CONCEPT
The New Inefficiency
The pathology specific to AI-augmented work — unlimited production past the point of diminishing returns, produced by the elimination of the natural and informal restrictions on output that protected worker capacity in previous eras.
The new inefficiency is the opposite of the inefficiency Taylor fought. Taylor targeted soldiering — the deliberate restriction of output through informal work norms. His victory, completed by the AI age, is the elimination of those restrictions. The machine does not restrict output. The machine does not negotiate norms. The machine produces until told to stop. The worker directing the machine can produce at rates no previous generation could match. The natural restriction that soldiering imposed — the human body's and mind's refusal to operate at sustained maximum — has been circumvented by a tool that operates at maximum by default. The result is the unlimited demand Taylor refused to recognize as a problem: workers producing past the point where additional production serves any purpose, generating work whose quality degrades as fatigue accumulates and whose direction becomes less coherent as reflective capacity erodes. The new inefficiency is volume without value.
In The You On AI Field Guide
The old