Luddites, AI Besties & Vacation Guilt
5 in 5 - Brave & Heart HeartBeat #212 ❤️
This week we’re discussing how CrowdStrike might survive an onslaught of lawsuits, or not, meeting a new wave of Luddites, and your new AI best friend.
Plus, are interview simulators useful or another AI nightmare, and how do you beat vacation guilt?
Let’s get into it.
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#1 - Well, duh. But it’s unclear what for…
Delta airlines have already announced their intent to sue CrowdStrike and Microsoft over the 500 million dollars they claim to have lost as a result of the outage, a class action lawsuit has been filed against CrowdStrike on behalf of their shareholders, who claim they were misled over their software testing practices, and another law firm are looking to bring another class action on behalf of small business affected.
CrowdStrike have responded to at least one of these lawsuits – the one about their shareholders – saying they believe it “lacks merit” and rejecting “any allegation that it was grossly negligent or comitted willful misconduct”.
CrowdStrike have said they were responsible for the outage, however that doesn’t mean it’s going to be easy for the businesses affected to get any money from them.
First of all, what would they be suing them for? Breach of contract, negligence, fraud – all are possible but not simple.
Any breach of contract lawsuit will be limited to what they pay CrowdStrike in service fees though thanks to a trusty little thing called the limitation clause – basically, the small print might save them.
#2 – Introducing The New Luddites
The Guardian recently put out an article where they posited that a new generation of “Luddites” have been stirred up thanks to recent AI developments, and they might have a point…
As we discussed last time, Google’s Gemini AI ad is the latest to have faced a frosty reception, following in the footsteps of Apple and having to actually take down their Olympics themed ad.
While they’re the big names in Tech, hence why we’ve talked about them before, they’re not the only ones who’ve faced this kind of reaction when putting out AI-enhanced projects.
A London cinema cancelled their screening of a fully AI-written film this Summer after their regulars went wild in a bad way, Lego have been pressured to take down AI-generated images they published on their website, and Doctor Who started experimenting with gen AI this year, before quickly stopping after they were hit with a wave of complaints.
The Guardian describe the life cycle as:
Company swallows the AI hype, thinks jumping on board will make them look innovative, fails to understand the growing anti-AI sentiment amongst customers, crashes and burns.
And especially in the creative industry, AI is a touchy subject.
Hayao Miyazaki, director of the iconic animation studio Studio Ghibli says he is “utterly disgusted” by AI, describig it as “an insult to life itself”, and Nintendo have committed to never using AI in their games.
They’re not the only ones though, as software engineers on Overflow rebelled after the platform allowed OpenAI to train models on their content – deleting posts or editing them into nonsense, and people are literally attacking driverless taxis on the streets in San Francisco.
Companies who push out “excting” new AI projects in this context are just not paying attention, or they’re only paying attention to one side of the hype.
They need to learn from Apple and Google’s mistakes, and take a more nuanced approach, at least for now…
Speaking of AI getting crazy, meet Friend, your wearable AI bestie. Yes, really.
Friend started it’s life as Tab, a wearable AI device designed to give you “perfect memory” and allow users to gain insight into their lives and behaviour.
However, after experiencing intense loneliness on a trip to Tokyo, Tab’s creator decided he wanted to turn his wearable into a companion – and so Friend was born.
You wear it around your neck, it records everything you do, and interacts with you about it by text. The ad shows a woman eating a falafel wrap receiving a text from Friend that reads “how’s the falafel?” while a guy playing video games gets a message that reads “you’re getting thrashed, it’s embarassing!”
The backlash, of course, came in droves. Friend was labelled, creepy, something out of Black Mirror, and a “tamagotchi with a soul”.
Apparently though, AI solutions like this DO help people who suffer with loneliness – studies on people who use the chatbot service Replika have already proved this.
So sure, maybe it’s not for you, but for someone, it could be an invaluable resource to fight against loneliness.
#4 - The Interview Simulator
As we keep telling you, AI is everywhere, especially in our working lives nowadays. The latest big thing for jobseekers - AI-powered interview simulation, but is it worth it?
The tools use coaching sessions, video recordings and personalised feedback, allowing you to practise interview skills in a comfortable and controlled environment before telling you how to improve.
Some simulators even assess confidence levels by analyzing speech patterns, tones and answers and then offering insights into what to say and how to speak to seem more confident.
In a tight job market, interview simulators seem like an AI powered way to take advantage of desparate job seekers, and a way to make the competition even fiercer for those who don’t use them.
However, they could be useful for people who need a bit of a confidence boost, new workers looking to get into the job market, or even olders workers who’ve been in the same role for a long time looking to get an advanced position without the same amount of interview skills as someone who’s job-hopped for their entire career.
#5 - Beat Vacation Guilt
Does your holiday feeling ever get spoiled by intrusive work thoughts – the team meeting you’re missing, that deadline you didn’t meet or your colleague left alone to manage your group project without you?
We’re all guilty of checking our emails on holiday, checking in on our colleagues and projects, or even not taking holidays at all. 49% of Americans don’t take their full PTO, and 12% of managers even encourage their team not to take vacations.
Still, it’s essential to check out and truly enjoy your vacation so you can return to work rejuvinated.
How?
Let go of people pleasing. Sure, it’s not cool to be the one left running a project while someone else on the team takes a vacation, but we all need them. Just think about the next time that you’ll be returning the favour, and if you’re in a management role, remember you’re setting an example about work-life balance.
Set yourself up for success. There are practical things you can do to make your vacation easier – such as making sure you get your work signed off before you go away and ensuring you’ve done a thorough handover to your colleagues. You might have to put a couple of extra hours in, but it’ll surely be worth it when you’re on the beach not thinking about work even a little bit.
Finally, accept the work guilt. Okay, so you feel guilty about taking a vacation – take it anyway. If you wait until you don’t feel guilty, or until you think work will be fine without you – you’ll be waiting forever.
Set your out of office up, and off you go.
Brave & Heart over and out.
Bonus
What Would You Do?
We saw a poll recently on LinkedIn about how to deal with your boss contacting you on holiday because a client needs something last minute - what would you do?
A majority of people answered they would say no and set boundaries, with the next most popular answer being to negotiate a compromise, then to delegate, with only 5% of people voting that they should take the work while on vacation.
Hot take, maybe the boss should have delegated it or compromised with he client right away?
What Would You Do?
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