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How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

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Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#91

Post by keybored »

wafflemaker wrote: post #76
lifestyleguru wrote: post #19

[flagged]

Hey! Don't make fun of us! You'd get used to the bottle caps too. Not really that unnoying, except for smoothies, where a bit of the smoothie drips down on the bottleneck and makes everything sticky. And about the reaction time - politics is in a way expression of the will of the masses. And that depends on how they are informed. They are maybe not yet on point, but they are getting there. Nowadays people are slowly…

> And about the reaction time - politics is in a way expression of the will of the masses.

Then you go on to list all the astroturfing that people are “waking up to”. You just contradict yourself. Politics writ large is astroturfing that you get gaslit into thinking is da will of da masses.

> And that depends on how they are informed. They are maybe not yet on point, but they are getting there.

But you have the uncorrupted view from God.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#92

Post by littlecranky67 »

kranner wrote: post #79
m463 wrote: post #2

I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things. Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away. for example, "how much does a ford f-150 cost" will give you something ballpark in a second, compared to annoying "research" to find the answer shrouded in corporate obfuscation.

Allegedly the 'clear' answer is much easier to manipulate than gaming PageRank ever was: https://x.com/thomasgermain/status/2024165514155536746

Don't think that is a fair point, the manipulation was done on a topic of which there are hardly any other sources (hot dog eating competition winner). If you want to manipulate what an AI tells you is the F-150 street price, you will complete with hundreds of sources. The AI will unlikely pick yours.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#93

Post by littlecranky67 »

gtowey wrote: post #4
m463 wrote: post #2

I wonder if web searches used to be pretty productive, then declined as sponsored results and SEO degraded things. Nowadays an ai assist with a web search usually eliminates the search altogether and gives you a clear answer right away. for example, "how much does a ford f-150 cost" will give you something ballpark in a second, compared to annoying "research" to find the answer shrouded in corporate obfuscation.

I was just thinking exactly the same. Basic web search has become so horrible that AI is being used as its replacement. I found it a sad condemnation of how far the tech industry has fallen into enshittification and is failing to provide tools that are actually useful.

> Basic web search has become so horrible

It is not horrible, it reached the point of absolute excellence. Not for you, the user - but for making money for the creator. Remember, no one paid for web search, so you are the product. If you are the provider of the web search engine, the point of having web search is not deliver the best search result to the user, but maximize the amount of money you can make from the sum of the world population. And google did very good in maximizing their profits, without users turning away from them.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#94

Post by littlecranky67 »

johnnyanmac wrote: post #11
gtowey wrote: post #4

Earlier quoted context omitted.

I was just thinking exactly the same. Basic web search has become so horrible that AI is being used as its replacement. I found it a sad condemnation of how far the tech industry has fallen into enshittification and is failing to provide tools that are actually useful.

And it'll happen again when AI models start resorting to ads once again.

I don't think that will ever happen. All you need is a trivial browser extension with a locally run, very primite LLM, that takes the output of the commercial LLM, and removes all advertisement. And adBlocker AI, so to speak.

Yes, there will be people not using adblockers just as there are people today. But no adblocker ever was able to remove SEO spam from googles website, all they did was hiding obvious adds. They didn't improve the search experience.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#96

Post by luke5441 »

littlecranky67 wrote: post #92
kranner wrote: post #79

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Allegedly the 'clear' answer is much easier to manipulate than gaming PageRank ever was: https://x.com/thomasgermain/status/2024165514155536746

Don't think that is a fair point, the manipulation was done on a topic of which there are hardly any other sources (hot dog eating competition winner). If you want to manipulate what an AI tells you is the F-150 street price, you will complete with hundreds of sources. The AI will unlikely pick yours.

The marketing game is already moving to game LLMs. Somehow you have to get what you want to have into the training data or the context window.

Currently it is probably just mostly quantity that does the trick w.r.t. training data. So e.g. spam the Internet with "product comparisons" featuring your product as the winner.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#97

Post by vachina »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #95

x

Big companies are surprisingly nimble when it comes to AI.

They typically white label Azure LLM offerings or use Github Copilot Enterprise and sign everyone up wholesale.

Some with competent IT dept wrote their own router and offer multiple models from multiple vendors and present it as " chat".

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#98

Post by littlecranky67 »

emptybits wrote: post #16
johnnyanmac wrote: post #11

Earlier quoted context omitted.

And it'll happen again when AI models start resorting to ads once again.

Yup. Any LLM recommendation for a product or service should be viewed with suspicion (no different than web search results or asking a commission-based human their opinion). Sponsored placements. Affiliate links. Etc. Or when asking an LLM for a comparison matrix or pros and cons between choices ... beware paid placements or sponsors. Bias could be a result of available training data (forgivable?) or due to paid prio…

Eager to see how that will work with existing laws. At least in a lot of countries in the EU, any advertisement has to be explicitly marked as such. Sponsored content, too. So the AI will have to highlight that.

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#99

Post by [deleted] »

bojan wrote: post #44
fhd2 wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Because even if an organisation hasn't rolled out generative AI tools and policies centrally yet, individuals might just use their personal plans anyway (potentially in violation with their contract)? I believe that's called "shadow AI".

Correct. Where I work we are only "allowed" to use AI since December 2025. But obviously people were copy/pasting content to ChatGPT and Claude long before that.

[deleted]

Re: How AI is affecting productivity and jobs in Europe

#100

Post by troupo »

sajithdilshan wrote: post #95

x

> fintec startup in Berlin,

> This was mostly due to second line pushing back because of data protection, data privacy and all other regulatory requirement and bureaucratic paperwork

Fintec startup. Fintech. Handling people's money. Handling a lot of extremely sensitive data. Complaining that they have to deal with some "bullshit bureacracy about the things like privacy and data regulations or something".

Really? Really?!

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