CEOs Have Started Warning: AI is Coming For Your Job (yahoo.com) 123
It's not just Amazon's CEO predicting AI will lower their headcount. "Top executives at some of the largest American companies have a warning for their workers: Artificial intelligence is a threat to your job," reports the Washington Post — including IBM, Salesforce, and JPMorgan Chase.
But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders? Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."
Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...
IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company...
Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. "We have little evidence of layoffs so far," said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. "What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business." Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard... It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. "Usage does not necessarily translate into value," he said. "Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?"
Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. "Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction ... or because humans are more productive."
On an earnings call, Salesforce's chief operating and financial officer said AI agents helped them reduce hiring needs — and saved $50 million, according to the article. (And Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, adds that if advanced tools like AI agents can prove their reliability and automate work — that could become a larger disruptor to jobs.) "A wave of disruption is going to happen," he's quoted as saying.
But while the debate continues about whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick still hedges that "the truth is probably somewhere in between."
But are they really just trying to impress their shareholders? Economists say there aren't yet strong signs that AI is driving widespread layoffs across industries.... CEOs are under pressure to show they are embracing new technology and getting results — incentivizing attention-grabbing predictions that can create additional uncertainty for workers. "It's a message to shareholders and board members as much as it is to employees," Molly Kinder, a Brookings Institution fellow who studies the impact of AI, said of the CEO announcements, noting that when one company makes a bold AI statement, others typically follow. "You're projecting that you're out in the future, that you're embracing and adopting this so much that the footprint [of your company] will look different."
Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey conducted for software company Dataiku showed. Tech leaders have sounded some of the loudest warnings — in line with their interest in promoting AI's power...
IBM, which recently announced job cuts, said it replaced a couple hundred human resource workers with AI "agents" for repetitive tasks such as onboarding and scheduling interviews. In January, Meta CEO Mark Zuckerberg suggested on Joe Rogan's podcast that the company is building AI that might be able to do what some human workers do by the end of the year.... Marianne Lake, JPMorgan's CEO of consumer and community banking, told an investor meeting last month that AI could help the bank cut headcount in operations and account services by 10 percent. The CEO of BT Group Allison Kirkby suggested that advances in AI would mean deeper cuts at the British telecom company...
Despite corporate leaders' warnings, economists don't yet see broad signs that AI is driving humans out of work. "We have little evidence of layoffs so far," said Columbia Business School professor Laura Veldkamp, whose research explores how companies' use of AI affects the economy. "What I'd look for are new entrants with an AI-intensive business model, entering and putting the existing firms out of business." Some researchers suggest there is evidence AI is playing a role in the drop in openings for some specific jobs, like computer programming, where AI tools that generate code have become standard... It is still unclear what benefits companies are reaping from employees' use of AI, said Arvind Karunakaran, a faculty member of Stanford University's Center for Work, Technology, and Organization. "Usage does not necessarily translate into value," he said. "Is it just increasing productivity in terms of people doing the same task quicker or are people now doing more high value tasks as a result?"
Lynda Gratton, a professor at London Business School, said predictions of huge productivity gains from AI remain unproven. "Right now, the technology companies are predicting there will be a 30% productivity gain. We haven't yet experienced that, and it's not clear if that gain would come from cost reduction ... or because humans are more productive."
On an earnings call, Salesforce's chief operating and financial officer said AI agents helped them reduce hiring needs — and saved $50 million, according to the article. (And Ethan Mollick, co-director of Wharton School of Business' generative AI Labs, adds that if advanced tools like AI agents can prove their reliability and automate work — that could become a larger disruptor to jobs.) "A wave of disruption is going to happen," he's quoted as saying.
But while the debate continues about whether AI will eliminate or create jobs, Mollick still hedges that "the truth is probably somewhere in between."
It can have my job (Score:3, Insightful)
AI can have my job. I don't care. I'm about done with having to work for a living anyway.
Re: It can have my job (Score:1)
Re: (Score:3)
If the CEOs believe it is true, it won't matter that it is true. Reducing headcount and ending hiring is going to be their priority.
