Meaningless vs Meaning-loss

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues

Today I got an email, which read like the following (I scrapped boring non-essential parts):

Hello Mihail PELEAH,
Thank you for your interest in null, and applying for [...] Please note that [...] 
Sincerely,
Recruitment Team
null
Picture from "Vovka in a Far Far Away Kingdom", 1965 animation https://www.imdb.com/title/tt0213309/

One of many machine-generated messages, one could say, cheap, fast, ubiquitous. Seems nothing wrong with it—in the end, Bloomberg has been using automatically generated news since the 90s or 80s. But this email is meaning-loss. 

It brought no new information to me—the scrapped part […] highlighted some info, which had already been in the application. But someone decided to send this email, and prioritized speed over quality, and checking how it will look like for recipients.

Automatization—epitomized by buttons “Make it nice!” or “Do it for me!”—giving raises the attitude “I don’t know and I don’t care” and desire to outsource decisions. According to the Oracle Decision Dilemma Report 2023, 64% of people and 70% of business leaders would prefer to have a robot make their decisions. However, this is meaning-loss, it distracts from the question WHY we make these decisions, and focuses on miniscule hassle of WHATs of decision making. 

Meaningless could be useful sometimes, meaning-loss—never. Meaningless mingling at parties could be fun and camaraderie. Meaningless slam and mosh-pit can help us shed negativity. Meaningless sitting in silence in a corner is called meditation. 

(Oxford dictionary defines meaningless as “without any purpose or reason” and adds “and therefore not worth doing or having.” Many artists would not agree with the latter statement) 

In a world plagued by speed and efficiency, it is easy to fall into the trap of meaning-loss. Maybe by embracing the meaningless could help us to slow down, focus on quality and ask ourselves WHY? to reclaim our agency?

P.S. Just got another email:

Congratulations! Job requisition [...] was canceled and has reached the Open - Canceled status.

Bringing the ‘punk’ in Cyberpunk!

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues

As the bustling city streets filled with pedestrians, a peculiar sight caught the attention of a curious onlooker. A delivery robot, with its tiny rollers and glowing LED eyes, stood patiently at a pedestrian crossing, waiting for the green light to signal its safe passage.

Meanwhile, humans rushed past the robot without a second thought, jaywalking and ignoring traffic rules as if they were mere suggestions. As if guided by some divine hand, cosmic irony intervened, arranging a perfectly synchronized sequence of events.

The traffic light turned green, signalling the robot to move forward. Just as it began to step forward, a delivery boy with a bulky square package appeared beside it. And just like that, the robot and the delivery boy moved in a stunning display of synchronized dance, as if they had been rehearsing the routine for weeks.

The robot blinked its LED eye and muttered to itself: 

[{  "image_id":"I0ZyaWRheUZ1bkZlZWQ=",     "label": [{
          "label":"class_name_human", 
          "prob": 0.9871635, 
          "text":"Meatbags, what a bunch of morons. . . Bringing the 'punk' in Cyberpunk!", 
    },]
}]

What’s Wrong with ChatGPT? A view from Economists

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues

Renowned economists—Daron Acemoglu and Simon Johnson—are concerned about ChatGPT. More precisely—the way how AI deployed by corporations in the US. Their analysis points out that it could displace workers, harm consumers, and bring losses to investors. The crux of the issues is focusing on cutting labour costs (in a short run), with little regard for the future of spending power and workers earnings, as well as neglecting the potential benefits of AI.

🤖 AI arms race, funded by billions from companies and venture-capital funds, bringing in a technology that can now be used to replace humans across a wider range of tasks. This could be a disaster not only for workers, but also for consumers and even investors.

👨‍🏭 The workers are facing clear and present danger. The job market is shifting, resulting in a decrease in demand for positions that require strong communication skills, ultimately leading to a decrease in higher-paying jobs. This trend is particularly challenging for younger people, just starting their careers, as there will be fewer entry-level positions available. AI powered tools could help in legal research, but deprive novice lawyers of learning techne through hands-on research.

🛍 Consumers, too, will suffer. Although they may suffice for routine inquiries, they are inadequate for addressing more complex issues—flight delay, household emergency, or dealing with a breakdown in personal relationships. We need understanding and actions of qualified professionals, not eloquent but unhelpful chatbots.

