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

221–230 of 238 posts

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

#221

Post by myko »

rglullis wrote: post #114
myko wrote: post #98

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Having used agentic ai (Claude Code, Gemini CLI) and other LLM based tools quite a bit for development work I just don't see it replacing developers anytime soon. Sure a lot of my job now is cleaning up code created by these tools but they are not building usable systems without a lot of developer oversight. I think they'll create more software developer roles and specialties.

What you are saying does not contradict the point from your parent. Automation can create "more roles and specialties" while reducing the total number of people in aggregate for greater economic output and further concentration of capital.

I was talking about software development roles specifically, LLMs aren't going to reduce them imo - they just aren't good enough, and I don't think they can be

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

#222

Post by jackthetab »

ai-christianson wrote: post #145
beng-nl wrote: post #139

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inter…

Tres cool! Can you point me in the direction of how to do that? We're a small, bootstrapped company and could use a manager like that.

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

#223

Post by rglullis »

myko wrote: post #221
rglullis wrote: post #114

Earlier quoted context omitted.

What you are saying does not contradict the point from your parent. Automation can create "more roles and specialties" while reducing the total number of people in aggregate for greater economic output and further concentration of capital.

I was talking about software development roles specifically, LLMs aren't going to reduce them imo - they just aren't good enough, and I don't think they can be

They are reducing jobs already.

Recent grads are having serious trouble to get work right now: https://www.understandingai.org/p/new-evidence-strongly-sugg...

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

#224

Post by conartist6 »

Workaccount2 wrote: post #120
conartist6 wrote: post #54

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Except that we know that even if you can't put your finger on what it is right now, there's something in the way of "ChatGPT just literally prints money" being at all realistic. It's pretty obvious in the markets if anyone has figured out a repeatable strategy for printing money. This is to say that we know from looking at outcomes over the long term that the kinds of concrete gains you're describing are offset by su…

>This is to say that we know from looking at outcomes over the long term Public LLMs have been around for 3 years, and adoption is still nascent. We don't have any long term data, and the longest term data we have involves a bunch of outdated models. Most people are still awful at using LLMs, and probably the most skilled users are the college kids who are graduating right now (the youth is always god-tier with new t…

I think saying you can't imagine anything more foolish makes you look the fool. You just pick which evidence you'd prefer to ignore and go on with being told "you're absolutely right" all day.

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

#225

Post by ai-christianson »

jackthetab wrote: post #222
ai-christianson wrote: post #145

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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 inter…

Tres cool! Can you point me in the direction of how to do that? We're a small, bootstrapped company and could use a manager like that.

On our site there's a discord button feel free to jump on our general chat or dm me!

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

#226

Post by Sherveen »

_DeadFred_ wrote: post #187
eatsyourtacos wrote: post #175

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well I'm part of a small few person team- I had a junior developer helping me who left. And I literally don't need someone like him anymore because I can do anything that he was doing via AI faster and better because it's under my control. I can have a 20 minute conversation and code revision that would have taken days for someone junior to code and would have probably been not done right (by 'right' I mean how I wan…

And when you are out sick, can AI do his role? When you are on vacation, can AI do his role? When you leave, can AI at least help define/interview your replacement, like he could have, even if he's too junior to step into the role? There is so much else that people do. So many details that are just being ignored because of short term 'gains' that justify ignoring so many details.

You aren't taking what he said seriously. The junior could also get sick, present management issues, etc.

If this person plus a junior represented "1.3 engineering knots," he's saying... "actually, I'm still 1.3 engineering knots without him."

When this person leaves, they go find someone else who is 1.3 engineering knots. The junior represented .3, without the 1., it doesn't matter that much. Headcount strategy shifts.

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

#227

Post by _DeadFred_ »

potato3732842 wrote: post #207
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #188

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Can the AI find alternative suppliers when your current ones go out of business or closes down production lines (even just for short term re-tooling)? Can AI negotiate when you get a big sale and need a huge production run? There are so many moving parts that a human juggles, more than what you list. All AI solutions seem like this. Automate the day to day duties of a job, when the real value of the person doing the…

That's like saying machines are bad because people still hand excavate ditches in the last couple feet near utilities. You are missing the point. Anyone who can do the full job isn't missing anything by skipping the drudgery. Every task the AI can juggle for you is one you don't have to. If your department goes from 4 to 3 great, if it goes from 2-1 or 1-0 that's fine too. Companies already exist at those numbers. Yo…

There's zero emotion, no need to manipulate via injecting language like that.

Companies that can benefit from these sorts of purchasing use cases don't exist at 0. And at 1, this is already a minimal need so not useful. Past 2, and you need 2 staff anyways from reasons listed and more, so AI doesn't give a cost benefit, but it does introduce all kinds of risk (there's a lot more than just comparing SKUs) and weaken relationship with supplies, which can kill a company. Just doesn't make sense all around.

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

#228

Post by NeutralCrane »

bombcar wrote: post #192
toss1 wrote: post #176

Earlier quoted context omitted.

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.

I wouldn’t say they have turned it around. Just a few weeks ago I was at a Walmart without my wallet. Went to use my phone to pay at the self-checkout. Can’t do it, you have to pay through the Walmart app. Downloaded the app. It had my payment information saved from my account. Didn’t work, it was an old card that had expired. Tried to update it with new card information. Errored out every time. Literally couldn’t pay, and was too annoyed to ask for help, so I left what I was going to buy there and just left.

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

#229

Post by _DeadFred_ »

Sherveen wrote: post #226
_DeadFred_ wrote: post #187

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And when you are out sick, can AI do his role? When you are on vacation, can AI do his role? When you leave, can AI at least help define/interview your replacement, like he could have, even if he's too junior to step into the role? There is so much else that people do. So many details that are just being ignored because of short term 'gains' that justify ignoring so many details.

You aren't taking what he said seriously. The junior could also get sick, present management issues, etc. If this person plus a junior represented "1.3 engineering knots," he's saying... "actually, I'm still 1.3 engineering knots without him." When this person leaves, they go find someone else who is 1.3 engineering knots. The junior represented .3, without the 1., it doesn't matter that much. Headcount strategy shif…

If your company can treat people as cogs this way, your company has zero value add/domain knowledge. A company's value is what it value adds, what domain knowledge/expertise it has, or cheapest price. If all you have is cheapest price, you will lose over time. You will be undercut. You won't have the domain knowledge to adapt, to see future changes coming down the path.

So the company you talk about is already in the entropy vortex. It has no momentum. It has no future. It just hopes it can keep doing what it is doing now.

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

#230

Post by MSFT_Edging »

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…

You misread my comment completely. I was saying these tools will never be capable of empowering the average user against the owners who hold all the cards. "do a luigi" was an exaggeration.
Post reply on HN