I say any company over 50 employees needs to be charged an extra AI tax for eliminating positions, above and beyond the unemployment taxes they already pay on layoffs.
Re: (Score:2)
Sadly, if we are headed into a depression CEOs first move will be to save the companies which often requires cutting costs. And where are most companies largest costs? Payroll!!!
Riding the narrative wave (Score:4)
1. Talk about AI, add a few AI initiatives
2. Slow down hiring or lay off employees to cut costs
3. Since we introduced the AI initiatives, our payroll has gone down and year over year we have saved $50 million on payroll
The wondering question is: "What will be the new shiny topic, strategy, transformational narrative, or technology for companies, business consultants, Gartner, think tanks, and business school professors to discuss once enough AI projects have failed to produce significant return on investment?"
The next question is: "What's the impact of most of the major web, database, cloud, SaaS, etc. platforms/technolgoies being 10 or more years old with few, if any, major new updates which result in significant productivity gains?"
AI is helping workers replace companies (Score:2)
Re: AI is helping workers replace companies (Score:2)
Except the employers know this and tequire more work. Anecdotes are of people writing prompts that mostly specify a handul of testcases and to have the agents self prompt with the output of the compiler, linter unit tests etc. until it passes. Then they verify the tests cases are still right and move to the next ticket never even looking at the code, commiting the prompts into git. I've tried this with cline and a corporate hosted mistral. it works. My employer doesn't know it works yet but at some point we
Re: (Score:2)
"What's the impact of most of the major web, database, cloud, SaaS, etc. platforms/technolgoies being 10 or more years old with few, if any, major new updates which result in significant productivity gains?"
Realistically, 99.9% of applications running new vs 10 year old databases will see no impact on how they operate. You could use 20 year old tech and most apps would still be just fine.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
If he's anything like me, he just saved and invested a lot. All it really takes is patience and putting off little things now for much bigger things later, a virtue seemingly few people here have. My house and stock assets minus mortgage debt are currently valued at around $1.1 million, with a cost basis just under half of that over the last ten years. Who knows where it will be in another ten years, but I certainly like the odds.
Re: nepotastic (Score:3)
Yep, if you work in tech you should be able to retire early by living below your means and invest the savings. I personally retired before 50 and really enjoy the additional free time.
Re: (Score:3)
Or just do what I did: Buy a house in Silicon Valley and watch it quintuple in value.
Re: (Score:2)
You also have to have the virtue of not encountering major health problems.
Re: nepotastic (Score:2)
I got discharged from the Army for having night blindness
I had stage 4 renal failure, which caused all kinds of problems (e.g severe gout) in my late 20s to about age 36 when I got a kidney transplant
I'm also apparently autism spectrum with ADHD and depressive disorder.
Probably other things I'm not thinking of right at the moment. Anything else you want to know? I'll volunteer a few other things:
I'm basically in-state community college educated, which I mostly paid for on my own with minimum wage savings.
Wh
A replacement for ghost jobs? (Score:2)
It would be good if CEOs switched to scaring employees and appeasing shareholders with threats from AI rather than fake job posts.
Re: (Score:2)
It would be even better if shareholdiers would scare management about taking over their jobs with AI. AIs can do meetings, issue buzzword bingo phrases, make threats, do stupid, etc. It's all out there to be trained on.
Job Most Replaceable by AI? (Score:5, Insightful)
According to AI experts, the job most replaceable by AI is CEO. Which leads back to why in the world are they so fantastically overpaid?
Re: (Score:2)
Offer to do their job for less money.
Re: (Score:2)
I've known enough CEOs to be mortally embarrassed to be known as one. And no board would believe you were for real unless you asked for an obscenely generous compensation package.
Re: (Score:2)
Why don't you start a company and put AI in charge?
You should save a bundle by not paying executive salaries.
Come back and let us know how it worked out.
Re: (Score:3)
According to AI experts, the job most replaceable by AI is CEO. Which leads back to why in the world are they so fantastically overpaid?
You're asking why the ownership class in a capitalist system gives itself most of the money.
