Grumble

Today, your challenge is to take a page from Catullus and Darwin, and write a poem in which you talk about disliking something – particularly something utterly innocuous, like clover. Be over the top! Be a bit silly and overdramatic.

The only thing I’ve felt like being ‘grumpy’ about recently is the use of LLMs in the workplace. On the one hand, this could indeed be considered something ‘minor’, after all we still don’t really know what the future impacts will be. LLMs could be a thing of the past in five years. On the other hand, if it does turn out to be a transformative technology in the workplace, my fear is that you have to spend all day reading text generated by LLMs, which feels like a nightmare.

Of course, regardless of the actual transformative potential, the more important point is what Cory Doctorow talks about; it doesn’t matter if an LLM can/can not replace you, what matters is if the LLM salesperson can convince your boss it can replace you.

These kind of existential questions about labour (as well as all the externalities of LLMs, like energy/water use), should prompt more than mere ‘grumpiness’, but with all that’s going on in the world right now, who has the energy…

Curiously, colleagues eagerly mumble
That change is needed, the system is clogged
Yet, organisational changes are met with grumbles
Minor updates to a policy document become a slog

Perhaps this is the change that changes all that?
LLM adoption, as something mandated
No more Word, Excel or Acrobat
All those old tools, whose updates you hated

Replaced with chat box friendly greeting
A friend, a partner of the highest calibre
No need to take notes during that meeting
Or write emails, or update your calendar

Soon, colleagues too, start to disappear
Behind emails created by rival LLMs
Slowly but surely you fear
You are succumbing to solipsism

You grumble to your LLM assistant
You get back a cheerful reply, so persistent