When a friend told me that her employer was monitoring its staff for generative AI usage I had originally assumed they were checking that their employees weren’t using it too much. Or something more similar to my own employer which had a policy such that they would check that we weren’t using “unauthorised” chatbots.
But no, they were being monitored to ensure that they were using it enough.
It seems like they are far from an isolated case. The huge consulting firm Accenture is now apparently tying decisions such as “do you get promoted?” to “are you using AI enough?”.
Accenture has begun monitoring staff use of its AI tools as part of how it decides top-level promotions, as consultancies push reluctant employees to adopt the technology.
Even if you personally find it entire useless for your job:
One person familiar with the change at Accenture who was not directly affected said they would “quit immediately” if the change affected them. They and a second person both criticised the usefulness of the tools Accenture wants employees to use, claiming some of the tools were “broken slop generators”.
They will also consider firing you if you don’t embrace this brave new world:
Accenture has reduced its global workforce by more than 11,000 in the past three months and warned staff that more would be asked to leave if they cannot be retrained for the age of artificial intelligence.
But hey, you do get a new title!
The firm has since dubbed its employees “reinventors” in an effort to emphasise their ability to advise clients on AI.
Of course, if it is really the case that you can’t do your job effectively without this technology then sure, it makes some sort of sense. I’m sure you’d be looked upon poorly if for instance you refused to use tools such a computer entirely. Although I would dearly hope these companies are doing everything in their ability to train and assist their employees to develop the necessary expertise to use these tools as reliably as possible.
But if any sizable proportion of the staff themselves are telling you that the AIs provided simply don’t work, well, that seems entirely counterproductive and potentially dangerous - and more like an excuse to cut costs.
AI doesn’t actually have to be better than us at our jobs in order to threaten our current livelihoods. It’s only necessary that our managers come to believe that an AI can do a just-about-adequate version of something akin to our work whilst costing less.