The union is great, don't get me wrong, but one side effect of having it is that there are massive, sometimes arbitrary and annoyingly vague, lines around what I can and cannot do in my role. This wouldn't necessarily be a problem, if most of the time the things I'm not allowed to do are required to be done by managers. Managers who are overworked, undertrained, and underpaid, and so don't have the time or brain space to address things I bring to them.
AI was supposed to lessen your workload, but it's actually making you work more. That's the finding of an eight-month study from UC Berkeley. Researchers tracked 200 employees at a U.S. tech company and discovered workers using generative AI didn't work less-they worked faster and took on broader projects, often extending work into more hours voluntarily. The main culprits were task expansion, with employees doing work that previously belonged to others, and blurred boundaries as workers prompted AI during lunch or breaks.
