You don't need help planning more things to do. I need to do less. Often these services offer users to invest money into the problem (if your problem is not having enough money, this is not very helpful). This app transforms parents from office workers into consumers, transforming our to-do lists into shopping lists. Someone is still out there “stealing the fun” from us, and it could be a call center worker or one of many other invisible workers who make artificial intelligence systems seem to run automatically.
The line between human and artificial is blurred. Yohana emphasizes that they hire “real humans (not AI chatbots) who can do the boring tasks.” However, according to Forbes, these humans are being assisted using generative AI. them As our mission. When these services style themselves as “worker bees,” “secret helpers,” or “fairy godmothers,” they rely on fantasy iconography to obscure the grim reality of providing “boring work” to an anonymous workforce.
The work these services seek to eradicate (or at least vaguely) is feminized. It is 'women's work' and indeed most of my Johanna helpers had feminine names. One of the most useful things a virtual assistant can do is distribute the family's burden more equitably among its members. This is an obligation that is generally considered “nagging.”
Last year, Meghan Verena Joyce, CEO of Duckbill, another task delegation service, argued that artificial intelligence could play a key role in alleviating social and economic burdens that disproportionately affect women “through its efficiency and customization capabilities” . ”
In illustrations on the Yohana website, a typical user is depicted as a bespectacled woman carrying a baby in a sling, securing a square wrapper under her feet, balancing a dog food bowl by lifting her legs, and stirring a pot with one hand. With my other hand, I'm typing on my computer. She's similar to Rosie from the Jetsons, with each mechanical limb firing autonomously to work more efficiently. We're all familiar with AI assistants like Apple's Siri that are modeled on female stereotypes, but it feels like the opposite is happening here. Her mother is reborn as a robotic being and her work is dismissed as mechanical and easily outsourced.
In the weeks I spent as a virtual assistant taskmaster, I realized that much of the busy work the app requires is actually deeply personal, often rewarding, and sometimes transformative.