Less money for middle class and more money for investors owning Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic.
Make no mistake about what's happening, that's wealth transfer from the bottom to the top.
And with how this particular AI technology only works by consuming all of the internet’s and our libraries’ data … it’s not just a transfer, it’s pretty much theft.
Interestingly, I don’t think I share this sentiment.
I’m no fan and personally don’t use AI (I barely touched it early ChatGPT days). But people use it to do things in successful fulfilment of their initial purpose.
I’ve seen it. Maybe I’ve seen the successes and not the failures in some cases. And I’ve certainly seen badly failed attempts to use it, but in those cases I’m happy to ascribe the failure substantially to a misapplication of the tool (which to be fair certainly invites gross misapplication).
My point though is that I don’t think an absolutist “AI is never useful” position is persuasive any more nor absolutely accurate.
Which, in my view, makes addressing the “rest of the situation” all the more fundamental. Indeed, I think everything g other than its efficacy was always the important part.
Part of the problem is that ethical arguments are difficult for people and many just switch off when it comes to the common good. Which is all of course part of the problem too.
But I think that’s gravity of the situation right now: our collective instincts may be misaligned for the moment. Our personal habits vulnerable from our prior corruptions. And our societal architectures already mutated, perhaps beyond repair, and therefore ill equipped for this.
Doomy, yes, but you’ve got to fight the fight you’re in, not the one you’d wish you’d won.
Another way I could put this counter, is that I feel like so much of what’s bad about AI was bad before AI, and that society from 2005-2020 badly mishandled technology. Whether AI “works” or not doesn’t matter. So long as it can fit into the same shape and meet the same urges that tech did 2005-2020, it will be adopted. But if the consequences of its adoption are graver than what came before, then the whole stack of that history needs to be addressed.
One of the problems the anti-AI crowd have with protrsting this use case is that they don't seem to appreciate that the enshittification happened long before AI.
Actual Software Engineers make up about 5% of the profession, the other 95% have been turning out slop that they don't even understand themselves for years. In that environment, an AI that does the same but at least doesn't complain when asked to do rework doesn't seem so bad.
Uhh... All shareholders get wealthier when the stock price goes up, there's no magic mechanism where it's only majority shareholders.
Obviously majority shareholders will make even more, but they all profit from it. I'm not even American and my retirement fund jumped up decently from the S&P 500 going up. Though now I've exited from the US ETFs completely. Only Europe and Asia now.
I guarantee you, managers, sales teams and PR firms have been writing copy like this since the first company was started. Unfortunately, LLM is just reducing the amount of typing a human has to do.
it's also resulting in fresh grads that don't know anything. this is naturally by design. within the past couple years I've come across so many new devs that just don't know jack. can they answer tickets? sure. can they provide prompts to an agent? yes. beyond that? good luck. and their salaries reflect this.
Nah I'm sorry you're dead wrong. My last job we straight up got rid of 95% of our HR department and all of our interns and were replaced with ChatGPT Enterprise licenses. Then they laid off the graphic design department and left just the head of the department and 2 staff. Then I was laid off alongside over half of the IT department.
both of my bros suffered job loss, or "sidelined indefnitely. one got layed off since 23, and the current one have been "on the bench" since last year.
If your company did indeed lay off 95% of HR and replaced it with ChatGPT you need to find another job somewhere like now. They are about two lawsuits from not existing.
Yep I missed that part, sorry. Good for you. Well not the being layed off part. Hopefully you found more employment. But companies like this are toxic at best, or just downright stupid.
I’ve had the misfortune of working for companies during the dotcom boom that had horrible business plans that I was lucky enough to leave before the bottom fell out.
No worries! I did find employment not too far after but it definitely doesn't pay anywhere near the same or provide nearly as good benefits but given the job market, I'm lucky to be employed.
Tons of people are getting fired because the owners think AI can replace them. Doesn't mean the AI can do the work properly, but they are getting fired anyway.
