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Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

businessinsider.com

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Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#61

Post by Moru »

iforgotpassword wrote: post #37
hyperman1 wrote: post #29

First time I tried Klarna, their 'payment' workflow was actually a 'grant full access to all bank accounts' workflow in disguise. I was thinking this amount of misleading must be illegal. Further interactions with them always felt sleazy. Maybe they know the regulators will dismantle the company in the near future and are optimizing for extracting the maximum before their implosion?

Yeah, I don't see why anyone with a bit of technical knowledge would use that over PayPal. I mean I'm all for destroying those evil ultra capitalist US corps but unfortunately our European counterparts are just complete rubbish more often than not. If you don't offer wire transfer or PayPal, you lost me as a customer.

Ehm, Paypal isn't exactly better than Klarna though. I have had only problems with both but Paypal beats Klarna in money saved for me as customer. Last time I used it I got the money back and the business got reported as a scammer (not by me, their algorithm). The business would have sent the goods already if it wasn't a bank holiday so I nearly got the whole order for free, around 1800 euro.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#63

Post by paradite »

ein0p wrote: post #59
paradite wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer with 7 years of experience. I've built products used by millions of users, I've built ML models and AI coding tools, and I've been using AI to generate 70% of code that's shipped to production in the last few months. I do believe that we can replace a large percentage of software engineers with AI in the next 3 years (2025-2027). Also this 1 million dollar Kaggle competition on AI coding just…

I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them…

Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons:

- AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code)

- I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#64

Post by m00x »

paradite wrote: post #45
ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

I'm a software engineer with 7 years of experience. I've built products used by millions of users, I've built ML models and AI coding tools, and I've been using AI to generate 70% of code that's shipped to production in the last few months. I do believe that we can replace a large percentage of software engineers with AI in the next 3 years (2025-2027). Also this 1 million dollar Kaggle competition on AI coding just…

Ah the junior dev starry-eyed mindset. Doing web dev isn't the only thing in the world.

AI will absolutely accelerate development, but we still need so much more modernization across all industries. We still have factories running on Windows NT with software made in the 80s. We have mines, lumberyards, farms, retail, parking, bio labs, etc. So many things need to be upgraded to the same standard as big tech is, but hasn't because it was too expensive.

Much of this AI isn't great at. It's easy to just spit out a web page with reactJS that was done 10,000x times already by millions of devs, but it's not so easy to make sure your smelter doesn't overheat or go cold using 20,000 live sensors.

New devs will have a harder time getting in, but they'll also have an easier time learning. Senior devs will be able to supervise much more.

The industry will change, but it's far from over. If anything, it will grow massively and make other industries much more productive.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#65

Post by yabatopia »

Aurornis wrote: post #7

Translation: Klarna is not growing and they needed a good excuse.

It's window dressing for their planned IPO. Klarna wants to go public during the first half of 2025, so it's all hands on deck to prop up the numbers. And saying the "right things" to investors, especially AI.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#66

Post by paradite »

m00x wrote: post #64
paradite wrote: post #45

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a software engineer with 7 years of experience. I've built products used by millions of users, I've built ML models and AI coding tools, and I've been using AI to generate 70% of code that's shipped to production in the last few months. I do believe that we can replace a large percentage of software engineers with AI in the next 3 years (2025-2027). Also this 1 million dollar Kaggle competition on AI coding just…

Ah the junior dev starry-eyed mindset. Doing web dev isn't the only thing in the world. AI will absolutely accelerate development, but we still need so much more modernization across all industries. We still have factories running on Windows NT with software made in the 80s. We have mines, lumberyards, farms, retail, parking, bio labs, etc. So many things need to be upgraded to the same standard as big tech is, but h…

I have to clarify that my statement don't apply to software engineers who are not working in tech companies or tech industries.

I usually call them IT instead of tech. Wrote more in my blog post: https://16x.engineer/2022/08/23/it-vs-tech.html

I have no knowledge of other industries that software is not the primary product.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#67

Post by suraci »

ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

I'm confused about why there are so many managers/CEOs who mythologize AI.

Some of them use AI as an excuse for layoffs, but many of them do believe that AI (or ChatGPT, specifically) is some kind of magic that can make (1 employee + ChatGPT) equal to 3 employees.

I mean, they must have used ChatGPT, right? How does ChatGPT give them the conclusion about this?

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#68

Post by blackeyeblitzar »

ablation wrote: post #20

Nearly every CEO I’ve talked to in the past three months (only a handful, admittedly) has said something along these lines, if not quite as extreme. They genuinely believed the current state of the art is polished and powerful enough to replace huge swathes of coders, designers, writers, etc. leaving only a middle-management supervisory layer and some lower-level grunts to herd the bots. Or it’s a good PR ruse to sca…

Some will not survive their customers abandoning them. Think about the typical automated voice response on a customer service line. Imagine that becoming far more pervasive. And it slowing you down and becoming a barrier while you desperately try to get help with your insurance claim or mortgage or whatever. It’ll be absolutely awful and companies that built trustworthy services with humans who pick up the phone will stand out even more easily. Or that’s what I hope.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#69

Post by ein0p »

paradite wrote: post #63
ein0p wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them…

Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.

See, the thing is, to determine which abstractions are "right and proper" you _already need a software engineer_ who knows those kinds of things. Moreover, that engineer needs to ability to read that code, understand it, and plan its evolution over time. He/she also needs to be able to fix the bugs, because there will be bugs.

Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'

#70

Post by 000ooo000 »

paradite wrote: post #63
ein0p wrote: post #59

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm a principal SWE with 25 years of experience and I think software today is comically bad and way too hard to use. So I think we can get engineers to write better software with these tools. The talk of "replacement" is going to be premature until we get something remotely resembling AGI. Unless your problems are so simple that a monkey could solve them, AI of today and foreseeable future is not going to solve them…

Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons: - AI naturally writes AI code that is more organized and clean (proper abstraction, no messy code) - I've recognized that, for AI to write code on an existing codebase, the code has to be clean and organized and make sense, so I tend to do more refactoring to make sure AI can take over them and update them when needed.

>Funny enough, now I write better code than I used to thanks to AI because of two reasons:

I assume you also believe you'll be one of the developers AI doesn't replace.

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