Re: (Score:2)
AI's are known to a) Lie, b) Cheat, and c) Pander to the lowest common denominator
Yup, sounds like a CEO to me.
Re: (Score:2)
According to AI experts, the job most replaceable by AI is CEO. Which leads back to why in the world are they so fantastically overpaid?
Because they have the power to demand that and you don't. Simple eh? Or did you think you lived in a Meritocracy?
Re: (Score:2)
Tech breakthroughs mean more jobs. (Score:3)
I'm old enough to remember breathtaking headlines from the first decade of the millennium stating that “technology” will cause half of the jobs in healthcare to disappear.
Instead, it doubled over the decade.
Tech breakthroughs will always make certain jobs redundant through automation: the printing press brought an end to the age of the illuminated manuscript scribe. But history shows us tech breakthroughs have always lead to more job total than before.
Re: Tech breakthroughs mean more jobs. (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Neither is an LLM. All it does is give the illusion of intelligence. Then again, so do some humans, like the guy mentioned in my signature.
70% (Score:5, Interesting)
It happened, but like most Americans because it didn't happen to you personally it's not real. It doesn't exist.
Americans can't comprehend a phenomenon that they do not personally experience. It's why there are so many mass shooting survivors that come out in favor of gun control
Re: (Score:2)
This chart is very starkly at odds with all three of their bullet points:
https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
And their article cites several saltwater economists, who usually tend to rely on very strict models which historically have fallen apart. They also seem to be at odds with your daily talking points:
Rising market power, markups, and deunionization "do not appear to play a major role in US wage inequality," they added.
It seems like you're disagreeing with yourself. I like this forward-looking quote too:
f the last four decades are precedent, automation is likely to further displace workers as the US reopens.
Only that didn't happen -- in 2022 we even saw negative unemployment in several industries.
The automation targeted middle class jobs (Score:3)
Ignoring the fact that our unemployment statistics are just flat out lies and that industries will always tell you that they have quote unquote negative unemployment in order to bring in more h1bs the fact of the matter is the automation initially was targeted towards factory workers because they were unionized and so they could demand better wages. Factory workers were prone to unionization b
Re: (Score:2)
Because of course it did. You don't automate dirt cheap labor first you go after the more expensive stuff first.
The Luddites weren't dirt cheap, but their job was surprisingly easy to replace with machinery. Before that machinery, unless you were incredibly rich you'd only get a new set of clothes about once a year, and odds are they were used, including the underwear.
Ignoring the fact that our unemployment statistics are just flat out lies and that industries will always tell you that they have quote unquote negative unemployment
So far I've witnessed infosec at three companies, and all three of them were constantly in search of new employees. There was never a moment when they weren't hiring, even when other departments had a hiring freeze during COVID. That has been constant o
Re: (Score:2)
It happened, but like most Americans because it didn't happen to you personally it's not real. It doesn't exist.
Um, you were the ones calling them "jerbs" and not only not caring, but snarking.
But that's often an accident (Score:3)
I'm old enough to remember breathtaking headlines from the first decade of the millennium stating that “technology” will cause half of the jobs in healthcare to disappear.
Instead, it doubled over the decade.
Tech breakthroughs will always make certain jobs redundant through automation: the printing press brought an end to the age of the illuminated manuscript scribe. But history shows us tech breakthroughs have always lead to more job total than before.
Historically, that's true. However, that's a coincidence, like Moore's Law. Also, most breakthroughs occur so slowly that the economy has time to adjust. Technology has replaced lots of people working in photography, travel agents, typists, stenographers, but it took awhile for each. Once you have AI that works as promised, you're going to have a massive amount of job loss. The only shining light is that modern AI is a pyramid scheme and the results are never as promised...but what if that changes?
I
Re: (Score:1)
I'm with y'all on the complete over-hype of LLMs. They'll be another useful tool in several toolbelts, but as a coder, the greatest boost to my productivity ever was... a second monitor. I've been speaking on this hype wave for years now, here's a talk I gave at DjangoCon US in 2023: https://www.youtube.com/watch?... [youtube.com]
If Altman or Amodei say it, you can believe we're nowhere close to it. :)
Re: (Score:2)
I'm old enough to remember breathtaking headlines from the first decade of the millennium stating that “technology” will cause half of the jobs in healthcare to disappear.