💸 Investors could also be disappointed as companies invest in AI technology and cut back on their workforce. Rather than investing in new technologies and providing training for their employees to improve services, executives are more interested in keeping employment low and wages as low as possible. This strategy is self-defeating and could harm investors in a long run.

🐙 The crux of the issues is that the potential of AI is being overlooked as most US tech leaders are investing in software that can replicate tasks already performed by humans. Contrary, AI-powered digital tools can be used to help nurses, teachers, and customer-service representatives understand what they are dealing with and what would help improve outcomes for patients, students, and consumers. The focus is primarily on reducing labor costs with little regard for the immediate customer experience and the long-term spending power of Americans. However, history has shown that this approach is not necessary. Ford recognized that there was no point in mass-producing cars if people couldn’t afford to buy them. In contrast, modern corporate leaders are utilizing new technologies in a way that could have detrimental effects on our future.

Read full article https://www.project-syndicate.org/commentary/chatgpt-ai-big-tech-corporate-america-investing-in-eliminating-workers-by-daron-acemoglu-and-simon-johnson-2023-02

P.S. I am currently reading “In The Age Of The Smart Machine: The Future Of Work And Power” by Shoshana Zuboff. The book published back in mid-1980s explores impact of the first wave of smart machines on labour relationships and future of work. There are a lot of similarities and lessons learned for current wave of ubiquitous AI-fication.

The Hidden Benefits of Commuting: Finding Serenity in the Space Between

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues
A stray dog named “Boji” has become a local celebrity after using buses, subways and ferries to travel across Turkey’s metropolitan city of Istanbul.

I used to hate mornings. Istanbul is a very anisotropic City. Commuting from one neighborhood to another, just two blocks away, could take everything from 5 to 55 minutes. However, I start valuing this commuting time as a “liminal space” between personal and business realms. It helps me to transition between home and work life, to kick start the day, and to finish it.

There are three elements of this transition ritual. First, is physical activity, which fuels my internal engine. I have to walk 10-15 minutes either to the bus or the subway stop. This walk makes me energetic and improves my mood–oxytocin proved to have beneficial cognitive and behavioural effects. Second, I use  walking and commuting time to learn something new, to push my creativity for the day. Podcasts are great, I have some business related–Anecdotally Speaking, Talking About Organizations, or Re:Thinking.  Some pure fun on the bun–Friday Night Comedy or Something Rhymes with Purple. Other good options are Coursera and LinkedIn learning apps, which allow you to save videos to watch off-line.  Third, I use this time to reflect and think things over. I always have a notebook and pen with me, and Google.Docs on my smartphone. (Full disclosure: I drafted and edited this post while enjoying views of Beşiktaş from DT2 bus). This helps me to kick start day or unload business thoughts at the end of the day.

This ritual works very well while working from home or while on a business trip. You could use  a treadmill for a 15 minutes walk, or simply walk around a block–I often enjoyed cities at 6am, empty and quiet. Podcasts are always with you, as well as a notebook and a pen.

Don’t hate mornings, instead embrace an opportunity. By incorporating a simple morning ritual–such as a short walk, listening to something new and interesting, and reflecting on your goals and intentions–you can prioritize your well-being and kick start the day; or close the day, avoiding business spillover to home life. 

Meet less, write more!

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues
Comic Strip Dilbert

We all survived meetings that could be an email. But could we do better? Tremendous summarized its high-documentation, low-meeting work culture in a blog post. Couple of takeaways:

🎯 Every meeting must have a reason—WHY are we meeting?—what Tremendous calls “meeting mindfulness”. Low-meeting culture is giving people the space and time they need to make innovative decisions. Meetings are reserved to discuss particularly heated topics and communicate on projects that require high-bandwidth collaboration

🤪 There are huge hidden costs of meetings, a 30-minute actually takes 68 minutes—15 minutes for preparation, 30 minutes meeting per se and 23 minutes to refocus. When meetings lack agendas, the efficiency cost quickly becomes grave

📑 High-documentation culture is the recipe for more productive, transparent, thoughtful, scalable, and efficient work. Writing a document—instead of shiny slides—forces people to focus on communicating their ideas as clearly as possible. While it comes with cost—time for writing (and editing), the benefits are clear—onboard and scale becoming easy. Thanks to searchable, traceable, public record of all significant decisions, projects, and initiatives across the organization

