Really feels like the calm before the storm rn imo. Not sure if I’m just paranoid or anyone else is in agreement

  • hexaflexagonbear [he/him]
    ·
    edit-2
    1 year ago

    Honestly if tv and movie writers get replaced by generative AI, the rest of the white collar world is fucked. As formulaic as those can be, I feel like the human touch is much more noticeable in media than it is in technical reports or powerpoints. If that's deemed acceptable email jobs are gone lol.

    • Hohsia [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      Godamn that just sounds wild because there are so many bullshit email jobs in America

      I work as a data analyst so I’ll probably be next on the chopping block, but considering how reactionary capital can be, I think jobs will be cut without a second thought (and of course the government will just shrug). It also seems likely that the boomers who don’t know how to send an email will somehow stick around.

      And libertarians will push for UBI, etc. lol we’re all completely fucked agony-shivering

      • Maoo [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        AI is and will continue to be used as a fig leaf for layoffs management wanted to do anyways.

        • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]
          ·
          1 year ago

          I remember seeing something like this with a mental health crisis line replacing their workers with a chat bot, and then replacing the chat bot with lower paid workers when it obviously didn't work.

          • Maoo [none/use name]
            ·
            1 year ago

            Yep! It's also being used to threaten writers during the ongoing strike and C-suites the world over are gushing about "replacing" their knowledge workers with a chatbot that just makes shit up at random and absolutely can't do the job.

            AI as it exists has promise for increasing productivity per worker, but can't actually replace a human. It's just... not actually smart. It mimicks knowledge by reproducing patterns and using connections, but it can't actually learn and do the tasks humans need to do (yet).

            Increasing productivity per worker can be used to justify layoffs, incidentally, though business-wise this is usually a stupid thing to do.

      • abc [he/him, comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        I work as a data analyst so I’ll probably be next on the chopping block, but considering how reactionary capital can be, I think jobs will be cut without a second thought (and of course the government will just shrug). It also seems likely that the boomers who don’t know how to send an email will somehow stick around.

        I've spent the last year just watching a specific coworker of mine, who has worked at the company for maybe 2 years but is so goddamn desperate to get promoted it is pathetic, constantly push AI shit onto the entire team. We didn't need ChatGPT literally making up answers to support tickets, etc etc. Just dumb shit that has the veneer of 'efficiency' and 'making the job easier' but really does nothing but serve his main purpose of getting praise from the department heads and the supreme prize of having the C-Suite remember his name.

        Found out the other week that he'd taken the 500+ random notes/useful responses/info about bugs, nuanced issues, etc that I personally spent too long figuring out and thus threw it into notes over the past 5+ years I've had this job to save me time the next time it popped up & duplicated every single one into a company wide shared notebook. Didn't even give me fucking edit access to it and I'm sure he took the credit for them or otherwise fed them into the ChatGPT instance that spits out answers to tickets. I was so fucking incensed over this that I was seeing red - if only because I'd gone out of my way to share it with him and other new-hires/coworkers here & there because I'd hated how when I was hired it was basically "yeah uh ask around someone may know" or hope you could figure it out yourself.

        Only regret that when I discovered this that I didn't immediately go in and remove his ass from everything I've compiled over the years - because it wasn't until I did so that I realized he'd set them up to auto-update too whenever I edited a pre-existing one or added an entirely new note, I could've just backed up all of them and then gone in & edited them all to blank notes with a "who gave you permission to do this you fuck, certainly don't recall you ever asking me??" in 48pt font as a fuck you to him & anyone else who encouraged/praised the idea. Ugh I'm still mad about this and am near malding just thinking about it so don't blame me if I delete this later lmao angery

        • Hohsia [he/him]
          hexagon
          ·
          1 year ago

          Dude are you me? Scum like that are everywhere, though luckily for me my coworker who shares those traits seems to have stopped bugging me.

          You’re concerns are very valid and extremely understandable

    • LaGG_3 [he/him, comrade/them]
      ·
      1 year ago

      Executive types don't actually read emails, so it'll be bots reading and writing emails to each other lmao.

      • InevitableSwing [none/use name]
        ·
        1 year ago

        About 10 years ago when Yahoo Chess was still alive - there were two bots in the chat area talking to / spamming each other. It was very weird. And - of course - that was pre-AI so it was just nonsense. The scenario you're describing will be 100x as strange because the text will seem almost realistic.

      • Hohsia [he/him]
        hexagon
        ·
        1 year ago

        I guess I still don’t understand how that’s possible because doesn’t it need an input?

  • laziestflagellant [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    A lot of companies are still waiting for the US government to give a more definitive statement on the legality of selling AI outputs, but they are absolutely chomping at the bit to start yeah

    • Hohsia [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      Hmm they might be a waiting a bit considering the fact that some senators aren’t aware that phones can access Wi-Fi

      Ooh here’s another fun bit to this crisis, geriatric lawmakers!

    • uralsolo
      ·
      edit-2
      1 year ago

      deleted by creator

  • YearOfTheCommieDesktop [they/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    it does feel dangerous but idk. A reserve army of labor is one thing but how much mass unemployment of formerly well paid people can the economy tolerate?

    • Frank [he/him, he/him]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The real question is can any industry resist the coercive pressure to to ProfitMax^™℠®© to the point of self destruction?

      It doesn't matter what the economy can take, every capitalist is in it for themselves playing a zero-sum game where you either grow or die.

    • Hohsia [he/him]
      hexagon
      ·
      1 year ago

      AI under capitalism should radicalize everyone. It won’t, but if the world made any sense it would.

      Considering the fact that the bourgeois have gotten away with increasing the price of fucking everything despite wages staying stagnant and blaming it on “inflation”, my hopes for the future have never been lower. Tack on climate change and you have a perfect recipe for neofascism

  • tactical_trans_karen [she/her, comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    AI is dog shit and isn't anywhere near able to do what these execs think it can. The whole thing adds up to some gullible fat cats thinking this is their golden ticket to the top, when they've just fallen for simple marketing hype that AI is something beyond a dressed up Siri. The damn things aren't even learning and changing, they're just fabricating shit and getting worse at it as time goes on.

    • jackmarxist [any]
      ·
      1 year ago

      The suits will not understand that until they start seeing huge losses even after years of trying to turn a profit off the shitty idea.