The Workers Who Lost Their Jobs To AI (theguardian.com) 158
"How does it feel to be replaced by a bot?" asks the Guardian — interviewing several creative workers who know:
- Gardening copywriter Annabel Beales
"One day, I overheard my boss saying to a colleague, 'Just put it in ChatGPT....' [My manager] stressed that my job was safe. Six weeks later, I was called to a meeting with HR. They told me they were letting me go immediately. It was just before Christmas...
"The company's website is sad to see now. It's all AI-generated and factual — there's no substance, or sense of actually enjoying gardening."
- Voice actor Richie Tavake "[My producer] told me he had input my voice into AI software to say the extra line. But he hadn't asked my permission. I later found out he had uploaded my voice to a platform, allowing other producers to access it. I requested its removal, but it took me a week, and I had to speak to five people to get it done... Actors don't get paid for any of the extra AI-generated stuff, and they lose their jobs. I've seen it happen."
- Graphic designer Jadun Sykes "One day, HR told me my role was no longer required as much of my work was being replaced by AI. I made a YouTube video about my experience. It went viral and I received hundreds of responses from graphic designers in the same boat, which made me realise I'm not the only victim — it's happening globally..."
Labor economist Aaron Sojourner recently reminded CNN that even in the 1980s and 90s, the arrival of cheap personal computers only ultimately boosted labor productivity by about 3%. That seems to argue against a massive displacement of human jobs — but these anecdotes suggest some jobs already are being lost...
Thanks to long-time Slashdot readers Paul Fernhout and Bruce66423 for sharing the article.
Non sequitir in summary (Score:3, Insightful)
The "but" in that sentence does not belong there.
i.e. There will be a small displacement of human jobs AND that small displacement is already happening.
It's happenning at my company (Score:5, Interesting)
I work for a software company in the UK. About six months ago, they laid off about 50% of the R&D dept with the idea that AI can do the development work instead. Then in recent months, they took the axe to the services and support teams with the idea that AI chatbots can answer customers' queries. We've seen support teams of 10 reduced to a team of 2. Some support teams are now down to one person, who are having to manage 100-200 tickets for the product they are responsible for. Literally no contingency there for holidays and sick days. Nor did they run any of the AI stuff in parallel with humans to see if it was as effective as providing ticket resolutions. Our customers were already getting pissed off at the declining level of support due to other non AI-related job cuts over the past couple of years; they're going to be really pissed off over the next few months and will probably start pissing off.
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I work for a software company in the UK. About six months ago, they laid off about 50% of the R&D dept with the idea that AI can do the development work instead. Then in recent months, they took the axe to the services and support teams with the idea that AI chatbots can answer customers' queries. We've seen support teams of 10 reduced to a team of 2. Some support teams are now down to one person, who are having to manage 100-200 tickets for the product they are responsible for. Literally no contingency there for holidays and sick days. Nor did they run any of the AI stuff in parallel with humans to see if it was as effective as providing ticket resolutions. Our customers were already getting pissed off at the declining level of support due to other non AI-related job cuts over the past couple of years; they're going to be really pissed off over the next few months and will probably start pissing off.
Sounds like a great way to go out of business.
Re:It's happenning at my company (Score:4, Funny)
Sounds like a great way to go out of business.
... at which point, the company's costs will drop to zero; making their cost-cutting initiative a complete success!
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Chances are they are out of business. Hopefully the OP got some severance out of it and likely good riddance.
You can be angry they laid you off, or you can reflect that they laid you off and paid you because they're going out of business. You already described how it's spiralling down the drain but cutting R&D and support. One person isn't going to keep up with 100-200 tickets a day and it's going to back up and customers are going to be angry. If it's a goo
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The suits will cash out and be welcomed to a new company with open arms for making such an incredible profit.
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So, typical behavior for a PE company: slash and burn, and mumble something to investors about AI being used to reduce headcount.
This isn't a story about the *successful* replacement of people with AI. It's a story about the *claimed* replacement of people with AI, going down in flames.
