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CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

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Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#201

Post by shimman »

AnimalMuppet wrote: post #151
sarchertech wrote: post #149

Earlier quoted context omitted.

They said “Acting like centrally planned dictatorships is a good form of collaboration is just so off base. There's no reason to think that introducing democracy into the work place wouldn't immediately benefit both workers + customers.” That sounds more like there’s no evidence that it won’t work than an unequivocal claim that it will.

Well... there is historical evidence that centrally planned dictatorships are not a very responsive form of government. Now, corporations usually have the problem of competition, so if they aren't responsive (or at least responsive enough ), they get out-competed by those that are. Is that enough to make them different from governments? Perhaps, but I don't know.

If you don't think there are competitions in dictatorships you are extremely sheltered. The competition in a dictatorship is whether you stay alive or not, just like in a corporation is whether you become homeless and die or keep a roof over your head.

That's just neoliberalism baby!

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#202

Post by figers »

misano wrote: post #5

A common misconception about AI is that it is intended to fully replace humans, which is incorrect. The purpose of AI is to reduce the need for human labor, and it has already been doing so. For example—though this is not an exact figure—a task that previously required 15 people might now only need 10. In no instance has the human element been completely replaced; rather, the reliance on manual labor has simply been…

You'd think we would see a large spike in unemployment if AI was reducing the number of employees needed for jobs the way these CEO talk about AI replacing people...

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#203

Post by lostphilosopher »

californical wrote: post #156
hintymad wrote: post #109

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> There's so much work in delivering products that will carry your brand, and then must be supported. People think otherwise with AI partly because Anthropic kept telling us that they didn't have to write code or review code any more for most of their work. Their agent swarms just comb through their github, slack and wikis to figure out what to do next, and another swarm of agents just review, test, merge, deploy, A/…

> the safeguards will limit effectiveness through methods such as prompt modification, steering vectors, or parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) Holy crap that is dark. I like learning about ML for fun, and now I have to assume that their model is intentionally misinforming me to sabotage my learning? It is absolutely bananas that somebody decided that was ok behavior.

Someone could write a cyberpunk Three Body Problem with this premise.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#204

Post by jandrewrogers »

willio58 wrote: post #27
everdrive wrote: post #11

There are a lot of bad CEOs, though. It's a lot like a politician -- it's quite difficult to become a CEO, and the skills to make it to that position don't always intersect nicely with the skills necessary to actually do the job well.

CEOs do get there with lots of politics in almost all cases. It’s all about who’s ass you kiss and who’s ass you don’t and if you’re lucky with timing things might just fall into place. I think it’s exceedingly rare that a CEO is actually competent at their job. In most cases it’s the labor class propping the company up, and in some cases the workers are doing so against the wishes of the CEO. Not that executives wan…

I’ve worked with CEOs in multiple large companies. I wouldn’t wish that job on my worst enemy. Nonetheless, someone needs to do that job and the intersection of difficulty and masochism is beyond what most people can do or endure. Many people try and fail. Their job, at the end of the day, is to eat an endless stream of shit sandwiches with a smile and a plan.

Much of the “competency” of a CEO in practice is to be able to accept the relentless drama and abuse without turning into an emotional wreck. Yeah, they have to make decisions, but that isn’t the part that makes the job difficult. That role takes an insane toll on the human spirit, and very few can do it for any length of time.

The cush job is often being CEO adjacent. You get most of the perks but also avoid most of the emotional abuse and drama.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#205

Post by piekvorst »

jandrewrogers wrote: post #204
willio58 wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

CEOs do get there with lots of politics in almost all cases. It’s all about who’s ass you kiss and who’s ass you don’t and if you’re lucky with timing things might just fall into place. I think it’s exceedingly rare that a CEO is actually competent at their job. In most cases it’s the labor class propping the company up, and in some cases the workers are doing so against the wishes of the CEO. Not that executives wan…

I’ve worked with CEOs in multiple large companies. I wouldn’t wish that job on my worst enemy. Nonetheless, someone needs to do that job and the intersection of difficulty and masochism is beyond what most people can do or endure. Many people try and fail. Their job, at the end of the day, is to eat an endless stream of shit sandwiches with a smile and a plan. Much of the “competency” of a CEO in practice is to be ab…

Thank you for busting the myth of worker self-management.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#207

Post by jcgl »

claysmithr wrote: post #183
californical wrote: post #156

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> the safeguards will limit effectiveness through methods such as prompt modification, steering vectors, or parameter-efficient fine-tuning (PEFT) Holy crap that is dark. I like learning about ML for fun, and now I have to assume that their model is intentionally misinforming me to sabotage my learning? It is absolutely bananas that somebody decided that was ok behavior.

time to support open source and local models

I don’t see how that helps, unless you actually mean open source, rather than open weights like most people do. Without everything that goes into the model, including training data, these things are opaque.

Re: CEOs who think AI replaces their employees are just bad CEOs

#210

Post by zerobees »

willio58 wrote: post #27
everdrive wrote: post #11

There are a lot of bad CEOs, though. It's a lot like a politician -- it's quite difficult to become a CEO, and the skills to make it to that position don't always intersect nicely with the skills necessary to actually do the job well.

CEOs do get there with lots of politics in almost all cases. It’s all about who’s ass you kiss and who’s ass you don’t and if you’re lucky with timing things might just fall into place. I think it’s exceedingly rare that a CEO is actually competent at their job. In most cases it’s the labor class propping the company up, and in some cases the workers are doing so against the wishes of the CEO. Not that executives wan…

> It’s all about who’s ass you kiss and who’s ass you don’t ... I think it’s exceedingly rare that a CEO is actually competent at their job.

But... that is kinda the job? CEOs are, first and foremost, the public face of the company. They're the one who talk to VCs / banks, regulators, major customers, the press. They're very highly paid PR reps / fall guys that shield everyone else, including the board of directors and all the VPs and SVPs, if something goes wrong.

For most companies, especially large companies, it's not important for a CEO to be good with software engineering, business development, etc. That, at least in principle, can be handled by other parts of the hierarchy.

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