We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person

(mcsweeneys.net)

284 points | by cainxinth 2 hours ago

20 comments

  • ARandomerDude 27 minutes ago
    > I am one of fifteen rank-and-file workers, and we are privileged to be led by thousands of Senior VPs.

    This is simultaneously hilarious and painfully familiar.

  • noir_lord 1 hour ago
    > We began a heated affair. A contractor hit a pipe above us, so rancid mayo splattered onto our bodies as we embraced, but we were too absorbed in our passion to mind. Try doing that from home.

    I can't remember the last time something I read on the internet got a laugh that hard.

    The whole thing is brilliant.

  • cafebabbe 50 minutes ago
    Gosh it's so soothing to read that after those months of drowning into the turbulent deluge of dAIrrhea that are blogposts now
  • selwoot 1 hour ago
    I reminds me of something I read years ago. Maybe sometime around 1984...
    • copperx 42 minutes ago
      Wasn't 1984 released in 1949?
      • Insanity 25 minutes ago
        Yup, it was written around 1948. Easy to remember as you just swap the final 2 digits.
        • bee_rider 8 minutes ago
          Oh wow, if they’d changed the title to match the release date (1994) that would really change the vibe, haha.
    • ddoolin 39 minutes ago
      It really does have a very similar feeling.
      • pjc50 26 minutes ago
        It takes the structure, the affair with Julia, the "we have always been at war with", best buddy/big brother, and the forced rehabilitation from 1984. This is also part of the joke, the reader is expected to twig.
  • burningChrome 16 minutes ago
    > founded as a mayonnaise company, which now sells consumer packaged goods, software as a service, and surveillance technology.

    The visual of this is completely hilarious.

    • noir_lord 9 minutes ago
      > software as a service, and surveillance technology.

      If someone could tell me the difference between those last two at this point I'd be grateful and yes the entire thing is bitingly funny.

  • lbrito 5 minutes ago
    Sounds like Amazon pivoted to the mayo business!
  • BLKNSLVR 57 minutes ago
    I'm assuming ButtFuckers demerged to become CageFight Pharma and SodaPorn.
  • liquid_thyme 5 minutes ago
    We used to develop AI to convince us its human (turing test). The future is about convincing AI/Automated Systems that you're - competent (hiring), not a bot (anti-spam), doing your job (KPIs), not a threat (ala social score, AI powered weapons targeting), worthy of being saved (insurance claims), etc, etc.

    Whether or not humans break from those shackles, I for one, am hoping Hollywood supplies us with wonderfully dystopian sci-fi entertainment for years to come.

  • jgbuddy 1 hour ago
    AI could never write this
    • cbg0 34 minutes ago
      It will now be able to.
      • xena 31 minutes ago
        No, there is soul in this that a soulless automaton cannot replicate. It is the difference between making something to be consumed and something to be felt. This is something to be felt.
        • meowface 12 minutes ago
          Current LLMs couldn't write this. Ones in a few years possibly could. Betting AI will never be as good as humans at [X] is usually not the hill you want to die on.
        • Autious 13 minutes ago
          If I train my 1000 billion parameter blank AI on this text and only this text over and over again, we may get 99% there.
          • lelanthran 10 minutes ago
            > If I train my 1000 billion parameter blank AI on this text and only this text over and over again, we may get 99% there.

            You'll get 100% of the way there, because, lacking any other training, it will only ever be able to reproduce this text verbatim.

            Hence, 100%, hence mission accomplished.

        • Invictus0 12 minutes ago
          Souls aren't real
    • x86x87 28 minutes ago
      it could given enough slop doulas
  • neuroelectron 4 minutes ago
    Returning to the office doesn't solve the problem of replacing office jobs with AI
  • indoordin0saur 46 minutes ago
    Hilarious read, and strangely accurate in a way.
  • bethekind 28 minutes ago
    RTO4AI should be a slogan. Or some variant thereof
  • flir 37 minutes ago
    "More leaders means more leadership"

    Heh.

    Also: make it stop!!!

  • talhaanwar 37 minutes ago
    Remind of covid days. But i prefer wfh
  • _doctor_love 23 minutes ago
    This was very funny! Paradoxically, I have found that working with people in person is the fastest way to enable them on using AI.

    It feels very similar to teaching pair programming and TDD. I can do it over remote, but there's a magic spark that happens in person that is really not replicable any other way.

  • mhd 55 minutes ago
    I hope "slop doula" sticks around…
  • iou 39 minutes ago
    I thought mcsweeneys did satire?
  • phplovesong 46 minutes ago
    RTO is the worst shit managers try to push.
  • neutrinobro 58 minutes ago
    > Associate Slop Doula

    had me ROFL