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Sounds like that business is dine for. Once the peopel are gone, the knowledge is gone and there is no fast way to get it back.
Re: It's happenning at my company (Score:2)
due to other non AI-related job cuts over the past couple of years
... so the company isn't doing well, they're damned if they cut jobs and they're damned if they don't, AI didn't cause that.
When your company rehires (Score:2)
Just like with 2008 they fired huge numbers of people and they rehired the bare minimum they needed to do.
Because of a lack of antitrust law there is very very little competition so businesses can get away with this shit without losing market share during the chaos.
Just like how stock BuyBacks cause economic crashes and the Federal reserve uses high interest rates to engineer those crashes in order to ba
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Is this software company, by coincidence, trying to be purchased or IPO? Because that's the kind of behavior that you see before a company's founders bank out...
AI Because we can, not because we should (Score:5, Insightful)
Similar with graphic design, I just asked for some silly "4 screen folding phone with 8 cameras!" type stuff from every major chatbot just last week, same prompt as a competition. Only Gemini gave me anything the least bit interesting or even close really, and only then if you really wanted specifically silly AI generated looking meme stuff.
Copywriters are the one thing I can actually see reliably being replaced at the moment, but only by people that aren't complete idiots. You could probably replace 3 copywriters with one that uses AI, AI can be more persuasive than the average human in scientific tests [arxiv.org], but the second you rely on your idiot boss to decide what a good ad is your ad firm goes belly up. Not that this has stopped ad firms before, they have one of the highest rates of going bust out of any industry in history, they're 90% run by idiots.
So are any of these examples a good idea? Maybe the VO guy, but that's about it so far. But that's not going to stop idiot bosses from destroying their own companies and jobs by doing this anyway!
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Maybe if you're some VO for say, corporate training videos, you can be replaced, but that's about it so far.
Yes, you could replace this entire video [youtube.com] with AI and it would be an improvement. I have to watch it every year now.
Copywriters are the one thing I can actually see reliably being replaced at the moment, but only by people that aren't complete idiots. You could probably replace 3 copywriters with one that uses AI
Most copywriters are doing shit work now already. It's churn churn churn for SEO. AI can do that just fine without any help. It doesn't matter if it puts out bullshit, it's replacing bullshit.
The Last Human Revolution, is like NO other. (Score:5, Interesting)
Labor economist Aaron Sojourner recently reminded CNN that even in the 1980s and 90s, the arrival of cheap personal computers only ultimately boosted labor productivity by about 3%. That seems to argue against a massive displacement of human jobs — but these anecdotes suggest some jobs already are being lost..
No shit they're already being lost. We really need to STOP comparing this revolution to any other in history. Because it is like no other. Even the personal computer was looking to enhance human efficiency. AI and automation are looking to replace it altogether. Because AI is targeting the human mind.
AGI? Please. AI is being hired everywhere under the name Good Enuff. If you're not perfect, AI doesn't have to be either. And AI will work 24/7/365 without bitching about all that needy shit humans require. Like pay raises, sleep, time off, vacations, sick pay, lunch breaks, and retirement funds.
Unless you like your UBI to come in more flavors than plain welfare, we best start reminding our "representative" leaders that this is a major fucking problem to solve. Now. Greed is deaf, dumb, and blind. Otherwise, it might think beyond a fiscal quarter or two and realize a 50% revenue drop and crashing of The Precious stock market was ultimately caused by firing your customer base and replacing it with AI. As if welfare-flavored UBI is gonna sustain the GDP revenue circus of excess.
The Rich will become quite edible. Let's just hope AI doesn't figure out how many computes per mile Soylent Green might achieve after that.
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Unless you like your UBI to come in more flavors than plain welfare, we best start reminding our "representative" leaders that this is a major fucking problem to solve.
My brother in Chris, there will be no UBI. They are making that clear all over the world right now. Fascism is rising.
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Unless you like your UBI to come in more flavors than plain welfare, we best start reminding our "representative" leaders that this is a major fucking problem to solve.
