Apple Can Help You “Be Ostentatiously Mediocre And Succeed”

Navigating the demands of office work in The Age of AI presents new challenges for today’s thought workers. If you are not careful to constantly upgrade skills, colleagues who have, may lap you in the perpetual race to impress the boss and keep your job.

Vinsom Cunningham, author of a new novel and staff writer at The New Yorker, recently wrote a piece of advertising criticism that reminded me how Apple Intelligence offers to aid today’s thought workers, be they crafty and ambitious or distracted and treading water.

Writing about “Lance”—a character in Apple’s ad campaign for its AI product—Cunningham wonders,  “Maybe Lance is evidence of progress: be ostentatiously mediocre, even forget how to read—who needs it?!—and succeed.”

The two other spots in the campaign purport to help you “write smarter” and “change your tone.” In other words, if you want to make better emails, give up your voice and adopt an AI-assisted voice that is more even-keeled, thoughtful, patient, compassionate, or whatever else suits the need and your fancy.

“Warren” uses Apple Intelligence to kiss up to the boss. It would be laughable if it were not also so utterly necessary. “Dale” uses Apple Intelligence to turn his hostile emotions about someone in the office eating his pudding—IT WAS MY PUDDING—into softer, simpler “beautiful words” that inspire compassion.

It’s easy to poke fun, but needing to catch up quickly and write smarter emails are legitimate workplace challenges. Also, workers are asking how AI can assist them, and here we have Apple’s answer to that. With Apple’s help, you can appear to be better at work than you are. This is not “fake it ’til you make it,” this is fake it forever.

There are some bright spots. I like the choice of music, “Genius” by Krizz Kalik. The casting, set design, and acting are also well-conceived and executed.