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AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

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Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#81

Post by gausswho »

PhantomHour wrote: post #45
ckorhonen wrote: post #25

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I don’t fully agree. Yes, AI can be seen as a cheaper outsourcing option, but there’s also a plausible future where companies lean more on outsourced engineers who are good at wielding AI effectively, to replace domestic mid-level roles. In other words, instead of nullifying outsourcing, AI might actually amplify it by raising the leverage of offshore talent.

Consider the kinds of jobs that are popular with outsourcing right now. Jobs like customer/tech support aren't uniquely suited to outsourcing. (Quite the opposite; People rightfully complain about outsourced support being awful. Training outsourced workers on the fine details of your products/services & your own organisation, nevermind empowering them to do things is much harder) They're jobs that companies can negle…

Also consider the mental health crisis among outsourced content moderation staff that have to appraise all kinds of depravity on a daily basis. This got some heavy reporting a year or two ago, in particular from Facebook. These folks for all their suffering are probably being culled right now.

You could anticipate a shift to using AI tools to achieve whatever content moderation goals these large networks have, with humans only handling the uncertain cases.

Still brain damage, but less. A good thing?

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#82

Post by sleepyguy »

adev_ wrote: post #54
cantrevealname wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had If we project long term, could this mean that countries with the most capital to invest in AI and robotics (like the U.S.) could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)?

> could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)? The idea that China is a low wages country should just die. It was the case 10y ago, not anymore. Some part of China have higher average salaries than some Eastern European countries. The chance of a robotic industry in the US moving massively jobs from China only due to a pseudo A.I revolution replacing low paid wages (without othe…

> The idea that China is a low wages country should just die. It was the case 10y ago, not anymore.

The wages for factory work in a few Eastern European countries are cheaper than Chinese wages. I suppose they don’t have the access to infrastructure and supply chains the Chinese do but that is changing quickly do to the Russian war against Ukraine

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#83

Post by nkingsy »

hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

It isn’t empowered to do anything you can’t already do in the UI, so it is useless to me.

Perhaps there is a group that isn’t served by legacy ui discovery methods and it’s great for them, but 100% of chat bots I’ve interacted with have damaged brand reputation for me.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#84

Post by TimTheTinker »

crazygringo wrote: post #41
candiddevmike wrote: post #12

> Despite $30–40 billion in enterprise investment into GenAI, this report uncovers a surprising result in that 95% of organizations are getting zero return. Oof

This is no different from the personal computer, and it is to be expected. The initial years of adopting new tech have no net return because it's investment . The money saved is offset by the cost of setting up the new tech. But then once the processes all get integrated and the cost of buying and building all the tech gets paid off, it turns into profit. Also, some companies adopt new tech better than others. Some d…

> transformative business processes

Many new ideas came through promising to be "transformative" but never reached anywhere near the impact that people initially expected. Some examples: SOA, low-code/no-code, blockchain for anything other than cryptocurrency, IoT, NoSQL, the Semantic Web. Each of these has had some impact, but they've all plateaued, and there are very good reasons (including the results cited in TA) to think GenAI has also plateaued.

My bet: although GenAI has plateaued, new variants will appear that integrate or are inspired by "old AI" ideas[0] paired with modern genAI tech, and these will bring us significantly more intelligent AI systems.

[0] a few examples of "old AI": expert systems, genetic algorithms, constraint solving, theorem proving, S-expression manipulation.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#85

Post by MangoCoffee »

torginus wrote: post #70

I wonder if AI automation will even lead to a recession in total software engineering revenue. At my job, thanks to AI, we managed to rewrite one of our boxed vendor tools we were dissatisfied with, to an in-house solution. I'm sure the company we were ordering from misses the revenue. The SaaS industry is full of products whose value proposition is 'it's cheaper to buy the product from us than hire a guy who handles…

I've done a vibe coding hobby project where I simply give AI instructions on what I want, using a persona-based approach for the agent to generate or fix the code.

It worked out pretty well. Who knows how the software engineering landscape will change in 10 to 20 years?

I enjoyed Andrej Karpathy's talk about software in the era of AI.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LCEmiRjPEtQ

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#86

Post by scarface_74 »

pluc wrote: post #78
hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

It’s even worse than you think. I work with Amazon Connect. Now the human agent doesn’t have to search the Knowledge Base manually, likely answers will automatically be shown to the agent based on the conversation that you are having. They are just regurgitating what you can find for yourself.

But I can’t imagine ever calling tech support for help unless it is more than troubleshooting and I need them to actually do something in their system or it’s a hardware problem where I need a replacement.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#87

Post by klodolph »

pluc wrote: post #78
hereme888 wrote: post #63

AI is already so much better than 99% of customer support employees. It also improves brand reputation by actually paying attention to what customers are saying and responding in a timely manner, with expert-level knowledge, unlike typical customer service reps. I've used LLMs to help me fix Windows issues using pretty advanced methods, that MS employees would have just told me to either re-install Windows or send th…

Except AI support agents are only using content that is already available in support knowledge bases, making the entire exercise futile and redundant. But sure, they're eloquent while wasting your time.

Most of my questions are answerable from the support knowledge base.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#88

Post by signatoremo »

daymanstep wrote: post #39
cantrevealname wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had If we project long term, could this mean that countries with the most capital to invest in AI and robotics (like the U.S.) could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)?

China has more robots per capita than the US And the idea that China has low wages is outdated. Companies like Apple don't use China for its low wages, countries like Vietnam have lower wages. China's strength lies in its manufacturing expertise

Manufacturing expertise that have been transferred from the West over the last 40 years. Knowledge and expertise are fluid, they can go both way, they can be transferred to other countries as well, India, Vietnam, etc. The world doesn’t stand still.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#89

Post by bcrosby95 »

hombre_fatal wrote: post #77
themaninthedark wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But it's not like China had the skills, tooling and supply chain to begin with....and it's not like the US suddenly stopped having all those things. There are reasons manufacturing moved out of the US and it was not "They are soooo much better at all the things over there!" Tim Cook had a direct hand in this and know it and is now deflecting because it looks bad. One of the comments on the video puts it way better th…

> it was not "They are soooo much better at all the things over there!" Though I think we should also disabuse ourselves of the idea that this can't ever be the case. An obvious example that comes to mind is the US' inability to do anything cheaply anymore, like build city infrastructure. Also, once you enumerate the reasons why something is happening somewhere but not in the US, you may have just explained how they…

Hence "had the skills" and "was not". They are not making claims about the present day, they are talking about why the shift happened in the first place and who brought it about.

Re: AI is predominantly replacing outsourced, offshore workers

#90

Post by abullinan »

I have hired “outsourced, offshore workers”. Anyone who has similar experience knows the challenges of finding quality talent. Generally, you don’t know what you’re going to get until you’ve already written the first check. Sometimes it is good quality, but lots of the time it is “acceptable” quality or poor quality that needs cleaning (or re-hiring), and 5% of the time it is absolute garbage. Since the costs are typically 1/10th to 1/20th that of US engineer, you can afford to make a few mistakes. However, I can see a future where I can hire local (US) and outsource to AI with oversight within the same budget.
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