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IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

finance.yahoo.com

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Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#21

Post by isoos »

prepend wrote: post #7

My experience is that there are lots of BS consulting jobs where I would wonder “what do these 10 people do?” This included lots of offshoring companies, like IBM, that seemed more about filling out whatever the budget sheet given to them than actually making software or even any evidence of software (commits, issues, etc). I expect that there are firms out there right now using ChatGPT to produce the facade of work…

I know a company that already reaches test coverage metric goals by feeding chatgpt with code that they need test for. These are tests based on mocks, running trivial things, providing little to no value to the overall codebase. But if the requirements are garbage, the delivered items will be garbage too.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#23

Post by nullsense »

XorNot wrote: post #12
rob74 wrote: post #5

> More mundane tasks such as providing employment verification letters or moving employees between departments will likely be fully automated, Krishna said. ...and if some employees quit out of frustration about being managed by AI (being "moved between departments" at the whim of an AI sounds pretty spooky to me at least), even better!

I actually can't wait till I'm managed by AI. At least with an AI there's the high probability it will get better. In fact most likely it'll just be the same gradually improving system which I can converse with for the rest of my career. Whereas with human managers who knows? Maybe they're good, maybe they're bad, it's a reset every time.

If it's trained on data human managers then it'll just burn you out and emotionally manipulate you into staying with the company longer to maximize corporate profits.

...or your life could become utopia. Who knows?

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#24

Post by pulse7 »

jillesvangurp wrote: post #11

IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. They are a very large and a former tech company that mostly coasts along on doing expensive consulting projects around me-too clones of things that other people have invented just so they can still pretend to be a tech company. So you can do things with AI, cloud, and databases with them. But they aren't really leaders in any of that for a long time. And havin…

Unlike many other tech companies they provide unprecedented backwards compatibility which makes a very solid foundation for their customers... There don't do "automatic-updates" which break software like Microsoft is doing with Windows...

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#26

Post by moffkalast »

prepend wrote: post #7

My experience is that there are lots of BS consulting jobs where I would wonder “what do these 10 people do?” This included lots of offshoring companies, like IBM, that seemed more about filling out whatever the budget sheet given to them than actually making software or even any evidence of software (commits, issues, etc). I expect that there are firms out there right now using ChatGPT to produce the facade of work…

Consulting jobs are largely bullshit because their main role is to be a corporate mercenary that makes up solid data supporting the direction that management wants to go. Their job is weaponizing confirmation bias.

Relevant: https://twitter.com/ConsultingHumor

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#27

Post by HlessClaudesman »

anonylizard wrote: post #17
realusername wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The irony of that is they are probably going to use AI services of competitors to do that despite pioneering the marketing on it for years, thus closing the loop.

There's nothing ironic about it. They invested only in the marketing of AI, but not in the serious R&D of it, pretty sure internally they never believed in their own AIs. Plus they got the publicity benefit from Watson, which is important for a consulting company.

IBM had / has an army of sales types running around trying to insert Watson into health care, always reminded me of the Dick Jones character from Robocop trying to pedal the fundamentally flawed ED-209: "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!"

Such an ethically questionable decision, trying to push unproven / non-functional tech into life or death decision making.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#28

Post by wesapien »

aflag wrote: post #13
jillesvangurp wrote: post #11

IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. They are a very large and a former tech company that mostly coasts along on doing expensive consulting projects around me-too clones of things that other people have invented just so they can still pretend to be a tech company. So you can do things with AI, cloud, and databases with them. But they aren't really leaders in any of that for a long time. And havin…

That's a very cynical view. It might be true, but I hardly think they were just waiting for the perfect opportunity. If it made business sense before, they would've already been halting their hiring.

A lot of corporations are replacing humans jobs instead of enhancing them with new tech like what the tech gurus say during their TED talks about the benefits of X tech. Another reason to flip cars.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#29

Post by dagw »

HlessClaudesman wrote: post #27
anonylizard wrote: post #17

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There's nothing ironic about it. They invested only in the marketing of AI, but not in the serious R&D of it, pretty sure internally they never believed in their own AIs. Plus they got the publicity benefit from Watson, which is important for a consulting company.

IBM had / has an army of sales types running around trying to insert Watson into health care, always reminded me of the Dick Jones character from Robocop trying to pedal the fundamentally flawed ED-209: "I had a guaranteed military sale with ED209! Renovation program! Spare parts for 25 years! Who cares if it worked or not!" Such an ethically questionable decision, trying to push unproven / non-functional tech into l…

trying to insert Watson into health care

They were trying to insert Watson into everything. I used to work at a company that worked with building management systems and we had Watson sales people all over our senior managers trying to get 'collaboration' projects going.

Re: IBM to pause hiring in plan to replace 7,800 jobs with AI

#30

Post by jillesvangurp »

realusername wrote: post #15
jillesvangurp wrote: post #11

IBM as a company barely makes sense at all at this point. They are a very large and a former tech company that mostly coasts along on doing expensive consulting projects around me-too clones of things that other people have invented just so they can still pretend to be a tech company. So you can do things with AI, cloud, and databases with them. But they aren't really leaders in any of that for a long time. And havin…

The irony of that is they are probably going to use AI services of competitors to do that despite pioneering the marketing on it for years, thus closing the loop.

Their in house stuff is mostly based on OSS anyway. There isn't a whole lot of IBM proprietary tech that they have to bring to the table anyway. I wouldn't be surprised to see them do some acquisitions to buy some street credibility though.
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