sure. Plus, it seems so very strange to talk on the phone when other people are trying to work no more than a few feet from you. (Also, they can hear your entire conversation!) But something else that’s a little hard to get used to? The cube-to-cube calling. You told me – which was VERY helpful – to pay attention to the other people and figure out what’s acceptable and what isn’t, and I have paid attention: and people call each other when they could probably hear each other if they simply raised their voices a little. Okay, okay – I know raising one’s voice isn’t conducive to a working environment. And I get that sometimes two people need to be able to look at their own computer screens simultaneously. But it’s just… new and interesting, is what I’m saying.

There are other quirky little things that have been throwing me off balance, but I can’t seem to remember them right now. (Oh! I just now remembered one: the delete key on my office computer is in a different spot than the one on my laptop. Weird! Unbalancing!)

And, of course, there’s the big thing: wanting to prove to my superiors that I was a Good Hire, but feeling like I’m trying to learn a new language while walking on my hands. Underwater.

Okay, it’s not all that bad. But it’s a teeny bit stressful, this New Job thing. (And lonely. Lonelier than being at home. But I’m hoping that will change.) (It will change, right?)

I’m also hoping that I’ll eventually stop being so exhausted that I can stay up a little later than 8:00 pm.