One of the main benefits of AI, according to many of the big tech companies boasting of it in recent years, has been that it'll make life easier and more convenient. You'll be able to generate a spreadsheet, an agenda, even a short film, in seconds or minutes, and your working day will be markedly shorter thanks to it. However, according to a BBC News report interviewing former employees at Meta, OpenAI, and more, it seems that AI isn't making everyone's lives easier.
A former worker at OpenAI, who left the company last year, said that they were working 70 hours a week at a minimum, with that number growing to 90-hours if they were in what big tech refers to as a "sprint." A "sprint" is the name for the period of time before a big feature or app releases, which requires workers to come in for additional hours to push it through. Think of crunch in relation to gaming.
A former employee from Meta also said that there now exists something called being "drafted," where a worker can be moved to another team with very short notice and without being able to protest, as they're pushed to do more AI work for urgent tasks. "You can't say no - or if you do, you have to quit," said the former employee.
New research also suggests that AI being added to the workplace is only making workloads more burdensome. Neil Thompson, of MIT, said that at big tech companies, the time apparently saved on having AI tools is then sucked away by making changes, "implementing them, and making sure they worked."
