Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

thedeepdive.ca

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

291–300 of 563 posts

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

#291

Post by jacquesm »

hwillis wrote: post #286
bushbaba wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

> You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Says who? What jobs did the industrial revolution eliminate? Essentially just spinners and weavers, and that caused a violent social uprising by the Luddites. Textiles were far outweighed by the industrialization of steam power, ironworking, and machine tools. Those three things did not put people out of jobs, they just created huge numbers of new jobs and tota…

Not a lot of textile still made in Europe. The Luddites got that one right, they were just a bit off about the timing. But this AI thing, assuming it manages to click the ratchet a few more times has the potential to eliminate a good 50% of all of the remaining blue collar jobs and a sizeable fraction of the rest. That is the sort of economic blow that I highly doubt we are prepared for. The big problem is that I don't see where those jobs will be going to, they are eliminated, not transformed this time around and that is a very serious change in the recipe.

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

#292

Post by hn_throwaway_99 »

ghaff wrote: post #283
eastof wrote: post #264

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I guess I'm against the trend since I'm a gen z who also vastly prefers a phone call to online. Computer systems IME are riddled with dark patterns, bugs, ads, and terrible UIs that make it nearly impossible to figure out where to go to solve my problem. Could you give an example of "transactions happening easily and reliably through a computer system"?

>Could you give an example of "transactions happening easily and reliably through a computer system"? Sure. A random travel booking. A stock purchase. Checking my account balance anywhere. These are all things that took visiting travel agents, brokers, and waiting for delayed monthly statements previously. We made a lot of phone calls and went into offices for multiple hours to handle things.

I think your examples also highlight the issue at hand - the automated systems are great when they work, but when they don't work it means that there are now a lot fewer real humans that can solve your problem.

Take travel bookings. When I know where I'm going and have relatively firm dates, I'd much prefer the ease of online booking. However, when I'm more in the mood of "I want to go on vacation to country X, but I don't know a lot about that country or what the best places to stay/visit are" I've found myself wasting a ton of time on endless travel websites trying to get a better "feel" for what I want to visit. About 15 years ago I went on a long trip to Italy, and the travel agent was invaluable. These days I'm not even sure travel agents like that exist any more.

Somewhat tangential (or ominous) aside, I've found ChatGPT to be really the best tool for travel planning/travel ideas when you're in that "I have a general idea of the kind of vacation I want" mood.

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

#293

Post by polote »

usednet wrote: post #174
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 logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant future, eliminate the vast majority of jobs. The choice will then be between a socialized economy or barbarism.

The vast majority of jobs could be eliminated today without AI and still they are not, so we are very safe. Even with AI getting better and better we will be

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

#294

Post by jacquesm »

asdf6677 wrote: post #281
bushbaba wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe da…

I'm with you in part, but I think it would be good to try to be fair: life as it was before the industrial revolution wasn't exactly paradise either. The industrial revolution solved some problems and replaced them with far larger ones. And for those far larger ones we don't have solutions, even after the thing has run for a couple of hundred years the problems are still increasing. And coupled with runaway economic systems, massive imbalance in the world with respect to where the benefits landed we don't look particularly good when it comes to the historical record of such revolutions.

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

#295

Post by coldtea »

usednet wrote: post #174
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 logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant future, eliminate the vast majority of jobs. The choice will then be between a socialized economy or barbarism.

>is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy

Yes, and basically a fundamental restructuring of the power relations in the economy.

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

#296

Post by itsanaccount »

bushbaba wrote: post #234
usednet wrote: post #174

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The logical conclusion that people don’t like to hear is that there will need to be a fundamental restructuring of the economy. AI will, in the not so distant future, eliminate the vast majority of jobs. The choice will then be between a socialized economy or barbarism.

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

The ruling class wants slaves.

Be it animal, human, or machine. In every case where something made a better slave, capital has switched to using it.

Recognize what class you're in and see it for what it is (lotta people identify with the ruling class on this site), but don't pretend for a second us tech workers are somehow insulated from being workers. No one will care when we're homeless on the street anymore than the current group of i-got-mines care about the current homeless.

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

#297

Post by CyberDildonics »

asdf6677 wrote: post #281
bushbaba wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

The Industrial Revolution and its consequences have been a disaster for the human race. They have greatly increased the life-expectancy of those of us who live in “advanced” countries, but they have destabilized society, have made life unfulfilling, have subjected human beings to indignities, have led to widespread psychological suffering (in the Third World to physical suffering as well) and have inflicted severe da…

Not much is stopping you from living in a log cabin in the woods.

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

#298

Post by jacquesm »

CyberDildonics wrote: post #257
bushbaba wrote: post #234

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Totally disagree. You could have said the same of Industrial Revolution. Yet here we are living better lives from the technological breakthroughs. AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era.

AI will just usher the next industrial revolution of the modern era. How will it do that? So far the only things being automated are Q&A and image generation.

That's a pretty narrow view.

The things that are being automated go much, much further than just those two examples. I'd like to add: classification (including lots of medicine) and diagnosis, lots of low level information processing, process and machine control, vehicle control (for instance: self driving cars) etc.

Whether all of those will succeed for 100% of the cases is up in the air but if I were coming-of-age and slated for some job I'd be very wary of what to pick as a blue collar worker because almost all of those jobs could well be on the chopping block in the next decade.

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

#299

Post by PheonixPharts »

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…

Personally I find the fact that Keynes's 15-hour work week never materialized despite massive improvements in automation to be fairly strong evidence in favor of Marx's Labor Theory of Value.

One of the ways that Marx posited capitalist extract surplus value is to have the increase in quality of life always lagging the increase in efficiency. Our quality of life does increase, but only if capitalists are able to increase greater surplus value from our labor than that quality of life increase accounts for.

> don't forget that we're going to take down the world economy with it

Interestingly enough this is one of the major focuses of Capital vol III: the tendency of the rate of profit to fall.

Marx argued that eventually the Capitalist pressure to increase efficiency through automation means that while production continues to be more efficient, precisely because of this the ratio of profit to capital expended decreases. For Marx this was the ultimate threat to Capitalism itself.

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

#300

Post by smt88 »

silisili wrote: post #125
smt88 wrote: post #84

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So far, I've never seen a Publix with even a single self-checkout. I'm not saying they don't exist, but they're rolling them out much more slowly than the other stores. This is likely because Publix is 80% employee-owned[1]. 1. https://fourweekmba.com/who-owns-publix/#:~:text=Key%20takea... .

The newer ones seem to have them. Which to me is like a breach of the unspoken contract. Publix has always been more expensive, but gave you great people experience, a cashier, and usually a bag boy asking if you wanted help out to the car. Now that they're moving to self checkout, what the hell are we paying more for?

> Publix has always been more expensive

It's still far cheaper than Whole Foods.

> what the hell are we paying more for?

In my (major) city, Publix has by far the best bakery and prepared foods of any of the grocery stores.

They also reliably have the freshest produce. Does that mean they're more wasteful and take things off the shelves if they're just slightly overripe? I have no idea. I just know that I end up spending more money at, say, Kroger because a lot of the fresh items go bad before I can use them.

I'm personally also willing to pay more to a business that takes care of its employees, but other people might not care that much.

Post reply on HN