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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

#91

Post by SoftTalker »

_ea1k wrote: post #82
Upvoter33 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea, that's not my space).

People mock them for that Jeopardy thing, but that would have been the perfect first move to offering something like Watson as a service. They could have built it over time to offer real assistance to knowledge workers with a real revenue stream. But that would have required vision and foresight.

The problem is that "Watson" wasn't a real thing, it was just a name they gave to any solution they were trying to sell.

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

#92

Post by blacksmith_tb »

retrocryptid wrote: post #90

I am sad J. G. Ballard is no longer with us to comment on IBM's plan. IBM is replacing humans, who can identify an exceptional events which weren't anticipated by planners, with AI, which only regurgitates past training data. I'm sort of imagining IBM human resources department now as some hellish mashup of Ionesco, Nietzsche and Ballard (with a piquant dollop of THX 1138 to provide that absurdist, institutionalized…

Hmm, all my experiences with the old, more-human IBM (randomly powering off VMs, randomly breaking the UI for cloud admin, etc.) have been pretty much Kafka all the way, so maybe this will be an improvement (though not for the 8K employees who will be replaced).

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

#94

Post by piyh »

Upvoter33 wrote: post #52
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea, that's not my space).

They're cutting edge on quantum computing, can't think of anything more computer science than that.

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

#95

Post by juve1996 »

_ea1k wrote: post #82
Upvoter33 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea, that's not my space).

People mock them for that Jeopardy thing, but that would have been the perfect first move to offering something like Watson as a service. They could have built it over time to offer real assistance to knowledge workers with a real revenue stream. But that would have required vision and foresight.

They did and it failed miserably.

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

#96

Post by gitfan86 »

fdye wrote: post #74

This is just using the AI hype as cover to not get slammed by the markets. If they came out and said "We are pausing hiring..." the markets would rightly be like "Man they are screwed..." Expect to see more of this from zombie companies in the future, as long as they spend $20/mo on a ChatGPT subscription somewhere they are probably not violating SEC disclosures either.

Yes, they have done things like this before. IBM is good at PR.

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

#97

Post by qbasic_forever »

fdye wrote: post #74

This is just using the AI hype as cover to not get slammed by the markets. If they came out and said "We are pausing hiring..." the markets would rightly be like "Man they are screwed..." Expect to see more of this from zombie companies in the future, as long as they spend $20/mo on a ChatGPT subscription somewhere they are probably not violating SEC disclosures either.

Yep if you read what the CEO said the quote was that they "could" replace workers with AI over five years and as the tech improves. That's just pure speculation and bullshitting, like when Elon said Tesla cars will be fully self driving vehicles in five years. It's market pumping talk from a company with a vested interest in selling "AI" to enterprises.

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

#98

Post by abakker »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #89
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

Sure, those 24 consecutive quarters of revenue decline under Rometty is an obvious indication of cutting edge. Cutting edge research on how to turn investors money into into option traders profits.

I'd point out at that Ginni Rometty was a bad CEO, but that doesn't mean that people there didn't do good research. Like, they're pretty unrelated. Research and Development is notoriously hard to commercialize. Over here in HN land, we just say that product market fit is poor or that products didn't get traction, but those are just as akin to R&D as anything.

A better model was that Rometty was not good at choosing what to fund and which bets to make. kinda a failed VC fund.

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

#99

Post by gitfan86 »

piyh wrote: post #94
Upvoter33 wrote: post #52

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the true thing is that IBM has ceased to be a leader in Computer Science. They used to be! But they gave that up long ago, and have resorted to various publicity stunts (e.g., remember Jeopardy?). But sure, they may be a leader in materials and semiconductors (though honestly I have no idea, that's not my space).

They're cutting edge on quantum computing, can't think of anything more computer science than that.

So they say. Remember Watson? Whatever came of that? IBM is PR and overpriced IT outsourcing.

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

#100

Post by pixl97 »

sidewndr46 wrote: post #89
manicennui wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You have no idea what you are talking about. IBM does more cutting edge research than the entire HN bubble combined. Hard research like materials science and semiconductors. Consulting is less than a third of their revenue and regardless of how you feel about consulting, it seems kind of idiotic to claim that this "barely makes sense at all at this point". Are the only companies that make sense the ones that work on…

Sure, those 24 consecutive quarters of revenue decline under Rometty is an obvious indication of cutting edge. Cutting edge research on how to turn investors money into into option traders profits.

Income and cutting edge technology are at best orthogonal to each other. Now I'm not saying that IBM has cutting edge technology, I'm just saying that a ponzi scheme that profits 24 months in a row is cutting edge under your definition.
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