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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

#301

Post by dopidopHN »

willnonya wrote: post #286
dopidopHN wrote: post #278

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't know for the US worker, they seems to be able to take any abuse and ask for more free market in their ass. But that stuff would not fly in places where workers have some leverage and can influence policies. ( Or let's be more real : influence policies roll-out and eventually stopping them for a few years )

Citations needed. As someone who works in an international environment and routinely taveles between sites run by international conglomerates workers in Europe for example are not better protected than workers in the US, they've simply ceded more control to government. The real difference between European and US workers is in sheer productivity. Sure, Americans work more hours but they also get more done in those hou…

> Citations needed

I come to that at this end.

I will start by giving the at-will contract example of poor US worker protection. Those at-will contract are not contracts. They describe in great lengths that you don't have any relationship with your employer. No string attach! Great, I wonder who benefit more from it?

That has deep consequences, and the result is when I work in the US i feel a Damocles sword upon me, while in Europe I feel deeply secure. ( for the

The why comes down to those questions.

- Can you be fired without cause and not get compensated?

- What is your level of compensation if you do get fired ( with or without cause)? For how long?

- Does your employers have to contribute to your retirement funds?

- What happen to your retirement fund if the economy goes to shit? Where was the money all along?

- What are your recourse in case of a disagreement with your employers? Can you realistically exercise those resources on a tie budget and limited time ( eg: single mother working full time for minimal wage )

---

The fun part :

> Sure, Americans work more hours but they also get more done in those hours.

No.

Pretty sure you are mislead. From memory the most productive place on earth is some western European country like Luxembourg or Belgium. They work less but produce a similar output of GDP.

Let me find a source on that.

Yeah. GPD per hour: https://worldpopulationreview.com/country-rankings/most-prod...

The US is just behind France. In 8th position.

French workers contribute $79.70 to the GDP (PPP) per hour worked. France’s workweeks are the fifth-shortest among OECD countries at 38.9 hours. France’s productivity is about 25% higher than the OECD average and EU averages.

While

US workers contribute $79.60 to the GDP. American full-time employees work 41.5 hours per week, and about 11.1% of employees work over 50 hours per week.

So, that for productivity, seems comparable in term of GDP. But then ...

A macdonald worker has 5 week vacation / years, per law in France. That's a starting point.

The work week is 35h/week, per law. ( people work 40h, but they get 5h/week of extra vacation on top of the mandatory 5 weeks )

So, to build on that example, French work less but the holy-GDP per hour worked is slightly better than the US.

And they get slightly more respect show to them in the form of predictable, enforceable and protective contracts.

I don't know what's wrong with the US. I looks like diminishing return on pressuring your worker into more work?

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

#302

Post by hussainbilal »

Middle Management is more or less resource allocation (so optimization problem maybe of the stochastic, multi-agent, multi-criteria and/or multi-objective flavour if you want it to be super complex).

This article is right for the wrong reasons. AI/ML (which approximates optimization problems due to inputs not being clearly defined) is not required for the replacement of middle management (an actual optimization problem with clearly defined inputs).

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

#303

Post by prometheus76 »

raxxorraxor wrote: post #240
jesuscript wrote: post #191

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

Part of the archetypal vampire trope was that peasants would carry grains of wheat or barley in their pocket, so that if they were being pursued by vampires, they could throw down the grains of wheat, and the vampire would be transfixed and obsessively start trying to count the grains, allowing the peasant to escape.

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

#304

Post by nottorp »

> Artificial Intelligence is now capable of beating the best humans at chess 100% of the time no questions asked [ ... ] or a program capable of making the best possible business decision given historic and currently available data?

I believe the OP has an interesting definition of business decision.

Also that a management AI would be good ... at giving us faster horses.

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

#305

Post by BlargMcLarg »

TheLoafOfBread wrote: post #258
BlargMcLarg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

The anecdote presented by OP is basically a sequence of questions followed by responses. It's only after running the sequence and still having to resolution you'd need any form of AI or a human.

Making a case for middle managers isn't done by providing a sequence which can be fully run by a chatbot in practice.

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

#306

Post by Loughla »

bryanrasmussen wrote: post #98
scifibestfi wrote: post #50

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

aw no! Now I have to go update my LinkedIn profile!

Hey, but for real, what is with the obsession that some employers have with linkedin?

I have been passed over for interviews in a non tech-sector space, because I don't update my linkedin. How is that relevant to anything? What kind of weird policy is that?

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

#307

Post by HideousKojima »

dopidopHN wrote: post #301
willnonya wrote: post #286

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Citations needed. As someone who works in an international environment and routinely taveles between sites run by international conglomerates workers in Europe for example are not better protected than workers in the US, they've simply ceded more control to government. The real difference between European and US workers is in sheer productivity. Sure, Americans work more hours but they also get more done in those hou…

> Citations needed I come to that at this end. I will start by giving the at-will contract example of poor US worker protection. Those at-will contract are not contracts. They describe in great lengths that you don't have any relationship with your employer. No string attach! Great, I wonder who benefit more from it? That has deep consequences, and the result is when I work in the US i feel a Damocles sword upon me,…

The PPP adjustment is doing a lot of heavy lifting there. Real (non-PPP adjusted) GDP per capita in the US is ~50% higher than France's.

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

#308

Post by helen___keller »

I think this is looking at things from the wrong perspective

Corporations can be viewed as artificial intelligences. Some components of that corporation are human, such as the marketing professional designing an advertisement or the executive deciding to invest $40 million in IT infrastructure. Some components of that corporation are not human, such as an automated system that sends emails and tracks metrics on the performance of the marketing campaign.

Rather than asking if this or that job will be automated, ask whether the total percentage of (loosely defined) 'stuff' that a corporation does will be more or less human over time? I would argue that the answer is, with decades and decades of evidence, over time corporations will do more and more with fewer humans.

Jobs aren't automated, job functions are. If most "middle manager" job functions are automated, we might still see middle managers but as a smaller percentage of the overall corporation. If some retail functions are also automated, then we might see both stay in the same ratio, but the business is capable of vastly more revenue without increasing the size of the staff.

Regardless, I would think it's largely accepted that in the foreseeable future, corporations will continue to do more 'stuff' with fewer humans.

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

#309

Post by grayfaced »

I see a lot of traps with this. Who manages it and maintains the AI? They have a lot of power over the company and most companies won't have skillset. What happens when there is a crisis (natural disaster, employee walkout)? What happens when there is downtime? What happens when the AI goes off the rails (fed bad data?), who can override it? What happens when the system is compromised?

What are the assigned goals of the AI? Short-term profit, long-term profit, employee retention/satisfaction, public image? Those have to be assigned priority values. Those programmatic goals will likely not align with stated company goals. Will people learn how to game the system?

What is the training data? If the data is biased, will the AI learn the bias? Does the AI understand legal protections? If someone makes a harassment complaint against a coworker, is that input it processes? What if someone requires medical accommodations?

All that said, I support it as a tool to be used by people. I'm just against overreliance and need to be able to gracefully fallback.

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

#310

Post by giantg2 »

"AI will replace middle management before robots replace hourly workers"

No it won't. In my experience, management does many things that they don't want a paper trail of. Having a system means there will be a record. No company wants that liability, and few would actually adhere strictly to their own policies.

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