Feed The Monkey Redux
About a dozen years ago, a joke I wrote on my blog was copied and pasted into every major news outlet in the United Kingdom, without attribution. A soccer coach (yeah, I know) had told the joke to his team, and the usual people who like to take offense took offense. The lazy, incurious newspaper writers just looked it up online, where I was essentially the only reference for it, and purloined it. It’s not an offensive joke, really, and not all that funny, truth be told:
NASA decided they’d finally send a man up in a capsule after sending
only monkeys in the earlier missions. They fire the man and the monkey
into space. The intercom crackled, “Monkey, fire the retros.” A little
later, “Monkey, check the solid fuel supply.” Later still, “Monkey,
check the life support systems for the man.” The astronaut took umbrage
and radioed NASA, ” When do I get to do something?” NASA replies, ” In
fifteen minutes, feed the monkey.”
I was only trying to illustrate a point. I’m going to dust it off and use it again to illustrate something more recent. We’re at a big, Feed the Monkey inflection point again. It’s about time that I get plagiarized for noticing it first.
In yesterday’s news roundup, there was an obscure article from the Harvard Business Review. It was written by Yukun Liu, Suqing Wu, Mengqi Ruan, Siyu Chen and Xiao-Yun Xie. Since I’m originally Boston Irish, and have staggered through Hahvahd Yahd plenty of times, it was gratifying to see so many fine, Irish names in the HBR byline like that. Anyway, the headline read: Research: Gen AI Makes People More Productive—and Less Motivated, and the gist of the story was this:
Generative AI (gen AI) has revolutionized workplaces, allowing professionals to produce high-quality work in less time. Whether it’s drafting a performance review, brainstorming ideas, or crafting a marketing email, humans collaborating with gen AI achieve results that are both more efficient and often superior in quality. However, our research reveals a hidden trade-off: While gen AI collaboration boosts immediate task performance, it can undermine workers’ intrinsic motivation and increase feelings of boredom when they turn to tasks in which they don’t have this technological assistance.
Hmm. Let’s examine the research, shall we?
In four studies involving more than 3,500 participants, we explored what happens when humans and gen AI collaborate on common work tasks. Participants completed real-world professional tasks, such as writing Facebook posts, brainstorming ideas, and drafting emails, with or without gen AI. We then assessed both task performance and participants’ psychological experiences, including their sense of control, intrinsic motivation, and levels of boredom.
I need you to picture the look on my face after being informed that “real-world professional tasks” consist of “writing Facebook posts, brainstorming ideas, and drafting emails.” To anyone that performs real work in the real world, this smacks of doing nothing all day, or maybe if you squint hard enough, doing the lowest form of clerical work. So what happens when your intrepid employees use generative AI to perform their “work”?
Immediate Performance Boost: Gen AI enhanced the quality and efficiency of tasks. For instance, performance reviews written with gen AI were significantly longer, more analytical, and demonstrated a more helpful tone compared to reviews written without assistance. Similarly, emails drafted with gen AI tended to use warmer, more personable language, containing more expressions of encouragement, empathy, and social connection, compared to those written without AI assistance.
What’s the downside, according to my new Harvardian amigos?
Psychological Costs: Despite the performance benefits, participants who collaborated with gen AI on one task and then transitioned to a different, unaided task consistently reported a decline in intrinsic motivation and an increase in boredom. Across our studies, intrinsic motivation dropped by an average of 11% and boredom increased by an average of 20%. In contrast, those who worked without AI maintained a relatively steady psychological state.
These Cambridge papershufflin’ boffins go on to blame Gen AI for the problem of demotivation when the subject isn’t using it. Because it’s so easy to do their work with a robot, they’re bummed out, and can’t perform their menial duties when their Magic Conch is turned off:
If employees consistently rely on AI for creative or cognitively challenging tasks, they risk losing the very aspects of work that drive engagement, growth, and satisfaction.
On the totem pole of balderdash-speak, “driving engagement” has got to be right up there. Baumol’s Cost Disease has marched through the Tertiary Sector of the economy that consists mostly of shoe-shopping online at your desk. It’s gone straight into the Quaternary Sector of the economy. Doing nothing for long stretches at great expense to the general public who didn’t ask for it to be done is an art form at this point.
Reactions to Generative AI have apparently made it through four of the five stages of Kubler-Ross grief:
- Denial: Shock and disbelief are common. Denial helps soften the initial blow.
- Anger: Pain may be redirected as anger toward people, institutions, or even the deceased.
- Bargaining: Often includes thoughts of negotiating with fate or a higher power to reverse or lessen the loss.
- Depression: Sadness, regret, and loneliness can set in as the reality of the loss sinks in.
- Acceptance: Not about being “okay” with the loss, but reaching a place of peace or resolution.
I’m not an expert or anything, but I’ve tested out various brands of generative AI for all sort of things (Not for any real writing. It’s not creative), including coding. I can testify that it can’t pass the Turing Test yet. I can spot AI writing at a hundred yards. I know it’s not written by the humans described in the article who get bummed out when they’re asked to do any work at all, instead of simply pressing a button on their browser. I can spot AI writing because all the words are spelled correctly, the whole thing isn’t in passive voice, the verbs are conjugated properly, and it’s otherwise grammatically correct. AI writing is going to have to get a lot worse to pass the Turing Test with me, not better.
So let’s rewrite Number Four, Depression, to read: “A decline in intrinsic motivation and an increase in boredom.” The Harvard Business Review nailed that one.
And Number Five needs to be updated, bigtime. Since generative AI writes everything for you, better than you can manage it, and faster, while still “driving engagement” and any other newspeak bosh for your job, one that probably shouldn’t even exist, you should probably radio back to base, tell them you’re bored and depressed and ask them, “When do I get to do something?”
Their answer? Acceptance: Feed the AI monkey, honey.
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