[Herring]

The problem is not AI. It's an excellent technology. The problem is there's an underlying power grab (e.g. layoffs). When humans do that to each other they inherently dehumanize/invalidate/insult each other. Implement strong labor protections or basic income and a lot of this dog-eat-dog toxicity goes away.

[sublinear]

AI is completely irrelevant to the power that software wields.

Implementing labor protections and basic income is not seeing the forest for the trees. What we need is a more educated public that can contribute their ideas. All AI can do is lower the barrier to entry, but it does not replace the need for education.

[ttoinou]

Automating a job is toxic now ?

[PedroBatista]

It can be.

Because most automations never capture the complete scope of the job/task ( not even close ). Just like neurons, if you don't use it you lose it and when the inevitable problems come, nobody knows the why, the how and the what. At that point someone smart would incorporate all those real costs and opportunity loses on the "automating everything" equation. But they usually don't.

Of course automating tasks is a must, but it's very far from being a black and white situation. These dynamics have been happening for centuries by now, nothing new.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

<< Because most automations never capture the complete scope of the job/task ( not even close ).

Management likes to think otherwise for a variety of reasons and peons such as myself know it is rarely that simple. Case in point, our team uses Jira, but Jira is not great at.. capturing efforts that are umm.. less code oriented. In fact, there are times when it is genuinely better to leave some details out for considerations that may simply not be part of coding considerations.

In other words, automation assumes proper capture of the entirety of the task, but, I have seldom seen it capturing anything but simple workflows well.

[ttoinou]

I agree with that, and that’s why it’s better to ask an AI and improve your prompt, instead of hiring a human that will disappear and you will loose all institutional knowledge

[skydhash]

The risk of hiring a hunan is easy enough to manage. Ensure that the process is documented and new hires are trained. Any disturbance by someone leavingg is then smoothed out in the long term.

Can you show us how it’s better to use an AI to ensure steadiness over a long period of time?

[ttoinou]

Ah yes of course, all companies can afford to hire 5 people for one job to smoothen out the loss of information by employee churn

[brailsafe]

You only have as much institutional knowledge as you're willing to cultivate and be liable for. Many companies already don't give a shit about institutional knowledge, indicated by how little they're willing to invest in keeping a strong team together, caused in-part by long-standing toxic incentive structures.

Ask an AI to solve a problem and it may do that, but if you don't understand why or how it works, or what to do with the information in order to keep it useful for even the medium term, then all you've done is taken away the opportunity for someone else to be responsible for something you shouldn't be.

It's not necessarily a mystery how to make good food. You can ask an AI how to make good food, follow the instructions, and you're off to the races. The question then is whether you want to be in that race.

Would you have gone to chef school? Would you work in a kitchen? Are you willing to deal with customers, or risk RSI from so many repeated kitchen movements? Are you willing to practice and be tested?

If the answer to any of those is no, then get the hell out of that kitchen and let the people who have more grit than you do their job. Do what you can to make it easier for you to pay them consistently and well on the back-end.

[iugtmkbdfil834]

^^;

I chuckled. Institutional prompt will disappear so much faster than you imagine.

[kderbyma]

Yes when the sole purpose is to remove the livelihood of people in an attempt to make short term gains for selfish short term reasons....AI is a weapon when you have corporate stooge lackies who have nothing but animous towards fellow humans who dare to work...and try to live. If AI was beneficial, no one would profitize it....but lbr...you know that...

[ttoinou]

If AI is not beneficial, then those humans could be re-hired soon.

Big companies are always doing bad things, but not because they use AI, because they have legal protections which prevents small companies (which could be anyone like you and me) to compete. The same small companies who could also benefit from using AI.

[ori_b]

Beneficial for who?

[jmye]

> If AI was beneficial, no one would profitize it

What? How does that follow?

[kderbyma]

Profit implies...more than it took....ie....you are taking more than giving...thus not a benefit except for profit...which is not a true benefit

[overgard]

Depends on the scale and the technology. If the answer is "all of white collar workers" then I would argue it's very toxic. (I don't think it can do that, but it's hard not to get the impression that it's absolutely the goal). I haven't really heard of a stable society with 50% unemployment and zero social safety net.

[sublinear]

I don't think anyone ever really believed it would replace ordinary jobs. That angle was meant to appeal to emotion and distract the public from the shady deals and big defense spending.

Think about all the security clearances no longer required to aggregate big data into intelligence reports. The conditions and incentives for LLMs seem almost laser focused on replacing those particular jobs.

It wasn't but ~20 years ago that people were concerned about Google slurping up all the world's data into spying programs. Now that the hardest part to hide is happening, people have forgotten or assumed it already had. Many other smaller and far less capable businesses have come and gone and taken tiny bits of blame until the public was satisfied they knew who the "real" scapegoats were. What they really had were overcomplicated theories built on a nebulous cloud of debatable evidence that led nowhere. This is how it succeeds in plain sight every time.

[super256]

200 years ago 75% of the population in western Europe were farmers. 100 years ago 41% were farmers. 10 years ago 1-3% were farmers.

We are looking forward to bring the same productivity gains to logistics and manufacturing (look at the advancements done in the last few decades!).

Why not bring this to white collar work too? I get so much more shit done today than I did a few years ago. It's a great time to be alive!

[ori_b]

Has your salary gone up to match your productivity, or are you giving it all away for free?

You're not one of the people who gets to benefit from the gains.

[super256]

I'm bootstrapping my own company, and I live off savings, so the answer is no. I don't have a salary at all.

[jmoggr]

So I guess you are one of the people experiencing these gains.

Can this model be scaled to the rest of society?

[jayd16]

Clearly not what is being said. If you read dehumanizing your workers and equate it with automating a job, then you're already well into the feeling that humans are fungible pawns to be disposed of, no?

Instead, you can and probably should see technology as augmenting you and your coworkers.

[ttoinou]

I don’t think humans workers should be cogs in the machine, but from my experience unfortunately that’s how people want to be treated. One simple explanation is that there is no freedom / creativity without responsibility, and the latter is extremely expensive in brain resources

[eikenberry]

They mentioned layoffs, not automation. You can 100% have one without the other.

[simianwords]

Automating _my_ job is toxic. Automating other people’s and being employed as a software developer is wholesome chungus moment.

[forgetfreeman]

When did killing someone else's livelihood stop being sociopathic?

[rpdillon]

It never was... tools and automation have been central to humanity's progress.

[forgetfreeman]

Automating a stamp mill that fed 50 families does not obviously correlate with human progress. I'm sure it's nice for an auto manufacturer's bottom line though.

[ttoinou]

Since the luddites at least

[orangecat]

"Computer" used to be a job title for a human. Was it sociopathic to introduce mechanical calculators because it made those jobs unnecessary?

[forgetfreeman]

That argument is on really shaky ground in an era of ubiquitous surveillance, social media, Amazon's retail extortion empire.