The author talks about AI management solutions that will reduce management head count as if such solutions are available and ready to use. But I'm not aware that such solutions are available yet.
AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
251–260 of 379 posts
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#252What 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…
Hello Human, If you're not in today, don't bother coming in tomorrow. Cheers, -AI
This is definitely how the Butlerian Jihad started.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#253Earlier quoted context omitted.
You are right and this is bad news, because AI middle management is still inevitable. Currenlty, AI more or less manages taxi drivers in different places around the world, also telesupport personnel and other positions like those. Every time it degrades to orwellian level of sick incentives and pure exploitation. And things will get worse, because it allows to maximize profits.
So from your writing I can extract: profit is bad and incentives to work are bad, no matter the improvement on the service or if people do it bc they found it an option? If you consider a job as exploitation, in the free world you can find another job, right? That is what I do: I will not work in what I think it is bad. But in my case at least that job should be very bad by all measures, bc there is no worst thing fo…
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Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#254Earlier quoted context omitted.
While I agree that encouraging a sick employee to work is all kinds of messed up, most countries impose a limit on sick days. At that point, you need to talk to the employee and figure out a solution.
The limit on sick days only matters for payroll decisions (what bucket will the day off fit in, paid leave or unpaid leave?). IME that's handled directly by the employee most of the time when they request the day off in the system. The manager gets involved at performance evaluation time, or if it has severe otherwise impacts (you're then asking the person to potentially leave), but I don't see the "figure out a solu…
Google "Bradford factor". Employers absolutely will ask employees to be less sick.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#255What 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…
> How’s AI going to do that better than a fellow human?
The idea of AI getting better than a fellow human is flawed at the definition itself. Instead of focusing of AI being generally better than a fellow human we should look at how AI gets better at specific tasks to start with and then go from one task to another making it more "intelligent/better".
This is already happening since industrial revolution freeing up humanity's bandwidth from the mundane tasks, so nothing new when it comes for managerial level tasks.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#256This reminds me of an argument I got into at a bar with someone who claimed robots would inevitably replace bartenders. I took the view that bartenders would be the last occupation to be replaced by robots because if the goal was to minimize the cost to consume alcohol people wouldn't be coming to bars in the first place. There's a misconception that jobs with higher pay and more prestige will be the last to be repla…
> I took the view that bartenders would be the last occupation to be replaced by robots because if the goal was to minimize the cost to consume alcohol people wouldn't be coming to bars in the first place. And the elephant in the room, people want human contact The "AI revolution" is a business owner dream, not a worker's dream, nor a citizen's dream
> The "AI revolution" is a business owner dream, not a worker's dream, nor a citizen's dream
Yes, but since money is power, that's whose dreams get to be enacted.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#257Earlier quoted context omitted.
Why devoid of AI? Not being combative here, genuinely curious Perhaps devoid of machine learning, given the year, but even that seems unlikely if the anecdote is true. If predicting and planning outcomes and with previous data is not some form of AI, what is? Agreed on the valuable ERP thing, though. There’s a reason SAP is as expensive as it is.
> If predicting and planning outcomes and with previous data is not some form of AI, what is? Algorithmic forecasting. If you squint really hard, the entirety of computer science falls under "AI". But practically speaking, today AI refers to ML. It's quite possible a savvy programmer integrated the weather forecast to the ERP, with specific products tagged as relevant to a sunny (or wet) outlook. That's not AI, that'…
>practically speaking, today AI refers to ML.
But it shouldn't and it won't.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#258What 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.
In theory we don't need testers for program testing, we just need an AI to do it. But it is easier to say it, than to implement it.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#259What 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…
How’s AI going to do that better than a fellow human? It will create metrics that will formalize a new paradigm. You know that arbitrary number in your bank account that defines you, that number on your report card, that rating on an Amazon review, that number that’s defining global inflation, that metric that measures interest rate, that number of hours you work … The fucking lines of code, number of commits, points…
We don’t have to blame AI for metrics that do not include comfort and job satisfaction. The effects you described are not inherent to AI but to goals that upper people impose on lower people through a pyramid of management. Everyone there cares about profits and efficiency, nobody gives a fuck about workers living on the edge. Maybe stripping this paradigm naked is a good thing and a way to something else.
Re: AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers
#260Earlier quoted context omitted.
Agreed. I think people warning of an esoteric singularity AI will be wrong. It won't even be called an AI perhaps, it will be little agents that try to quantify everything. Data analysts as prostitutes of special interest will set up metrics so that management can nudge workers towards a certain direction. In the vast majority of cases it will be metrics to quantify individual productivity. This then becomes a new re…
Competition is going to love predictable competitors.
Yeah, but they also like price fixing and exploitation. Look at the transport industry how it implemented surveillance. One participant extracted more from their employees by putting them on a tighter schedule so that taking a leak became something relevant. Others have to adjust to these measures.