My brother in Chris, there will be no UBI. They are making that clear all over the world right now. Fascism is rising.
Funny thing: Proper fascism needs jobs for everybody. This crappy copy has not even the limited future that real fascism has.
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Proper fascism needs jobs for everybody.
You needn't worry; I'm sure our respected leaders will provide proper venues for us peons to redeem ourselves through work. After all, don't they tell us that work will set you free? (though it sounds better in the original German).
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Funny thing: Proper fascism needs jobs for everybody. This crappy copy has not even the limited future that real fascism has.
A war economy usually means jobs for everyone and we seem to be ramping up in that direction. Now the push is 5% of GDP to ready for war, going to be lots of jobs there. How it will be paid for is the next question.
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The Rich will become quite edible.
I dunno. You might be able to eat some of them, but not the ones you really want. Today's ultra wealthy have security/intel teams comprised of former SEALs, Delta operators, Secret Service, etc, and can move anywhere/anytime in the world they want (along with their wealth). They have eyes/ears everywhere and are pretty much untouchable.
Security teams usually stop caring when not paid (Score:2)
From: https://www.vice.com/en/articl... [vice.com]
""The billionaires understand that they're playing a dangerous game," Rushkoff said. "They are running out of room to externalize the damage of the way that their companies operate. Eventually, there's going to be the social unrest that leads to your undoing."
Like the gated communities of the past, their biggest concern was to find ways to protect themselves from the "unruly masses," Rushkoff said. "The question
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This doomsday scenario is as likely as Soylent Green itself.
Yes, AI will replace some kinds of jobs, just as automation and mechanization have been replacing jobs for centuries. But people will find new kinds of work to do, also just as they have done for centuries. The vast majority of those farming jobs from the 1800s are gone forever. Most of those factory jobs from the 1900s are gone forever. Do we miss those lost jobs? Most of us do not.
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The problem is that there is usually a lag between the old jobs disappearing and the new jobs appearing. During that lag, things can be unpleasant for the those who lost their jobs.
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This is true enough. That lag used to be *really* long, like many decades. These days, just as new technology comes at us at lightning pace, so do the new job opportunities.
Did you notice, for example, the major rise in unemployment between 1970 and now, when factory work in the US dropped from 30% to 10%? There were literally millions of manufacturing jobs lost. https://fred.stlouisfed.org/se... [stlouisfed.org]
No, you didn't notice those huge spikes in unemployment? Neither did anybody, because they didn't happen, and the
Honestly the last two industrial revolutions (Score:2)
Christopher Columbus being a nice guy isn't the only myth you're taught in grade school history. Honestly pretty much everything is a lie of one kind or another.
You can't eat the rich anymore (Score:2, Interesting)
We are old farts so we are probably old enough to remember the Rodney King riots.
People like the point of those and say that the rioters were animals because they
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> We really need to STOP comparing this revolution to any other in history. Because it is like no other.
Nonsense. At one point, 90+% of us were stoop-labor agricultural peasants, typically unfree (serfs or outright slaves). Now fewer than 5% work on farm, and the ones who do are typical riding in air-conditioned combines with GPS steering and an Internet connection rather than hoeing a bean field by hand. Yet somehow we don't have 85% unemployment. Weird, huh?
The only way in which this revolution is "lik
Yes, but... (Score:2)
There's a significant question as to what degree even the most advanced current AI can replace a human expert. The answer DOES vary a lot with the field. but in most fields the answer seems to be "not yet". In many it can do a part of the job, so if it weren't changing rapidly the answer would be to refactor the jobs, but it *is* changing rapidly, so often (usually?) any particular refactoring would be obsolete by the time it was implemented.
And *IF* Ai2027 ( https://ai-2027.com/ [ai-2027.com] ) is even approximately c
A lesson learned (Score:2)
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I think the businesses likely to take up AI LLM generated slop are the same that were ready to offshore a call centre. These are the companies that don't really care about their customers but care about the shareholders. Be concerned if you're working for one of those.