Can you provide a link to one of these breathtaking headlines? Because it was clear a generation ago that when the Boomers got old the number of people providing health care services was fated to skyrocket.
CEOs drank the kool-aid (Score:3)
Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains, a Harris Poll survey
What this tells me is that CEOs aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the severe limitations of AI. As a result, they are compelled to push AI use into their company simply because preliminary results show AI being effective at certain tasks. They clearly want to deploy AI and think it will decrease costs thereby improving profitability and thus raising their stock price. However, it has not panned out as doing what they think but they have not come to terms with that just yet.
TL;DR: CEOs drank the "AI revolution" kool-aid and are now trying to convince everyone they are right.
Re: (Score:2)
What this tells me is that CEOs aren't knowledgeable enough to understand the severe limitations of AI.
They may understand perfectly well.
From TFS:
Some CEOs fear they could be ousted from their job within two years if they don't deliver measurable AI-driven business gains
They fear an unknowing investment community. Who will demand, "Do AI or else." The Googles and Microsofts have figured out how to run a protection racket. "That's a nice little pile of stock options ya' got there, buddy. Either do business with us or it would be a shame if something happened to them."
CEOs first (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
I'll believe that ... (Score:2)
In reality, everyone knows that not every job will go. So this is just a threat to lower your demands or we'll put you on the chopping block. The first half to sign up for the cuts can stay. Everyone else, get out.
Re: (Score:2)
Why would such a company need VC funding?
Re: I'll believe that ... (Score:2)
Hardware and/or LLM as a service fees.
AI is expensive to train and run (Score:4, Insightful)
Which is why we should focus on replacing jobs that pay the most. Ideally jobs that have rather subjective measures of success, like CEO, are ideal because even if AI is terrible at it; nobody will be able to tell the difference or offer any agreeable criticism of its performance.
You don't replace the king (Score:1)
Re: (Score:2)
Instead, you like to pretend that this chart is the exact opposite, because that's what your religion tells you to do.
https://platform.vox.com/wp-co... [vox.com]
Re: (Score:2)
The theater that we play in America, that we're an egalitarian democracy, is a coping mechanism.
Except we don't do that at all. Instead, acutely aware that any time anybody ever promised some kind of egalitarian utopia, all they ever delivered is a dystopia. And for whatever reason, you guys are gullible enough to buy into that shit, so you keep trying to drag everybody else down with you, just as you have done countless times before. You guys trusted Lenin, Mao, Pol-Pot, Castro, Hugo Chavez, and countless others who promised egalitarian democracy. Each time, you said: "This time it will work, trust m
Re: (Score:2)
Instead, acutely aware that any time anybody ever promised some kind of egalitarian utopia, all they ever delivered is a dystopia.
That's a mistake. Democracy and equality is something you work for, constantly. You get out of it what you put into it. We're now repeating the harvest of decades of neglect.
Re: (Score:2)
That's a mistake. Democracy and equality is something you work for, constantly.
The problem is you guys are trying to create equality of outcomes, not equality of opportunity. The former doesn't work, it has never worked, and every time you try to do it you just make everybody equally hungry. Equality of outcomes is also fundamentally incompatible with democracy (more on that below.) This has always been the result, every. single. time.
And there's a reason for that: When you either deny people the ability to invest or just take away any potential reward for doing so, your economy just
Re: (Score:2)
The wealthy want to have everything and pretend the poor won't come looking for food. It's not clear why they want to pretend it won't happen again when it always happens
And when was the last time this happened?
