Kara had experienced increasing burnout, much of which she attributes to being instructed to use AI despite her concerns over legality and creative use. She said her team was encouraged to use AI-enabled production tools like Runway, which generates AI videos and images, and ElevenLabs, an AI voice generator, to supplement its creative work. As the producer, she was charged with handling legal clearance at a time when AI-generated video and audio based on a human’s likeness is still a gray area.
Her employer “compelled” the team to incorporate generative AI, then “in the same conversation, warned about the legal dangers”, she said. The result was constant stress.
This is a pattern that I see a lot in tech. None of the managers is taking responsibility. They create double-binds all the time - stuff has to be on time, but with high quality, has to done rapidly, but safe, one has to save work but the product should be secure, and so on. This is not psychologically healthy.
In the last year I’ve seen my management go from “you have unlimited AI caps, use it as much as possible” to “actually now you have a very low cap, please use it when you feel like it’s necessary”. The real disruption has been to productivity, ironically enough, because the rules of my job keep changing.
This is a pattern that I see a lot in tech. None of the managers is taking responsibility. They create double-binds all the time - stuff has to be on time, but with high quality, has to done rapidly, but safe, one has to save work but the product should be secure, and so on. This is not psychologically healthy.
In the last year I’ve seen my management go from “you have unlimited AI caps, use it as much as possible” to “actually now you have a very low cap, please use it when you feel like it’s necessary”. The real disruption has been to productivity, ironically enough, because the rules of my job keep changing.
This however is not a new thing. It’s always been this way.
Of course they would expect all that. After all they have listened to tech bro CEOs for years now that AI will solve all of this.