AI only has to be marginally better to deal with than the trouble involved in switching to another provider.
However, I do also believe that over time humans will make life better for those who are dealing with AI slop, if you want to succeed a
AI jobs (Score:2)
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Stop waiting. The judge has already ruled that the company can't escape a trial over causing a kid to commit suicide. (I think that was on Slashdot yesterday or the day before.)
Legalities (Score:2)
If the courts rule in favor of copyright holders (which is appearing more probable as the cases wind through the courts, and as AI companies keep making admissions of copyright theft), all of these companies racing to replace people with copyright infringement are going to be ripe for the suing.
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Not theft, infringement. That's an important distinction in a legal case.
So? (Score:2)
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No different? Can you predict what jobs you can currently train for that will NOT be taken by AIs of one sort or another?
A few decades ago I wrote a paper called "Be a garbage man" as my prediction for one of the last jobs to be thoroughly automated. Part of the reason was the flexible skill-set required and another part was the relatively low pay.
Sad but... (Score:2)
copywriters (Score:2)
Sure, a copywriter for a gardening site doesn't seem like an essential function for society. I'm not into gardening myself, so I probably wouldn't miss her.
So what do you do for a living? Do you do it sitting in front of a computer? What percentage of jobs would you define as "knowledge work?" Do you realize how many of those jobs have gone away, and how many more will disappear in the near future? You don't have to buy the AI hype about "superintelligence" to understand that what it can do right now is cau
And again... (Score:2)
At some point, AI, robots, and automation are going to render the vast majority of jobs obsolete. At that point, the robber barons will consider us all to be "surplus to requirements".
The economy won't be anything like it is now. They won't need us to make stuff for them, nor will they need us to buy stuff from them. They will control, and therefor own, everything: all of the means of production, all of the resources, and all of the power.
They will have extracted all of the value from us that they possibly
I looked at the statistics (Score:2)
These are statistics for my country, but I assume any western country with the aging problem looks pretty much the same. I looked at the amount of work hours, divided by average hours of work for one full time worker and took that as percentage of whole population. Range was 15 years. Here are the results:
1. Total amount of work has not really changed. The drop in work is less than half a percent. (I expected the drop to be much larger)
(1.5. The amount of work has not changed much, the work has shifted fro
Eat shit because it's cheaper. (Score:3)
Even if 'AI' were, in fact, a human-or-better replacement for humans there would obviously be a teensy little social problem implied by the relatively abrupt breakdown of the notion that people who possess useful skills and are willing to apply them diligently can be economic participants in ways that make their lives at least endurable; but it wouldn't necessarily be a problem for the optimistic theory that the incentives generally align to encourage quality. Sure, most of the people theorizing that implicitly assumed that humans would be doing the better or more innovative work; but the thesis didn't require that.
What we are getting is worse. The disruption is being drawn out a bit, because 'AI' is not in fact generally fit for purpose; but the incentives have turned toward delivering shit. 'Creative' is an obvious target because that's the designation for a swath of jobs where quality is understood to exist but there aren't really rigid failure states: anyone who thinks that lorem ipsum and literature are interchangeable, or that there's nothing worth doing in graphic design once you've identified somewhere between 2 and 4 colors that the human eye can distinguish from one another is abjectly beneath human culture(and I don't mean that in the 'High Art' snob sense: don't even try to tell me that all shlocky summer blockbusters are equally entertaining; or that no billboards differ meaningfully; or that some social media shitposters aren't more fun to read than others); but it's not like the CMS will throw an error if you insert a regurgitated press release where journalism was supposed to go; or sack the writer who is actually passionate about the subject and have the intern plagiarize a viral listicle instead.
The whole enterprise is really a sordid revelation less of what 'AI' can do than of the degree to which people were really just hoping for an excuse to get away with less and worse; and the ongoing trend of societies feeling relentlessly poorer and more fixated on scarcity even when their GDPs allegedly just keep going up; and economic statistics assure us that productivity metrics look amazing.
