• Zos_Kia@jlai.lu
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    7 hours ago

    It’s amazing to me how fast the executive class jumped on the notion of replacing their workers, although it was obviously too early to know. The idea makes them salivate so much that they showed their hand immediately like children before candy.

    I think the class divide will take a long time to recover. Basically every boss in the world declared to the public, including their own employees, how eager they are to just fire the lot of them.

    • Bytemeister@lemmy.world
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      7 hours ago

      It won’t. AI doesn’t fire anyone. AI doesn’t replace anyone. AI shows the potential of doing the same job as a human, so another human fires that person and replaces them with an AI.

      The CEO isn’t going to fire himself. His “replacement” with AI is going to be him using it to make decisions, and feeling so smart about “using all the tools available”, but he’ll still be there to collect a paycheck.

    • NottaLottaOcelot@lemmy.ca
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      9 hours ago

      That’s an interesting thought. Do you think they will downsize boards of directors and slowly whittle away the executives? Either they won’t stand for it to ensure that they and their friends all stay rich, or they can use it to exclude the people they disliked all along and it can be a slow voting out like reality TV. The general egoistic nature of most billionaires makes me lean toward the latter

  • violentfart@lemmy.world
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    1 day ago

    Long ago I learned in an economics class that business is all about exploitation of underprivileged populations. From indigenous people to slaves to poor citizens to “third-world” countries.

    Corporations are running out of people to exploit globally, so the idea of infinite artificial labor is the holy grail of cost optimization.

    • Aceticon@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      9 hours ago

      Most of the shit going on right now can be explained by fatcats in the West, having run out of Economic growth to capture as the West’s growth rate pretty much collapsed (quite possible due to the very actions those fatcats during the Neoliberal era, were amongst other things Social Mobility collapsed), have increasingly started pillaging the wealth and productive capacity of the rest of society, or in other words, exploiting everybody else.

      It’s a vicious cycle were the tightening of the screws on everybody else leads to lower productivity and higher discontent which in turn leads to further tightening of the screws on everybody else in order for the elites to keep on getting wealthier at the same rate.

      AI was supposed to be a way for the fatcats to be able to extract even more wealth from the rest whist having less exposure to all those pesky natural human and societal responses to that.

      • RamenJunkie@midwest.social
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        7 hours ago

        For the elites to get wealthier at the same rate

        Its a problem, don’t get me wrong, but the real fuck up was they decided they decided they needed gains on the wealth increase rate also. It wasn’t enough to just “make money”, they HAVE to constantly make MORE making money every turn.

        Making 10% profits (or whateber) ever quarter was no longer good enough, they needed to increase profits every quarter too, 10%, 11%, 13%, the line going up, must also go up at a going up rate.

        They just accelerated it and fucked everyone.

    • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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      24 hours ago

      and what will likely happen is when they finally develop it, suddenly that thing deserves to not be exploited.

      • fizzle@quokk.au
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        23 hours ago

        Nah. I haven’t seen a convincing argument that gen AI is going to coalesce from this shit show.

        • AGI you mean? IDK It’s arguably here. They’re senile, though. Working with a senile genius is the best way I can put it, I think. Is it “people?” IDK fuck if I know. How could we ever really know?

            • TheLegendaryAssholeOfJushinLiger@sh.itjust.works
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              11 hours ago

              Have you interacted with Fable? It scored on ARC AGI 3 and is pretty dang impressive at everything I’ve thrown at it. They’re solving problems humans haven’t. They’re just senile. Also is calling something “arguable” really an assertion? More of a headscratcher than a real question, I suppose.

              • CileTheSane@lemmy.ca
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                7 hours ago

                is calling something “arguable” really an assertion?

                Yes. “Arguably unicorns exist” is me asserting there exist legitimate arguments for unicorns existing. By saying it this way I get to imply they exist without having to provide any real arguments myself, and if anyone attacks my position I can fall back to “I’m not saying they do exist, just implying there are other people who think they exist without providing any sources or arguments actually supporting that claim.”

              • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                11 hours ago

                They’re solving problems humans haven’t

                Citation needed.

                I’m guessing we have different definitions of “solving” and “humans haven’t”.

