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Replacement.ai

replacement.ai

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Re: Replacement.ai

#461

Post by overfeed »

bilekas wrote: post #396
allturtles wrote: post #32

This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the AI age. The leader bios are particularly priceless. "While working for 12 years as the Director of HR for a multinational, Faith realized that firing people gave her an almost-spiritual high. Out of the office, Faith coaches a little league softball team and looks after her sick mother - obligations she looks forward to being free of!"

> This is a brilliant piece of satire. "A Modest Proposal" for the AI age. There's some truth in all satire though. I'm just shocked YC hasn't nuked the link from the front page.

Everyone is way above average here on HN, and will be thinking "The article speaks about every other idiot I work with - my genius is singular; I'm too valuable to my employer and irreplaceable. I'll be the one wrangling the AI that replaces my colleagues, while they figure out welfare"

Re: Replacement.ai

#462

Post by amarant »

boogieknite wrote: post #407
amarant wrote: post #220

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I mean, she already has 3 tiny pink little robots designed specifically for the purpose. This isn't exactly news

"this guy fucks" - Russ Hannamen, HBO's Silicon Valley surprised to see this so far down. if a robot can fuck better, then we would probably both have fun fucking robots together

Indeed! And "it might lead to better dildos" is genuinely the weirdest argument against AI I've heard so far.

Re: Replacement.ai

#463

Post by acuozzo »

onraglanroad wrote: post #323
EgregiousCube wrote: post #274

Earlier quoted context omitted.

When you sign your offer letter, you're entering into an employment contract. What you're describing is regulatory limitations on what that contract can say, and how different contracts can have different terms.

Now from what you've said I think they might be right. You don't get a full contract that you sign that details your job, leave entitlement etc in the US?

Unless it's a contracting or union position, what you get is something resembling a contract, but your agreement to it comes with the mutual understanding between you and your employer that no effective enforcement body exists to uphold your interests.

If it says "you work 40 hours per week and have 4 weeks of paid vacation" and your employer, EVEN IN WRITING, compels you to work 60 hour weeks and not take any vacation at a later date, then your only real option is to find work elsewhere. The Department of Labor won't have your back and you likely won't have enough money to afford a lawyer to fight on your behalf longer than the corporate lawyers your company has on staff.

Many programmers don't get treated this way because of the market, but abusive treatment of employees runs rampant in blue collar professions.

Need proof? Look at how few UNPAID weeks of maternity leave new mothers are entitled to under the law. This should tell you everything you need to know.

I have personally seen women return to work LESS THAN A WEEK after delivering a baby because they couldn't afford to not do so.

Re: Replacement.ai

#464

Post by YZF »

erichocean wrote: post #423
JimDabell wrote: post #336

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. Taking work away from people is practically the definition of technology. We invent things to reduce the effort needed to do things. Eliminating work is a good thing, that’s why inventing things is so popular! What ends up happening is the amount of work remains relatively constant, meaning we get more done for the same amount of effort performed b…

[flagged]

We've replaced human jobs in the past not just made them more efficient. Horses (and all the jobs to do with them) were completely displaced by cars. Those jobs aren't more efficient, they're gone. Similar with many other jobs during the industrial revolution.

This is not a zero sum game. For an economy to exist we need consumers. For consumers to exist we need people to have jobs and be paid. So the equilibrium is that there will be some new jobs somewhere, not done by robots, that will pay people enough to consume the (better and cheaper) goods made by those robots. Or we'll just have a lot of leisure time and get paid by the government. Or (like some other discussion thread) we'll all be wiped out or slaves in the salt mines if the elites can just sustain/improve without us and are able to enforce it. Either way, it's not the scenario where we're out of jobs sitting at home.

Re: Replacement.ai

#465

Post by pydry »

Kiro wrote: post #144
darthoctopus wrote: post #18

Earlier quoted context omitted.

that is the point of Luddism! the original Luddite movement was not ipso facto opposed to progress, but rather to the societal harm caused by society-scale economic obsolescence. the entire history of technology is also powerful business interests smearing this movement as being intrinsically anti-progress, rather than directly addressing these concerns…

I think we should be careful attributing too much idealism to it. The Luddites were not a unified movement and people had much more urgent concerns than thinking about technological progress from a sociocentric perspective. Considering the time period with the Napoleonic Wars as backdrop I don't think anyone can blame them for simply being angry and wanting to smash the machines that made them lose their job.

Exactly, the luddites werent especially anti technology. Smashing stocking frames for them was a tactic to drive up their wages.

Just as the fallout of the napoleonic war was used as a means of driving down their wages. The only difference is that tactic didnt get employers executed.

