Will GenAI be a timesaver or will it frazzle marketers at scale?
Marketers see GenAI as a productivity aid, but in reality that means more work in the same time, not the same in less.
By Ben Davis
It’s perhaps simplistic to argue that modern technology is making us all frazzled, but many of us instinctively feel this to be true.
Tech offers efficiency and cost-saving, but it doesn’t seem to save us time, at least not overall. After centuries of innovation, there are still culture-war debates when companies dare to trial a four-day week.
Tech tends to set new standards or unlock new industries, rather than letting us idle. To use an example from the last century, some economists and sociologists have argued that, between 1900 and 1960, the time spent on housework didn’t change much, despite this being the era of the appliance. One possible explanation (referenced in this 2009 paper) is that standards were improving at the same time; so, for example, people began doing laundry more often (getting rid of workarounds like the detachable collar). In the end, appliances allowed a housewife in the 1950s to produce, alone, what her counterpart in the century prior would have needed staff to produce.
