[Aurornis]

Companies with projects that are doing well don't try to hire consultants who specialized in saving failing projects.

No company with a good AI strategy is going to go to the Hermit Tech website where text written in Ye Olde Font explains that they'll use ancient techniques from the 80s and 90s to make your software work and thinks, "These are the right people for our AI job!"

These people are trying to carve out a niche for themselves as being anti-modern, anti-AI, and being contrarian consultants that you can bring in when you want some external consultants to agree with you in a very specific way.

[K0balt]

I think you are right on target. I’ve seen this pattern:

Company does x. X sucks, and is largely derided as being a bad idea, but it’s important-employee-bobs baby. No one wants to be the guy that tells bob that x is killing the company in some small or large way, because bob can get them fired or is protected by someone who can, so you hire consultants xyz who specialize in “transforming productivity through x management” and they come in and “transform” x into something less lovecraftian, or just explain why it’s bad in a way that makes bob look like a genius.

[Retric]

> Companies with projects that are doing well don't try to hire consultants who specialized in saving failing projects.

Large companies where every project is going well are rare.

I agree companies with good AI strategies are unlikely to use these people, but excluding failures is just as much a bias as excluding winners. AI lets you shoot your sold in the foot even faster shouldn’t be surprising, but it’s still something to consider.

[DiscourseFan]

Christ they are profiting off of reaction, they're like Trump but even worse since at least Trump is not stupid enough to be anti-technology.

[TeMPOraL]

Tale as old as time. Revolution has been merchandised. The action and the reaction, they all have suppliers, which often turn out to be the same entities supplying to both sides.

[recursive]

Check out some of Trump's positions on renewable energy.

[DiscourseFan]

Perhaps I should have specified Anti-AI. Its just the thing that upsets me the most about your everyday liberal professional, how much they hate AI just because Trump is pro AI

[amalcon]

I think "your everyday liberal professional" is more likely to be anti-AI because it is being advertised as a direct threat to their livelihoods, rather than for any more abstract reason. The latter includes both political allegiance stuff and the reasons those professionals would likely cite, like its energy requirements or the economic damage if the bubble bursts.

Whether or not you think it likely that this threat will materialize is beside the point. Workers never like it when someone is advertising that they will put you out of work.

[DiscourseFan]

No, because most people in say, California, which is very pro-tech, are perfectly fine with AI. But people in the Northeast are angry at it. It’s entirely cultural.

[amalcon]

That observation[0] isn't particularly useful for arguing that it's a political allegiance thing. A lower fraction of voters in the pro-tech part of California (SFO, roughly) voted for Trump than, say, in NYC. Your observation cuts against the argument that political allegiance is the main driver, not in favor of it.

[0]- Assuming it's true, which in my experience it isn't especially, but this isn't the best argument.