this post was submitted on 20 Sep 2024

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Fuck AI

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Billionaire tech CEO says bosses shouldn't 'BS' employees about the impact AI will have on jobs (www.cnbc.com)

submitted 1 month ago by [email protected] to c/[email protected]

16 comments fedilink hide all child comments

Jim Kavanaugh, CEO of World Wide Technology, told CNBC that people are “too smart” to accept artificial intelligence won’t alter their work environment.
Business leaders shouldn’t “BS” employees about the impact of AI on jobs, Kavanaugh said, adding that they should be as transparent and honest as possible.
Kavanaugh, who has a net worth of $7 billion, stressed that overall he’s an optimist when it comes to AI and its ability to improve productivity.

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[–] [email protected] 36 points 1 month ago

Summary:

Tech bro billionaire thinks no one knows what the impact of ai will be on the market but also that the impact will be huge for employees and that everyone should learn ai.

Conclusion: Tech bro billionaire invested in ai and has realized that there is barely any real money to be made as of right now, to cope with his apparent bad judgement, he doubles down on the idea that ai soon be worth it. To continue his plan, he needs more funding and he doesn't want to double down hard enough to do it all himself. So to find new investors, he sings the praise of ai and promises a great future, as the present looks... Well... Bad.

[–] [email protected] 12 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Jobs will be lost short term, but in 5 to 7 years we'll all be like "Hey, remember AI? LOL!"

[–] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

I work with a lot of software where ai is part of the tool set, and in a lot of use cases it comes in pretty handy and really can save time. I think ai really will kill some jobs but mostly in undesirable industries, call center and the likes, and it will deteriorate quality in customer service even more. (That's the point where I always lol.)

Besides that: I'm quite sure that every job that gets lost due to ai will be reinstated by "demographic demand" - western nations will run out of workers sooner than they think (it's already happening), and in a few years companies will not hire but buy workers.

Simply wait for it, and then choose the job of your likings.

[+] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago (1 children)

"Learn to script" will indeed become more common (coincidentally I had a meeting today about scripting in a DMS).

Can't tell about numbers as that is far from my expertise.

[+] [email protected] 6 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (2 children)

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[–] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago (1 children)

It's important for everyone to understand this. Thank you for spelling it out so clearly.

At the same time, it's also important for everyone to understand that the Luddites lost. They lost every single war over every single technology they ever tried to protect their lives and livelihoods from. They always have, and they always will.

If we are going to SURVIVE, our survival strategy can't rely on either 'replacing' jobs OR preventing disruptive technology from destroying them.

[–] [email protected] -1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

That specific field is lost. "There aren't enough jobs" has never been more than a short term issue, while the technological progress idiots complain about is constantly moving the standard of living massively forward.

This iteration of "AI" won't replace workers long term because it doesn't work. But when we get to the point where it actually can, the standard of living will, once again, be massively better across the board as a direct result of the ability to do more work with less effort.

[+] [email protected] 3 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] -4 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (3 children)

There are other jobs. Adapting and changing is part of life.

Every technologically advancement throughout history has resulted in the floor, ceiling, and median quality of life significantly advancing in short order. There isn't a group who isn't better off very quickly as a result of the change that was always inevitable.

Change isn't bad.

[+] [email protected] 2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 2 weeks ago) (1 children)

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[–] [email protected] -2 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (2 children)

You don't just learn, get a job, and be set forever. That's not the real world. It's not supposed to be the real world. You develop yourself, apply that development to getting a job, then keep learning and keep developing yourself to be ready for the next opportunity.

The real world isn't stable, and companies fail with or without technological advances. All your anecdotes are just that, and things that are happening every day with or without progress.

Less people will be starving in 2-3 years with every meaningful advance in tech. Progress makes the world a better place at every level of the ladder. The Luddites were terrible people actively working to make the world a worse place, to try to maintain their own monopoly. But a hell of a lot more people had access to warm clothes when their insane nonsense got put down and clothes became easy to mass produce.

Again, that isn't LLMs because LLMs have functionally zero value. But even the poorest of the poor are better off when technology changes industry, and yes, new skilled jobs have always come back quickly.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago (1 children)

Less people will be starving in 2-3 years with every meaningful advance in tech. Progress makes the world a better place at every level of the ladder.