Just tell me that it's not fucking bullshit that a generation ago any city of nontrivial size had several newspapers, all with enough staff to actually fill a 'newsroom' that was probably a literal place at the time; and even podunk towns often had one with a few plucky wearers of multiple hats; and now we've got bot slop. In inflation-adjusted dollars the GDP per capita has just slightly less than doubled since 1985; and journalists and editors are both relatively cheap for what they do and produce something that can be copied across a subscriber base of almost any size at close to zero marginal cost.
This is getting TL;DR; but fuck it, it's honestly profoundly depressing: we are all, constantly, being made to cosplay a vastly poorer society(except on the specific occasions when it's time to justify the order of things; in which case look at what big TVs you can buy!) despite the numbers allegedly saying that we are richer than ever. 'AI' is a new and exceptionally versatile tool for continuing this trend; but you see it everywhere; both in terms of what just gets done and in terms of arguments that get made: why is it harder to get news made by journalists when the metro area being served is ~50% more populous and a trifle under twice as wealthy, per capita, than it was back in the day? What do you mean that's what has happened to housing affordability and even the nominally-luxurious 'McMansions' are all plastic plumbing and sawdust and formaldehyde pseudowood in places they think it won't be noticed? What do you mean tenure-track faculty positions are being slashed in favor of adjuncts who could earn
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She might even get a side gig as Dupe detector.
Please mod parent up, funny (Score:3)
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You wish. Or not.
Re:That sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
And gardening copywriters? I didn't even know that was a thing
I'm guessing you're not British. We are mad crazy about gardening here.
so I won't be too sad about seeing that one go.
That seems a very reductionist thing, "doesn't affect me personally so fuck it".
Re:That sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
"doesn't affect me personally so fuck it".
Spot on. Gardening Copywriter does not mean what it says directly. It means the person is a copywriter. Just happened to work for a gardening magazine. A information source written by people. If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on. Like eating your own shit because it it is recycled.
As for "I am not too sad"? The guy is just a goddamn psychopath without feelings for other people.
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I think maybe you're not clear about what the latest models actually do (ground with Google Search for example).
Re: That sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
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Indeed. That AI "optimization" made them genric and boring. Probably far more expensive by way of damage than keeping a person that knows what they are doing.
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Indeed. That AI "optimization" made them genric and boring. Probably far more expensive by way of damage than keeping a person that knows what they are doing.
Sounds like a business opportunity for the displaced copywriter, doesn't it? They can break out and prover their worth by competing with their old employer by offering a superior product, unless, of course, the consumers don't see the difference the copywriter imagined they brought to the table...
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And if things were that simple, bad ideas would die early. But they are not.
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
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If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on.
If readers don't like it, they'll cancel their subscriptions and/or stop going to the website. The magazine will respond by rehiring human copywriters.
The market will self-correct.
On the other hand, if readers are okay with the LLM output, the money formerly spent on the copywriter can be invested elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I am a gardener, but I don't read about gardening.
Re:That sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
The magazine will respond by rehiring human copywriters.
It's very hard for a quality product to compete with planet sized oceans of shit, it turns out. It's why we have enshittification, it's why cheap, even dangerous crap illegally imported puts legitimate companies out of business.
The market will self-correct.
I find your blind faith in a higher power touching.
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If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on.
If readers don't like it, they'll cancel their subscriptions and/or stop going to the website. The magazine will respond by rehiring human copywriters.
The market will self-correct.
Will it?
The first mistake of the Resistance, is assuming pushback somehow represents an impactful (addressable) part of the revenue stream. It often does not. And that's assuming the current business owners aren't out to make a loss for some reason (a la UK candy shops)
Also, "reader" behavior. If humans use AI to summarize an article written by AI, does anyone notice?
Re:That sounds about right (Score:5, Insightful)
"The magazine will respond by rehiring human copywriters."
Fabricating some facts, Bill?
Yes, of course the free market is the answer to everything...when you're a business executive that profits from that answer.
"...the money formerly spent on the copywriter can be invested elsewhere."
Into ShanghaiBill's back account. Let's be clear who posted this.
