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

theregister.com

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

#71

Post by capyba »

d_sem wrote: post #49
scott_w wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say "contradiction," he said "kafkaesque," meaning "characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world" (according to Google).

I'm being facetious, but life in the rust belt post industrial automation is kinda close. Google Maps a random Detroit east side neighborhood to see what I mean.

But it wasn’t industrial automation that ruined Detroit. It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition.

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

#72

Post by bugglebeetle »

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 In any case, which jobs have been replaced by LLMs?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…

Ask ChatGPT to explain consequentialism to you.

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

#73

Post by avodonosov »

And capcha forces users to train neural networks for free, planning to then replace the users with those neural networks :)

Moreover, website ovners even pay for capcha. It should be other way around - people participated in training the neural nets should share profit and owhership of the networks, at the very least.

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

#75

Post by jdietrich »

EthanHeilman wrote: post #37
x187463 wrote: post #7

How many jobs have they actually 'eaten'? For now, we mostly have AI labs and those in proximity claiming some number of jobs will be obsolete, but the actual job loss has yet to manifest.

In my personal experience I've seen: - OCR eat a good chunk of data entry jobs, - Automated translation eat a number of translation jobs, - LLM have eaten quite a few tier I support roles. I don't have numbers tho, maybe people are still doing data entry or hiring translators on mechanical turk.

Also illustrators, voiceover artists and customer service agents. Commercial photographers have seen their income from stock image services collapse and they are now seriously worried about the impact Nano Banana will have on work like product and fashion photography.

The question is no longer whether AI will put people out of work, but how many and how quickly.

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

#76

Post by nicce »

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.

I haven’t read the book, and I should.

The series was really good. Too bad they cancelled it for being too expensive.

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

#77

Post by torium »

muldvarp wrote: post #51
scott_w wrote: post #47

Earlier quoted context omitted.

He didn't say "contradiction," he said "kafkaesque," meaning "characteristic or reminiscent of the oppressive or nightmarish qualities of Franz Kafka's fictional world" (according to Google).

I don't see why it would be "kafkaesque" either. In fact I fail to see any connection between those two facts other than that both are decisions to allow or not allow something to happen by OpenAI.

If you don't see why this is oppressive, that's really a _you_ problem.

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

#78

Post by jajko »

MSFT_Edging wrote: post #61
muldvarp wrote: post #51

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don't see why it would be "kafkaesque" either. In fact I fail to see any connection between those two facts other than that both are decisions to allow or not allow something to happen by OpenAI.

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…

Yeah but what we are all whining here about (apart from folks working on llms and/or holding bigger stocks of such, a non-trivial and a vocal group here) has hit many other jobs already in the past. Very often thanks to our own work.

It is funny, in worst way possible of course, that even our chairs are not as stable as we thought they are. Even automation can be somehow automated away.

Remember all those posts stating how software engineering is harder, more unique, somehow more special than other engineering, or generally types of jobs? Seems like its time for some re-evaluation of that big ego statements... but maybe its just me.

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

#79

Post by mensetmanusman »

It turns out you can’t have a thriving economy if everyone is just working at service jobs as floor stockers and barista’s.

If we are lucky, AI provides a huge accelerant to being able to insource manufacturing with advanced automation. This is an energy saving play to reduce the total distance that objects are shipped which wastes a lot of energy especially as the objects are of lower value.

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

#80

Post by dgfitz »

capyba wrote: post #71
d_sem wrote: post #49

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I'm being facetious, but life in the rust belt post industrial automation is kinda close. Google Maps a random Detroit east side neighborhood to see what I mean.

But it wasn’t industrial automation that ruined Detroit. It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition.

> It was the automakers’ failure to compete with highly capable foreign competition.

I contend it was when Dodge won the court case deciding that shareholders were more important than employees. It’s been a slow burn ever since.

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