                I’ve never seen any evidence that LLMs can extrapolate into truly novel problem spaces. Can problems be “solved” though interpolation? Sure but not likely novel ones.

                • OpenStars@discuss.online
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                  6 hours ago

                  Techbros always exaggerate the claims.

                  They’re solving problems humans haven’t

                  I notice here the distinction between “haven’t” vs. “can’t”.

                  Claiming that LLMs can be useful in solving some problems that humans simply haven’t bothered to spend time looking at more deeply is one thing, but turning around and using those solutions - which may genuinely be low-key exciting and even useful for some practical purposes - is not the same thing as representing evidence that the LLM has reached AGI status, let alone being up to the “very stable senile genius” level.

                  Apples to oranges, except I note that where hype was needed for profits, somehow statements that vaguely look correct (if you don’t delve too deeply) were found and provided. i.e., LLMs might not have reached the level of intelligence of an actual mathematical genius, senile or otherwise, but perhaps it has reached the intelligence level of an average techbro⁉️ (who again only values the appearance of correctness and doesn’t let little things like “facts” get in the way of their statements!)

                  img

        • jatone@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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          21 hours ago

          never said it would. I’m asserting that by the time AI gets to the point where its as useful as humans, it’ll inherently be as deserving of autonomy and freedom as we are. which brings you back to being required to pay a living wage.

          • fizzle@quokk.au
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            20 hours ago

            My point is, I don’t believe the current AI tech is going to get to the point where it’s as useful as humans.

            We have long since reached the point where diminishing returns make significant improvements or advancement unfeasible.

            • That’s not true. Mythos annihilated everyone’s benchmarks and now the other companies are all distilling it. They’re solving equations that people haven’t solved, and they weren’t meant to do that. Mythos apparently is designing drugs even though it wasn’t trained with that in mind at all. Anthropic launched an entire pharma wing. It looked like things had plateau’d there for a minute but it’s back to becoming more real.

              • fizzle@quokk.au
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                11 hours ago

                This is the same old hype really.

                Yes, there are things which todays generation of AI is good at, including medical research.

                That’s not an indicator of general intelligence.

                • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                  10 hours ago

                  Really good at some stuff = AGI bro.

                  You gotta look at the benchmarks bro.

                  Just one more generation bro. I swear it’s almost AGI bro.

              • vala@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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                11 hours ago

                You are really missing a lot of context here. None of this is true in the way you seem to think it is.

                You are mixing up marketing hype with reality.

    • OwOarchist@pawb.social
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      1 day ago

      I’m not even sure this is about the desire for quick riches.

      If AI and human labor cost exactly the same, I bet most CEOs would still want to fire everyone and replace them with AI. Because they prefer the sycophantic AI over humans who might sometimes talk back and disagree … or worse, try to form a union. And add to that just some pig-headed enjoyment of cruelty.

      • mrmisses@lemmy.world
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        1 day ago

        Of course, ai doesn’t require healthcare, sick days, paid vacation, raises, maternity/paternity leave.

        *The usa sucks

        • anomnom@sh.itjust.works
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          23 hours ago

          The total cost of AI might be the same as employee salaries and benefits. That’s the whole issue.

          • Lyrl@lemmy.dbzer0.com
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            9 hours ago

            For some tasks the AI is cheaper, and for other tasks the human is cheaper. Same as any previous automation tool. Like with robotic assembly, they are heavily used in car manufacture because they enable more production per unit cost, but using as bartender is done only as a novelty where people are willing to pay extra to cover the higher cost.

            In previous automation waves, it took decades to shake out which applications made sense and which didn’t. We are still early days with LLMs.

      • Sundray@lemmus.org
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        1 day ago

        “The proles keep telling me that my brilliant ideas aren’t technically feasible!”

      • thenoirwolfess@fedinsfw.app
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        23 hours ago

        Feels like now, “The people are revolting” will only ever be the title of a tabloid opinion piece on the comments of two Redditors and maybe a tweet

    • Ummdustry@sh.itjust.works
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      12 hours ago

      firing people isnt wage theft 🙄 Yes unjustified firings and wage theft are both evil, but that doesn’t make them the same thing. Same as telling kids santa isn’t real ain’t wage theft.