this post was submitted on 06 Aug 2026
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Programming
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I cannot for the life of me understand AI mandates.
Who doesn’t want to be able to get their work done easier? Nobody.
Then it follows you shouldn’t have to tell your employees to use a tool if it makes them however much as productive as CEOs think that tech demo should make them.
I think it’s pretty obvious that at the exec level AI is the ultimate hoodwinking machine. It’s made 90% of them look like the out of touch morons they are. The 10% or whatever that aren’t trying to force this down their staff’s throats in the hopes they can replace said staff are coming out smelling like roses.
Don’t fit a square peg in a round hole.
If the metric is stupid and the metric is also tied to comp, there should be absolutely zero surprise when everyone starts gaming the metric.
Every fucking customer hates our AI answering the phone. Yet USAA insist that customer use it. A lot of customers have told me they are considering going somewhere else for insurance over it.
Unfortunately I think most of the another use it too. At least with All state, progressive, and state farm and some other have local agents. But can promise the Allstate one only do sales you got issues or questions they direct to customer service that uses AI to answer the phone.
Fuck up part we all using the same AI tool even phone companies.
Some companies are in a race to the bottom on customer service, quality and customer satisfaction. They seem to assume the hogs will continue slurping up what's at the trough. It's allowed some to take marketshare that's been off the table for upstarts for the last 20 years. Example: Independent game developers on Steam, some of which are lone developers without a team, now have a healthy business thanks to the big AAA game companies faltering. It's not 100% about AI, but that's part of the issue they have. Knowing when to rely on AI, possibly allowing a reduction in staff, versus when they're over-relying on AI, seems elusive for them.
I dumped my phone company over their AI answering system.
It was totally broken:
I’ll bet the cost metrics looked great, 100% of calls being handled without a callback! Oh, the customers leaving is unrelated, talk to the retention department.
Just utter fucking stupidity. No, not stupidity, complete disregard for the customer to serve some department heads self interests. There needs to be a word stronger than greed…
At some companies, it's because they're hoping to use the data of the employees using the AI to automate their job away.
If AI actually made people faster and more productive, they could simply set faster timelines and people would use the tools.
There are AI mandates because the people in leadership are stupid and dishonest. "Return to office" has the same shape. For many people working from home is healthier and more productive, and it's better for the environment not to commute as much, but the emotional needs of leadership are primary.
I want to work with your team. I work with a sysadmin who, rather than using the up-arrow, will scroll up in his terminal to copy / paste the last command he ran. Even if that command was just "ls -l".
It's maddening to watch and horribly inefficient. But he's always done it that way.
Many people simply do not seek a faster way of doing things.
Teach him ctrl+r, life changing when you plug out into fzf
I do not want to work with such people, and rite incompetence is something any organization should try to combat.
But forcing period to use AI tools will only mask this problem.
Right. But if you're a soulless manager, and you set faster timelines, you PIP and fire the people who don't make it. They'll use the tools or be replaced.
It's the same as an AI mandate, except less stupid. (It can still be stupid if you set the timelines impossibly fast, but management is not known for being smart or informed)
I wouldn't do this as me because I'm not a soulless manager.
While this seems true, this is not my experience. It is easier to do things they way you have always done them, because it involves no learning, and thus some people will continue unless forced.
This is both accurate and understating the issue. People can't be downright hostile to new ideas even if it makes their life easier.