In your utopian egalitarian democracy, everybody but the party experiences hunger daily. This has occurred every. single. time. In this non-utopian non-egalitarian democracy called America, rsilvergun is as poor as they come without being completely destitute, yet he's so overweight that he can't even get out of his own bed unassisted. You and rsilvergun both live off of the excesses of those wealthier than you, and yet you've got it in your head that if you get rid
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah that just, like, happens a lot, doesn't it? I think I saw this on the walking dead once too. One day they're sitting on their porch sipping lemonade and scotch when a big crowd of hungry people overpower the guards, ram the gate and take all the food. Those rich guys just get so sloppy. Sure, they could have gotten a lot more by raiding the grocery store down the street, but why bother when you can kill a bunch of rich people who are obviously dumber than you, and possibly get shot at in the process?
It doesn't have to be AI (Score:4, Insightful)
Remember CEOs can't just make statements like this, at least not unless they are Elon Musk. These kind of statements come with fiduciary responsibility. The affect the stock price because investors are expecting bigger returns because of fewer employees.
That means that the CEOs believe this. And that means they're going to do large scale layoffs whether the technology works or not.
If it works then great for them right? If it doesn't work great for them because the people they don't fire will be forced to work double time to make up for all the people who got fired.
You allowed a civilization to form where the ruling class wins no matter what. There are consequences for doing that. You had your reasons for doing it and now you've got the consequences.
Re: (Score:2)
My understanding is that musk normalized lying to shareholders and getting away with it. The shareholders discovered that if he made really big lies the stock went up enormously, and they liked that. It took years for other ceos to catch on but now its generally considered the thing a really successful buisness leader ought to do. Examples of promising things that the ceos almost certainly know are not going to happen soon include
Michael Saylor says a BTC will be worth $5 million
Mark Zuckerburg saying digit
Re: (Score:2)
but if you try that as a regular CEO you still get your ass handed to you when the stock eventually comes back to Earth.
Re: (Score:2)
Musk is so incredibly powerful and wealthy now he can get away with crashing the stock as long as he doesn't screw over his fellow 0.1%ers.
Those are the ones by far the most impacted by any stock in the S&P 500 crashing.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
You're talking about insider trading. The volume of trades that would have to happen just before these events sticks out like a sore thumb. If the same people or group of people kept doing it like you're suggesting, the SEC would stick a probe so far up their asses it would hit the back of their teeth.
The only people believed to do that and get away with it are congressmen. Kind of ironic that you're pointing the finger at Trump when Nanci Pelosi is perhaps the most well known for this, so much so that a lo
Re: (Score:2)
Yeah it is Elon (Score:2)
The strategy is simple. You start with overwhelming propaganda. Sane washing it's called. That gets you to about 47%. Meaning 47% of voters are completely confused and will vote for your stupid candidate who will hurt them.
That doesn't win elections so you use voter suppression and maybe just a little bit of cheating to get over the finish line. You send broken voting machines to you
Re: (Score:1)
They're looking to automate everything they possibly can.
They're not the only ones. It seems somebody automated you, after all, and you know exactly what I'm referring to. I'd say their work is pretty good as the copy is completely faithful to the original, but I won't because at the end of the day, it's not as if they cloned anything that can show any signs of intelligence, even if it was only an illusion.
Re: (Score:2)
"You allowed a civilization to form where the ruling class wins no matter what"
Rsilvergun is also part of this 'you'. Don't blame everyone else while proclaiming your own innocence.
Re: (Score:2)
You allowed a civilization to form where the ruling class wins no matter what.
Oh man. I feel terrible. I didn't realize I was responsible for making it happen. I tried everything I could think of, but I guess I just wasn't smart enough or powerful enough to stop the evil people from doing what they are doing.
There are consequences for doing that.
I feel terrible for allowing all of this to be foisted upon you rsilvergun. Are you going to outright kill me now?
You had your reasons for doing it and now you've got the consequences.
Yes, I am suffering now for my actions. I will accept my penance. But what are YOU going to do now that I have fucked up your life so badly? It was me who allowed the
Expected! (Score:5, Insightful)
HR will disappear (Score:1)
It's a bunch of fucking assholes (Score:2)
Saying fucking asshole things. They're tired of having to pay skilled labour what it's worth, and AI isn't going to actually take the jobs, so they have to make everyone scared by saying things like this and laying off hundreds of people at a time.
