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Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

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Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#81

Post by Insimwytim »

pjc50 wrote: post #21

Lots of people reporting their "I had to use up my tokens, so I burned them on worthless stuff" stories. Incredible thing to do in a climate emergency. Push harder guys, maybe we can hit 3C warming? This reminds me of the story of how the USSR nearly made whales extinct to meet a quota for whale meat that nobody wanted to eat.

> USSR nearly made whales extinct

USSR barely accounted for 15% of the world caught amount (with Japan as the leader).

> that nobody wanted to eat

unsubstantiated.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#82

Post by Qem »

philipallstar wrote: post #70
Qem wrote: post #68

It's a shame AI now has a universal basic jobs[1] program, but humans still not. Companies are paying AI to dig holes, so other AI can fill them. [1] https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

We didn't. The USSR had 100% employment long ago[0], and all the poverty that goes with it. This isn't like that, as it isn't funded through taxes. This is private companies experimenting with their money, and risking downstream cost increases that may cause people to go elsewhere, as they do when they try anything new. This is much better than just funding people regardless of productivity through forced taxes. [0]…

> We didn't. The USSR had 100% employment long ago[0], and all the poverty that goes with it.

I don't think USSR poverty rates surpassed those of Tsarist Russia that preceded them. To their credit, I think ideologic competition between capitalist and communist blocks was part of what allowed improvement of life conditions of workers in capitalist countries, after WWII. Fear of revolutions avoided one-percenters taking all productivity gains in the period. They had to share some to keep guillotines away. As soon as things went south in the USSR, from the 70s onwards, and capitalism took over the whole world, lacking any sort of viable extant competition, we reverted back to the old norm, the workers were denied their share of the productivity gains since then, and here are us now. A regime premised on free competition was undermined by lack of competition to itself.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#83

Post by mrandish »

dominotw wrote: post #54
isk517 wrote: post #44

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I know some that was told to try and use AI more on the job so they created some agent to just burn tokens and ended up using about 10x what the next highest employee used. Buddy expected to get shit but instead got an accolade and was asked to give a short talk to the other employees about how they could match their success.

i call BS on this story

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Goodhart%27s_law

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#86

Post by CaptainTaboo »

jordanb wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Lots of people reporting their "I had to use up my tokens, so I burned them on worthless stuff" stories. Incredible thing to do in a climate emergency. Push harder guys, maybe we can hit 3C warming? This reminds me of the story of how the USSR nearly made whales extinct to meet a quota for whale meat that nobody wanted to eat.

I've been noticing how our economy keeps getting more Soviet as it becomes more top-down. We basically have central planning now with all the pathologies inherent in that system, but unlike the soviets we just have a bunch of guys who happened to get rich or bribe the right people running our GOSPLAN.

Things definitely feel 'Soviet' at my company. AI usage has been mandated by upper management (despite the fact that it doesn't really make sense or solve any problems in my particular job). They literally call it an "AI revolution." If you dare question the wisdom of the company's 'AI-First' policy, it's like you risk being singled out as a "counter-revolutionary."

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#88

Post by bobthepanda »

philipallstar wrote: post #70
Qem wrote: post #68

It's a shame AI now has a universal basic jobs[1] program, but humans still not. Companies are paying AI to dig holes, so other AI can fill them. [1] https://locusmag.com/feature/cory-doctorow-full-employment/

We didn't. The USSR had 100% employment long ago[0], and all the poverty that goes with it. This isn't like that, as it isn't funded through taxes. This is private companies experimenting with their money, and risking downstream cost increases that may cause people to go elsewhere, as they do when they try anything new. This is much better than just funding people regardless of productivity through forced taxes. [0]…

[dead]

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#89

Post by throw-the-towel »

jordanb wrote: post #50
pjc50 wrote: post #21

Lots of people reporting their "I had to use up my tokens, so I burned them on worthless stuff" stories. Incredible thing to do in a climate emergency. Push harder guys, maybe we can hit 3C warming? This reminds me of the story of how the USSR nearly made whales extinct to meet a quota for whale meat that nobody wanted to eat.

I've been noticing how our economy keeps getting more Soviet as it becomes more top-down. We basically have central planning now with all the pathologies inherent in that system, but unlike the soviets we just have a bunch of guys who happened to get rich or bribe the right people running our GOSPLAN.

Yeah, the stories I've heard from Meta are very Soviet-coded. Like, trying to exceed the plan but not too much, because then the new plan would be hopelessly unachievable and you'd be punished for not meeting the insane expectations.

Re: Amazon workers under pressure to up their AI usage are making up tasks

#90

Post by wahnfrieden »

mrbungie wrote: post #47
MrCharismatist wrote: post #9

Like six months ago we got a presentation from an AWS guy on the AI tooling available and how it fit with our particular use cases. At one point seemingly out of nowhere he pointed out on his screen share "Look at how many tokens I've used this month. I run so much Opus." It was a number that was offensively large. I remember thinking "That's a really odd flex, this crap is so expensive the fact that you use so much…

I still don't know how to reconcile these reports with what other people say about GenAI-agentic assisted engineering being the only way of working nowadays, especially in startups. Probably there is no dichotomy going on and it depends on multiple factors, but it seems so weird to see reports that are so different between each other.

Wage workers are evaluated on behaviors, founders are evaluated on growth and revenue. Of course usage patterns and outcomes will be different
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