Help Me Hera: My boss is obsessed with AI

It started with automating the odd task here and there – now everything we do has to use AI in some way.

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Dear Hera,

My boss is going absolutely mental with AI, and I desperately need some advice before I completely lose my mind!!

For context, I’m an AI hater through and through, and avoid using it in my personal life at all costs for ethical and moral reasons. But at the moment, it feels that everything is being pushed to AI workflows that it’s getting harder to ignore. I think there are some benefits to using it at work to help automate tasks, analyse data or whatever, but done so in moderation and always as a starting point, never the final result.

Anyway, my boss has been pushing us to use Claude more and more to the point where it’s becoming mandatory for everything, and it’s making me go insane. It started by automating the odd task here and there which feels harmless, but now, everything we do uses AI in some way. Coding, copywriting, customer service, every single thing that could be “made easier” with AI has been automated. It’s even at a point where my boss only speaks to us through Claude instead of actually typing himself. If we try to do something ourselves, we’re scolded since it’s not an “efficient use of our time” when AI can just do it.

What’s worse is that we’re now being pushed into using generative AI to create assets, social media content, and video content, which is what I was hired to do in the first place. The real kicker is that we pride ourselves in being a sustainable, eco-conscious company, and nothing's been done to at least acknowledge or counteract the environmental impacts our AI use is causing.

I just feel so defeated and hopeless, and I don’t know what to do. I actually feel like I’m getting dumber by not thinking critically and just letting some machine do my thinking for me, and my creativity is dwindling by the day. With the state of the job market right now, I don’t want to rock the boat and risk losing my job by not being onboard, but I don’t know how much more of this I can take.

How can I get my boss out of this AI psychosis? Or is this just the way the world will be from now on?

Any advice you have would be greatly appreciated.

Yours,

Sam At-FaultMan

Dear Sam At-FaultMan,

First of all, I want you to take a deep breath, because I think there's something important you need to hear:

You’re not at fault. You’re someone who values creativity, independent thinking and ethical responsibility. That’s not weakness — it’s human.

Let’s break this advice down into three key sections:

OK just kidding (sorry)...

The sudden and ubiquitous adoption of AI in every modern workplace, from progressive left-wing organisations to niche hobby shops, is a nightmare from which I’m not convinced any of us will ever wake.

Like you, I try not to be a doomer. There are lots of genuinely useful and interesting applications of AI, whether you’re trying to brute-force mathematical theorems or identify arcane cancers. There are even interesting creative uses, beyond turning photos of you and your family into Dragon Ball Z Villains. But the most frightening thing beyond environmental degradation and the collective generational brain atrophy is the chaos it’s wreaking on an already precarious job market. It’s a shitty time to be a worker, especially here on the frontiers of the AI revolution, and it’s scary how many workplaces have adopted AI without having any kind of coherent policy in place.

There are plenty of boring and mindless tasks which have understandably been automated. But what’s become increasingly clear is how many people have long been harbouring a secret hatred for the sentence, and would rather put another token into the frog-smashing machine than have to think of what to write in Deirdre’s retirement card.

The best solution is for every workplace to have a clear, publicly accessible policy about AI, factoring in relevant environmental, privacy and ethical considerations. But right now it’s the Wild West out there, only without the fun stuff, like big hats and blonde horses. The genie is well and truly out of the bottle, and we need a regulatory solution – there’s only so much any individual can accomplish. What are you supposed to do if you have a manager who would genuinely prefer to be the emperor of a digital wasteland than have to deal with employees?

You could definitely try to have a conversation with your boss about developing some kind of workplace AI policy. But that depends on you having a boss with strong personal values who is willing to rethink their core philosophical principles when challenged. This is a quality conspicuously lacking in many bosses.

If you think it’s the kind of conversation your boss might be open to, or you’re on good terms, you could try and raise your concerns by pushing the “environmentally conscious reputation” angle. I know a few people who have managed to singlehandedly change the way their organisation handles AI, through sheer personal pedantry. But considering your boss is already such a strong advocate for AI, and is aggressively trying to get everyone to use it, it doesn’t sound like you would have a lot of luck.

I’m hopeful that eventually, there will be some backlash to the overautomation of creative jobs, or maybe just better regulation, which will force some of the early adopters to furiously backpedal into the nearest transverse crevasse. But until Olive the Woolworths customer service bot accidentally malfunctions and tells someone how to build a car bomb, it’s going to be a tough decade.

I don’t think there’s anything I could say to change your boss's mind. Maybe it’s time to start quietly looking around for other jobs. But as you say, the job market is horrible, and you’ll need something to keep your brain active while seeking out an escape hatch.

My only genuine suggestion is to find something to keep your mind and soul occupied. If your boss is intent on you feeding every task into the mass redundancy machine, you likely have a lot of free time on your hands. Can you get away with doing a little sly novel writing on the clock? Do you have any kind of creative passion you could borrow a little time for? Can you read PDFs of great Russian literature on the corner of your screen? Design your next Dungeons & Dragons campaign? Write a long email to a friend abroad?

My feeling is, if your boss is completely uninterested in utilising your capacity for creative or strategic thought, then you should feel emboldened to do the bare minimum, and use all that spare mental energy on something that feels meaningful to you. The best resistance, it seems to me, is to reinvest that creative energy into an area of your life where it still has the potential to be appreciated. It doesn’t matter what that is. But anything that keeps your mind and spirit alive is a worthy act of personal resistance.

I don’t think you can cure your boss. But you can potentially read the entirely of Moby Dick on your phone. I know that’s not a good solution, but right now it’s all I’ve got.

Anyone with useful advice that will not get the letter writer immediately fired please respond in the comments!