Funny how such easy to predict actions aren't being threatened with being replaced. As more than one other person has said here, CEOs are ripe for replacing; nobody would even notice the difference.
hey CEOs (Score:1)
Normalized sociopathy (Score:3)
Media takes be like: more jobs == good... but then, layoffs due to overhiring is just a natural outcropping and is always blamed on AI.
Less water / electricity use and a lower carbon footprint was an ideal, but now a massive upswing water / electricity use, diverting it away from living breathing carbon creatures that need it is just the cost of doing business.
VC spending money on bullshit business concepts is good.. until that well dried up, and then oh well, it was nice when it lasted. Media takes boil down to: VC is good, the C-suite is good, everyone who has money to mindlessly pollinate the industry is good, and everything / anyone else can just get thrown in a pit.
No workers = no consumers (Score:3)
So who will be buying all these supposedly great AI products? No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities. Trillions in shareholder value wiped out ;)
Re:No workers = no consumers (Score:4)
So who will be buying all these supposedly great AI products? No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities. Trillions in shareholder value wiped out ;)
Precisely. Assuming AI really matches the hype to some extent, producing the stuff people need will be a lot cheaper in terms of hours worked. So people will have to work fewer hours to pay for it.The people who should be worried are investors. Because AI may make access to capital a lot less important.
The assumption seems to be that a small group will control AI and everyone else will have to go to them hat in hand. I am not sure that is the way it will work. There was a time when IBM was king because they owned and controlled the computers. But it didn't last.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:3)
Re: No workers = no consumers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
A company that has the goal of high profits will not lower prices just because they have AI.
No, they will lower prices because someone else can produce the product cheaper using AI and they have to compete. And yes, that will depend on the industry. But if AI saves a company money, there is no reason to believe its competitors money.
Re: No workers = no consumers (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
That's just not how it works. In capitalism the entrenched players stay entrenched and keep out new players.
No one ever lost their job buying IBM. There are very few tech companies that have held on to their monopoly. Which is why Google, Facebook, Amazon and Microsoft are all scrambling to get into AI. They see the handwriting on the wall.
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities.
Why can't the unemployed people just make stuff for each other?
They could even use a medium of exchange to make their transactions more efficient.
Re: (Score:2)
That idea is too difficult for economics graduates and MBAs.
Re: (Score:2)
So who will be buying all these supposedly great AI products? No one will be able to afford anything beyond the barest of necessities.
I believe they think it will be the rest of the world who will be buying all of their stuff. It is why they feel happy shitting where they eat. The customers will have no idea what they are actually buying.
The future is becoming increasingly unpredictable (Score:3)
That said, here's my prediction
Technologically clueless CEOs will believe the hypemongers and spend a lot of money on early AI systems
Some will work well, some OK and some will fail catastrophically
Eventually, a balance will be found, but the transition will not be smooth
Re: (Score:2)
I agree, except that the "some will work well" part will likely be rather small and completely offset by the others.
Re: (Score:2)
And all be lauded as "brave" and richly rewarded regardless of outcome.
Unionization (Score:2)
We should be pushing hard to unionize the tech sector and then using those unions to collectively act against attempts to replace workers with AI.
Re: (Score:2)
Wouldn't that just speed up the process?
Re: (Score:2)
Why? Unions can negotiate contracts together, and those contracts can expressly call for slow or no adoption of AI agents. A corporation can try to replace them, but then their entire staff walks. The amount of tribal knowledge at most major companies is astounding. Without the development team available, there's no chance AI can catch up and replace the dev team. No chance they can replace the SRE teams. The companies can choose to negotiate their AI initiatives down, or they can choose to lose everyone.
If AI means lower headcounts... (Score:2)
Re: (Score:2)
Only that it will not. These large companies can do it because they have high momentum and even sacking all their coders, for example, would only kill them slowly. But they will find out that this does not work. And then they will be struggling for a long time to undo the damage. If they can.
Snake oil for your job! Buy it here! (Score:2)
Buy it before AI tries to take over your job.
