A 32 year old female friend of my son lives in SF and despises the work culture. Both her and her fiancé work in AI. I thought about her while reading your essay. There will definitely be marriages and families destroyed because of the AI work pressure. The pace is frenetic, the competition fierce.Thanks fro pointing me to your easay.
So many things inside the AI hothouse go unsaid or unexplored, particularly gender dynamics and family life. I know young people working in the AI industry, too, and the pace is just relentless. Worse, the people running the companies act as if there's no other way for it to be, putting enormous pressure on anyone looking for a job right now.
One of the commonplaces beliefs of software development, going all the way back to the 80s, is the belief that teams should be kept as small as possible because the need for programmers to communicate with each other is a drag on the development process. Fewer people, less need for communication. The unavoidable implication is that team members should put in as many hours as possible so as to make up for the understaffing.
Another reason to be weary of AI. My 15 year old is pretty freaked out about her prospects because of it. For now, I’m burring my head into sand, which is not the best coping mechanism. Reading uou always helps
We've got to stay focused on the humanity, Imola. I wish that for your daughter, too. Ironically, I think young people who head away from the exploitative train wreck of doing AI work might find job niches with less competition that are more rewarding.
Well, you know, sexism — the problem tech bros have no awareness of, let alone a name. The privileged few really do live in bubbles reflecting back their own ideas, as if what passes for inner life is the sycophancy of chatbots. But Marc Andreessen would use my complaints as Exhibit A for the time-wasting nature of introspection. What a guy.
Shelley, that same issue of *Wired* has a harrowing first-person report about Hollywood writers doing AI gig work to help make ends meet these days. Not a pretty picture:
This is fantastic, Martha. Another perspective in the AI mania. I’m collecting perspectives for my students and this will be great for my senior cohort. It’s also sad that history keeps repeating itself 🤨
Thanks, Lisa! Are your students seniors in high school? What a good time for them to consider all the hype about AI from different angles. With all the potential losses, the mystique in no more than the Emperor's New Clothes.
Yes, high school in Australia. I teach English and I’m putting together some lessons on Critical AI Literacy. All voices need to be heard, all perspectives, because it’s a murky world out there!
Absolutely, Ken - ! I’d also say her writing and activism continue to be relevant, no matter how much younger feminists have taken her to task for the blind spots of her time.
Like you, I am too young for the happy housewife era, but I do remember when wives in college towns joked about working on their "P. H. T.: Putting Hubby Through," working to support the household so their husbands could concentrate on getting an advanced degree, usually medical or law. (STEM had not yet gone soaring up into the stratosphere to the point of being virtually the sole focus of obsessive youthful masculine ambition.) It was a rational choice in those days. Even after medical and law schools were hypothetically open to women, there were still professors whose grading policy was something like "A is for athlete, B is for boy and C is for co-ed." If a woman aspired to the cabin-cruiser-owning class, marrying a medical student was a surer route than going premed herself.
Another thing I remember from that era is the anxious obsessiveness that characterized so many premeds. They burned the midnight oil. They sabotaged each other's lab experiments for a slight advantage on the grading curve in chemistry classes. They told my then-boyfriend (when they came to him for math tutoring) "I don't want to understand it. I just want to know how to get the right answer." The mid-1970s was a lot like the present: a time of economic restructuring, high inflation and narrowing opportunity, when ambition was inspired as much by fear of ending up in the declining true middle class as by hope for personal success.
Which in turn brings us back to the tangled nexus of sexism and social class snobbery in which, for men, respect is closely tied to the prestige and pay rate of the work they do. Even if they don't care all that much about the luxe life, they are driven by the belief (for some of them it's a certainty) that their families will lose respect for them if they don't make it big. Back then I really hoped that The Movement was going to rid society of that nonsense, but then Jerry Falwell made the cover of Time Magazine, my first warning that the pendulum was swinging the other way. And here we are, with the grandsons of those anxious, driven premeds just as anxious and driven. If AI had never come along, they'd be tying themselves in knots over something else instead, whatever looked like the best opportunity.
Joan, the "Putting Hubby Through" school examples are really on point, and you're right — these same economic pressures on white-collar breadwinners existed back in the day, especially in the 1970s, before the web, social media, and AI. All the renewed hope of major social movements from the 1960s dwindled into stagflation, narrowed opportunities, and the feeling that society was falling apart. Then came the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and "there is no alternative." Not pretty.
For me, it's always been a matter of who benefits most from the labor of others — and who controls the money. You may well be right that without the current AI bubble, young workers would still be in a fix. But the current AI boom has concentrated wealth more than anything previously — with investments and financial leverage ballooning — and the attitudes issuing forth from male tech moguls are extremely sexist. There's a reason *The Feminine Mystique* seems so relevant again. Cory Doctorow is doing the interview rounds for his new book, emphasizing why the money involved has become dangerous for anyone who cares about civil institutions and a just society. Like him, I think we need to push back on AI hype and investments before it's too late.
A 32 year old female friend of my son lives in SF and despises the work culture. Both her and her fiancé work in AI. I thought about her while reading your essay. There will definitely be marriages and families destroyed because of the AI work pressure. The pace is frenetic, the competition fierce.Thanks fro pointing me to your easay.