" I am a gardener, but I don't read about gardening."
You are also an executive who profits from human suffering.
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If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on.
If readers don't like it, they'll cancel their subscriptions and/or stop going to the website. The magazine will respond by rehiring human copywriters.
The market will self-correct.
On the other hand, if readers are okay with the LLM output, the money formerly spent on the copywriter can be invested elsewhere.
Disclaimer: I am a gardener, but I don't read about gardening.
It isn't too difficult to detect AI written material. Now describing the difference, it's kind of like the "fake" person you meet at a party.
I do a lot of research, both technical and social. AI makes for poor results in either. Wishy-washy technical articles? weird. Social articles that are non-committal and I get a fair amount of "Although some people believe that".
I mean, it will be what it will be, and of course businesses will try to eliminate the enemy, which is people on payroll. I suspect at so
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Markets rarely if ever "Self correct" when it comes to business-destroying decisions. The businesses concerned go out of business and the entire market they served gets considered radioactive by investors for decades to come.
The web is being destroyed in front of our eyes right now. In a few years, you may see a combination of "You need to know where to find it" personal websites with real information on them, manufacturer's support sites, and shopping sites. People will no longer be going to "the internet"
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If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on.
"What has been will be again, what has been done will be done again; there is nothing new under the sun."
Ecclesiastes 1:9, circa 3,000 years ago.
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If AI takes over all the text we are going to live on regurgitated stuff from now on. Like eating your own shit because it it is recycled.
Are you really of the opinion that the vast majority of articles written are new, unique, and present fresh perspectives heretofore unseen by any living person? Really? I contend many/most are regurgitated from other sources.
As for "I am not too sad"? The guy is just a goddamn psychopath without feelings for other people.
Why must society coddle people that only contribute something that can be easily done by a machine? Perhaps the days when a person could feed their family, put a roof over their head and save for their retirement by writing stories about playing in the dirt are over? If the human copywr
Re:That sounds about right (Score:4, Insightful)
After reading the section about it in TFA, it made me wonder whether this site was a content mill, which is kind of the in-thing now for popular news sites and magazines of yore. If you look at old enthusiast computer sites and magazines like toms hardware, pc magazine, and countless of others I've long since forgotten, you'll find that bunches of them were bought out by content mills over the last few decades, and even when they're owned by different content mills it just looks like the same old shit. Those companies farmed it out to whoever to just produce slop. Doesn't matter whether it's good or just total crap, all that matters is whether it brings in clicks from google. Notice how SEO was part of her job.
So it sounds like the company replaced human slop with AI slop. The question is, will anybody know the difference? Some people will, but most won't.
But honestly, who the fuck cares? Think about all of those times when you've google'd a show you just watched to find out if it's going to have another season or if it's going to be cancelled, and most of the search results you find spend the first 8 paragraphs just re-hashing shit that you already know about it before basically admitting that they don't know either. This is exactly the kind of slop that google seems to like, hence google makes it rank high in the search results. Honestly, I hope they do fire the assholes that waste people's time with that shit.
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
well, some people perceive AI slop as soulless and boring. They find the internet more and more empty, lacking human interaction. It is called the dead internet theory.
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it made me wonder whether this site was a content mill
It likely wasn't since it employed people. It probably is now.
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Content mills employ people too.
Maybe AI wrote TFA? (Score:2)
Be afraid. Be very afraid.
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Notice how SEO was part of her job.
SEO doesn't make articles bad. What makes articles bad is writing them specifically and only for the purpose of SEO, and not caring about quality. Most people paying for copy seem mostly to want articles of a certain size. They don't care if they are any good. But why would you not want articles to contain some specific keywords that will raise article scores?
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SEO doesn't make articles bad.
While I've never done SEO, from what people who do have told me, google apparently likes articles that are more wordy than they probably need to be and focus on answering questions the reader might have. In my mind, that says you inevitably genericize your content into targeting the everyday visitor instead of finding a core audience. Likewise, also emphasizes wasting the reader's time.
