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Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

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Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#91

Post by indy »

krainboltgreene wrote: post #78
indy wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Exactly, almost everyone who reads Hacker News have built their careers on technological progress. Outrage now that it's coming after their jobs just rings hollow.

I built careers on making labour easier, I want the result of that labour to benefit the workers, not the exceptionally short term vision of shareholders. Just because you can't understand why this affects your future doesn't mean it's hollow outrage.

If you think that AI only benefits shareholders then you're the one with exceptional short term vision.

Broadening access to AI will massively benefit all humans

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#93

Post by maxbond »

BigBalli wrote: post #56

I don't understand why everyone (excluding people who were replaced) is so "outraged".

> I don't understand why everyone (excluding people who were replaced) is so "outraged".

I think once you've applied the label "outrage" it's very difficult to see what people's concerns are and why. It adds this moral component, where only some people are entitled to be outraged (eg the people you identified as having understandable reasons) and thus by implication everyone else is throwing an unnecessary tantrum. I think that actually obscures what's going on.

I think it's worth resisting applying the label of "outrage," and it becomes easier after that to hear people's concerns and evaluate their merits. Because they don't have to reach the artificial goalpost to justify outrage, they just have to be valid concerns.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#94

Post by phpisthebest »

gnufied wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #2

There's been a pretty steady trend towards automation, chatbots, self-service, etc. replacing getting an empowered human on the line. Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more. Had an airline thing that the website (and app) wouldn't let me complete online. Spent ages on hold but then was able to get hold of their premium account number and was fixed right away. (Of course, would actually have preferred…

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

I resisted using online ordering at Kroger for a long time, then in 2021 I started using the mobile app, and just picking up my groceries... now I have not be inside a Kroger in almost 2 years and have no plans on going back in.

The Kroger App is great, and having them bring the stuff out, load me up, and I drive away... even if they actually go back to charging $5 for the service I am paying.

>>I don't know what humanity plans is

I dont know about humanity, but consumers demand low prices on food, one of the biggest complaints people have today is high cost of food, even if over history we still have some of the lowest costs of food as a percentage of expanded ever...

Grocery is also one of, if not the lowest profit retail businesses to be in, it is not surprising they will look to lower their #1 cost... people.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#95

Post by ghaff »

rcme wrote: post #71
ghaff wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Grocery stores and others absolutely still need cashier checkout. If I have a handful of items I can barcode swipe and even a couple pieces of produce that's fine. But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Ditto with home repair stores. Scan a new smoke detector? Sure. Check out a bunch of lumber etc. That would be no. In my experience, most stores are findin…

Order groceries online. It's much more convenient for large orders.

I don't have great options where I live and both my nearby grocery stores are pretty good with cashier checkout. I have a car so shopping for larger orders isn't really an issue.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#96

Post by muskmusk »

indy wrote: post #64
BigBalli wrote: post #56

I don't understand why everyone (excluding people who were replaced) is so "outraged".

Exactly, almost everyone who reads Hacker News have built their careers on technological progress. Outrage now that it's coming after their jobs just rings hollow.

I agree :)

7-10 years ago people on this forum thought they were invincible. People who said said software work would be commoditized were ridiculed.

Rate of change is just fast and probably lots of people just thought that a career in tech was a free golden ticket for life. Now that it is threatened people are getting anxious and defensive.

The vast majority of bad things happening in the world are okay as long as they don't happen to "me". Living conditions in sub Saharan Africa are really poor, but noone cares. We are all hypocrites to some degree.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#97

Post by misnome »

WestCoastJustin wrote: post #28
misnome wrote: post #24

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Wait, you actually think that AI will improve any of this?

Have you been using ChatGPT to solve work problems? I have. It's amazing. This technology can do amazing things and companies should be using it to solve problems. Of course I think it can improve things. Think about what happens when companies start to build corporate LLM's trained on their docs, code, knowledge base, support tickets, etc. You're going to have super human support. Sure, this might assist the current…

What do you mean by “work problems”. Writing regex? SQL? Exclusively software development?

Outside of this, even using for “summarizing” documents, you are lucky if it doesn’t distort or twist meanings such that it isn’t useful, except now you have spent as much or more time checking it’s work than just doing it yourself. Checking others’ work is much harder than writing it.

Every time I’ve attempted to ask it something I can’t answer myself or through immediate googling it has been completely useless.

I’m unconvinced that it isn’t just developers with a poor eye for nuance who aren’t realising how much information they are giving in the questions who rave about it. Horses can count, if you give enough context.

It seems to be generally good at novelty style transfers.

> It's like when you win the lottery and get the support person who's been at the company 15 years and knows everything in and out. That's what these LLM's can be.

This is pure fantasy, extrapolating what you want to see into an arbitrary future where it’s true. More likely it gaslights the customer onto thinking problems are their fault until they give up, but this scenario is mildly cheaper for the companies who don’t need to pay humans to do the runaround.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#99

Post by IshKebab »

gnufied wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #2

There's been a pretty steady trend towards automation, chatbots, self-service, etc. replacing getting an empowered human on the line. Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more. Had an airline thing that the website (and app) wouldn't let me complete online. Spent ages on hold but then was able to get hold of their premium account number and was fixed right away. (Of course, would actually have preferred…

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

I think the automation trend can be annoying when it fails, but self checkout is a weird thing to pick on. In the UK at least they always have a staff member on hand to override the scales. They're soooo much better than waiting in a queue for a human.

Re: Shopify employee breaks NDA to reveal firm replacing laid off workers with AI

#100

Post by brrtbrrt »

gnufied wrote: post #27
ghaff wrote: post #2

There's been a pretty steady trend towards automation, chatbots, self-service, etc. replacing getting an empowered human on the line. Given labor costs and labor shortages, expect even more. Had an airline thing that the website (and app) wouldn't let me complete online. Spent ages on hold but then was able to get hold of their premium account number and was fixed right away. (Of course, would actually have preferred…

Same goes for almost all grocery shops here - Publix, Kroger, target etc replacing checkout with self-checkout kiosks completely. I absolute hate using self-checkout for non-packaged groceries items. Especially if I have lots of stuff. Freaking "unintended item in baggage area". Not to mention, I feel like Publix etc in particular employed lots of folks with disability. It warmed my heart to talk to them. I don't kno…

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