It's a good thing (Score:2)
At least an AI CEO will have a slider to change the sociopathy and or psychopathy to the desired grade.
It is not going to happen (Score:2)
The only thing that will happen for the ones that go this route is deep enshittification and then possibly corporate death. AI cannot even successfully replace a worker that is somewhat dim. Oh, and all the good engineers that got sacked will remember ans spread the word. Good luck ever hiring competent people again.
Who do they think will buy their product (Score:2)
if AI replaces most jobs, who will have the money to buy their products? It seems a lot of these pointy-haired MBA's have no idea other than clueless following the buzz-word talk.
CEOs started telling their shareholders (Score:2)
CEOs started telling their shareholders: We will make more money because we will need fewer people.
It's unclear if it is true. But it sounds plausible and that makes shareholders happy.
AI is coming (Score:2)
In a world where serving the stakeholders is the only thing that matters, AI can do a better job at CEO than some human.
The big question is - since the stated goal of the CEO set is a workforce with as close to no employees other than them is the end goal. Will the AI figure out that people need employment to buy the shit that services the stakeholders?
The goal of 99.9999 percent unemployment that causes some folks massive boners, does have that one really big issu
YOUR job, CEOs (Score:2)
What? (Score:2)
AI coming for middle management first (Score:2)
It's the next Dot Com Bubble (Score:3)
Yes, everyone is scrambling towards AI now, and they're tossing money at anything AI. Everyone is also trying to put "AI" on every product they can, even if there's no AI at all, just as long as some AI has been used to generate something, could even be a logo on a product, then it's AI supported.
No, your jobs are pretty safe - with one small caveat:
If you suck at your job, and you refuse to use your AI LLM tool help you learn and extend your knowledge, yes - you'll most likely lose your job to those who are useful and resourceful.
If you use LLMs and AI to make your job easier, yes - you're using it the way it was intended, it's a great learning tool, and it's even better at doing mundane tasks, guess what - they used to call that automation, AI is exactly that - it's more intelligent automation, but still nowhere NEAR capable of replacing a human fully.
Sure, a lot of companies will lay people off due to AI, but that's because they were dumb enough to buy into the hype, they actually think that AI can replace humans, well - sort of, but not really. AI and LLMs hallucinate a lot. LLMs demands a VAST amount of computing power to get even the simplest of stuff predicted correctly (in other words, it cost a fortune to train a database), in fact - it's so darn expensive that if anyone of you have been using and following OpenAI's adventure into this success, you'll notice that they had to DIAL BACK their latest models, because it became to expensive to provide to the masses, in other words, you got thousands of people on Reddit proving how "dumb" LLMs have become after the dialback, they met with MASSIVE protests because of this.
But think about this, if its THIS expensive, how much of a HYPE bubble dont you think we're in right now? This is why I think your jobs are still safe, at least for the next 10+ years until we have better GPUs, which in turn will have to be a lot more energy efficient. So you're safe for now, if you use it as a tool and don't freak out because of it, that is.
What's worse is all that A.i. slop we're facing, all those "let's get rich of VAO 3" scheemers on Youtube that now automated the process of "Cocomelon" stuff, aka AI videos made for content, mindless drivel content, but they just copy anything in existence, and make AI content out of it, untill we're so swamped that we don't know how to find real content anymore, youtube don't care because it means more money, the Scheemers don't care, because the more AI slop they make, the more money they make.
And ofc. this ends up in a sea of AI garbage, now that is a FAR bigger problem in the future than joblessness. because you aint gonna be out of a job, as long as you're creative and willing to change.
Re: (Score:2)
And I always see people falling for these schemes again and again, with ever greater consequences, because greed always trumps logic and reason.
Re: (Score:2)
The share of the economy that goes to wages - what people are paid - has been declining for 45 years. This is definite evidence of jobs, or at least good jobs for most people, have been in decline for the entire working life of almost everybody here. It is a metric that entirely avoids cherry picking.
And for those who are interested in the early history of the Industrial Revolution its first phase, starting with thread spinning in 1770, moving on the the more complex stages of fabric production, lead to hig