So many things inside the AI hothouse go unsaid or unexplored, particularly gender dynamics and family life. I know young people working in the AI industry, too, and the pace is just relentless. Worse, the people running the companies act as if there's no other way for it to be, putting enormous pressure on anyone looking for a job right now.
One of the commonplaces beliefs of software development, going all the way back to the 80s, is the belief that teams should be kept as small as possible because the need for programmers to communicate with each other is a drag on the development process. Fewer people, less need for communication. The unavoidable implication is that team members should put in as many hours as possible so as to make up for the understaffing.
Another reason to be weary of AI. My 15 year old is pretty freaked out about her prospects because of it. For now, I’m burring my head into sand, which is not the best coping mechanism. Reading uou always helps
We've got to stay focused on the humanity, Imola. I wish that for your daughter, too. Ironically, I think young people who head away from the exploitative train wreck of doing AI work might find job niches with less competition that are more rewarding.
Yes, yes Martha! Focus on humanity! I’ll share this with my daughters!
Love this, Martha! I keep wondering why nobody is talking about the Bro part of tech bro. Appreciate it being elaborated here!
Well, you know, sexism — the problem tech bros have no awareness of, let alone a name. The privileged few really do live in bubbles reflecting back their own ideas, as if what passes for inner life is the sycophancy of chatbots. But Marc Andreessen would use my complaints as Exhibit A for the time-wasting nature of introspection. What a guy.
Shelley, that same issue of *Wired* has a harrowing first-person report about Hollywood writers doing AI gig work to help make ends meet these days. Not a pretty picture:
https://www.wired.com/story/i-work-in-hollywood-everyone-who-used-to-make-tv-now-training-ai/
This is fantastic, Martha. Another perspective in the AI mania. I’m collecting perspectives for my students and this will be great for my senior cohort. It’s also sad that history keeps repeating itself 🤨
Thanks, Lisa! Are your students seniors in high school? What a good time for them to consider all the hype about AI from different angles. With all the potential losses, the mystique in no more than the Emperor's New Clothes.
Yes, high school in Australia. I teach English and I’m putting together some lessons on Critical AI Literacy. All voices need to be heard, all perspectives, because it’s a murky world out there!
Great post, we all need to re-read Friedan who was way ahead of her time!
Absolutely, Ken - ! I’d also say her writing and activism continue to be relevant, no matter how much younger feminists have taken her to task for the blind spots of her time.
Like you, I am too young for the happy housewife era, but I do remember when wives in college towns joked about working on their "P. H. T.: Putting Hubby Through," working to support the household so their husbands could concentrate on getting an advanced degree, usually medical or law. (STEM had not yet gone soaring up into the stratosphere to the point of being virtually the sole focus of obsessive youthful masculine ambition.) It was a rational choice in those days. Even after medical and law schools were hypothetically open to women, there were still professors whose grading policy was something like "A is for athlete, B is for boy and C is for co-ed." If a woman aspired to the cabin-cruiser-owning class, marrying a medical student was a surer route than going premed herself.
Another thing I remember from that era is the anxious obsessiveness that characterized so many premeds. They burned the midnight oil. They sabotaged each other's lab experiments for a slight advantage on the grading curve in chemistry classes. They told my then-boyfriend (when they came to him for math tutoring) "I don't want to understand it. I just want to know how to get the right answer." The mid-1970s was a lot like the present: a time of economic restructuring, high inflation and narrowing opportunity, when ambition was inspired as much by fear of ending up in the declining true middle class as by hope for personal success.
Which in turn brings us back to the tangled nexus of sexism and social class snobbery in which, for men, respect is closely tied to the prestige and pay rate of the work they do. Even if they don't care all that much about the luxe life, they are driven by the belief (for some of them it's a certainty) that their families will lose respect for them if they don't make it big. Back then I really hoped that The Movement was going to rid society of that nonsense, but then Jerry Falwell made the cover of Time Magazine, my first warning that the pendulum was swinging the other way. And here we are, with the grandsons of those anxious, driven premeds just as anxious and driven. If AI had never come along, they'd be tying themselves in knots over something else instead, whatever looked like the best opportunity.
Joan, the "Putting Hubby Through" school examples are really on point, and you're right — these same economic pressures on white-collar breadwinners existed back in the day, especially in the 1970s, before the web, social media, and AI. All the renewed hope of major social movements from the 1960s dwindled into stagflation, narrowed opportunities, and the feeling that society was falling apart. Then came the 1980s, Margaret Thatcher and "there is no alternative." Not pretty.
For me, it's always been a matter of who benefits most from the labor of others — and who controls the money. You may well be right that without the current AI bubble, young workers would still be in a fix. But the current AI boom has concentrated wealth more than anything previously — with investments and financial leverage ballooning — and the attitudes issuing forth from male tech moguls are extremely sexist. There's a reason *The Feminine Mystique* seems so relevant again. Cory Doctorow is doing the interview rounds for his new book, emphasizing why the money involved has become dangerous for anyone who cares about civil institutions and a just society. Like him, I think we need to push back on AI hype and investments before it's too late.