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AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

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Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#161

Post by pluc »

somenameforme wrote: post #114
pluc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

"Only" kind of misses the benefit though. I'm very bearish on "AI", but this is an absolutely perfect use case for LLMs. The issue is that if you describe a problem in natural language on any search engine, your results are going to be garbage unless you randomly luckboxed into somebody asking, with near identical verbiage, the question on some Q&A site. That is because search is still mostly stuck in ~2003. But now…

"Instead of making search smarter we just decided to make everyone stupider"

Why invest in making users more savvy when you can dumb down everything to 5 year old level eh

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#162

Post by keybored »

simianwords wrote: post #154
kelseyfrog wrote: post #148

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm genuinely glad for the people in India. But that progress doesn't reduce the feeling of inequality here in the U.S. Dismissing people with arguments doesn't work either. It doesn’t eliminate the feeling of inequality or change people's perspective about absolute vs relative wealth. Why? Because the promise used to justify labor - that hard work will be rewarded - was deeply believed. The contradiction becomes vis…

This is not the appropriate way to respond when the poster was clearly incorrect in their main points. Dismissing people with arguments is the rational thing to do. Your first mistake is thinking hard work matters. No it doesn't and it shouldn't. Only work that provides value should matter - you don't deserve more money just for working 10x hard but when it doesn't matter to anyone. Your entire comment hinges on a ze…

Productivity in the US has gone up steadily since WWII (“only work that provides value should matter”) but wages have stagnated since the 70’s.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#163

Post by d1sxeyes »

pluc wrote: post #78
hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

I would agree, but I’ve spent the last ten years or so working with outsourced tech support and I guarantee you, a lot of people call us just because they can’t be bothered to look for themselves.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#164

Post by simianwords »

keybored wrote: post #162
simianwords wrote: post #154

Earlier quoted context omitted.

This is not the appropriate way to respond when the poster was clearly incorrect in their main points. Dismissing people with arguments is the rational thing to do. Your first mistake is thinking hard work matters. No it doesn't and it shouldn't. Only work that provides value should matter - you don't deserve more money just for working 10x hard but when it doesn't matter to anyone. Your entire comment hinges on a ze…

Productivity in the US has gone up steadily since WWII (“only work that provides value should matter”) but wages have stagnated since the 70’s.

Wages have _not_ stagnated since the 70's. Nor has it stagnated since the 2000's.

Can you provide a source to backup your claim?

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#165

Post by PhantomHour »

crazygringo wrote: post #145
PhantomHour wrote: post #95

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected. What are you talking about? The return on investment from computers was immediate and extremely identifiable. For crying out loud "computers" are literally named after the people whose work they automated. With Personal Computers the pitch is similarly immediate. It's trivial to point at what labour VisiCalc automated & improved. The gains a…

> What are you talking about? The return on investment from computers was immediate and extremely identifiable. It is well-documented, and called the "productivity paradox of computers" if you want to look it up. It was identified in 1987, and economic statistics show that personal computing didn't become a net positive for the economy until around 1995-1997. And like I said, it's very dependent on the individual com…

It's well documented. It's also quite controversial and economists still dispute it to this day.

It's economic analysis of the entire economy, from the "outside" (statistics) inward. My point is that the individual business case was financially solvent.

Apple Computer did not need to "change the world" it needed to sell computers at a profit, enough of them to cover their fixed costs, and do so without relying on other people just setting their money on fire. (And it succeeded on all three counts.) Whether or not they were a minute addition to the entire economy or a gigantic one is irrelevant.

Similarly with AI. AI does not need to "increase aggregate productivity over the entire economy", it needs to turn a profit or it dies. Whether or not it can keep the boomer pension funds from going insolvent is a question for economics wonks. Ultimately the aggregate economic effects follow from the individual one.

Thus the difference. PCs had a "core of financial solvency" nearly immediately. Even if they weren't useful for 99.9% of jobs that 0.1% would still find them useful enough to buy and keep the industry alive. If the hype were to run out on such an industry, it shrinks to something sustainable. (Compare: Consumer goods like smartwatches, which were hyped for a while, and didn't change the world but maintained a suitable core audience to sustain the industry)

With AI, even AI companies struggle to pitch such a core, nevermind actually prove it.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#166

Post by mythrwy »

simianwords wrote: post #135
jmyeet wrote: post #131

Earlier quoted context omitted.

There are many ways to attack this assertion. For example: 1. The stagnation or decline in real wages in the developed world in recent decades; 2. Increasing homelessness as a consequence of the housing affordability crisis; 3. How global poverty has increased in the last century under capitalism. This surprises some because defenders claim the opposite. China is singlehandedly responsible to massive decrease in extr…

Your first and last points are egregiously incorrect. A simple google search will tell you this. Extreme poverty throughout the world has dramatically reduced. In Western Europe it came down from 50% to less than 1% through the 20th century. India brought it down dramatically and is continuing to do it. A simple Wikipedia search can tell you this. Wages has been increasing in china, India as well as USA after account…

Additionally we can point out the problems of inequality and governmental capture by elite interests (and they are problems) but then the jump to "government will do it better than these greedy people" is a big one and I don't see much evidence for it.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#167

Post by pluc »

d1sxeyes wrote: post #163
pluc wrote: post #78

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

I would agree, but I’ve spent the last ten years or so working with outsourced tech support and I guarantee you, a lot of people call us just because they can’t be bothered to look for themselves.

Getting instant answers without having to deploy any effort isn't going to make the problem go away, it's going to make us dependent on the solution.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#168

Post by torginus »

simianwords wrote: post #102
torginus wrote: post #70

I wonder if AI automation will even lead to a recession in total software engineering revenue. At my job, thanks to AI, we managed to rewrite one of our boxed vendor tools we were dissatisfied with, to an in-house solution. I'm sure the company we were ordering from misses the revenue. The SaaS industry is full of products whose value proposition is 'it's cheaper to buy the product from us than hire a guy who handles…

What you are saying is not intuitive. Software engineers are a cost to software companies. With automation the profits would increase so I’m not sure how it can lead to recession.

Something not being intuitive doesn't make it untrue - if AI makes engineers 10x as productive it means that we need 1/10th the engineers to produce as much software as we do - it might induce demand but demand might not keep up with the production. SW Engineering might become a buyers market instead of a sellers market.

One example I mentioned is SaaS whose value proposition is that it's cheaper than to hire a dedicated guy to do it - if AI can do it, then that software has no more reason to exist.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#169

Post by Teever »

cantrevealname wrote: post #38
jcfrei wrote: post #14

IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.

> AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had If we project long term, could this mean that countries with the most capital to invest in AI and robotics (like the U.S.) could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)?

Probably not because America lacks the blue collar skills necessary to build and service the kind of manufacturing infrastructure needed to do what you're describing.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#170

Post by anelson »

The move that I’m fighting in my company now is hiring bargain basement Indian outsourced heads who are very obviously vibe coding slop. It’s a raw deal for us since we’re paying extra for a meat wrapper around an LLM coding agent, but I’m sure it’s a boon for the outsourcing company who can easily put one vibe-coding head on three or four engagements in parallel. It’s hard to imagine LLM coding technologies not being enthusiastically adopted by all of the outsourcers given the economic incentives to do so.

Whether or not they end up losing business long term, it seems like a nice grift for as long as they can pull it off.

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