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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

#341

Post by morkalork »

ghaff wrote: post #44
gnufied wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

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…

I watched someone try taking a freaking step ladder through the self check out and the machine scanned it okay but then wouldn't proceed to the next item or cash out because "item must be placed on scale". Really?

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

#342

Post by vba616 »

PheonixPharts wrote: post #299
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 incr…

>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.

I don't understand the train of thought that lead to the sentence above. "Marx's Labor Theory of Value" is a well-known phrase, but its meaning is probably more precise for you than me.

Do you not think, broadly speaking, there is some economy of scale with longer hours (compared to 15/week), that gaining experience more quickly has some value, that overhead like shift handoffs or putting work aside for the next day becomes more significant the shorter the day/week is?

I'd also suggest it's plausible that automation changes the nature of work to increase the efficiency of long hours. The more education and thought a job requires, the longer it takes to "get up to speed" and to hand off work to other people.

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

#343

Post by CamperBob2 »

jachee wrote: post #240
starik36 wrote: post #178

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think the air quality is far better today than it was in the 30-40 years ago. I moved to Los Angeles in the late 80s and in the first six months didn't even realize that there were mountains all around us. I just couldn't see them because of the smog. I can see the mountains clearly today. That's my anecdotal evidence.

Now do Beijing.

Damn, the wheels on those goalposts must be diesel-powered.

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

#344

Post by azherebtsov »

codetrotter wrote: post #85
Dylan16807 wrote: post #75

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> But they simply aren't designed for a full shopping cart which includes a ton of non-barcoded items. Huh. Everything at my grocery store either has a barcode or is produce that needs to be weighed, so there's no speed advantage for a cashier. And they've gone through different sizes of self-checkout, some of which actually had more room than the cashier checkouts.

> produce that needs to be weighed In Spain and France (and probably other countries too) they’ve been doing something that’s pretty neat in regards to the fruits and vegetables since long before self-checkout even became a thing, but which helps a lot now with self-checkout as well. When you go to the fruits and vegetables section of the store, a lot of these stores have a scale there with a printer. So when you pic…

Same thing in Poland. I’m very surprised that this is not a common standard. I saw rage same in Austria, Italy… basically EU countries. I’m very surprised this is not common in US which is usually known as a place where many retail technologies have emerged. By the way, the plastic bag must not be wasted. If I take a few bananas I do not take any plastic bag, I just put a sticker on one of them, and then drop them all into bag area after scanning so that total weight matches expected. Same applies to many fruits which do not need a separate plastic bag (apples, oranges, …).

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

#345

Post by version_five »

hn_throwaway_99 wrote: post #156
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…

> Of course, would actually have preferred if I could have just completed the change online. It's so interesting to me how generational this is, and how it changed so quickly. I used to work in something tangentially related to real estate. The sellers/landlords tended to all be older (50+, this was about 10 years ago), while the renters/some buyers tended to be millennials and younger. The older folks went apoplecti…

Communication preference is one thing. But what a lot of modern "online" support is really about is preventing people from getting support and forcing them into a dark pattern doing what the company wants and not what they want.

If I could unsubscribe, deal with billing errors, resolve complaints, etc online I'd love it. But most support systems try and trap you in some Kafkaesque faq hell that never lets you get near something that would solve your problem. That's the real reason people want a person.

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

#346

Post by CyberDildonics »

jacquesm wrote: post #327
CyberDildonics wrote: post #297

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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

Not a chance of that around here. And with any solution you have to ask yourself: does it scale? What if the current population of the earth would want to live in a log cabin in the woods? The woods would no longer be the woods.

you have to ask yourself: does it scale?

You don't have to ask yourself that because almost no one actually agrees with this person that the 'industrial revolution had disastrous effects on the human race'. They don't even believe it.

What if the current population of the earth would want to live in a log cabin in the woods?

They don't and no one said anything about that.

The woods would no longer be the woods.

That's what we have now because that's what people want.

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

#347

Post by ChildOfChaos »

"The drastic changes in Shopify’s approach have led both employees and customers to question the company’s integrity and commitment to its original mission of empowering small businesses. Many see the company as straying from its roots, becoming more akin to the corporate giants it once aimed to oppose."

This seems to me like most start ups or companies as they grow and get big, they start out by disrupting and fighting the way things are done, mixing up the space and taking on 'the man', then they become that which they opposed and then pivot to act in the same way, until someone new comes along and the cycle repeats.

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

#348

Post by antisthenes »

nverno wrote: post #287
awwaiid wrote: post #248

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can do this right now! It's called "Alaska".

I do hope to end up there eventually, but I think the government ended homesteading back in the 80s sadly.

Homesteading is a lifestyle.

Government can't "end" it any more than it can end partying.

If you're talking about the ability to live off the land you don't own and owning land without paying taxes, that's a different story.

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

#349

Post by silisili »

smt88 wrote: post #300
silisili wrote: post #125

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 spen…

I lived in a city with a Publix, Walmart, and Kroger. While I agree re: the deli, most of my family's grocery bill came from things other than that.

In a routine week, where I'd buy the typicals(dairy, meat, bread, canned good, etc), Kroger would be about $90, Publix would often be ~$120. (If you couldn't tell, this was a few years ago, before massive inflation).

I want them to take care of their employees too, and part of doing that is not replacing them with machines.

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

#350

Post by CyberDildonics »

jacquesm wrote: post #298
CyberDildonics wrote: post #257

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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…

Are you calling all automation "AI" now?
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