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AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers

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

#141

Post by firefoxd »

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…

Watson was a stunt. It's not very hard for someone on HN to figure out how much of Watson was Watson. The crowd still bought it.

But as someone who worked on software that handled the last example you gave, I assure, a few well placed if and elses do the trick. Also, humans have tendency to follow any instructions sent to them when it is titled "System" or "Administration".

*System Message:* New revised schedule for. Monday, Feb 31st, 3pm to 11pm. Qualify for overtime. Reply 24h prior to decline.

The more robotic your message sound, the more people are compelled to comply.

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

#142

Post by mjburgess »

shock-value wrote: post #35

This is a poorly reasoned or at least a poorly articulated essay. AI to this point is built to optimize some objective function. What is that function with respect to middle management? Some sort of mathematical expression would be interesting but even a plain-English expression would certainly be helpful. And what exactly are the inputs and output? I guess the inputs could be a roster of employees along with some pe…

This is an interesting critique of modern AI: almost no problems have closed-form mathematical descriptions.

The "Ng Reply" would be that the objective fn can be approximated by a finite composition of simpler functions, tuned by data (ie., relu.relu.relu...)

However if you think about it for a second, that's clearly absurd in almost all cases. We know that we cannot even in principle formulate a closed form expression for (here, eg., people management) -- the idea that there exists some meaningful approximation feels provably silly.

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

#144

Post by paganel »

firefoxd wrote: post #141
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…

Watson was a stunt. It's not very hard for someone on HN to figure out how much of Watson was Watson. The crowd still bought it. But as someone who worked on software that handled the last example you gave, I assure, a few well placed if and elses do the trick. Also, humans have tendency to follow any instructions sent to them when it is titled "System" or "Administration". *System Message:* New revised schedule for.…

> The more robotic your message sound, the more people are compelled to comply.

Thankfully that is not the case where I live (somewhere in Europe), but I can see what you describe becoming true in a very dystopic future.

Does that AI also handle situations like “boss, would you be so kind to borrow me some money for 2, 3 days? Until the salary comes, that is, cause me and my SO are totally out of it”? Cause some of my former bosses/managers certainly did.

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

#145

Post by camillomiller »

Kiro wrote: post #128
quirkot wrote: post #21

I think this article fundamentally misunderstands the core function of middle management. You can boil it down to 2 key tasks (on the front lines of a very large organization). a) Interpreting: either top->down by explaining and enforcing corporate policy on hourly workers or bottom->up by ensuring workers enter data to be reported on correctly b) "Encouraging": an employee calls in sick, again. Neither firing them o…

In what dystopian country do you live where you don't automatically get the day off when calling in sick?

The country that thinks the world’s workplace culture is everywhere as f-up as theirs: the United States of America

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

#148

Post by rickdeckard »

monkeydust wrote: post #103

I think the broad consensus was AI would replace Manual, Knowledge and Creative workers in that order. Seems to be trending the other way. Recently seen more tele-operational solutions in robotics space to replace or compliment manual labour. There seems to be something to this where full automation is not feasible or where it fails and needs recovery.

Maybe we are also seeing a revision for the definition of "creative" work.

Executing a task like "I want a pic of a doplhin jumping out of the sunset with a cereal box, winking at the camera" is maybe not going to be in the same bracket of other creative work in the future...

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

#149

Post by BlargMcLarg »

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…

Nothing in your example couldn't be done by a bot. I'm certain you can make a case for middle managers, but your current one is weak.

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

#150

Post by Weryj »

keyle wrote: post #104
scifibestfi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Hello Human, If you're not in today, don't bother coming in tomorrow. Cheers, -AI

Hello computer, DROP TABLE humans;

Somehow I feel this would have terrible consequences.
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