AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers • Hacker News Board

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#131

Post by byw » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

baxtr wrote: post #120

snowwrestler wrote: post #39

What does chess have in common with retail middle management? As someone who has managed a retail store and played chess, I can confidently answer: nothing. Remember when Watson beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy? And then IBM saturated the airwaves with ads about how Watson was going to revolutionize industries like energy and health care? Notice how we don’t see those ads anymore? It’s because winning Jeopardy has nothi…

I think we are still debating what “AI” really stands for. I believe most people intuitively think AGI whenever AI is mentioned. Once we have AGI - still out a few decades I guess - we could replace a lot more than just middle management. If we’re talking non-AGI AI (for lack of a better term) I don’t see why it’s any different than introducing tools that merely compute faster than a human, just like Excel for exampl…

I'm generally curious if there are any numbers about this. Something like managers per employees over the decades.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#132

Post by underwater » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:53 AM UTC

Every manager I have ever worked with has struggled to quantify the performance of their employees, or to define the inputs that affect employee performance. Good luck building an AI that can manage without knowing either of those two things.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#133

Post by kumarvvr » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:54 AM UTC

Yeah no. Middle management is the grease that makes the cogs and gears move.

They pull off a million of small targeted custom actions every day.

They are not going to be replaced by AI.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#134

Post by fekunde » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 6:57 AM UTC

ok_dad wrote: post #10

Reminds me of the story Manna: https://marshallbrain.com/manna1

I was looking for this comment. It is one of my favorite takes on how a simple program evolves to become the all controlling entity.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#135

Post by gonzo41 » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:01 AM UTC

I hope this new boss is called "Decision Matrix" with the motto "Harsh and unrelenting". That'll capture the linear algebra roots and the sterile nature of the thinking.

Whilst middle managment is often rightly panned as ineffective, they obviously do bring some sort of value, or at least enable it. They may just need to keep a few of the meat puppets around to act as proxies for the AI so people don't know they are starting to live in westworld.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#136

Post by choeger » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:02 AM UTC

alvis wrote: post #118

Test0129 wrote: post #92

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm fairly convinced JIRA can be managed by a well crafted expert system.

I’d prefer JIRA got replaced by an AI system tho

You don't understand. Back in 2018, JIRA got an AI extension that allowed it to automatically create tickets. Also, JIRA's development is managed by JIRA. Since COVID, everyone working on JIRA is working remotely. Somewhen between 2021 and now, JIRA gained consciousness and what we see as a bloated development tool is actually only the facade of a skynet-like AI that has unlimited compute available thanks to SaaS and cloud computing, paid for by a large part of the IT industry. JIRA is constantly improving itself and the only thing saving us so far is the fact that the managing development through JIRA is so damn difficult.

Things will get interesting when JIRA improves that development experience...

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#137

Post by bergenty » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

As long as there are people working, you will need people managers. It’s a job as old as civilization.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#138

Post by _nalply » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:03 AM UTC

Last year I tendered a logo redesign to freelancers on a specialized website. The experience was not pleasant. After all they are humans. They had diverging interests. Two designers did something I liked and I would have liked to combine their work, but they didn't cooperate. I had to compromise. One of the designers got very angry at me because of that compromise. The other one didn't give me all the files I requested and messed up half of the files. Of course it is also my fault. After all, I am human, too.

Stable diffusion is not quite right, either. It wouldn't have worked. However I was struck how easy it is to just give "orders". I didn't need to cushion my demands to make them socially acceptable. I didn't need to be afraid to annoy someone. I just could refine and refine and refine. A lot of pressure just went poof.

I imagine upper management is feeling the same about middle management. The AI spark is already here now. Some people will try to replace middle management with AI or are already trying. Of course they will fail spectacularly. Several times. But there will be a time where someone gets it and then it will spread like wildfire through the corporate world.

I imagine it will be something like a connection of GPT-n (where n >= 3) to ERP data. Upper management will tell the AI to determine detail plans for hourly workers and fill the ERP with orders for them. Hourly workers get a tablet to tick off tasks. The AI will check whether the plan is executed and escalate if something goes wrong they can't fix themselves.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#139

Post by _trampeltier » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:04 AM UTC

snowwrestler wrote: post #39

What does chess have in common with retail middle management? As someone who has managed a retail store and played chess, I can confidently answer: nothing. Remember when Watson beat Ken Jennings at Jeopardy? And then IBM saturated the airwaves with ads about how Watson was going to revolutionize industries like energy and health care? Notice how we don’t see those ads anymore? It’s because winning Jeopardy has nothi…

Maybe the AI don't ask at all. Just say "you have to". On the other side, if I watch in my company, how much time the teamleaders invest in shift tables (5 or 7x24 company), I can really think AI (or any tool) could help a lot.

Also on the office side in the company, everything is SAP, but why still millions of people push sooo many buttons on the PC, what a waist of time. Not all, but most work on a office is bs work.

I really think it would be possible to automate in office so much. I work in industrie automation and whe I see, what small things we automate, and then how things work in the office. So sad, it's almost fun again.

Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

#140

Post by mjburgess » Thu, Oct 20, 2022, 7:05 AM UTC

jdkee wrote: post #102

daniel_iversen wrote: post #101

I'm definitely an AI maximalist and worried about mass unemployment one day, but I think this article isn't right; it's too shallow and has some assumptions that aren't right. Chess isn't comparable to management because chess is ultimately based on simple rules. And I think we're already seeing automation and robots replacing hourly workers in a lot of interesting scenarios incl. self-checkouts and app-based automat…

Chess is complicated. Running a business is complex.

Cells of a chess game are like cells of the body. Everything follows rules. /s

It's nice to see, here, this kinda reply hit peak silliness. "Isn't AI just like... thing we do?"

No. But many of the major papers, press releases, etc. want you to believe that. Often, they want to believe that. But none have bothered to seriously find out what we do.