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Let me give you a very personal exa
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Let me give you a very personal exampe of why it sucks. Youtube recently decided to force down translations for video titles down the user's throat. It has exactly one control: the UI language. Most Americans might not understand the problem, but if you are ever fluent in another language, the quality of the automatic translations are infuriatingly hilariously bad. It says a lot about the culture in Google's management that they pushed this change through and no one thought that spending a bit more time on it might be a good idea. But I guess I shouldn't be surprised given that Google cancelled their DEI policies a while ago...
Hold on there a moment. I was following you until you threw in the gratuitous DEI reference.
Care to explain how AI is connected to Google and DEI?
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If Google's management at Youtube at any kind of diversity, they would know how most multilingual people around the world react to this. AI translations can be a great help if you interact with someone you couldn't interact before, but getting it forced down your throat for a language you know better than the AI?
As a citizen of the world, you are free to use any other translation system, and not forced to use Google. I shall help you find perfect translations, although you can ensure they had good DEI. DeepL Quillbot, all apparently perfect with no issues translating English into whatever languages with the addition of proper DEI. So you are not chained to the bigots at google.
You're welcome.
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Why such antipathy for employment?
Because they'll soon find new jobs that are more productive and meaningful.
Regions with high levels of employment churn tend to be more productive and prosperous.
Re:That sounds about right (Score:4, Insightful)
Because they'll soon find new jobs that are more productive and meaningful.
Oh sweet summer child, such faith you have.
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Yes, there was a ton of jobs in the 1930's for those farmers and farriers that became unemployed.
Truth was a 25% unemployment rate until government created jobs, and even then it took a world war to really employ those unemployed farmers and farriers.
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Why such antipathy for employment?
Because they'll soon find new jobs that are more productive and meaningful.
Regions with high levels of employment churn tend to be more productive and prosperous.
They also tend to be a great way for individuals to increase pay. I always suggest people starting out in their careers to job hop for a few years. I just about doubled my pay in a few years - interestingly enough, by going back to a place I left. I guess they liked me.
You don't want to overdo that though. If you post 10 different jobs on your resume' in your mid 30's, it'll raise questions.
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That seems a very reductionist thing, "doesn't affect me personally so fuck it".
It isn't reasonable to expect people to be worried about every single bad thing that happens on the planet, especially when they can't do anything about it.
Now, if you flat out tell someone, "I don't care that you lost your job", then you're being a prick. But there isn't anything particularly wrong about about not caring that someone lost their job.
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
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I suppose it depends what he really meant by "too sad". To me that had "fuck 'em" vibes. Like, I'm not too sad that Tesla's sales plummeted after Elon kept being a dickhead in public. And that means I'm spitefully gleeful. That goes way above and beyond not having energy to care about everything (which none of us do).
I can definitely express some minor sympathy about the abstract notion of someone I don't know losing jobs I didn't know existed and don't personally affect me especially when it's funneling m
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And gardening copywriters? I didn't even know that was a thing
I'm guessing you're not British. We are mad crazy about gardening here.
so I won't be too sad about seeing that one go.
That seems a very reductionist thing, "doesn't affect me personally so fuck it".
Could it be confusion regarding "copy writer" and copywriter, which is similar to copyright?
Not that I'd tell people across the pond how to do words, but as a person who writes copy, the combining of two words might be the issue here.
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
Re: That sounds about right (Score:2)
That seems a very reductionist thing, "doesn't affect me personally so fuck it".
I don't think that's fair. Local journalism is basically dead in the US now, and I'd rank that higher than some online magazine. I'd take a local paper with fewer jobs over none at all, but it's too late. The lost jobs suck... but it's dead.
Take the Gardening part out of this and replace with Popular Mechanics, something a lot of nerds grew up reading. It's turned into clickbait slop to keep up with the times. I don't think I'd feel any different about a lost job there. AI isn't the reason they lost a job.
Re: (Score:2, Funny)
And gardening copywriters? I didn't even know that was a thing so I won't be too sad about seeing that one go.
