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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

#191

Post by ryanackley »

BeetleB wrote: post #68
ryanackley wrote: post #53

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's not a comment on the ethics of replacing jobs but the hypocrisy of companies using "ethics" as reasoning for restricting content. They are pursuing profits. Their ethical focus is essentially a form of theater.

Replacing jobs is not an ethical issue. Automation and technology has been replacing jobs for well over a century, almost always to better outcomes for society. If it were an ethical issue, then it would be unethical not to do it. In any case, which jobs have been replaced by LLMs? Most of the actual ones I know were BS jobs to begin with - jobs I wish had not existed to begin with. The rest of the ones are where CEO…

You're so wrapped up in defending the job replacement aspect that you miss the point on hypocrisy.

I would like to make one small point about job replacement, the better outcomes for society are arguably inconclusive at this point. You've been indoctrinated to think that all progress and disruption is good because of capitalism.

We're still in the post-industrialization arc of history and we're on a course of overconsumption and ecological destruction.

Yes, we've seen QoL improvements over the course of recent generations. Do you really think it's sustainable?

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

#192

Post by bombcar »

toss1 wrote: post #176
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…

Yup, software was one of the keys to Walmart being able to expand as much as it did in the 1980s-90s. Their advanced (for the time) inventory & sales systems could tell when some products were selling well in one region and not in another (due to stylistic preferences, prevailing weather, etc.), and they could arbitrage that and move inventory to optimize sales for each location. It was a major advantage over any oth…

Their internal software was so good that their website and online store was an absolute embarrassment for so many years.

They finally seem to have turned that around, though I heard they did it buy just buying someone.

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

#193

Post by 7thaccount »

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 Arkansas is basically like a cheaper Denver Colorado.

They have one of the best coffee roasters/shops out there, tons of bike and hiking trails, you're in the Ozarks, a major university is next door in Fayetteville. You're not that far away from doing a float trip on the buffalo river either (1.5 hours). They have tons of concerts there too in Walmart's ampitheater. Also, there is some industry for sure and decent schools (for the south anyway).

It is very trendy. Northwest Arkansas is nothing like south Arkansas. Not geographically or politically. I wouldn't expect it to be THAT difficult to convince folks to relocate to somewhere like that. Walmart does pump a lot of money into the area.

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

#194

Post by johnbellone »

7thaccount wrote: post #193
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 Arkansas is basically like a cheaper Denver Colorado. They have one of the best coffee roasters/shops out there, tons of bike and hiking trails, you're in the Ozarks, a major university is next door in Fayetteville. You're not that far away from doing a float trip on the buffalo river either (1.5 hours). They have tons of concerts there too in Walmart's ampitheater. Also, there is some industry for sure a…

For people that care, the state is politically a no go.

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

#195

Post by ascagnel_ »

LeifCarrotson wrote: post #65
nilkn wrote: post #29

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's rarely (maybe never) a direct one-to-one elimination of jobs. Most attempts to replace a single complete human job with an AI agent are not successful (and large companies, generally, aren't even attempting that). Rather, the phenomenon is more like a diffuse productivity gain across a large team or organization that results in a smaller headcount need over time as its final net effect. In practice, this materia…

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…

> secretaries who took dictation (with a typewriter, of course) to write those documents

Complete aside, just because you brought up this thought and I like the concept of it:

My mom trained professionally as a secretary in the 1970s and worked in a law office in the 1980s; at that point, if you were taking dictation, you were generally doing longhand stenography to capture dictation, and then you'd type it up later. A stenotype would've been a rarity in a pre-computer office because of the cost of the machine; after all, if you need a secretary for all these other tasks, it's cheaper to give them a $2 notebook than it is a $1,500+ machine.

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

#196

Post by fzeroracer »

7thaccount wrote: post #193
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 Arkansas is basically like a cheaper Denver Colorado. They have one of the best coffee roasters/shops out there, tons of bike and hiking trails, you're in the Ozarks, a major university is next door in Fayetteville. You're not that far away from doing a float trip on the buffalo river either (1.5 hours). They have tons of concerts there too in Walmart's ampitheater. Also, there is some industry for sure a…

With how hostile state politics have become though, there's no amount of pay that could get me to move out to Arkansas. Learned my lesson after living in Austin for a few years.

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

#197

Post by 7thaccount »

fzeroracer wrote: post #196
7thaccount wrote: post #193

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Bentonville Arkansas is basically like a cheaper Denver Colorado. They have one of the best coffee roasters/shops out there, tons of bike and hiking trails, you're in the Ozarks, a major university is next door in Fayetteville. You're not that far away from doing a float trip on the buffalo river either (1.5 hours). They have tons of concerts there too in Walmart's ampitheater. Also, there is some industry for sure a…

With how hostile state politics have become though, there's no amount of pay that could get me to move out to Arkansas. Learned my lesson after living in Austin for a few years.

Good point. The state's government is in Little Rock in the middle of the state and pretty conservative.

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

#198

Post by fuzzfactor »

DrewADesign wrote: post #109
ActionHank wrote: post #58

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 While many of them are mistaken, the much bigger problem is for all the early career developers, many of whom will never work in the field. These people were assured by everyone from professors to industry leaders to tech writers that the bounty of problems available for humanity to solve would outpace the rate at which automation would reduce the…

For another thing the owners of the data centers may not do so well if their wildest dreams fail to come true, and if they don't happen to make enough money to replace the hardware before it wears out.

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

#199

Post by BeetleB »

ryanackley wrote: post #191
BeetleB wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Replacing jobs is not an ethical issue. Automation and technology has been replacing jobs for well over a century, almost always to better outcomes for society. If it were an ethical issue, then it would be unethical not to do it. In any case, which jobs have been replaced by LLMs? Most of the actual ones I know were BS jobs to begin with - jobs I wish had not existed to begin with. The rest of the ones are where CEO…

You're so wrapped up in defending the job replacement aspect that you miss the point on hypocrisy. I would like to make one small point about job replacement, the better outcomes for society are arguably inconclusive at this point. You've been indoctrinated to think that all progress and disruption is good because of capitalism. We're still in the post-industrialization arc of history and we're on a course of overcon…

How is it hypocrisy when OpenAI is clearly acknowledging in their blog post that AI is going to disrupt jobs?

When a factory decides to shut down, and the company offers to pay for 2 years of vocational training for any employee that wants it, is it hypocrisy? One of my physical therapists, who took such an offer, definitely doesn't see it that way. The entity responsible for her losing her job actually ended up setting up a whole new career for her.

> I would like to make one small point about job replacement, the better outcomes for society are arguably inconclusive at this point. You've been indoctrinated to think that all progress and disruption is good because of capitalism.

That's overstating my stance. I can accept that it's too early to say whether LLMs have been a net positive (or will be a net positive), but my inclination is strongly in that direction. For me, it definitely has been a net positive. Because of health issues, LLMs allow me to do things I simply couldn't do before.

> Yes, we've seen QoL improvements over the course of recent generations. Do you really think it's sustainable?

This is an age old question and nothing new with LLMs. We've been arguing it since the dawn of the Industrial Revolution (and for some, since the dawn of farming). What I do know is that it resulted in a lot of great things for society (e.g. medicine), and I don't have much faith that we would have achieved them otherwise.

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

#200

Post by lagniappe »

keiferski wrote: post #26

IIRC this is a background premise in William Gibson’s The Peripheral. Most jobs are either for a tech company, or at a Walmart-esque store that has eaten all other retail.

Or you end up as one of the hired goons of Corbell Pickett, one of the greatest bad guys of all time (only slightly below Clarence Boddicker).
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