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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

#191

Post by yreg »

almost_usual wrote: post #155
yreg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mean quality of life is sky high compared to 100 years ago and it is such thanks to the advancement made.

And as the Earth burns away and we choke on the smoke we rejoice as we have our AI entertainment and we can go quietly into the night.

Yes, but that's an entirely different problem I would say.

The parent complained about having to work more when the tools get more efficient, insinuating that the fruits of advancement go only to the business owner. I commented only on that.

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

#192

Post by jarjoura »

yreg wrote: post #149
jarjoura wrote: post #134

If the promise of AI means I can do 1/2 the amount of work and maintain my high quality life, then I'm all for it. However, every advancement that has come in the last 100 years that improved efficiency has only meant we're pushed to work more and do more. So I am now expected to do 2x the work. If you're really dreaming for AI that can wipe-out entire classes of decent middle-class jobs in one big swing, don't forge…

The mean quality of life is sky high compared to 100 years ago and it is such thanks to the advancement made.

Actually, economists are now saying that the 20th century was an anomaly in terms of QoL and we're reverting back to U shaped distribution of wealth.

It will be very interesting times when all that 20th century earned Baby Boomer wealth moves to the next generation and accelerates the shift even faster.

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

#193

Post by ChumpGPT »

darawk wrote: post #165
almost_usual wrote: post #155

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And as the Earth burns away and we choke on the smoke we rejoice as we have our AI entertainment and we can go quietly into the night.

Lol. Nobody is choking on smoke. The earth is fine. Humans may make life slightly more difficult for themselves in the next century or two due to global warming, but those difficulties will be more than offset by advances in technology, even under pessimistic assumptions.

I wish I shared your optimism, but I feel like we're running out of road while accelerating.

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

#194

Post by vikinghckr »

yreg wrote: post #180
digdugdirk wrote: post #152

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mean quality of life is irrelevant if the mode quality of life is only a tenth of that.

The mode quality of life is also sky high compared to 100 years ago. So is the median quality of life. Mode and median were raised even faster than the average. Humanity managed to uplift a huge fraction of people out of extreme poverty. In 1820s around 70-80% people lived in extreme poverty In 1920s it was around 60-70% In 2020s it's around 10% source: e.g. https://www.oecd-ilibrary.org/sites/e20f2f1a-en/index.html?…

That this even needed to be said on a forum like HN baffles me. I suspect it's a result of decades of mainstream political/cultural doom-and-gloom propaganda.

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

#195

Post by ghaff »

cityofdelusion wrote: post #171
bdangubic wrote: post #119

Earlier quoted context omitted.

[flagged]

You might as well skip the extra steps and just walk out the store with your cart without paying.

Given current rules for store employees they'd probably be fine. I'm sure it will all end well.

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

#196

Post by ChumpGPT »

coryrc wrote: post #181
darawk wrote: post #165

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Lol. Nobody is choking on smoke. The earth is fine. Humans may make life slightly more difficult for themselves in the next century or two due to global warming, but those difficulties will be more than offset by advances in technology, even under pessimistic assumptions.

No one except most Canadians, the West Coast, Midwest, and Northeast of the US. And Texas too apparently: https://www.houstonchronicle.com/news/houston-texas/environm... Is there anywhere in the continental US not affected by wildfire smoke? Hawaii is probably doing alright.

They are getting choked by Chinese pollution.

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

#197

Post by alluro2 »

jarjoura wrote: post #87
BigBalli wrote: post #56

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

What is the response you expect from everyone? Americans were replaced with off-shore call centers last decade. Now they're replaced with AI. Both are equally shitty because there's a very real human cost here. I certainly don't feel good about building technology that puts anyone out of a job like that. Maybe that person was working there as a means to pay for school to get a better job, and now has to find other wo…

Exactly - I don't understand the argument of "this happened before to people worse off than you, and you are entitled if you complain about it now happening to more people (including you)".

Unless we somehow reform the whole society into a socioeconomic utopia in the next decade or so, what started happening now with AI has all the potential to speed up the wealth gap growth and push everyone else towards the gutter.

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

#198

Post by akira2501 »

topynate wrote: post #163

What's the disclosure that breaks the NDA this tweeter is supposed to have had? I searched every quote in the thread and they're all already public. Tweet #11 shows as "unavailable", but the archived version at https://threadreaderapp.com/thread/1681673980682305541.html refers to a "Code Yellow" that did leak, but in March: https://www.businessinsider.com/shopify-issues-code-yellow-f... I tried to find people complai…

I see these like Blake Lemoine. Obvious propaganda meant to push the corporate message harder. That message being: "Labor is being devalued. Expect to earn less." The very specific reach and targeting of these articles is a good hint here, I think.

If these "chat bots" were actually capable of what is claimed, none of this would be necessary, and no NDAs would need to be "broken" for the world to know about it.

It's like imagining a Ford factory worker in 1907 breaking an NDA to tell us all "cars are coming."

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

#199

Post by nverno »

jarjoura wrote: post #192
yreg wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The mean quality of life is sky high compared to 100 years ago and it is such thanks to the advancement made.

Actually, economists are now saying that the 20th century was an anomaly in terms of QoL and we're reverting back to U shaped distribution of wealth. It will be very interesting times when all that 20th century earned Baby Boomer wealth moves to the next generation and accelerates the shift even faster.

Do you mean U-shaped on a wealth vs. age graph, or something else? I would imagine wealth distribution to look more like an exponential distribution.

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

#200

Post by kec »

avery17 wrote: post #58
RugnirViking wrote: post #41

Earlier quoted context omitted.

in theory: customer support automation frees up support workers from focusing on repetetive customer issues to being able to devote more time to those difficult issues, providing better service at lower cost in practise: have you ever used any automated customer support for anything? it speaks for itself - it's literally worse than nothing.

We've never had a gpt powered customer support though. It will be fine tuned on all of their recorded customer interactions ever. I could see this being way better than typical customer support where you have minimally trained, low wage employees who barely know how to use a computer just reading a script.

The problem with customer support broadly isn’t having the agent understand you, it’s often about escalation until you get to an agent with the authority to handle your particular exceptional circumstance. There is no godly way any company will ever allow a chatbot, however capable, to go off script.
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