this post was submitted on 07 Apr 2024
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[–] [email protected] 135 points 8 months ago (7 children)

I predict a huge demand of workforce in five years, when they finally realized AI doesn't drive innovation, but recycles old ideas over and over.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (4 children)

I predict execs will never see this despite you being correct. We replaced most of our HR department with enterprise GPT-4 and now almost all HR inquiries where I work is handled through a bot. It daydreams HR policies and sometimes deletes your PTO days.

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[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (7 children)

"Workforce" doesn't produce innovation, either. It does the labor. AI is great at doing the labor. It excels in mindless, repetitive tasks. AI won't be replacing the innovators, it will be replacing the desk jockeys that do nothing but update spreadsheets or write code. What I predict we'll see is the floor dropping out of technical schools that teach the things that AI will be replacing. We are looking at the last generation of code monkeys. People joke about how bad AI is at writing code, but give it the same length of time as a graduate program and see where it is. Hell, ChatGPT has only been around since June of 2020 and that was the beta (just 13 years after the first iPhone, and look how far smartphones have come). There won't be a huge demand for workforce in 5 years, there will be a huge portion of the population that suddenly won't have a job. It won't be like the agricultural or industrial revolution where it takes time to make it's way around the world, or where this is some demand for artisanal goods. No one wants artisanal spreadsheets, and we are too global now to not outsource our work to the lowest bidder with the highest thread count. It will happen nearly overnight, and if the world's governments aren't prepared, we'll see an unemployment crisis like never before. We're still in "Fuck around." "Find out" is just around the corner, though.

[–] [email protected] 41 points 8 months ago (8 children)

Even mindless and repetitive tasks require instances of problem solving far beyond what a.i is capable of. In order to replace 41% of the work force you’ll need a.g.i and we don’t know if thats even possible.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Let's also not forget that execs are horrible at estimating work.

"Oh this'll just be a copy paste job right?" No you idiot this is a completely different system and because of xyz we can't just copy everything we did on a different project.

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[–] [email protected] 29 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’ve worked with humans, who have computer science degrees and 20 years of experience, and some of them have trouble writing good code and debugging issues, communicating properly, integrating with other teams / components.

I don’t see “AI” doing this. At least not these LLM models everyone is calling AI today.

Once we get to Data from Star Trek levels, then I can see it. But this is not that. This is not even close to that.

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[–] [email protected] 104 points 8 months ago (1 children)
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[–] [email protected] 98 points 8 months ago (2 children)

In my experience, 100% of executives don't actually know what their workforce does day-to-day, so it doesn't really surprise me that they think they can lay people off because they started using ChatGPT to write their emails.

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (1 children)

This was my immediate thought too. Even people 2-3 levels of management above me struggle to understand our job let alone the person 5-6 levels up in the executive suite.

[–] [email protected] 35 points 8 months ago

At my last job my direct manager had to explain to upper management multiple times that X role and Y role could not be combined because it would require someone to physically be in multiple places simultaneously. I think about that a lot when I hear about these corporate plans to automate the workforce.

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[–] [email protected] 71 points 8 months ago (3 children)

Well it's good to know 59% of execs are aware that AI isn't gonna change shit

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

Some of that 59% might, but I guarantee at least some very strongly think it will change things, but think the change it brings will require as many people as before (if not more), but that they will be doing exponentially more with the people they have.

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[–] [email protected] 65 points 8 months ago (4 children)

Can AI replace executives too?

[–] [email protected] 30 points 8 months ago (9 children)
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[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Yes.

The biggest factor in terms of job satisfaction is your boss.

There's a lot of bad bosses.

AI will be an above average boss before the decade is out.

You do the math.

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[–] [email protected] 63 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Say execs. You know, the people who view labor as a cost center.

They say that because that’s what they want to happen, not because it’s a good idea.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

Freeing humans from toil is a good idea, just like the industrial revolution was. We just need our system to adapt and change with this new reality, AGI and universal basic income means we could live in something like the society in star trek.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (1 children)

I’m sure that’s what execs are talking about.

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[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (11 children)

And only 41%.

I've advised past clients to avoid reducing headcount and instead be looking at how they can scale up productivity.

It's honestly pretty bizarre to me that so many people think this is going to result in the same amount of work with less people. Maybe in the short term a number of companies will go that way, but not long after they'll be out of business.

Long term, the companies that are going to survive the coming tides of change are going to be the ones that aggressively do more and try to grow and expand what they do as much as possible.

Effective monopolies are going out the window, and the diminishing returns of large corporations are going to be going head to head with a legion of new entrants with orders of magnitude more efficiency and ambition.

This is definitely one of those periods in time where the focus on a quarterly return is going to turn out to be a cyanide pill.

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[–] [email protected] 38 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (12 children)

Can't wait for AI to replace all those useless execs and CEOs. It's not like they even do much anyways, except fondling their stocks. They could probably be automated by a markov chain

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

AI will (be a great excuse to) reduce workforce, say 41% of people who get bonuses if they do.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Game's changed. Now we fire people, try to rehire them for less money and if that doesn't work we demand policy changes and less labour protection to counter the "labour shortage".

