The rise of meat proxies and AI-jacked decisions

In the early days of the internet, we coined the phrase "IRL" (in real life) for the supposed "real world", in contrast to our new virtual one. Then, we turned it into "AFK" (away from keyboard), as our online space gradually rose to default status. And at the tail end of the Covid pandemic, my native Swedish blessed us all with the gorgeous, fleshy term "köttvärlden", referring to the "meat world" where people meet in person as opposed to those endless Zoom and Teams calls of the plague years.

Enter AI. And suddenly, some of us in this meat world are rapidly mutating into "meat proxies". Meaning, flesh-and-blood tools, who gather and throw hastily-assembled AI slop grenades at our fellow colleagues at work, without discernment.

And opposite of what the AI tech bros are preaching, the rise of meat proxies in our workplaces are making our lives worse, leaving the rest of us overwhelmed by having to handle, react to, and wade through endless mountains of AI-generated pointlessness.

Because here's the thing. AI has shifted the speed of work into a ridiculous over-hyper-mega-drive, sure. The Millennium Falcon would be jealous.

But - our human abilities to make decisions, use our judgement and discernment, take in multiple perspectives, weigh options and trade-offs, and come to agreement over what we should do, why, to what end, and at what cost? Those abilities have barely evolved an inch, since we trotted across the savannah thousands of years ago.

Making decisions is hard work. Making good decisions is even harder. It requires not just knowledge and information, but also courage, conviction, collaboration, and compromise.

And here's the kicker: AI doesn't give us any of that.

Yes, it can gather information, sift through it, organize it, outline it, list pros and cons, structure it, and give us all the basis we could ever possibly need to make decisions, on any topic in the world.

But it can not do that last crucial part needed for every human involved. Namely: to give the decision meaning.

And that's why, as an organizational psychologist and service designer, I'm not that worried (yet) over the immense speed of AI development. Because at the end of the day, AI can only really develop at the speed of the human brain. And that speed is...glacial, at best. Slop grenades be damned.

Hi! I'm Lina Bodestad, an organizational psychologist, UX/service designer, and author based in Sweden. Wanna chat about AI and the future of work and design? Reach out to me at lina@bodestad.se