If you're 10x more productive with AI, how come your wage is flatlining?

I’ve heard people say that they’re 10x more productive when using tools to machine-generate text or code for them; a practice also known, in marketing terms, as using generative ‘artificial intelligence’ (AI) for work.

Often this is an illusion. A randomized controlled trial found that skilled engineers (understood as workers having 5+ years of experience in a particular domain), even when they estimated that they had completed a task 20% faster, were actually 19% slower overall than those who didn’t use AI tools. And a meta-analysis shows exactly zero relation between the adoption of AI-tools and aggregate productivity gains.

But hey, let’s suppose that the perceived productivity increase is real. Let’s assume that you are indeed more productive when having a machine write or code things for you compared to learning and doing that work yourself.

In that case: What about your wages?

What’s happening to your wages? #

I’ve yet to hear of a single case of a worker who supposedly became 10x more productive with the use of AI getting a 10x wage increase.

When you think about it, that’s somewhat odd, isn’t it?

You’re getting 10x more work done than you did before. Hence, you’re producing 10x the value for the company. And yet you’re … still receiving what you made earlier? Most likely not even keeping up with inflation?

So where does that productivity go?

That productivity goes, of course, right into the pockets of bosses, owners, and shareholders. Erm alright but what does that mean?

All wage labour is exploitative, to some degree or other #

Wage labour always involves at least some sprinkle or other of exploitation. (Read: often it involves a lot of exploitation.)

A toy example. Say you do your work. In doing your work, you produce value to the equivalent of €5. However, under wage labour, you don’t get, in return for the value produced by your work, that €5. No no no no. Certainly not.

Instead, your boss gives you €2 for the work you delivered, and keeps €3 for themselves as owner. They keep €3, without themselves having done any of the work that produced that €5 of value. How is that OK???

It’s OK, your boss might say—backed up on this by fellow bosses, owners, and shareholders across the globe—because that’s what’s specified in a contract that you and they freely agreed upon after you competed in an open market with others for the privilege of being allowed to have the value produced by your labour extracted.

You’d do the work. You would get €2. (They would keep €3.) That was the deal.

And it might indeed still be the deal, but it’s also a measure of exploitation: bosses, owners, shareholders have others—workers—do the actual work that produces value, and without having done any of the work themselves they skim off a portion of that value as profit.

There’s no profit produced by wage labour that doesn’t involve at least a slither of exploitation.

What this means? Increased exploitation #

Alright, now against this backdrop, say that you’re truly 10x more productive with ‘AI’, while still getting paid the same.

Congrats! You’ve just increased your exploitation rate.

For, following the toy example, with your increased productivity you’re now producing €50 in value. But you yourself are still only getting €2 in wages. That means that your boss is extracting not €3, but €48 from your ballooning productivity; an increase of 1500%!

So you’re now producing mouthfuls of additional value for no extra pay at all.

Why would you want to do that??

Please don’t be a sacrificial buttercup saying you don’t mind working for free—unless of course it’s as a hobby, volunteering work, or you’re an aristocrat who can live off exuberant pre-existing wealth (but then why are you in wage labour in the first place?).

Do you do it because you want to show yourself a diligent worker, angling for a raise or promotion? lol good luck with that. I’d love to see the day that a boss spontaneously, out of the crevices of their own dusty benevolence, awards workers higher pay simply for increasing their productivity.

Are you maybe trying to avoid getting fired, dodging layoffs that nowadays seem so perpetually looming somewhere on the horizon? Surprise! Tech layoffs are happening anyway; they’re brutal, often ill-motivated, and shouldn’t be assumed to track worker performance.

Seriously. Your boss might be a nice lass, jolly to talk to, even remembers your name! But they’re not charitas and their interests are not your interests.

The reality is that, for bosses, your labour is always a cost. If you complete 10x the work at 1x the pay, then bosses are getting value produced at a lower cost per unit (whatever unit you’re going by) resulting, all else being equal, in a significant increase in profits. And bosses being bosses, they aren’t voluntarily going to dampen company profits to treat you better.

You’ve just multiplied your exploitation rate.

Friendly reminder: Your boss is not your mate.

Of course it’s understandable that, amid endless competition, precarious contracts, debt, social insecurity, fear of losing your house, your healthcare, people would feel pushed to perform such company-licking productivity-brags. That’s what ’the market’ loves workers to do.

But that doesn’t mean it’s strategic or sustainable.

What next #

As Sun Tzu already said, to win the battle, deceive your enemy. In this age of machine generation, the enemy of workers isn’t the computer, or ‘AI’. Hey, even the companies pushing AI tools might not exactly be your enemy—though some are dangerously lead by WeWork impersonators but with linear algebra and a god complex. Nope, your enemy is your boss. More precisely, your enemy is the person who controls your work, your compensation, and can decide on a whim whether you’ll have any or no income at all tomorrow, all the while pointing arousedly to LLMs as an apologia.

Consider doing the following.

1. Take stock #

Before emitting any further word about your LLM-induced productivity, go talk with your coworkers. Do a reality check. What are LLMs really doing for you? Are you objectively, factually delivering 10x more work? Or is everyone just bragging?

Together, either decide to stop bragging (it’s a chore anyway) or, if you must, only brag collectively and back each other up on every fabulous assertion you can think of. Either way, avoid making any individual worker the standout ‘fall person’, as that’ll only create division amongst you as workers, while you’re not each other’s enemy.

Avoid getting sucked into an interpersonal productivity competition maelström, as that’s a sure path towards burnout.

2. Cut back your hours #

Then, if an actual, non-delusion assessment shows that LLMs really allow you to do 10x the work, then for the love of Wodan cut back your work hours.

Maybe quietly take Monday afternoon through to Friday end of day off to make up for missed wages? Start doing something meaningful with the hours you gained? Spend more time with family, explore daytime clubbing, go out otter watching in De Onlanden, get active with your local Bond Precaire Woonvormen, or join Techwerkers and organize your workplace 😉

Obviously, don’t tell your boss. They’re already exploiting you. Until they start paying you properly for the increased value you deliver, you’re fully within your moral right to take your own compensatory measures.

Sure, maybe you’re indeed 10x more productive with AI? But that’s no reason to willingly increase your rate of exploitation.