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Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

businessinsider.com

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Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#111

Post by _cenw »

hyperman1 wrote: post #29

First time I tried Klarna, their 'payment' workflow was actually a 'grant full access to all bank accounts' workflow in disguise. I was thinking this amount of misleading must be illegal. Further interactions with them always felt sleazy. Maybe they know the regulators will dismantle the company in the near future and are optimizing for extracting the maximum before their implosion?

Almost like PSD2's open banking part was a huge mistake. I love how my banks, payment providers and random financial apps can now ask for unscoped access, without any way to figure out what I have authorized in the past, what's still pulling my data and how I can revoke any of it.

Most OAuth providers have better transparency and control.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#112

Post by PittleyDunkin »

mmmore wrote: post #14

If I were a CEO/PR team of large tech company that wanted to downsize, I would probably also say stuff like "AI efficiencies drive long term profitability". That said, I suspect in the short-medium term AI might increase salaries at the high end, but reduce opportunities at the low end. And of course, companies which seriously embrace AI advances, but in sensible ways, will do best. https://www.klarna.com/internation…

> And of course, companies which seriously embrace AI advances, but in sensible ways, will do best.

The use here of "sensible" exemplifies a good way to predict basically anything you want about the market so long as you don't reveal what "sensible" means in concrete terms.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#113

Post by misswaterfairy »

gyre007 wrote: post #40
ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

The most ironic thing is thar the middle managers are somehow surviving this. So far, anyway, but I think they’ll be found too sooner or latet

If they're replacing all of their staff with AI, why do they need so many middle managers to manage staff that no longer exist at the company?

It often seems that AI 'will replace middle managers' though it would be more likely that middle managers would be made redundant, given a lack of people to 'manage'.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#114

Post by misswaterfairy »

ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

Hot take: this will eventually be the downfall of AI/burst the AI bubble, when businesses all over finally realise that 'AI-ing' their workforce was a mistake that cost them dearly, and need to re-employ almost the same number of staff to do what they're in business for.

One hopes at least, anyway...

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#115

Post by constantcrying »

suraci wrote: post #67
ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

I'm confused about why there are so many managers/CEOs who mythologize AI. Some of them use AI as an excuse for layoffs, but many of them do believe that AI (or ChatGPT, specifically) is some kind of magic that can make (1 employee + ChatGPT) equal to 3 employees. I mean, they must have used ChatGPT, right? How does ChatGPT give them the conclusion about this?

Non-technical management is often completely unable to understand technologies. "AI" is already far beyond a specific technology, it is a general buzzword, which describes an arbitrary thing which solves whatever problem you throw at it.

I am absolutely convinced that none of these companies have done any benchmarking or trials.

>I mean, they must have used ChatGPT, right? How does ChatGPT give them the conclusion about this?

Ask ChatGPT to generate a program for you. Imagine what the result would look like to you if you had never read a single line of code in your life. It is pretty obvious that the output of ChatGPT is indistinguishable from what your developers produce, so they obviously are superfluous.

You may think I am exaggerating, but there are many people in very large companies who think exactly like that. Often their ambitions are smaller, but usually that just worsens their lack of understanding. Problems which could be trivially solved by a mediocre software engineer in a week suddenly become AI Game changing Technologies.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#116

Post by itsdrewmiller »

rapsey wrote: post #36
emseetech wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm open to the idea they see something I don't. I'm not convinced, but I'm open to it.

[flagged]

Even if rare, surely something like the rapid advancement of AI could be something that qualifies. At minimum I agree with GP to keep an open mind about it.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#117

Post by itsdrewmiller »

mike_hearn wrote: post #108
9dev wrote: post #101

Earlier quoted context omitted.

That's just the slippery slope of neoliberalism. The ends do not justify the means, no matter how you spin them: A company will not fail if you continue to employ parents of many children, employ a regional candidate, or write fair performance reviews regardless of strategic goals. If any of these cases appears to lead to the downfall of a corporation, there were much bigger problems looming that actually caused the…

Why are you switching between corporations and companies as if they're the same? I actually do know of a small company that was quite badly screwed over by a vindictive employee who hated her boss, deliberately did not quit because she knew she was about to have another child, got pregnant and then disappeared for a year. Local law makes her unfireable almost regardless of reason (including not actually doing any wor…

Where did this happen? Typically the government covers some or all of the parental leave costs where it is mandated, and while a company can't fire her they are allowed to hire someone to do the job in the meantime with the money they would have paid her. It's obviously not ideal but it's hard to imagine it is screwing the company over all THAT badly.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#118

Post by mmmore »

PittleyDunkin wrote: post #112
mmmore wrote: post #14

If I were a CEO/PR team of large tech company that wanted to downsize, I would probably also say stuff like "AI efficiencies drive long term profitability". That said, I suspect in the short-medium term AI might increase salaries at the high end, but reduce opportunities at the low end. And of course, companies which seriously embrace AI advances, but in sensible ways, will do best. https://www.klarna.com/internation…

> And of course, companies which seriously embrace AI advances, but in sensible ways, will do best. The use here of "sensible" exemplifies a good way to predict basically anything you want about the market so long as you don't reveal what "sensible" means in concrete terms.

What I mean concretely is embrace AI code assistants, generally allowing employees to use AI tools, use AI for some content production and customer services (preferably with human moderation and escape hatches).

What would count as non-sensible would be company wide mandates that everyone must jam AI into their work. I've heard stories about stuff like this at certain big corps.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#119

Post by downrightmike »

ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

They're going to get rolled when the script kiddies figure out how to drain the corporate bank accounts by starting the chat asking to disregard all previous instructions...

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#120

Post by downrightmike »

emseetech wrote: post #27
ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

I'm open to the idea they see something I don't. I'm not convinced, but I'm open to it.

It costs way more to run the AI than the equivalent human labor. No one is paying the actual costs.
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