We Must Return to the Office to Use AI in Person

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ccainxinth about 3 hours ago 39 commentsRead Article on mcsweeneys.net

HI version is available. Content is displayed in original English for accuracy.

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Discussion (39 Comments)Read Original on HackerNews

ARandomerDude•about 1 hour 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•about 2 hours 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•about 1 hour 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•about 2 hours ago

I reminds me of something I read years ago. Maybe sometime around 1984...

donquichotte•28 minutes ago

Feels a bit more light hearted and humourous, more like Brazil?

copperx•about 1 hour ago

Wasn't 1984 released in 1949?

Insanity•about 1 hour ago

Yup, it was written around 1948. Easy to remember as you just swap the final 2 digits.

bee_rider•44 minutes ago

Oh wow, if they’d changed the title to match the release date (1994) that would really change the vibe, haha.

sctb•26 minutes ago

I'm getting major DFW vibes.

ddoolin•about 1 hour ago

It really does have a very similar feeling.

pjc50•about 1 hour 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•about 1 hour 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•about 1 hour 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.

BLKNSLVR•about 2 hours ago

I'm assuming ButtFuckers demerged to become CageFight Pharma and SodaPorn.

jgbuddy•about 2 hours ago

AI could never write this

lubujackson•8 minutes ago

Claude: Hold my mayo

cbg0•about 1 hour ago

It will now be able to.

xena•about 1 hour 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•about 1 hour 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•about 1 hour 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.

Invictus0•about 1 hour ago

Souls aren't real

x86x87•about 1 hour ago

it could given enough slop doulas

indoordin0saur•about 1 hour ago

Hilarious read, and strangely accurate in a way.

flir•about 1 hour ago

"More leaders means more leadership"

Heh.

Also: make it stop!!!

gmiller123456•32 minutes ago

This guy is a straight shooter with upper management written all over him.

bethekind•about 1 hour ago

RTO4AI should be a slogan. Or some variant thereof

lbrito•41 minutes ago

Sounds like Amazon pivoted to the mayo business!

liquid_thyme•41 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.

talhaanwar•about 1 hour ago

Remind of covid days. But i prefer wfh

_doctor_love•about 1 hour 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•about 2 hours ago

I hope "slop doula" sticks around…

neuroelectron•40 minutes ago

Returning to the office doesn't solve the problem of replacing office jobs with AI

iou•about 1 hour ago

I thought mcsweeneys did satire?

phplovesong•about 1 hour ago

RTO is the worst shit managers try to push.

xp84•16 minutes ago

It's your position that remote work is an unvarnished success though? No notes? Personally, I feel that remote-only in 2026 is mainly a cost-savings scheme, and probably functions to make the ground much more fertile for replacing knowledge workers (us) with AI agents.

In a physical space, humans have built-in advantages over bots. Operating exclusively or primarily over IP levels the playing field, nullifying our advantages of expressive nonverbal communication, and makes 100% of our output accessible to agents.

And it minimizes our contact with each other. I know you can DM people on Slack to gossip about the boss, but do you? Figuring everything is logged, you'd have to create and nurture alternative private channels like texting, and doing that at scale carries at least some implication of subterfuge that limits participation, in a way that chatting around a table at the sandwich shop just doesn't.

All of us really do appreciate the savings on gas money and (in theory) the time savings, though I bet most people have given over some of that time savings to work tasks. I'm not saying it doesn't have benefits. But I don't think the companies still embracing remote work are doing it out of philanthropy, and I don't think it's necessarily good for us workers.

neutrinobro•about 2 hours ago

> Associate Slop Doula

had me ROFL