I know a person that works at an AI startup and they convinced a company to replace their HR department with AI a while back. Funnily enough, that startup's "AI" is largely "Actually Indians." Their service is an agent that writes its own "tools" to solve problems/complete tasks, but the tools often don't work, so they have a large team of devs in India rewrite them or do the tasks.
sounds like a troll, but they started massively laying off since 2023, both my bros were affected severely, and then the company my older bro got bought off down the line. im in a tech hub in the west, and all they are peddling in the tech conference is all AI related, before it use to be a variety of software/tech, now its the same tech with more AI.
This is like measuring a carpenter’s work output by how much they use their hammer, not how much gets actually built. I hope every company that does this sorta bullshit goes belly up.
Using their hammer would be the tools they use to actually code. This is more like measuring a carpenter’s work by how often they get advice from the workers at Home Depot.
It strikes me that it's probably because of all the visibity it offers them into what people are doing and drives them to interact with the chatbot instead of each other. Not everything is about having productive workers. A lot of it is about finding people who are compliant suck ups who won't question the boss no matter what and eliminating anyone with a half a brain cell and an ounce of class solidarity.
I recently had to listen to our glorious CEO (who totally isn't a nepo failson) about the company being bought out (so yeah I'm getting fired within 2 years for sure) and it was just him furiously jacking off, thinking he sounded smart with all of his ivy corpo speak.
At a certain point I was like "you know, maybe violence IS the answer"
A bit ironic they offer a service to keep away AI bots from scanning websites, but say AI use is making them so productive they have to lay people off.
Specifically: Scrapers operated by individuals rather than big, important companies. On one hand, this significantly cuts down on the volume of scraping. On the other, it restricts control of the AI market to a select class of people who are important enough to get by the bot protection.
The root problem, obviously, is that the "AI market" is generally directed at that select class.
Besides which, why wouldnt they make money preventing other people from scraping websites, while scraping the traffic that flows through their network.
No wonder most of us give a fuck about our company. Why should I care if I am nothing more than a number that is unfortunately not a robot.
Working could be to just create something good and do so in a community with like minded people. And if it earns enough money to pay everyone's comfortable life needs then that is enough.
That they constantly force growth is just the most toxic bullshit imaginable.
79 Comments
vratajin@piefed.social · 142 pts · 102d
Less money for middle class and more money for investors owning Nvidia, OpenAI, Anthropic.
Make no mistake about what's happening, that's wealth transfer from the bottom to the top.
maegul@lemmy.ml · 49 pts · 102d
And with how this particular AI technology only works by consuming all of the internet’s and our libraries’ data … it’s not just a transfer, it’s pretty much theft.
CorrectAlias@piefed.blahaj.zone · 19 pts · 102d
"works" is a bit too strong
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 4 pts · 101d
and it still cant make anything good out of that slop.
maegul@lemmy.ml · 6 pts · 101d
Interestingly, I don’t think I share this sentiment.
I’m no fan and personally don’t use AI (I barely touched it early ChatGPT days). But people use it to do things in successful fulfilment of their initial purpose.
I’ve seen it. Maybe I’ve seen the successes and not the failures in some cases. And I’ve certainly seen badly failed attempts to use it, but in those cases I’m happy to ascribe the failure substantially to a misapplication of the tool (which to be fair certainly invites gross misapplication).
My point though is that I don’t think an absolutist “AI is never useful” position is persuasive any more nor absolutely accurate.
Which, in my view, makes addressing the “rest of the situation” all the more fundamental. Indeed, I think everything g other than its efficacy was always the important part.
Part of the problem is that ethical arguments are difficult for people and many just switch off when it comes to the common good. Which is all of course part of the problem too.
But I think that’s gravity of the situation right now: our collective instincts may be misaligned for the moment. Our personal habits vulnerable from our prior corruptions. And our societal architectures already mutated, perhaps beyond repair, and therefore ill equipped for this.
Doomy, yes, but you’ve got to fight the fight you’re in, not the one you’d wish you’d won.
Another way I could put this counter, is that I feel like so much of what’s bad about AI was bad before AI, and that society from 2005-2020 badly mishandled technology. Whether AI “works” or not doesn’t matter. So long as it can fit into the same shape and meet the same urges that tech did 2005-2020, it will be adopted. But if the consequences of its adoption are graver than what came before, then the whole stack of that history needs to be addressed.
timwa@lemmy.snowgoons.ro · 3 pts · 101d
One of the problems the anti-AI crowd have with protrsting this use case is that they don't seem to appreciate that the enshittification happened long before AI.
