Why do they need 3500 people (!) to issue simple installment loans?
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Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
81–90 of 218 posts
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#82Nearly 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?
Because they are selling to market. AI is the hot new thing, so they sell it... It is all about short term now. Make a next few quarters sound hot and line goes up.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#83Nearly 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…
My guess is that people will keep buying the cheapest option. And only notice things when they actually need it. So market won't fix itself.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#84Nearly 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?
Confirmation bias in my experience. “ChatGPT can write this email to investors for me!” cognitively balloons into “ChatGPT can replace my engineering team!” Quite possibly a dash of Dunning-Kruger Effect too.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#85Was it ever a good place to work? When they opened their Berlin office the word was the mobile team was a revolving door of contractors doing append-only development on a monolithic RN app. It already seemed dysfunctional then.
> append-only development
I have not seen this term before. What do you mean by it?
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#86First 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.
Only use case for me with Klarna is getting them give me invoice I pay with SEPA-transfer. 30 days after shipping. Actually a good system for me.
Recently bought something and then found it cheaper, negotiated the seller to match price and now the invoice I got got the cheaper price. And I just now had payment go out.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#87Nearly 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…
The most ironic thing is thar the middle managers are somehow surviving this. So far, anyway, but I think they’ll be found too sooner or latet
This is a pretty cynical take, but I would think that having AI management would be highly undesirable for companies, and not because it would be bad at managing.
Even in good, reputable companies, there is a certain amount of legally/ethically dubious behavior that is nonetheless desirable.
An H1B candidate for a position has been found, but it must be demonstrated that there is no local candidate for that position. Every local candidate must fail the interview, whether or not that is fair.
You have a small team. You've hired someone good at their job, but over lunch, they've mentioned they plan to have 10 children, so they will be on parental and FMLA leave for 3+ months a year indefinitely. You need to find a problem with this person's performance.
You have a team of developers. One of them has done a great job this past year, but the project they are working on and their specialization is no longer needed. It would not be fair to them to give them a middling performance review, but it's in the company's interest that the limited compensation budget goes towards retaining someone with skills aligned to the future direction.
An AI would have any unethical or illegal prompting exposed for any court to examine. Likewise, there would be little reason not to maintain a complete record of everything the management AI is told or does. One could design an AI that leadership talks to off the record, which then manifests its instructions in its state, and then could lie (or be unable to prove) its instructions later. That would then be similar to a human manager.
But I don't think any court would accept such an off the record lying AI. So an AI probably can't keep any secrets, can't lie for the company's benefit in depositions or court, and can't take the fall for leadership.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#88Sell short.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because they are selling to market. AI is the hot new thing, so they sell it... It is all about short term now. Make a next few quarters sound hot and line goes up.
Any CEO without an AI strategy would get punished by their investors. Public or private.
AI market is in a feedback loop which is why it is so powerful.
Re: Klarna CEO: Company stopped hiring because AI 'can do all of the jobs'
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
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?
Because they are selling to market. AI is the hot new thing, so they sell it... It is all about short term now. Make a next few quarters sound hot and line goes up.
What I mean is they really believe it, not just for market selling
For example, I know a boss add AI as a factor in performance reviews, where someone was evaluated as 'not AI-capable' for not using ChatGPT. He also asked for 3x output from the teams and said, 'If you feel it's too hard to complete, go learn how to work with AI.'