{"id":27846,"date":"2026-06-02T12:48:12","date_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:48:12","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27846"},"modified":"2026-06-02T12:50:23","modified_gmt":"2026-06-02T19:50:23","slug":"good-news-about-work-and-ai","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/?p=27846","title":{"rendered":"Good News About Work And AI!"},"content":{"rendered":"

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From a report in <\/a>Fortune<\/em><\/a>:<\/p>\n

AI is actually increasing strain for most employees, as the tools add more time to menial tasks, and actually takes away from deep-focus work. Since adopting AI into their workflows, time spent across every job responsibility shot up anywhere from 27% to 346%, according to a recent ActivTrak report<\/a> that analyzed 10,584 users 180 days before and after their AI adoption.<\/p>\n

The time spent toiling on grunt work like emails increased by 104%, while chatting and messaging climbed by 145%, and using business management tools rose 94%.<\/p>\n

There wasn\u2019t a single activity category where using AI actually saved users time, with the report reaffirming that: \u201cThe data is unambiguous: AI does not reduce workloads.\u201d Instead, professionals are now multitasking at a greater rate, and spending less of their days concentrating on complex problems.<\/p><\/blockquote>\n

So that’s not the greatest. The headline in Harvard Business Review<\/em><\/a> summed it up: “AI Doesn’t Reduce Work — It Intensifies It.”<\/p>\n

—<\/p>\n

I don’t draw robots often, but cartoonists like Mattias Adolfsson<\/a> make it look like so much fun that I was eager to give it a try. Here’s the first batch of robot drawings I did for this cartoon:<\/p>\n

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I had a lot of fun drawing those, but I decided the robots just look too old-fashioned and broken to represent AI, so I started over.<\/p>\n

The second draft of robots aren’t quite as wrecked looking, but they’re not exactly slick and shiny looking, either.<\/p>\n

Thinking about it now, I could<\/em> have represented all the AI characters as text on smartphones, with a different smartphone (and hand holding the phone) in every panel. That might have been a better representation of AI than robots. But hopefully the way I did it is more fun for you folks to look at.<\/p>\n

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TRANSCRIPT OF CARTOON<\/strong><\/p>\n

This cartoon has six panels, each of which shows a different scene. The first five panels all feature cheerful robots in office environments.<\/p>\n

PANEL 1<\/strong><\/p>\n

A shiny golden robot talks to the viewer.<\/p>\n

GOLDIE: Good news! Here are just some of the ways AI saves you time and makes your job better!<\/p>\n

PANEL 2<\/strong><\/p>\n

A robot – which seems to be a suit and tie with a smartphone sticking up out of the collar – talks to us. He’s carrying a huge stack of papers.<\/p>\n

PHONE: Good news! Because your new AI agent is expected to save you so much time, the company is providing you with extra work!<\/p>\n

PANEL 3<\/strong><\/p>\n

A tiny robot that looks like a ball with hands is bouncing on a desk.<\/p>\n

BOUNCY: Good news! The AI agent makes lots of mistakes, so you get to do proofreading and debugging! Yay!<\/p>\n

PANEL 4<\/strong><\/p>\n

A robot with a head shaped like a Telsa Cybertruck talks to us. A bunch of other robots are in the background.<\/p>\n

TELSA: Good news! The company has determined you’ll get more work done with more AI agents doing more bad work for you to check and correct!<\/p>\n

PANEL 5<\/strong><\/p>\n

A coffee machine with a screen with a happy face on it talks to us.<\/p>\n

COFFEE: Good news! More of your colleagues are letting AI do their jobs, so now you get to fix that work, too!<\/p>\n

PANEL 6<\/strong><\/p>\n

A human with a shellshocked look is walking on a sidewalk, carrying a cardboard box full of desk stuff in classic I’ve-just-been-fired iconography. A caption is shaped like a memo on paper.<\/p>\n

CAPTION: Good news! We’ve determined that bad work done by A.I. is more cost-effective than better work done by humans.<\/p>\n

CHICKEN FAT WATCH<\/strong><\/p>\n

“Chicken fat” is obsolete jargon for what we now call “Easter eggs.”<\/p>\n

PANEL 1: A poster on the wall says LESSER EVIL INCORPORATED. “If it’s not lethal, it’s a lesser evil.” A rat sits reading a book, Charlotte’s Web<\/em>.<\/p>\n

PANEL 2: A gigantic ant is climbing a skyscraper in the background.<\/p>\n

PANEL 3: A picture of an adorable toddler is inscribed “I heart you Mommy! Always remember if u quit ur job I’ll starve.” A “to do” list says: “-Work -Work -Work -Labor -Toil -Lunch -Drudge -Slog -die.” A coffee mug, decorated with Charlie Brown’s zig-zag shirt line, has a mouse wearing glasses peering out of it.<\/p>\n

PANEL 4: One of the robots is a toaster. The robot puppy has left poo (a steaming pile of nuts and bolts) on the ground. The cybertruck robot’s head is on fire, and if you peer closely at the passenger window you can see a screaming person trapped inside.<\/p>\n

PANEL 5: The coffee cup has a picture of Bender from Futurama<\/em> on it. There’s an electric outlet with two “faces”; one of the faces is the standard, the other one is smiling and winking at us. A poster says “NOTICE: Cups must be cleaned after death.” A cannister is labeled “82% real Sugar,” with an adorable granny mascot saying “What you don’t now won’t kill you, probably.”<\/p>\n

PANEL 6: The box of stuff from the fired employee’s desk includes a coffee mug; the mouse from panel 3 is still in the mug. A jar on the sidewalk says “Background Juice” on the label.<\/p>\n

And there’s graffiti! “BG” (for background) is written in a few places. Someone has written a list of jobs: “Priest Poet Lawyer Marine Squire Grocer Vicar.” (Let me know in comments if you know where that list comes from.) A game of “hangman” is in progress: “A_S_ER.” (You see the answer, right?) More things written on the wall: “Filler.” “Who reads this?” “PP + Marcie 4EV.” “E=M.C. Hammer.” “Mary + Charlie + Frank.” Finally, a poster on the wall is partly blocked by the caption, but I can tell you it says “Secret Hidden Text! Because you can’t read this text: At last, I’m free to say it: Basketball is BORING! Bite me, b-ball fans!”<\/p>\n

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Good News About AI and Work! | Patreon<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

From a report in Fortune: AI is actually increasing strain for most employees, as the tools add more time to menial tasks, and actually takes away from deep-focus work. Since adopting AI into their workflows, time spent across every job … Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[17,25],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-27846","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-cartooning-comics","category-economics-and-the-like"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27846","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=27846"}],"version-history":[{"count":3,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27846\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":27851,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/27846\/revisions\/27851"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=27846"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=27846"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/amptoons.com\/blog\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=27846"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}