It's always been in the interests of capital to nudge the pitchforks away from their hides in the direction of the machines, and to always try and recharacterize anti capitalist movements as anti technology.

In 2010 I remember a particularly stupid example where Forbes declared anti Uber protestors were "anti smartphone".

Sadly most people dont seem to be smart enough to not fall for this.

Re: Replacement.ai

#466

Post by brandensilva »

theptip wrote: post #73
sincerely wrote: post #9

I kind of get it, but at the same time...isn't "we made a machine to do something that people used to do" basically the entire history of of technology? It feels like somehow we should have figured out how to cope with the "but what about the old jobs" problem

> AI can do anything a human can do - but better, faster and much, much cheaper. Should be pretty clear that this is a different proposition to the historical trend of 2% GDP growth. Mass unemployment is pretty hard for society to cope with, and understandably causes a lot of angst.

And that comes down to the moral and social contract we have and the power we give to digital money and who owns it.

We either let the peoples creativity and knowledge be controlled and owned by a select few OR we ensure all people benefit from humanities creativity and own it. And the fruits that it bears advance all of humanity. Where their are safety nets in place to ensure we are not enslaved by it but elevated to advance it.

Re: Replacement.ai

#467

Post by mattgreenrocks »

warent wrote: post #339
beeflet wrote: post #325

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It is not a bug, it is a law of nature. The world has limited resources, time and labor being one of them. The technology proposes a source of labor for the elites so abundant that they will not need to trade their wealth with the eaters. However much resources you consume, it will be too much to buy for your labor. You will be priced out of existence.

Elites unilaterally claiming and reaping the benefits of automation (i.e. consolidation of wealth) is not a law of nature.

Correct. If we don’t do anything, it effectively is about as immutable as a law of nature. But if enough people respond, the system will change in some way.

Note that the stench of inevitability likes to sneak into these discussions of systemic problems. Nothing is set in stone. Anyone telling you otherwise has given up themselves. The comment section attracts all kinds of life outlooks, after all. The utility of belief in some sort of agency (however small) shouldn’t be surrendered to someone else’s nihilistic disengagement.

Re: Replacement.ai

#468

Post by layer8 »

brainwad wrote: post #421
layer8 wrote: post #331

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The (former) translators I know mostly translated B2B publications (brochures, specifications, …), commonly containing specialized domain vocabulary. Certainly not low-hanging fruit. I’m sure AI can’t make a quality job on those without guidance and review by a speaker of both languages knowledgeable in the respective domain. Nevertheless, the market for such translations has dried up, and those that remain only pay…

It's because the marginal value of idiomatic human translations, over robotic and partially bad machine translations, is not actually that high. Especially not for B2B where people can accept poor prose from a trading partner.

The important thing is for the technical details and terms to be correct, otherwise it might be false advertising, or the spec for what you are requesting might be wrong. And you can’t rely on AI to be reliably accurate in that, or for the translation even to make sense technically.

Re: Replacement.ai

#469

Post by anonym29 »

klipt wrote: post #453
raincole wrote: post #358

Earlier quoted context omitted.

It's actually an extremely good analogy (but in the opposite way of what you imply), as you don't own your job or your wife. Banning AI for job security is like banning dildos because they make men feel insecure.

It's not limited to men. A lot of feminists are also vocally against the idea of female sex bots because it makes them feel insecure.

Any idea why a bipedal fleshlight makes them insecure? My head jumps to "could it because they fear that without sex, they have no value?" but that sounds so ridiculous to me. All human life matters, has value, and should be treated with kindness, respect, and dignity. I've met plenty of women who add value to the world in a bajillion other ways.

Can someone help me understand this one?

Re: Replacement.ai

#470

Post by StevePerkins »

lwhi wrote: post #208
TechSquidTV wrote: post #86

Personal belief, but robots coming for your jobs is not a valid argument against robots. If robots can do a job better and/or faster, they should be the ones doing the jobs. Specialization is how we got to the future. So the problem isn't robots, it's the structure of how we humans rely on jobs for income. I don't necessarily feel like it's the AI company's problem to fix either. This is what government is for, and n…

Government no longer has the power or authority to constrain private enterprise; especially in highly technical sectors.

Of course it does. Do you think the elites actually WANT massive tariffs putting a brake on GDP growth? Why are tech companies suddenly reversing course on content moderation and/or DEI, after years of pushing in the opposite directions?

Private enterprise will always have some level of corrupting influence over government. And perhaps it sees current leadership as the lesser of two evils in the grand scheme. But make no mistake, government DOES ultimately have the power, when it chooses to assert itself and use it. It's just a matter of political will, which waxes and wanes.

Going back a century, did the British aristocracy WANT to be virtually taxed out of existence, and confined to the historical dustbin of "Downton Abbey"?

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