Actual Software Engineers make up about 5% of the profession, the other 95% have been turning out slop that they don't even understand themselves for years. In that environment, an AI that does the same but at least doesn't complain when asked to do rework doesn't seem so bad.
wonderingwanderer@sopuli.xyz · 1 pts · 101d
Funny, this is the same cloudflare that harasses me every time I open a new tab on certain websites to check that I'm not a bot...
How ironic...
Maeve@kbin.earth · 5 pts · 102d
Not even investors. Majority shareholders/BoD.
boonhet@sopuli.xyz · 2 pts · 102d
Uhh... All shareholders get wealthier when the stock price goes up, there's no magic mechanism where it's only majority shareholders.
Obviously majority shareholders will make even more, but they all profit from it. I'm not even American and my retirement fund jumped up decently from the S&P 500 going up. Though now I've exited from the US ETFs completely. Only Europe and Asia now.
Maeve@kbin.earth · 4 pts · 102d
Pennies or a few hundred vs millions was the point.
baggachipz@sh.itjust.works · 126 pts · 102d
🤮
The MBAs have won.
billwashere@lemmy.world · 64 pts · 102d
JFC, this marketing speak makes me wanna slap someone. I’m not sure how you can so many words and so little.
criss_cross@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 102d
AI is shockingly good at doing just that.
I guarantee a human did not write this.
northface@lemmy.ml · 5 pts · 101d
I guarantee you, managers, sales teams and PR firms have been writing copy like this since the first company was started. Unfortunately, LLM is just reducing the amount of typing a human has to do.
morriscox@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 101d
https://youtu.be/8Gv0H-vPoDc
Word Crimes by Weird Al.
systemglitch@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 102d
So little what? SO LITTLE WHAT???
HeyThisIsntTheYMCA@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 102d
why, torgo's executive powder
teohhanhui@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 102d
I suppose, "write so many words and yet say so little"? Or less awkwardly, "say so little with so many words".
StarryPhoenix97@lemmy.world · 5 pts · 102d
Don't you worry about blank, let me worry about blank.
billwashere@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 102d
Well shit. My ADHD brain leaves out words all the time. It was supposed to be “say so little”.
badgermurphy@lemmy.world · 9 pts · 102d
Scrollone@feddit.it · 94 pts · 102d
Every company that fires people for AI is going to regret it so much in the long run...
OwOarchist@pawb.social · 66 pts · 102d
They've already had a spate of serious, unprecedented outages affecting half the internet.
So I guess that means the only place to go from there is to double down, eh?
outandinburger@ttrpg.network · 41 pts · 102d
reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca · 20 pts · 102d
Still a short term win. Longer term, this will likely kill youth appetite for pursuing dev as a career option.
rozodru@piefed.world · 14 pts · 102d
it's also resulting in fresh grads that don't know anything. this is naturally by design. within the past couple years I've come across so many new devs that just don't know jack. can they answer tickets? sure. can they provide prompts to an agent? yes. beyond that? good luck. and their salaries reflect this.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 101d
if it hasnt already? cant say the same for CS, since that have been lacking of jobs for like 10years already.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 33 pts · 102d
But....line go up for next quarter right?
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 3 pts · 101d
not if they all got thier golden parachutes, they treat it as an endgame, just run it like a PE firm and move on.
Telodzrum@lemmy.world · -19 pts · 102d
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca · 19 pts · 102d
Nah I'm sorry you're dead wrong. My last job we straight up got rid of 95% of our HR department and all of our interns and were replaced with ChatGPT Enterprise licenses. Then they laid off the graphic design department and left just the head of the department and 2 staff. Then I was laid off alongside over half of the IT department.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 1 pts · 101d
both of my bros suffered job loss, or "sidelined indefnitely. one got layed off since 23, and the current one have been "on the bench" since last year.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 101d
On the bench takes me back to Accenture days. What a horrible time.
