Here’s a vital thing that AI can’t do
Here’s a vital thing that AI can’t do
What counts as work today? What about the invisible labour that underlies tasks that can be seen and measured? There is a connective tissue between ourselves and our societies, which we fail to recognise. The Last Human Job: The Work of Connecting in a Disconnected World by Allison J Pugh is about the importance of this ‘connective labour’.
Seeing the other and reflecting that understanding back is how humans help each other be human. This work is ubiquitous but there is no name for it. It is only partially understood. It is not recognised or reimbursed. As data analytics and automation push systems to be efficient and reproducible, we are in the middle of a full-blown depersonalisation crisis.
When someone feels seen and understood, that powerful interaction reverberates. Neuroscientists call this “perceptual crossing”. It is about mirroring a relatively true image back to the other person. We might recognise the value of this in teaching and nursing, and not so much in police or the law. But, in fact, it pervades all successful interactions and organisations.
Automation and depersonalisation — a kind of machine logic — has set in across fields. Those who push these solutions say that it is to ‘scale up’ operations, or expand access, be more efficient, or take over tasks so that humans can be freed to focus on what matters.
But the primacy we give to data tends to edge out connective work, which is really an artisanal practice. It’s something we do with our bodies and expressions, our ‘spider sense’, that creates rapport and enables collaboration. We make helpful mistakes, our interactions are spontaneous and unpredictable. Machines can customise, they can offer a thin veneer of sociality, but cannot reproduce this capacity for connection.
In workplaces, excessive standardisation not only hinders relationships, it makes humans feel like automatons. Centring checklists, protocols and info can affect the quality of work, as the process becomes its own point, distracting from the actual work. In the West, after electronic records supplanted personal attention, doctors reported higher rates of burnout.
In the gig economy, connective labour becomes a consumer service, counted, shaped and surveilled through technology. Ratings and reviews do not replicate the quality of relationship that such work provided. Working in these environments is often alienating, with little solidarity to be found.
Connective labour is shot through with questions of social inequality. Today there’s a growing sector of lifestyle work: investment advisers, coaches and therapists for affluent people. With the emergence of ‘concierge medicine’, only wealthy people can afford some handholding and clinical intuition.
People-to-people interactions are not always for the best, obviously. Shame and judgment can rear up. For those from marginalised or stigmatised backgrounds, it might be easier to rely on an impersonal system than a person who might condescend to them.
Social intimacy is not just a lubricant for transactions. It makes the world go round. Leaders who centre relationships motivate others, but they must also allow others to connect. This is seen in education, where research suggests a good principal can affect 25% of a school’s outcomes by affecting teachers’ emotions and consequently, a school culture of care, which boosts morale and learning.
Grocery shops, playgrounds, classrooms, clinics are all venues of interaction and belonging. They make a community out of individuals. Our social health depends on them.
For more news like this visit TOI. Get all the Latest News, City News, India News, Business News, and Sports News. For Entertainment News, TV News, and Lifestyle Tips visit Etimes