alt Hacker News>Stoping trying to cope that AI/LLM augmented automation isn't to blame here.
It's not cope. The math just isn't mathing. the efficiencies advertiesed don't match the layoff proportions. The earning call employment counts don't match with the idea that they are "downsizing" as a company (meanwhile, what semblence of truth we have left in the job numbers DO suggest that we lost a lot of white collar jobs in 2024/5). The output error of deployed products don't match the sentiment that AI is leading to equal/higher quality software. The volume of litigation doesn't match this sentiment that "AI is here to stay".
This is less about whatever I personally think of AI (and especially its future) and more acknowledging that this is simply an irrational market. Yes, the market can indeed remain irrational longer than I can stay solvent. But that irrationality also has a time limit. I'm sure people in 1928 can point to how high its stocks were too.
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Because it doesn't matter if it actually works, or is creating efficiencies. As long as they can justify making a huge % of labor unemployed, not just SWE. The more people laid off the less bargaining power labor has in the future.
This buys them time psyop everyone into believing that AI actually does make things easier, this includes convincing labor also. So when they go to hire everyone back in 18 months, or at least a percentage of them they can say well [insert job that required computer i/o] actually doesn't require as much skill as before (whether it does or not) so your salary is going to be 3/5ths of what it used to be, and if you don't accept there's a huge supply of desperate people. Its literally the exact same targeted operation that was pulled on factory workers in the mid to late 20th century.
The efficiencies will be gained in lower labor costs going forward, not actual productivity gains or better software.. They care about the quality of the work produced as long as they have houses in Vail/Aspen and a spot in the Bahamas..
Certain industries where quality matters, may survive on merit like medical equipment manufacturers or aviation... but will it, look at Boeing..
The ruling class is our enemy and we better start acting like that. We are going to need our generations French Revolution soon.
If we don't take this seriously, and see it for what it is, they are going to give us their own version of a war to fight, but it will be to accumulate resources for them overseas. Just like in the 20s young men and women will be so poor they'll do anything, they'll beg for a war. We need to make sure they don't channel that energy away from them, because they're going to get us to try the working class to go fight on their behalf in EU, MENA, and the Pacific again. It's the same playbook. I'll bet my last dollar on it.
I'm wondering what the heck will pay the bills on all that 'AI' hardware that's being put out there. So far the number of ideas that sound like an episode of some tech-horror show far outweigh the ones that sound like a Star Trek utopia.