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[–] [email protected] 34 points 8 months ago (1 children)

if a manager says that instead of seeing the opportunity to reassign staff and expand, the manager needs to be replaced by AI immediately

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[–] [email protected] 33 points 8 months ago (9 children)

If Gartner comes out with a decent AI model, you could replace over half of your CIOs, CISOs, CTOs, etc. Most of them lack any real leadership qualities and simply parrot what they're told/what they've read. They're their through nepotism.

Also, most of them use AI as a crutch, so that's all they know. Meanwhile, the rest of us use it as a tool (what it's meant to be).

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[–] [email protected] 28 points 8 months ago (2 children)
[–] [email protected] 15 points 8 months ago

I think that's a little low.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 8 months ago (2 children)

41% execs think that a huge amount of class power will go from workers in general to AI specialists (and probally the companies they make or that hire them).

I personally can't wait for a lot these businesses that bet on the wrong people to replace turn around and form new competition but with this new tech filling in the gaps of middle management, hr, execs, etc.

I mean its fucking meme, but an AI assisted workplace democracy seems alright to me on paper (the devils in details).

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (2 children)

Execs don't give a shit. They simply double down on the false cause fallacy instead. They wouldn't ever admit they fucked up.

Last year the company I work for went through a run of redundancies, claiming AI and system improvements were the cause. Before this point we were growing (slowly) year on year. Just not growing fast enough for the shareholders.

They cut too deep, shit is falling apart, and we're loosing bids to competitors. Now they've doubled down on AI, claiming blindness to the systems issues they created, and just made an employee's "Can Do" attitude a performance goal.

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[–] [email protected] 23 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Thankfully I don't even wanna work. I just wanna live and if that's not possible, exist.

[–] [email protected] 18 points 8 months ago (7 children)

Same. I welcome our AI overlords as long as that means I can just stay at home and fully embrace my autism by not giving a fuck about the workforce while studying all of the thousands of subjects I enjoy learning about.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago

Not allowed. Work or die, im afraid.

[–] [email protected] 20 points 8 months ago (1 children)

And that means lower prices for consumers. Right? Guys.. r.. right?

[–] [email protected] 25 points 8 months ago (2 children)

And that means lower prices for consumers. Right? Guys.. r.. right?

No, but it does mean 41%fewer people can afford to buy these companies products, you cheapass shortsighted corporate fucks.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago

41% is the number of executives that think AI will reduce their work force, not the number of jobs they expect to replace.

Your point stands though.

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[–] [email protected] 19 points 8 months ago (2 children)

Execs? The same people who make short sighted decisions and don't understand basic psychology? Let me go get a pen so I won't...give two fucks what this bogus survey says. Let AI run your business so I can have some excitement in my life

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (2 children)

As someone scripting a lot for my department in the tech industry, yea AI and scripts have a lot of potential to reduce labor. However, given how chaotic this industry is, there will still need to be humans to take into account the variables that scripts and AI haven't been trained on (or are otherwise hard to predict). I know the managers don't wanna spend their time on these issues, as there's plenty more for them to deal with. When there's true AGI, that may be a different scenario, but time will tell.

Currently, we need to have some people in each department overseeing the automations of their area. This stuff mostly kills the super redundant data entry tasks that make me feel cross eyed by the end of my shift. I don't wanna be the embodiment of vlookup between pdfs and type the same number 4+ times.

[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (25 children)

exactly, this will eliminate some jobs, but anyone who's asked an LLM to fix code longer than 400 lines knows it often hurts more than it helps.

which is why it is best used as a tool to debug code, or write boilerplate functions.

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[–] [email protected] 17 points 8 months ago (1 children)

Here’s a thought: let’s get rid of 41% of execs instead.

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[–] [email protected] 16 points 8 months ago (8 children)

People here keep belittling AI. You're all wrong, at least when considering the long run... We can't beat it. We need to outlaw it.

Train it to replace CEO's.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago) (1 children)

It's Schrödinger's AI. It is both useless and will replace everyone. Depending on the agenda the particular person is trying to push.

We need to outlaw it.
Train it to replace CEO's.

Oh, there it goes again.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago (1 children)

It’ll reduce the workforce from well-remunerated professionals who perform tasks to a larger number of disposable minimum-wage labourers who clean up botshit.

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[–] [email protected] 14 points 8 months ago

There is no denial a.i. is going to replace or significantly reduce some jobs. But I predict it's going to happen mostly in bullshit job like marketing, advertisement, the kind of journalism that repeat the same news from other reputed newspaper.

A.i. isn't going to replace the migrants that lay bricks in front on me, it's not going to replace their chief.

[–] [email protected] 13 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

Biz leaders optimistic it can reduce living, breathing cost centers... er, valued workers

And aggregate demand needed to buy the shit they produce. But that's not this corpo's problem. Not until most corpos are doing it.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago (2 children)

What's really interesting this time around is AI will cut middle management and paper pushers. Those are typically very good middle class jobs.

Unlike manufacturing, those people really don't have transferable skills. They can't go become mechanics or plumbers.

AI is going to hurt.

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[–] [email protected] 12 points 8 months ago

AI will remove 41% of execs, say 100% of people who know what AI is.

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