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OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

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Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#141

Post by elevatortrim »

muldvarp wrote: post #95
SwtCyber wrote: post #87

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's like being lectured on ethical behavior by the thing that's actively eating your lunch

Why do you think automating software development is any less ethical than automating other jobs (which many software developers actively engaged in)?

Automating software development is not unethical. The unethical bit is allowing resource flow default to those who own the means of production.

As a software developer, when I automate someone's job, say of a cashier, I do not start to get paid their salary - my salary stays the same.

This is different for capital investors and shareholders. They keep the cashier's salary (not directly but ultimately). This results in an increasing concentration of wealth, creates lots of suffering and destabilises the world. That is where it is unethical.

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#142

Post by torginus »

torginus wrote: post #62
EthanHeilman wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

In my personal experience I've seen: - OCR eat a good chunk of data entry jobs, - Automated translation eat a number of translation jobs, - LLM have eaten quite a few tier I support roles. I don't have numbers tho, maybe people are still doing data entry or hiring translators on mechanical turk.

I have a friend who used to do book translations. Due to some craftsman union rules, the minimum rate for translations has been set (and of course that's what everybody pays). Machine translation didn't decrease these rates, but they haven't been increased in 15 years, which made inflation completely eat it up. Initially machine translation was way worse (by professional standards) than people assumed, essentially us…

Sorry for replying to my own comment but I had a separate thought - this is how I feel about LLMs today.

While they help with programming, I feel like the scope of my tasks have increased over time as well. I feel like this is happening to me - I'm insanely more productive and my tech stack has increased hugely over the past two years as has my productivity.

But I don't make significantly more money, or get a ton more recognition, it's just accepted.

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#143

Post by no_wizard »

nunez wrote: post #135
madamelic wrote: post #108

Either I am mistaken that Walmart was offering store associate type jobs or the author doesn't realize Walmart has software engineering teams. Quite a few non-tech companies have very hip, modern, and high-power tech teams behind them. https://github.com/walmartlabs Walmart has been doing this level of work since at least 2013/2014 to my knowledge so it's not something new. Getting a job on the Walmart engineering te…

Walmart Global Tech (what Labs was called) got gutted in the layoff-palooza last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate . Heavy outsourcing, too, so I've heard. I also believe that Walmart is trying to consolidate everyone into their Bentonville HQ; gl trying to get engineers in SFBA to move out to Arkansas!

They don’t want SFBA engineers for the most part now, they want so called “dark matter” developers, meaning they’re primarily recruiting from the Midwest, upper South, and rust belt states where opportunities are more scarce

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#144

Post by muldvarp »

elevatortrim wrote: post #141
muldvarp wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Why do you think automating software development is any less ethical than automating other jobs (which many software developers actively engaged in)?

Automating software development is not unethical. The unethical bit is allowing resource flow default to those who own the means of production. As a software developer, when I automate someone's job, say of a cashier, I do not start to get paid their salary - my salary stays the same. This is different for capital investors and shareholders. They keep the cashier's salary (not directly but ultimately). This results i…

In that case pretty much any automation is unethical, isn't it?

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#145

Post by ai-christianson »

beng-nl wrote: post #139
ai-christianson wrote: post #52

We're replacing managers with AI at our startup.

Really? Can you tell us more about that?

Yeah we spawned an agent, his name is Jeremy, that runs 24/7 and coordinates work within the team. He reaches out to individuals on the team (via email) and we interact with him, things like:

    - "Hey Jeremy, I completed , what should I look at next?"
    - "Jeremy, who's currently working on "
He's backed by db so it ends up being way more powerful than something like trello or Jira.

This is one of our agents we use internally to dogfood our product (gobii dot ai). We spun up the agent, told it that its job was helping coordinate and prioritize work within the team, and authorized it to contact the relevant team members. Now we all just email to/from the agent (would love Discord or Slack, but we don't have that quite yet.)

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#146

Post by Aloha »

nunez wrote: post #135
madamelic wrote: post #108

Either I am mistaken that Walmart was offering store associate type jobs or the author doesn't realize Walmart has software engineering teams. Quite a few non-tech companies have very hip, modern, and high-power tech teams behind them. https://github.com/walmartlabs Walmart has been doing this level of work since at least 2013/2014 to my knowledge so it's not something new. Getting a job on the Walmart engineering te…

Walmart Global Tech (what Labs was called) got gutted in the layoff-palooza last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate . Heavy outsourcing, too, so I've heard. I also believe that Walmart is trying to consolidate everyone into their Bentonville HQ; gl trying to get engineers in SFBA to move out to Arkansas!

Bentonville is quite nice all things said

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#147

Post by michaelmrose »

eks391 wrote: post #126
LeifCarrotson wrote: post #65

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When my father joined an attorney's office as recently as the 80s, there was a whole team of people that worked with: Of course, there were the attorneys who actually argued the cases, but also legal assistants who helped create various briefs, secretaries who took dictation (with a typewriter, of course) to write those documents, receptionists who managed the attorney's schedules and handled memos and mail, filing c…

Head on the nail. I try to explain this to everyone who thinks we are heading to global collapse. AI isn't good enough to replace a person . It enables a person to replace a team . That will take awhile since, as cool and great AI is now, it is not yet as powerful and integrated yet for teams to be totally replaced. Only as fast as people naturally leave, so instead of hiring someone to replace that job, one guy inhe…

Many jobs even most jobs don't work you at or near the short term max capacity you can achieve because it isn't sustainable, lacks redundancy or because the nature of work flow and peer expectation creates a degree of slack.

Condensing the workforce as you describe risks destroying redundancy and sustainability.

It may work in tests with high performers over short dutations but may fall under over longer terms, with average performers, or with even a small amount of atrition.

Having cog number 37 pick up the slack for 39 doesn't work with no excess capacity.

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#148

Post by geodel »

ActionHank wrote: post #58
muldvarp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there? I don't see any contradiction there. For me it's funny that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated.

I think many of us question the ethics of lying to sell a product that cannot deliver what you are promising. All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs, they are happy there is a shortcut through boilerplate and documentation. They are also equally unhappy about having to talk management, who know very little about the world of dev, off the ledge as they are getting ready to jump off with t…

> All the good devs that I know aren't worried about losing their jobs...

'Good' is doing heavy lifting here. E.g AI/Automation could possibly eliminate 90% of IT jobs and cause all kind of socio-economic issues in society. All the while good developers remain in great demand.

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#149

Post by Aurornis »

Aloha wrote: post #146
nunez wrote: post #135

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Walmart Global Tech (what Labs was called) got gutted in the layoff-palooza last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate . Heavy outsourcing, too, so I've heard. I also believe that Walmart is trying to consolidate everyone into their Bentonville HQ; gl trying to get engineers in SFBA to move out to Arkansas!

Bentonville is quite nice all things said

Having your job abruptly changed to force you to move far away from family and friends is not nice at all, though.

Re: OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart

#150

Post by geodel »

azemetre wrote: post #106
muldvarp wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Is there? I don't see any contradiction there. For me it's funny that the first time most programmers ever think about the ethics of automating away jobs is when they themselves become automated.

The book "Why We Fear AI" by Hagen Blix and Ingeborg Glimmer talks about this dynamic. Whether it will lead to a class awakening because previously if you were aligned with the company you were rewarded as well, but now if you align with the company you're advocating to destroy your livelihood. What rational worker would want to take part in this?

It can lead to class awakening but I think AI is not sufficient. It would need very large scale climate / ecological disasters where suddenly lot of current middle classes conveniences become available only to top classes.
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