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The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

cnn.com

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#431

Post by DonHopkins »

trhway wrote: post #306
bachmeier wrote: post #68

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I mean, we hired someone on my team to attend cross functional meetings because our calendars were literally too full to attend. Some managers read Dilbert and think it's intended as advice.

AI has been also consuming Dilbert as part of its training...

Worse yet, AI has been consuming Scott Adams quotes as part of its training...

"The reality is that women are treated differently by society for exactly the same reason that children and the mentally handicapped are treated differently. It’s just easier this way for everyone. You don’t argue with a four-year old about why he shouldn’t eat candy for dinner. You don’t punch a mentally handicapped guy even if he punches you first. And you don’t argue when a women tells you she’s only making 80 cents to your dollar. It’s the path of least resistance. You save your energy for more important battles." -Scott Adams

"Women define themselves by their relationships and men define themselves by whom they are helping. Women believe value is created by sacrifice. If you are willing to give up your favorite activities to be with her, she will trust you. If being with her is too easy for you, she will not trust you." -Scott Adams

"Nearly half of all Blacks are not OK with White people. That’s a hate group." -Scott Adams

"Based on the current way things are going, the best advice I would give to White people is to get the hell away from Black people. Just get the fuck away. Wherever you have to go, just get away. Because there’s no fixing this. This can’t be fixed." -Scott Adams

"I’m going to back off from being helpful to Black Americas because it doesn’t seem like it pays off. ... The only outcome is that I get called a racist." -Scott Adams

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#432

Post by tokioyoyo »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #104

These are the moments that make millionaires. A majority of people believe that AI is going to thoroughly disrupt society. They've been primed to worry about an "AI apocalypse" by Hollywood for their entire lives. The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. You can't get more diametrically opposed than that. If you can correctly guess (or logically determine) which is correct, and bet all of y…

Not the biggest fan of crypto companies, but YC probably did well because of Coinbase.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#433

Post by VonTum »

renewiltord wrote: post #386
catigula wrote: post #206

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Off-shoring is pretty big right now but what shocks me is that when I walk around my company campus I see obscene amounts of people visibly and culturally from, mostly, India and China. The idea that literally massive amounts of this workforce couldn't possibly be filled by domestic grads is pretty hard to engage with. These are low level business and accounting analyst positions. Both sides of the aisle retreated fr…

[flagged]

What a weird crabs-in-a-bucket argument against unions. "Don't empower yourself and the rest of your colleagues because they might get powerful enough to kick you out"?

The whole reason H1Bs were invented is to disempower the existing workforce. Not reaching for a (long overdue) tool of power for tech workers is playing right into their hand.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#434

Post by tdeck »

AznHisoka wrote: post #425
tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

“we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in innovative products and improvements to existing products.” Shipping features faster != innovation or improvements to existing products

Granting that those don't fully overlap, is that relevant to the point? I'm not seeing either.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#435

Post by DonHopkins »

myko wrote: post #157
idkwhattocallme wrote: post #150

Earlier quoted context omitted.

True! I golfed with the president of the division on a Friday (during work) and we got to the root of this. Companies would rather burn money on headcount (counted as R&D) than show profits and pay the govt taxes. When you have 70%+ margin on your software, you have money to burn. Dividends back to shareholders was not rewarded during ZIRP. On VP's being respected. I found at the companies I worked at VPs and their d…

Not so fun in real life but I kind of like this as a video game concept

LGR - Afterlife - PC Game Review

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-azFNwF6fa0

Afterlife (video game)

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Afterlife_(video_game)

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#436

Post by barchar »

phendrenad2 wrote: post #104

These are the moments that make millionaires. A majority of people believe that AI is going to thoroughly disrupt society. They've been primed to worry about an "AI apocalypse" by Hollywood for their entire lives. The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. You can't get more diametrically opposed than that. If you can correctly guess (or logically determine) which is correct, and bet all of y…

It's not really enough to predict the outcome, you need something concrete to actually bet on, and you need to time things right (particularly for the pessimistic bet).

For any bet that involves purchasing bits of profits you you could be right and lose money because because the government generally won't allow the entire economy to implode.

By the time a bubble pops literally everyone knows they're in a bubble, knowing something is a bubble doesn't make it irrational to jump on the bandwagon.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#437

Post by tdeck »

bjt12345 wrote: post #430
tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

The problem seems to be two-fold. Firstly, the capex is currently too high for all but the few. This is a rather obvious statement, sure. But the impact is a lot of companies "have tried language models and they didn't work", and the capex is laughable. Secondly, there's a corporate paralysis over AI. I received a panicky policy statement written in legalaise forbidding employees from using LLMs in any form. Written…

This is a good reminder that every org is different. However some companies like Microsoft are aggressively pushing AI tools internally, to a degree that is almost cringe.

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#438

Post by tikhonj »

wcfrobert wrote: post #427
tdeck wrote: post #416

Maybe someone can help me wrap my head around this in a different way, because here's how I see it. If these tools are really making people so productive, shouldn't it be painfully obvious in companies' output? For example, if these AI coding tools were an amazing productivity boost in the end, we'd expect to see software companies shipping features and fixes faster than ever before. There would be a huge burst in in…

If AI makes everyone 10x engineers, you can 2x the productive output while reducing headcount by 5x. Luckily software companies are not ball bearings factories.

unluckily, too many corporate managers seem to think they are :/

Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#439

Post by financltravsty »

esperent wrote: post #424
CMCDragonkai wrote: post #420

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's cause there are still bottlenecks. AI is definitely boosting productivity in specific areas, but the total system output is bottlenecked. I think we will see these bottlenecks get rerouted or refactored in the coming years.

> It's cause there are still bottlenecks How do you know this? What are the bottlenecks?

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Re: The ‘white-collar bloodbath’ is all part of the AI hype machine

#440

Post by barchar »

ls612 wrote: post #272
SoftTalker wrote: post #133

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> The prevailing counter-narrative is that AI is going to flop. HARD. Why is that the counter-narrative? Doesn't it seem more likely that it will contine to gradually improve, perhaps asymptotically, maybe be more specifically trained in the niches where it works well, and it will just become another tool that humans use? Maybe that's a flop compared to the hype?

At the rate the hyperscalers are increasing capex anything less than 1990s internet era growth rates will not be pretty. So far its been able to sustain those growth rates at the big boy AI companies (look at OpenAI revenue over time) but will it continue? Are we near the end of major LLM advances or are we near the beginning? There are compelling arguments both ways (running out of data is IMO the most compelling be…

It's been able to sustain 90s era revenue growth rates, not 90s era income growth rates no?
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