I'm sorry for your bros :/ I hope they find something soon. I'm rooting for them
Telodzrum@lemmy.world · -3 pts · 102d
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca · 4 pts · 102d
billwashere@lemmy.world · -10 pts · 102d
If your company did indeed lay off 95% of HR and replaced it with ChatGPT you need to find another job somewhere like now. They are about two lawsuits from not existing.
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca · 17 pts · 102d
Had you read all the words in my comment, you'd see I'm no longer at that job.
billwashere@lemmy.world · 2 pts · 101d
Yep I missed that part, sorry. Good for you. Well not the being layed off part. Hopefully you found more employment. But companies like this are toxic at best, or just downright stupid.
I’ve had the misfortune of working for companies during the dotcom boom that had horrible business plans that I was lucky enough to leave before the bottom fell out.
Edit: typo
PerogiBoi@lemmy.ca · 1 pts · 100d
No worries! I did find employment not too far after but it definitely doesn't pay anywhere near the same or provide nearly as good benefits but given the job market, I'm lucky to be employed.
reddig33@lemmy.world · 3 pts · 101d
deleted
sobchak@programming.dev · 2 pts · 102d
Tons of people are getting fired because the owners think AI can replace them. Doesn't mean the AI can do the work properly, but they are getting fired anyway.
I know a person that works at an AI startup and they convinced a company to replace their HR department with AI a while back. Funnily enough, that startup's "AI" is largely "Actually Indians." Their service is an agent that writes its own "tools" to solve problems/complete tasks, but the tools often don't work, so they have a large team of devs in India rewrite them or do the tasks.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · -1 pts · 101d
I heard Agentic is a codework for Humans actually, and Indians/south america, eastern europeans are the ones actually controlling the AI systems.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today · 0 pts · 101d
sounds like a troll, but they started massively laying off since 2023, both my bros were affected severely, and then the company my older bro got bought off down the line. im in a tech hub in the west, and all they are peddling in the tech conference is all AI related, before it use to be a variety of software/tech, now its the same tech with more AI.
testaccount789@sh.itjust.works · 93 pts · 102d
Meanwhile the employees:
billwashere@lemmy.world · 73 pts · 102d
This is like measuring a carpenter’s work output by how much they use their hammer, not how much gets actually built. I hope every company that does this sorta bullshit goes belly up.
binarytobis@lemmy.world · 34 pts · 102d
Using their hammer would be the tools they use to actually code. This is more like measuring a carpenter’s work by how often they get advice from the workers at Home Depot.
dan@upvote.au · 9 pts · 101d
If the company is only measuring token usage and not actual output, it's more like measuring a carpenter's work based on how many hammers they buy.
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 102d
Yes.
But I do like that, by this measure, I have attained mastery of plumbing, woodworking, landscaping, and have become a master gardener.
binarytobis@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 102d
They say you achieve mastery of a skill by spending 10,000 hours receiving advice from Hank over in Home & Garden.
Squirrelanna@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 3 pts · 101d
Me when I find a skill trainer in Skyrim
black_flag@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 21 pts · 102d
It strikes me that it's probably because of all the visibity it offers them into what people are doing and drives them to interact with the chatbot instead of each other. Not everything is about having productive workers. A lot of it is about finding people who are compliant suck ups who won't question the boss no matter what and eliminating anyone with a half a brain cell and an ounce of class solidarity.
Test_Tickles@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 101d
It's about training their replacement. The more that they are forced to use it, the faster it will learn all of their jobs.
tehn00bi@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 101d
Wouldn’t it be like how often they use their measure tape?
criss_cross@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 102d
Having AI do your commits is a great way to game the system. Gives the added benefit of making it look like the AI wrote it for you as well.
dan@upvote.au · 1 pts · 101d
Just add a co-authored-by line to your commit message to make it look like the AI wrote it.
criss_cross@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 101d
But that doesn’t burn tokens. Comps can track how many tokens you use.
Yes it’s that dystopian.
benjirenji@slrpnk.net · 1 pts · 101d
... or to get all these cupcake recipes. If all that matters not to get fired is active agents...
BlackCat@piefed.social · 41 pts · 101d
God, I hate corpo-speak so much.
Ophrys@lemmy.dbzer0.com · 17 pts · 101d
I recently had to listen to our glorious CEO (who totally isn't a nepo failson) about the company being bought out (so yeah I'm getting fired within 2 years for sure) and it was just him furiously jacking off, thinking he sounded smart with all of his ivy corpo speak.
