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

331–340 of 563 posts

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

#331

Post by marcosdumay »

rahimnathwani wrote: post #213
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.

in practise: have you ever used any automated customer support for anything? I've used it to cancel orders, cancel subscriptions, change a broadband package, arrange a return/refund for faulty goods. Do you prefer to talk to a human for things like this?

I have never successfully used automated voice support, even for getting information plainly available on the place's database.

But I have tried to use it plenty of times.

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

#332

Post by whack »

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…

> 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 content to live at the same quality-of-life that people had in 1923, you can certainly achieve that by doing half the amount of work. The cost of living that quality of life is dirt-cheap - median household real-income back then in today's dollars is less than $30k. The average person back then had a life expectancy of ~60, barely traveled long distances, had minimal electronic gadgets, and lived in houses that have none of today's modern amenities.

If you're content with that kind of lifestyle, you can easily achieve that by either working as a freelancer for 20 hours per week. Or by working a high-paying job, saving most of your money, and retiring in your 30s/40s.

Most people don't do this because ... they don't want to live like someone in 1923. Our own life expectations today are far higher, and hence, we push ourselves to work 40+ hours/week to meet them.

The risk of hyper-income-inequality is real. Fortunately we also live in a democracy. Billionaires like Murdoch will be able to exploit wedge issues like guns and LGBT for only so long. Sooner or later a critical mass of people will demand sharply more progressive tax rates, and even things like UBI, if too much wealth is concentrated in too few hands.

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

#333

Post by 0xDEF »

cm2012 wrote: post #35

This is good for society just like any productivity enhancing invention. You'd think a place like HN would know that the only way the world has ever gotten better has been innovation improving per-human output.

>You'd think a place like HN would know that the only way the world has ever gotten better has been innovation

Since 2013 this site has not been the optimistic hacker/startup forum Paul Graham envisioned in 2007. For a decade it has just been a higher quality version of r/technology but with the same reddit-tier doomposting.

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

#334

Post by MisterBastahrd »

monero-xmr wrote: post #208
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.

[flagged]

It's hard to take a comment like this seriously given all the bloodshed that has come about because of capitalism.

Now, it could just be that people who accumulate power also accumulate the means to defend that power, and that to accumulate it in the first place you've almost got to be a sociopath, but that's actually being thoughtful instead of bringing up context-barren boogeymen.

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

#335

Post by CapricornNoble »

usednet wrote: post #242
yreg wrote: post #180

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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?…

As somebody with a degree in economics who did research in this area, I strongly disagree. I cannot stress how important is to not equate poverty data with quality of life. Let me give you an example of how economic statistics can be misleading. In colonial India, economic production and GDP skyrocketed. Forests were razed, waterways were privatized, communal granaries were destroyed, etc. Agricultural production inc…

> the vast majority of poverty reduction in the last century has been in China, a non-capitalist country

Can't it also be said that the vast majority of poverty reduction has been in China...once they began to adopt capitalist economic principles in the last 40 years ?

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

#336

Post by pacifika »

indy wrote: post #205
alluro2 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In the socioeconomic utopia we'll build in the meantime?

In the fact that AI is the only realistic path we have of providing every human being on the planet with the best health care and education.

Are we not solving that with this whole web thing?

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

#337

Post by 23B1 »

kromem wrote: post #172
rglover wrote: post #131

How I read all headlines like this now: "Shopify just opened themselves up to be less dominate (or non-existent) in the market." The destruction of brands on the horizon is creating a ton of opportunity for new businesses to develop. One's that can only succeed if they reject the religion of "automate all the things with AI" and take a quality/human-first approach to running their business.

Yep. It isn't going to be in the next 12 or maybe even 24 months, but in the not too distant future any company that made significant downsizing in the early days of AI is going to find out the hard way that they effectively threw away a lot of their lead against competition. The smart companies right now would be keeping headcount the same, provide their employees with access to AI and training on how to use it effe…

> then set them towards further specialization with the new freed up workload

Or innovation. Imagine not hiring McKinsey or IDEO to 'innovent' new market opportunities but instead, y'know, listening to your frontline about what they think customers might want...

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

#338

Post by Shekelphile »

0xDEF wrote: post #312
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.

>socialized economy Here in Denmark a significant fraction of the population (students, elderly, long-term unemployed) are already on some kind of pseudo basic income. Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? Why do so many people on the Internet think only radical socialist revolutions can solve all our problems?

Basic income is a horrible idea. It resigns 80%+ of the population to being unproductive for life and living in abject poverty.

If AI is going to automate away all 'meaningless' low and middle class jobs then the government should be stepping in to tax the productivity gains and use the money to educate and employ those people in roles that AI can't (maybe ever) fill. Having the government pay tens of millions of people to further scientific research and innovation would be a massive boon for our society rather than the current ratcheting incrementalism and lack of innovation the pervades in our current system where innovation is always shunned unless it can provide immediate short-term gains.

Unfortunately it's moot to even think about. Nothing will change and the elites will simply let the majority of the population starve to death.

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

#339

Post by sangnoir »

0xDEF wrote: post #312
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.

>socialized economy Here in Denmark a significant fraction of the population (students, elderly, long-term unemployed) are already on some kind of pseudo basic income. Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario? Why do so many people on the Internet think only radical socialist revolutions can solve all our problems?

> Why not just do basic income in this future "total AI automation" scenario?

The oligarchy doesn't want to fund this future, and the federal, state and local governments in the US don't have the wherewithal.

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

#340

Post by sharts »

Anyone that has ever interacted with a customer service chat bot knows this is pretty stupid.

I’m not sure why people (esp. those in the tech community) think we have evolved the technology in any meaningful enough way to replace people yet.

How do we know this? Those same people would be against AI chatbots replacing their children’s teachers.

Post reply on HN