I am so tired of reading the word ‘efficiency’ linked to technologies and how AI is going to make the world and me more efficient. This is such a bit of nonsense-marketing, motivated by tech-designers/oligarchs assuming it must be what businesses want to hear to justify their inventions. Perhaps, it is what the businesses think they want to hear. Absolute efficiency, however, potentially leads to no humans whatsoever, and without humans buying and consuming, those businesses are left with nothing. They don’t really want efficiency. They want problems, often invented or planned (as in planned obsolescence), so as to keep selling. I believe if they were honest, those businesses would admit they desire chaos and inefficiency. An LLM, while agreeing with my underlying critique on the overplaying of efficiency, suggested this might be an oversimplification and that businesses probably prefer controlled friction rather than chaos. I suspect the jury is out on that (especially where the business of finance and technology are concerned, and where profit may no longer be the key driving force, as argued by Varoufakis* (2023) whom I mentioned in a previous post). What the world needs is not more efficiency but rather fewer unscrupulous business practices (such as outsourcing to friends with no experience in certain sectors; in fact, stop outsourcing altogether). We need better legislation that protects people from being exploited, rent controls, actual affordable housing, to stop dropping bombs on people or financing others to do so, and to reintroduce ourselves as a species to empathy.
My experience with generative tech is as follows, most of which shows how I have slowed down rather than sped up and overall, opted for less efficiency but potentially arrived at greater depth:
- I am a single parent and already as efficient as fuck! I am not looking for more efficiency in my life. I would LOVE to be less efficient; not to be constantly thinking about how to pay for this or that; or figuring out how to attend three different events at the same time; or making sure there are clean clothes, appropriate food on the table at the right times, dealing with teens, school and the state’s demands (I cannot live without state support – it’s been made nigh on impossible by neoliberal policy); going to work as an employee and making work as a self-employed visual artist and occasional artist-support-worker.
- I use generative technologies in my day job from time to time; does it make me more efficient? Not really. I was already efficient, and part of my efficiency is borne of the ability and willingness to use tools that support the admin and creative tasks that are a part of my job. In some cases, tasks have sped up, but in many instances, additional tools reveal much greater levels of information that I must process, which, in fact, makes more or different work. That’s fine – ever since I left acting and started working in a retail fund management company in the 90s (only briefly in the time frame of a life), work for me has been about re-configuring how one goes about managing tasks using the technologies available in the moment.
- I use generative tech in my self-employed work; to edit photographs in Photoshop (it sometimes saves time; other times, it can make the task longer, especially when I have to start again from scratch and do it manually – in fact, this is the least useful, least efficient area); I work with generative image-creation – it’s takes a few seconds to generate any old crap – it takes ages to recognise something of note and then incorporate that in way that feels meaningful and worthy of inclusion (Incidentally, I heard one of my kids discussing vintage SLOP recently – I love this term as it acknowledges how SLOP is nothing new, we’ve been inundated with it for ages); I use large language models (LLMs) when reading essays and books – this for me is the most useful of all the tools as this has become a way of thinking ‘out loud’ as I have conversations with what is effectively an entry point to the collective vaults of cultural history. Are there confabulations (a better word for hallucinations)? Sure. But this is no different to my own faltering short-term and long-term memory bank. Learning to think critically entails questioning and re-examining one’s habitual summations as well as others’, LLMs included. (A very smart tutor once told me that Mary Wollstencraft wrote Frankenstein and confused me immensely! Everyone does it.) Are there tremendous problems associated with generative tech? Yes – none of what I have said above excludes that. However, using an LLM in the way I describe means that reading anything closely takes a lot longer than it did previously, as I dialogue with the LLM to figure out where I might question what an author says or find correlations with other thinkers I have read. This lengthening of time enables greater depth of understanding rather than making me more efficient, but this is a healthier outcome. As Adam Curtis (2025) said in a recent podcast in which he promoted Shifty, people need to be a bit more tentative and measured with their certainty over AI (for or against) and how it will affect us. With a modicum of reservation, I have found Jac Mullen worth reading. His piece on ‘externalising attention’ is excellent.
All of that said, rather than aiming for efficiency, businesses could do with better manners, more empathy, and radical care for their employees, potential and actual (acknowledge job applicants, it takes not a moment and can even be done automatically which would surely better than nothing – so rude and yet businesses complain if applicants use an LLM!); care for the world in which we live and die; and with better convictions that give them the strength to stand up to international bullies while maintaining their core values. (Honestly, if anyone thinks giving up on investment in green innovation and research is the way forward, they don’t deserve to be in business at all.) If anything, an LLM can even help with some of this, which demands humans slow down, take stock, think more, feel more and consider more – rather than allowing themselves to turn and be turned into machine-like automatons while leaving LLMs to fare better on empathy tests.
As for me, my experience with and research around using generative technologies has indeed prompted me to slow down, encouraged me to be more judicious over what I apply for, as well as approach social media with care and discernment. And with that, I’m off to enjoy the weekend!
*Varoufakis argues that tech oligarchs have transcended traditional capitalism through ‘cloud rent’ extraction as they benefit from ‘socialism for capitalists’ (taxpayers’ support), creating what he calls ‘technofeudalism’ rather than operating within traditional market competition. Critics across the political divide challenge his diagnosis and whether this represents a fundamental shift away from capitalism. I have included links to both here – scroll to the bottom of the page.
Refs:
Curtis, A. (2025) Shifty: Living in Britain at the End of the Twentieth Century. [TV documentary series] BBC iPlayer. Available at: https://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episodes/m002d2jv/shifty (Accessed: 12 July 2025).
Mullen, J. (2025) ‘The Loom and the Weavers: Part One’, Substack. Available at: https://jacmullen.substack.com/p/the-loom-and-the-weavers-part-one (Accessed: 12 July 2025).
Osman, R. and Hyde, M. (2025) ‘Adam Curtis on AI, the BBC and Bucks Fizz’, The Rest Is Entertainment [Podcast], 18 June. Available at: https://podcasts.apple.com/gb/podcast/the-rest-is-entertainment/id1718287198?i=1000713140525 (Accessed: 12 July 2025).
Varoufakis, Y. (2023) Technofeudalism: What Killed Capitalism. London: Penguin.
Open Call: I am part of a group looking for five artists to join us. Please visit The Doughnut (W)Hole to find out how to apply. The open call is free and runs until the 15th of August. The online exhibition will go live from Nov ’25 to March ’26. The Doughnut(W)Hole, our pavilion, is broadly themed around AI and what might be meant by absence. You will be joining Maria Ahmed, Sarah Deane, David Koh, Evangelia Danadaki and me, along with Kim Shaw as lead curator.
Edited 14/07/25 to change ‘green tech’ to ‘green innovation and research’