It’s easy to hide behind simple statistics and I’m with you in the beginningAI can help increase efficiency to bring overall more people out of survival poverty. That’s excellent.

However, we’ve seen in the US at least, that the last decade or two of economic progress has been marked by an increase in service level jobs. Looking just slightly deeper shows us a decrease in solid middle class jobs, a decrease in typical income, a huge portion of people are worse off even if some overall stats are better. Then what happens if ai replaces driving and warehouse people and fast food? What’s left?

[–] [email protected] 0 points 1 month ago

The last decade has been those "middle class" jobs moving to China/India and providing way more of them with jobs that pull them from starving to not starving.

You can debate policy stuff of offshoring and whatever, but globalization isn't removing jobs. It's moving them. It's completely separate from technology making labor more efficient.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago* (last edited 1 month ago) (1 children)

Every technologically advancement throughout history has resulted in the floor, ceiling, and median quality of life significantly advancing in short order.

Every such change in the past has eventually resulted in vast improvements. However take a closer look at history and you’ll see that those disrupted mostly don’t recover, and it takes a couple generations to see the improvement. Those buggy whip manufacturers generally couldn’t get another job equivalent to theirs, and it wasn’t until their grandkids that people were overall better.

The AI revolution is theoretical so far so we can each offer whatever predictions we want. The thing is previous industrial revolutions replaced muscle: a machine can work harder and more continuously than people. However there always needed to be people. Each could do more with the help of the machine but there were so many things a machine couldn’t do that as efficiency improved it always opened more opportunity for people.

But what can people do that AI can’t? My prediction is to lump it in with other advanced automation. As automation gets smarter and smarter, there’s less need for people: the smart automation takes over more supervision. We know AI also has a place in creativity: that’s what generative ai is. It may be bad but it’s already on par with the dregs of the internet and will only get better. And we know that ai can make decisions: machine learning used to be central to ai until it worked.

Machines already took place of muscle and focus. various forms of smart automation and AI can start making inroads (and already have) on supervision, imagination, and decision making. Even if it doesn’t go far up those trees, most of the jobs are in the bottom branches. What type of role is left for humans that machines, automation or ai can’t handle? Theoretically not much is left.

Think back to the scare over self driving. If that works, that’s a huge safety and efficiency improvement, but it’s also millions of jobs. What else will those millions do, especially if other jobs at that level of skill are also being automated. It would be a huge disruption. If ai is able to take all the jobs predicted, that’s most of them and no one will have any better options. Even if it ushers in a new golden age, that will take a couple gneberations, and it might not if there’s no role left for humans that can’t be automated

Luckily ai sucks now. It does some amazing things and I’m in awe at recent progress. It does seem to have come far enough to be a useful tool in some places but luckily for us is far from being able to replace humans. However the potential is there, and approaching fast

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

Every one of them raised the floor very quickly. The increase in travel made way better quality of life available to way more people. But this isn't the Middle Ages. You don't need to enslave yourself to someone for a decade before you can get a new job.

LLMs can't do anything. "AI" will eventually replace jobs, but LLMs (the current "AI" everyone is spending through the nose on) can't actually do anything.

Self driving will be a great thing that saves lives exactly as quickly as it's implemented. It's not really connected at all to the current "AI" LLM bubble, though, because again, LLMs don't work.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 1 month ago

@conciselyverbose @ZDL We can't wait until we change the rules to disincentivize predatory invasive tech

[–] [email protected] 5 points 1 month ago

I work in AI (cue boos).

I trust a tech CEO to tell me the truth about the future of AI as much as I'd trust Harold Shipman to care for my elderly relatives.

Ask most people in the industry, the ones with PhD's in ML/DS, and the engineers that build the infrastructure around this stuff, and you'll likely hear that while it's very cool, what we'll likely see from it is a huge improvement in productivity tooling and word processing. It'll make workers' lives easier.

IMO, it won't take away any jobs any time soon. Most of the CEO's that say it's saved millions of hours of their engineers are, bluntly, liars. Those that say that software engineering will disappear because LLM's will get better are either really fucking stupid, liars that are pandering to shareholders, or a mix of the two.

Where I'll say that this person is right is that it'll improve productivity, naturally because the tools help the workers.