I'm not surprised. American gardens seem to be about putting down a perfectly flat layer of green grass and hoping for the love of God, Christ and everything that is holy that not a single element of colour or varying plant matter is seen. Oh and then a leaf falls and you run off in a panic, hit the big red button, the klaxons ring and you get a leaf blower out to make sure that demon plant based hellspawn is ejected from your property.
In much of the rest of the world gardening is a thing. Shit man paper ba
Re: (Score:2)
And gardening copywriters? I didn't even know that was a thing so I won't be too sad about seeing that one go.
I'm not surprised. American gardens seem to be about putting down a perfectly flat layer of green grass and hoping for the love of God, Christ and everything that is holy that not a single element of colour or varying plant matter is seen.
Sounds like a French formal garden, not some American thing. It's also one of the less likely varieties you'll find here.
In much of the rest of the world gardening is a thing. Shit man paper based magazines for gardening still exist too, they seem to have outlived everything else.
Yes, in the USA, gardening is very much a thing. And we have all manners of them. French formal gardens and more random gardens. And they are all over the country.
In my yard for instance, I have a Rhododendron and various flowering plant garden just in front of the house, a raised bed garden for veggies, and an iris garden around the mailbox. A Hosta path to the back yard, where we have
'Copywriters' are PR drones aren't they? (Score:2)
Part of the parasitical industry that is advertising. Not a group for whom I have any sympathy if they are being exterminated.
Re: (Score:2)
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Has anyone tried to boost their Karma by having GPT write his Slashdot comments?
Weird enough to try. Talk about the new Slashdot Effect.
Should we call the new UID "Clippy"? Not like all of us here aren't old enough to remember.
Re: (Score:2)
Has anyone tried to boost their Karma by having GPT write his Slashdot comments?
Weird enough to try. Talk about the new Slashdot Effect.
Should we call the new UID "Clippy"? Not like all of us here aren't old enough to remember.
I did it a few times. No one noticed. I did vet out the AI content for correctness, so there was a human in the loop yet.
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A lot of comments in TFA talk about how AI cannot do complex things, while only humans can.
Desktop calculators can do some pretty complex things. Long division took humanity millennia to develop.
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What remains true is that someone must generate training data. The current AI wave is essentially riding on centuries of accumulated training data. This is effectively the fossil fuel boom data for AI. It will run out. And then model capabilities will plateau. What will probably happen at that point is that original novel works to used as new training data will become much much more valuable, and only the upper percentile of creative folks will have viable careers. The mediocre stuff will be replaced by AI
Yes, it is inevitable that AI will end up referencing itself. Which will be interesting, because eventually, the AI will be able to be considered truth, and if AI glitches and tells us that the Earth is flat - it is flat. The truth delivereved via AI. AI even "knows" that now.
"When AI references itself, it is engaging in a process known as "self-referential reasoning," where it uses its own outputs or beliefs to inform its understanding or decision-making. This can create complexities in ensuring the AI's
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I do not believe that there's any real requirement that the AI not have access to sensors able to perceive the world. That the current LLMs do is not evidence of that. I suspect that an example of AIs that do will be found in the recent Chinese robot kick-boxing contest, though I don't really know that those were actual robots rather than telefactors. I'd also mention the self-driving cars, but I'm not certain to what extent those are AI, and to what extent preprogrammed. (If something can't learn durin
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It probably depends on what you are measuring. E.g. in the company I worked at, the productivity didn't go up much with the arrival of personal computers, but the costs went down. We stopped buying as much time on remote mainframes. (We still needed some.) OTOH, I'm not sure word processors helped much. True, we needed fewer secretaries, but that meant managers were typing their papers...and they were both more expensive and less efficient.
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Actually, I think computers may have increased the number of office workers. Perhaps they reduced the number in some areas. This is partially because they made it easier to ... micro-manage isn't quite the correct word, but it's close. If the correct word exists, I can't think of it, but to "manage" multiple layers of the hierarchy at once. (I didn't say this was a good thing.)