At a certain point I was like "you know, maybe violence IS the answer"
benjirenji@slrpnk.net · 2 pts · 101d
Sounds to me they will be charging more for their services. Or do I need to purposely misunderstand the statement to be useless?
fubarx@lemmy.world · 41 pts · 102d
A bit ironic they offer a service to keep away AI bots from scanning websites, but say AI use is making them so productive they have to lay people off.
So AI bad or good? Getting whiplashed here.
luciferofastora@feddit.org · 19 pts · 102d
Specifically: Scrapers operated by individuals rather than big, important companies. On one hand, this significantly cuts down on the volume of scraping. On the other, it restricts control of the AI market to a select class of people who are important enough to get by the bot protection.
The root problem, obviously, is that the "AI market" is generally directed at that select class.
AI good. Non-rich people bad.
vodka@feddit.org · 9 pts · 102d
The main selling point of that feature is to charge for access to scraping websites.
They don't care that your website gets scraped, they care about getting paid when someone does it.
binarytobis@lemmy.world · 4 pts · 102d
I’ve recently found it ironic that cloudfire classifies me as human based on how I sort AI generated images, presumably as judged by AI.
fizzle@quokk.au · 3 pts · 102d
Obviously, its a non-binary answer.
Besides which, why wouldnt they make money preventing other people from scraping websites, while scraping the traffic that flows through their network.
corbindallas@fedinsfw.app · 1 pts · 102d
ceo bad. pumch up
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip · 26 pts · 102d
That tracks. Cloudflare was probably overdue to make a good solid run at grabbing defeat out of the jaws of success.
Edit: Hijacking this to answer the question on some of our minds:
It's Anubis
anon_8675309@lemmy.world · 24 pts · 101d
34% YoY revenue growth but that isn’t enough! We want your salary also! Raaaaawr
dhcmrlchtdj__@lemmy.world · 15 pts · 102d
Everyone needs to stop twiddling their thumbs and organize their workplaces.
sirico@feddit.uk · 13 pts · 102d
Brave move after recent years
SCmSTR@lemmy.blahaj.zone · 13 pts · 101d
Ah yes, the elimination of jobs is always good for society.
SunshineJogger@feddit.org · 13 pts · 101d
So much greed.
No wonder most of us give a fuck about our company. Why should I care if I am nothing more than a number that is unfortunately not a robot.
Working could be to just create something good and do so in a community with like minded people. And if it earns enough money to pay everyone's comfortable life needs then that is enough.
That they constantly force growth is just the most toxic bullshit imaginable.
pinball_wizard@lemmy.zip · 5 pts · 101d
Yes. We need more worker owned cooperatives.
Danarchy@lemmy.nz · 11 pts · 102d
Jokes on them I’ve been training ai to seize the means of production
kazerniel@lemmy.world · 10 pts · 101d
ugh I host my domains with them, but probably high time I switched away :/
edit: and done! switched to a local host :)
vane@lemmy.world · 6 pts · 101d
Useless company with useless services from silicon wankers.
mokey@therock.fraggle-rock.org · 5 pts · 101d
The halting problem is your friend. Have one agent review the work of another agent and then have trade places in an endless loop.
northface@lemmy.ml · 3 pts · 101d
Perpeetum token machine
Mwa@thelemmy.club · 4 pts · 101d
so i have to boycott Cloudflare now?
but imma wait until more Sources cover this, i dont want to rely soly on the register.
StillAlive@piefed.world · 10 pts · 101d
https://blog.cloudflare.com/building-for-the-future/
Mwa@thelemmy.club · -5 pts · 101d
alr thanks for linking their blog directly, am gonna wait a little to think am not gonna boycott them immediately.
Rooster326@programming.dev · 14 pts · 101d
Wait for someone else to tell me how to feel?
Sam_Bass@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 101d
600% increase in ai agent usage cant be coincidence
GreenKnight23@lemmy.world · 1 pts · 100d
oh wait..that shitty service that thousands of people complained about is doing something even worse?!
well I'll just boycott them when it's convenient...