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by bongodongobob 418 days ago
> This is demonstrably untrue. CEOs are chomping at the bit to reorganize their business around AI, as in, AI doing things humans used to do and getting the same effective results or better, thereby they can reduce staff across the board while supposedly maintaining the same output or better.

Nah. Maybe tech CEOs. Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams and/or only allowing an instanced version of MS Copilot, if anything. Other than write emails, it doesn't do much for the average office worker and we all know it.

The value is going to be the apps that build on AI, as you said.

3 comments

It certainly isn't maybe, look at the recent Shopify memo leak, and the way that lots of companies are talking about AI.

Any company with any sort of large customer service presence are looking at AI to start replacing alot of customer service roles, for example. There is huge demand for this across many industries, not only tech. Whether it actually delivers is the question, but the demand is there.

Claiming these AIs "don't do much" overlooks the very real productivity gains already happening – automating tedious tasks and accelerating content creation. This isn't trivial and will lead to the deeper integrations and streamlined (read: downsized) workforces. The reorganization isn't a distant fantasy; it's already here.
I don't disagree, but your average excel jockey isn't going to build out these automation workflows and likely neither will IT. I'm not saying AI isn't useful. I'm saying the average person doesn't know what to do with it.
> Companies are blocking AI carte blanche at the direction of their security teams

What companies?

I know many IP-heavy and health-centric companies are blocking AI use severely. For example, pharma depends on huge amounts of secrecy and does not want any data leaked to OpenAI, and often has barely-competent IT and security staff that don't know what "threat model" means. Those who deal with controlled health data also block with a heavy hand.
I imagine it'll take time for any of this tech to permeate and the lower barrier of entry will see adoption faster - as is usually the case with new tech - but it'll make its way eventually. On premise AI will be a thing
Once upon a time, they blocked docker too. Things change.