👩‍💻 Learn from successes. Professional development is a by-product of having access to the ‘how’ and ‘why’ of every impactful decision the company makes. Peer reviews help to learn and grow from the evolution of their own recommendations and proposals. It also teach people to provide feedback in a constructive, consistent and public manner (rather than derisive seagull-like critique)

Read blog https://www.tremendous.com/blog/the-perks-of-a-high-documentation-low-meeting-work-culture

Hidden human capital and cost of staff turnover

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues

More than century ago Henry Ford made an unusual offer. He guaranteed pay $5 per day (around $150 per day in today’s dollars) for eight hours of assembly line work for all workers at his production plant. At the time the offer was surprising and created a lot of hype. It was quite generous, roughly doubled workers’ pay. It went against common wisdom—labour is abundant, you could fire and replace workers in no time. Ford had his own views, based on the issue he faced. Ford standardised products and production processes at plants. The workers were not, turnover was high, and quality of products varied. Generous wage offer aimed at reducing workers turnover and maintaining this hidden human capital. Arguably, it paid off in a long run.

Century later economists got data to confirm Ford’s intuition and quantify the hidden cost of worker turnover. Recent article in Management Science “The Hidden Cost of Worker Turnover: Attributing Product Reliability to the Turnover of Factory Workers” combined data on weekly workers turnover at major electronic producer plant, and data on field failures of their electronic products. Result? For Each percentage point increase in the weekly rate of workers quitting from an assembly line, field failures increase by 0.74%–0.79%. These extra failures could total to striking 10.2% in the high-turnover weeks following paydays. The associated costs amount to hundreds of millions of U.S. dollars.

The issue seems to be even worse in new sectors economy, knowledge based. Search Cloud provider Sinequa published findings from a survey of 1,000 IT managers at large organizations in the UK and US to explore the impact the Great Resignation has on employee experience, productivity, and organizational risk. It showed that 64% felt that their organization already has experienced loss of knowledge due to people leaving the company. There is a concern that turnover could have a cumulative effect—56% of surveyed managers agreed it will hurt the organization’s ability to onboard new employees. Hidden human capital is not that visible, highly underappreciated, and could be quite costly to replace.

If data are not persuasive enough, here is a nice meme on newbie dealing with legacy products.

Cultural shifts for asynchronous work

By mikepeleah in Schmooze Cues
Focus comics by Monkeyuser https://www.monkeyuser.com/2018/focus/

“It changes everything!” say remote work enthusiasts. Shining new technologies make online work possible and offer opportunities for asynchronous interactions. However, it appears that the problem is not technological, but rather social. We’re still stuck in old patterns of work and habits of presenteeism. What is worse, technology is aggravating things.

Recent study “Killing Time at Work” by Qatalog x GitLab brought some interesting figures. Good news—people do value flexibility and asynchronous work and believe this way is beneficial for both outputs and wellbeing. Some 80% of people believe they are more productive and create higher quality output when they have more flexibility over when they work. People are ready to resign if flexibility is limited (66%) and ready to accept lower paid roles with greater flexibility (43%). This shift is already in progress—two-third of responded said they have more flexibility compared to before the pandemic.

Bad news, people still spend striking 67 minutes, 13% of workday, in a “productivity theater,” showing their colleagues and managers they are present and ‘working’. Usually, it happens by signaling online presence at certain times of the day, but quite often (73%) it implies replying to notifications outside of the working hours. Multiplication of notifications is striking—the average knowledge worker now receives notifications from six applications. What is worse, by default notifications are noisy and competing for your attention by blinking, blipping, and buzzing. The cost of interruptions is well know—it takes an average of 23 minutes and 15 seconds to get back to the task . In many cases managers and leaders are sending mixed messages , officially encouraging flexible arrangements, while signaling the virtue of presenteeism and connecteism (in worst cases peppering calendar with mandatory meetings). The result is poisonous work-life blur, lack of control over your time, burnout and ultimately exodus of annoyed employees.

Way forward towards asynchronous work requires intentional culture shifts, which combine technological and cultural responses, suggests Qatalog x GitLab study. For instance, team could agree on minimizing distractions by agreeing to use less applications and setting up expectations—e.g. response to email is expected with 24 hrs, and one (and only ONE) instant messaging app is used for urgent (and really URGENT) conversations. Meetings and synchronous communication should be used more deliberately, less frequently but with a specific purpose.