Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

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

theregister.com

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

151–160 of 238 posts

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

#151

Post by moduspol »

odie5533 wrote: post #131

I don't understand how people can sit in these comment sections pretend AI isn't affecting productivity and the job market. Do we all just imagine the insane level of AI usage is only affecting high school students, and somehow doesn't affect employees? It's clearly having a huge impact on large portions of the job market.

I think current implementations of AI are vastly overhyped in the market. There's a huge gap between what people think or expect from AI and what has been delivered, and the deliveries are not likely to catch up in the short or medium term.

There are remarkably few success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. The best examples we've got are marginal (and conflicting) improvements in software developer productivity.

I'm 100% willing to believe some fewer people are getting hired because many employers are actually drinking the kool-aid: they think they won't need them in 3-6 months. I also think fewer people are getting hired due to other economic conditions (e.g. tariffs). Still others see the writing on the wall (AI bubble pop is imminent, recession likely incoming) and don't want to hire for that reason.

In any case, I don't think it's because of AI itself.

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

#152

Post by azemetre »

geodel wrote: post #150
azemetre wrote: post #106

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

This is happening parts of the world where hyper scale data centers are being built. Rolling brown outs and diverting potable water from towns, you find these stories both in Ireland and across South America.

We already see it happening in the US too, with the Nashville data centers causing immense medical issues.

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

#153

Post by jlarocco »

mattacular wrote: post #17
dfxm12 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 layoffs ‘because I need less heads’ with AI - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/salesforce-ceo-confirms-4000...

Does anybody really believe that SalesForce of all companies has successfully replaced 4000 real and necessary jobs with AI? Or is that more likely just an excuse to justify more layoffs in the tech industry for the usual reasons.

It would be some kind of securities fraud for their CEO to say it to the media if it weren't at least partially true.

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

#154

Post by odie5533 »

moduspol wrote: post #151
odie5533 wrote: post #131

I don't understand how people can sit in these comment sections pretend AI isn't affecting productivity and the job market. Do we all just imagine the insane level of AI usage is only affecting high school students, and somehow doesn't affect employees? It's clearly having a huge impact on large portions of the job market.

I think current implementations of AI are vastly overhyped in the market. There's a huge gap between what people think or expect from AI and what has been delivered, and the deliveries are not likely to catch up in the short or medium term. There are remarkably few success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. The best examples we've got are marginal (and conflicting) improvements in software developer…

> There are remarkably few actual success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly.

If I employ 100 people, and AI makes them 10% more productive, then I only need 90 people now to do the same work. AI doesn't have to replace people 1:1 for it to result in job losses. It just needs to increase productivity (or be seen to even).

And you might think 100 people that are 10% more productive now I have 110! But that's not how corporations work. When they have extra money, they don't invest it in R&D. They do stock buybacks. And when they have extra productivity, they do layoffs and stock buybacks.

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

#155

Post by Aurornis »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #61
muldvarp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it would be "kafkaesque" either. In fact I fail to see any connection between those two facts other than that both are decisions to allow or not allow something to happen by OpenAI.

It's oppressive and nightmarish because we are at the mercy of large conglomerates tracking every move we make and kicking our livelyhoods out from under ourselves, while also censoring AI to make it more amenable to pro-corporate speech. Imagine if ChatGPT gave "do a luigi" as a solution to walmart tracking your face, gait, device fingerprints, location, and payment details, then offering that data to local police f…

> Imagine if ChatGPT gave "do a luigi" as a solution to walmart tracking your face, gait, device fingerprints, location, and payment details, then offering that data to local police forces for the grand panopticon to use for parallel reconstruction.

> It would be unimaginable.

By "do a luigi" you're referring to the person who executed a health insurance CEO in cold blood on the street?

Are you really suggesting that training LLMs to not suggest committing murder is evil censorship? If LLMs started suggesting literal murder as a solution to problems that people typed in, do you really think that would be a good idea?

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

#156

Post by LunaSea »

Aurornis wrote: post #155
MSFT_Edging wrote: post #61

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's oppressive and nightmarish because we are at the mercy of large conglomerates tracking every move we make and kicking our livelyhoods out from under ourselves, while also censoring AI to make it more amenable to pro-corporate speech. Imagine if ChatGPT gave "do a luigi" as a solution to walmart tracking your face, gait, device fingerprints, location, and payment details, then offering that data to local police f…

> Imagine if ChatGPT gave "do a luigi" as a solution to walmart tracking your face, gait, device fingerprints, location, and payment details, then offering that data to local police forces for the grand panopticon to use for parallel reconstruction. > It would be unimaginable. By "do a luigi" you're referring to the person who executed a health insurance CEO in cold blood on the street? Are you really suggesting that…

Didn't OpenAI already suggest to a kid to kill himself and avoid asking for help from the outside some weeks ago?

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

#157

Post by torginus »

patrick451 wrote: post #83
torginus wrote: post #55

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean one of the services at work had a custom HTML dashboard. We eliminated it and replaced it with Grafana. I worked on both - my skillset went from coding pretty bar charts in SVG + Javascript to configuring Grafana, Dockerfiles and Terraform templates. There's very little overlap between the two, other than general geekiness, but thanks I'm still doing OK.

Seems like a bad decision. Grafana is awful compared to a bespoke solution.

I don't get the hate - Imo it's one of the better working tech products I've had the chance of using.

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

#158

Post by moduspol »

odie5533 wrote: post #154
moduspol wrote: post #151

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I think current implementations of AI are vastly overhyped in the market. There's a huge gap between what people think or expect from AI and what has been delivered, and the deliveries are not likely to catch up in the short or medium term. There are remarkably few success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. The best examples we've got are marginal (and conflicting) improvements in software developer…

> There are remarkably few actual success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. If I employ 100 people, and AI makes them 10% more productive, then I only need 90 people now to do the same work. AI doesn't have to replace people 1:1 for it to result in job losses. It just needs to increase productivity (or be seen to even). And you might think 100 people that are 10% more productive now I have 110! But…

> If I employ 100 people, and AI makes them 10% more productive, then I only need 90 people now to do the same work.

I think it's yet to be seen that AI actually makes people 10% more productive, and further, that getting a task done 10% faster actually means they have 10% more time that is actually used for additional tasks.

And more bluntly: I think if it actually were happening, it'd be a lot more plainly obvious to all of us. The pressure from the C-suite to integrate AI into our workflows has been widely noted.

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

#159

Post by 93po »

mattacular wrote: post #17
dfxm12 wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Salesforce CEO confirms 4,000 layoffs ‘because I need less heads’ with AI - https://www.cnbc.com/2025/09/02/salesforce-ceo-confirms-4000...

Does anybody really believe that SalesForce of all companies has successfully replaced 4000 real and necessary jobs with AI? Or is that more likely just an excuse to justify more layoffs in the tech industry for the usual reasons.

It's less about justifying layouts and more PR: Salesforce is trying to sell AI products and they're marketing how good they are at AI by saying they removed 4k jobs with it

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

#160

Post by Guthur »

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 even used clojure at one stage, possibly still does.
Post reply on HN