alt Hacker NewsThis is interesting because it's a case of "AI taking jobs" but not in the way people normally mean; these massive layoffs are happening not because AI is doing the work they used to do but because capex is sucking all of the operating money out of everywhere. The companies may be forced to replace some of the laid-off employees with AI (as far as possible) but that's an effect not a cause.
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Yeah, this is a justification, but still -- they save single digit billions doing this, while AI capex is $150B (same timeframe) and RL spend is $16B. Feels like you could make the same cut from AI capex and barely notice a difference.
In other words: Nothing has changed.
Finance is destroying the real economy in search for "optimization" because business value doesn't neatly fit into an excel sheet cell. All these layoffs have been done because of AI washing right from the start.
The WWeWork model of being in real estate and not tech, I guess.
Given the unironic use of 'woke mind virus' by certain billionaires, there's something to be said about the sudden obsession of building data centres, no expense spared.
I mean AI was auto-warning me for a Facebook comment I made, which was a somewhat widely known internet meme. Long story short, video of a young girl (maybe 8 or 9 idr) with a GIANT spider on her hand. I wrote the words "Put that spider down, we have to burn down the house" and Facebook's AI flagged it, I tried to appeal, a human allegedly reviewed it and denied it, because they didn't understand a subtle meme. That's when I knew, I had to stop logging on to Facebook altogether.
This was in 2022... So I cannot imagine how much worse the "automoderation" will probably become.
I think in several ways the promises of AI to leadership is taking jobs not what AI is actually doing.
Funny how AI took all the jobs, but not from automation
Yup feels like it.
3 and a half ways AI takes jobs:
1. By making workers unnecessary (largely hypothetical right now?)
2. By companies spending big on AI, but it didn't pay off yet so they need to cut back on something else.
3. AI is a good excuse for layoffs they want to do anyway.
Also - the investors would rather hear "AI" than "oops we are in trouble so we need to do layoffs". For example, if you spent a lot of billions on a 2nd life clone with fewer players than developers ...