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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

#491

Post by muskmusk »

the_only_law wrote: post #204
muskmusk wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What if replacing people's jobs is helping people? Milk men, computers (the people kind), horse carriage chauffeurs, people who light lamp posts (when they were oil based) we could go on here. You are clearly coming from empathic place, but I am not sure your premise is nuanced enough. Lots of progress has "victims" but that doesn't necessarily make progress had.

So this comes up all the time on these threads. The key bit of information I’m missing is where did those milk men, carriage chauffeurs, lamp lighters, whatever go and how did they get there after they were rendered useless . Did they retrain for new careers? If so how did they afford the education/retraining necessary. How did they pay their rent/mortgage/etc. in the time in between it took them to do that? What are…

The opioid addict cases are probably more when entire cities gets fired because a company moves or shuts down.

Surely there will be cases where those that are replaced are unable to find work, but I am willing to bet that

1. Those cases are somewhat rare

2. They "make sense" (e.g. close to retirement anyway)

The common case is just to get a new job. Maybe the new job is not as good, maybe it is actually better in the long run.

There are plenty of jobs to go around these days. Unemployment is very low.

If I were to give advice I would personally tell people to stop looking for work that is "safe from automation" because over a long horizon very little is safe. Figure out how to work with the technology instead. Don't need to code there are lots of other ways to contribute.

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

#492

Post by kaonashi »

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…

There were a couple of deleted tweets in the original thread.

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

#493

Post by sometimes_all »

dreamcompiler wrote: post #446

After a recent horrible experience with JetBlue customer service, it has become obvious to me that the true purpose of all "customer service" at major companies is not "solve the customer's problem" but "make the customer go away." This seems to be true regardless of whether humans or robots are involved. If humans are involved they will be low-paid hourly workers on the other side of the planet, staring at the same…

When I was in the US, certain companies (like Discover) had customer service which were a joy to interact with. An almost immediate connect with a human, who had the permissions to make a relatively large chunk of problems go away / actually have the right information at hand without having to transfer or hold the call. I would not hesitate to do business with them again if I could.

Good customer service inspires loyalty to a company in a way discounts/advertising cannot. Their topline might not be the best, but they'll never go out of business.

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

#494

Post by mike_hock »

indy wrote: post #285
data-ottawa wrote: post #263

Earlier quoted context omitted.

AI can answer questions cheaper, but can it address real problems? I worked at Shopify when it was much smaller, it was fairly common for support staff to reach out with questions for the product team which drive fixing bugs or improving features. How can the AI chatbot fill that role? It’s a gap that offshoring/disintegrating support creates.

Yes, the AI chatbot will fill that role. It will answer questions that customers have and then it will feedback to the product team about the most common queries made by customers. Honestly, the Hacker News crowd have been such visionaries about the potential for technology but as soon as that technology infringes upon their livelihood they develop these massive blind spots.

> that technology infringes upon their livelihood

TIL the HN crows works in customer support/call centers!

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

#495

Post by fy20 »

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 feel the opposite. I much prefer the self-service experience. Staff are miserable, they usually scan stuff faster than you can pack, and I have to wait in a large line for that. I'd much rather do it myself.

Even with a large cart (family of 3 weekly shop) I have no issues, you just need to be good at stacking items so they don't fall off.

Where I live stores are slowly adopting scan-as-you-shop which is even better.

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

#496

Post by ipaddr »

fragmede wrote: post #483
martin8412 wrote: post #474

Earlier quoted context omitted.

All you need to do is to speak the magic codeword, charge back.

And then you can't use Uber, or Doordash, or Instacart. It works for single transaction merchants, but for platforms that having become critical to functioning in today's modern society, it's unfortunately not the magic password.

If you need to issue charge backs you shouldn't be using them. Painful lesson but call the restaurant. Call a cab. Go to the store yourself. Your modern society is a wasteland to be avoided.

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

#497

Post by topynate »

kaonashi wrote: post #492
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…

There were a couple of deleted tweets in the original thread.

Oh, what did they say?

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

#498

Post by rightbyte »

j45 wrote: post #228

Not referring to Shopify specifically, it's surprising to see startups who are able to increase their operational capacity with their existing workforce by using AI... and instead of instantly having freely trained and ready to go employees to grow the business, instead work to shrink their workforce, instead of putting them to work on the new problems their eventual disruptors will solve. Automation has always been…

It's probably enshitification. Short term higher profits.

Fire support staff and it tales time for the effects to manifest. Could be either internal support like secretaries, technical writers or external support, like, customer support.

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

#499

Post by rightbyte »

bdcravens wrote: post #427
TheCleric wrote: post #221

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Speak for yourself.

If you've been in software for any amount of time, and haven't written software that involves either automating processes (thereby making those processes less dependent on human labor) or increasing efficiency (doing more with less human labor) that's unusual.

I think you dropped a "don't", but anyways, without the don't you describe my experience.

I can't honestly say any project I have worked with have increased efficiency.

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

#500

Post by rightbyte »

tennisflyi wrote: post #52

Oh no. I thought tech only took jobs away from “low skill” people, e.g., cashiers or baristas and let the smart retire early… I guess the days of pushing a couple emails with cushy AF perks are over. This is sarcasm BTW (somewhat).

There has been automatic barista machines since ... a long time. Turns out a baristas job is not really to make coffee.
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