Employee Exhaustion Incites Stealthy Adoption of AI At Work, Much to Bosses’ Oblivion!

“Burnout Is Pushing Workers to Use AI—Even if Their Boss Doesn’t Know”

“The Covid-19 pandemic increased the use of AI assistants for customer and employee support. Often behind the scenes are real humans, responding to inquiries about schedule changes and password resets. That work can be stressful and monotonous, even when performed alongside AI assistants programmed to help.”

No kidding, right? Surreal as it may seem, turns out, our technological saviors – AI assistants, owe a sizeable chunk of their prowess to some dedicated, albeit exasperated, human beings. Now, isn’t that ironic? Behind the veneer of seemingly miraculous AI, we have real, breathing humans, grappling with queries on the exciting subject of password resets, of course paired with the delightfully ever-changing schedules. Truly, the stuff of dreams.

According to the techno-giants, Microsoft and LinkedIn, manual review work, a polite term for this mind-numbing labor, apparently breeds burnout. Imagine that? Who would have thought endlessly playing ‘fix-it’ for others’ schedules, and password issues could result in employee exhaustion?

Perhaps it’s the high-stakes adrenaline rush of resetting a lost password or the sheer joy of sifting through an endless barrage of support tickets that pushes these workers to the limit. Maybe the AI assistants’ “assistance,” is just the cherry on this stress sundae. After all, who wouldn’t love working in tandem with unfeeling AI, pretending to be human, while the real humans slave it out?

Experts suggest that tech companies should adopt various strategies to keep this workforce from burning out. Clearly, these experts have a knack for stating the obvious. But, joking aside, it’s high time companies explored these strategies. These hardworking souls hidden away behind the scenes are the mechanics that keep the social machine oil well-oiled. Unless these groundwork soldiers are taken care of, the well-oiled machine might soon squeak a bit too much for comfort.

Morale booster activities? Rotation of tasks? Training in maintaining better mental health? All of these are on the table. Anything that keeps our human firefighters from burning out while extinguishing digital fires all day long. Here’s hoping that these remedies affect some real change soon because our human assistants deserve nothing less.

Or better yet, how about investing in truly autonomous AI that can take care of these mundane customer grievances? Surely that’s the logical next step for these tech behemoths. But until then, let’s just keep our fingers crossed and hope the human side of AI receives the acknowledgment and care they deserve. After all, it’s not like we humans would prefer having our problems solved by real individuals or anything, right?

Read the original article here: https://www.wired.com/story/ai-workers-burnout-microsoft-linkedin/