onfocus

This sort of journalism doesn't really care about real consumers, labor, technology, or even whether the technology even works. Its focus is propping up extraction class narratives surrounding unchecked wealth accumulation. It's lazy fanfiction for MBAs who want to pretend to be informed without the pesky weight of ethical or even logistical realities.

But the scam is so lucrative!

The true risk of AI to your job isn't: "an AI will do your job." It's: "an AI salesman will exploit your boss's infinite horniness for replacing mouthy workers with pliable machines to sell him a chatbot that can't do your job, and then your boss will fire you and replace you with that inept, defective chatbot."

CEO brain in a nutshell.

"Starting today, Automated Counting will be retired," read an internal company newsletter dated Monday that Reuters reviewed and verified ​with two employees. "Beverage components and milk will now be counted the same way you count other inventory categories in your coffeehouse."

Feels good when AI gets fired. I guess Starbucks is realigning resources to focus on human talent.

The reports may throw cold water on the bets tech’s biggest firms have placed on the technology. While some cling to the promise of an AI “renaissance” or “revolution,” the cost of adoption is proving a stubborn bottleneck. These developments also suggest that the economics of replacing or augmenting human labor with AI may be more complicated than some early forecasts originally implied.

oops, trading human employees to pay for compute time may have been a bad trade.

Predictably, the huge spike in productivity that these companies claim their own AI products have enabled hasn’t resulted in more or better products, shorter work weeks, or better consumer experiences. Mostly, AI implementation in tech companies has been used to justify multiple massive rounds of layoffs.

Seems like it’s primarily a tool to devalue (and deskill?) labor. Why aren’t we seeing improvements in the software we use everyday?

Gartner projects that 50% of companies that attributed headcount cuts to AI will rehire for similar functions by 2027. Forrester found that over half of companies that cut staff for AI already regret the move. A Careerminds survey went further. One in three employers spent more on restaffing than they saved from the original layoffs. That is not efficiency. That is a wire transfer with extra steps.

CEOs need to log off their group texts. I think layoffs are more of a social contagion than a sound business strategy. The more room for error a company has, the more likely they are to indulge terrible ideas.

Now, amid high interest rates and economic uncertainty, job openings have fallen and employers are hiring at their slowest pace in more than a decade.

Economy warning light flashing.

It’s a legacy that deserves a more considered resting place, as many on the internet have pointed out an unfortunate reality: The kerning on Pope Francis’s tomb in the Basilica of St. Mary Major is objectively awful.

It's just painful to see an organization with that much wealth not hire people good at their craft.

… I don't think the audience for these memos is really the people who work at these companies. I think the audience is the other CEOs and investors and VCs in the industry, just as it was for the other fads of the last few years.

We need someone to hop on that group chat and say it's very cool to provide meaningful work, help employees thrive, and work toward a more equitable society. Just normal CEO group text shit they can flex about.

Over the next decade, advances in artificial intelligence will mean that humans will no longer be needed "for most things" in the world, says Bill Gates.

LOL, man these billionaires are telling on themselves by promoting the idea they don't need labor anymore. AI's primary function is to devalue labor and it's not much more than that. These sorts of predictions are part of that devaluation process. Your work is valuable! Join a union.

None of this will be easy. This is Google, after all. But as a great leader once put it, nothing in the world is worth doing unless it means endless suffering that only benefits the ownership class. That was me, I said that. But someday very soon, a humanoid powered by AGI will be the one saying it, as it denies your insurance claim.

Too real, SF Standard. Sometimes I wonder if these tech leaders can hear themselves. Just truly disconnected from working people.

“I’m in close contact with the CDC. They have about what, 13,000 employees, 13,000 employees at the CDC. In the last couple years, those probationary people, which is about 10% of their employee base, about 1,300 people, which you’re referring to. A lot of the work they do is duplicitous with AI,” McCormick said. The mention of AI led to “no’s” and murmurs from the crowd, leading the Republican representative to say, “I happen to be a doctor. I know a few things.”

AI’s primary use right now is devaluing workers. Sounds like even Republican constituents have had enough of the AI snake oil.