11 ms·

“Widespread impact of AI” I know it’s helping people a lot already but is it actually causing layoffs?

by rutierut 3y ago

Zetobal 3y ago
These are opportunity layoffs and everyone who says otherwise is delusional.
- infotainment 3y ago
  Yup, companies realized they could blame nonexistent “adverse macroeconomic conditions” to ditch a bunch of staff with zero bad PR and did it.
lifestyleguru 3y ago
Layoffs might be premature but everyone's LinkedIn news feed says clearly that AI is taking over everything.
thinkharderdev 3y ago
My (uninformed) guess would be that approximately 0 of these layoffs we because of AI. If anything the recovery in tech stocks partly due to AI hype prevented a lot more layoffs at big tech companies.
ReptileMan 3y ago
Just talked with a friend from VMWare they are to be laid off soon after the acquisition. It went like this - they prohibited usage of chatgpt, but we continue to use it at my team - because the AI won't take my job, but the programmer using AI will do. It is a tremendous force multiplier. It will take time to run trough organization - but if you are not the steamroller you will be the asphalt. And it will destroy a lot of the white collar bullshit jobs.
- pylua 3y ago
  The U.S. tax base may implode if that is the case.
- spaceman_2020 3y ago
  This is what it is: a massive force multiplier. It speeds things up like nothing before it. Cookie cutter code that you would have to otherwise write can be offloaded to AI flawlessly. Boring stuff like writing unit tests is easily AI’s domain. Among small startups and entrepreneurs, it can also increase speed of execution. Instead of handing off instructions to a designer (IF you have one already - otherwise you have to find one) and waiting for the results, you can tinker around with prompts and get what you want within hours. More than the cost, it eliminates another source of friction.
- skepticATX 3y ago
  > but the programmer using AI will do. Where exactly will these magical programmers come from, if not the existing pool? That is the fundamental flaw with this argument - there are not tens of thousands of people with not enough skill to be currently employed, but enough skill to out-compete current programmers as long as they can use GenAI. If these tools get orders of magnitude more powerful then maybe we can have a real discussion about the number of programming jobs diminishing, but that hasn't been the case yet. The reality is that for a typical software developer, you're looking at a single digit increase in productivity if you use Copilot. ChatGPT provides even less productivity increase right now.
  - baby_souffle 3y ago
    Sure , existing pool. But if I and co pilot can do double the work per unit time compared to just me, suddenly the pool is twice as large as it needs to be. Am I 2x productive? Depends on what I’m doing. But at almost no point since adopting copilot have I become 0 percent more productive so the pool is somewhere between 1 and 50 percent bigger than needed.
gumballindie 3y ago
Not really. But it is trendy to assume so. In the real world ai is mostly used by inexperienced people that after a while realise it doesnt work as advertised and pester colleagues with annoying questions on how to fix its broken code.
- hotpotamus 3y ago
  I have to say that it's been bizarre watching people say how much of a "game changer" LLMs are. There is clearly an advance there, no doubt, but it hasn't really been able to solve any actual problems that I have.
  - gumballindie 3y ago
    There’s a lot of marketing around llms, with related spam everywhere. For a while i tried using chatgpt for instance as a replacement for google search, but it fails even at that. I do still use it for basic queries but can never be trusted to be reliable.
    - elforce002 3y ago
      Same. Heck, I went to SO just to find an obscure piece of info that help me solve my issue and saved me 1 or 2 days of asking chatGPT the "right" question. ChatGPT is good but you need a "Jarvis" type AI to be Tony Stark and even then Tony must point it in the right direction.
      - DrSiemer 3y ago
        It's a common argument here: "LLMs are overhyped, because they could not solve my super niche issue". Their current status is basically "very junior programmer with a photographic memory, who has read a sizable chunk of the internet". They are excellent if you regularly need to implement code that has been done before.
        elforce002 3y ago

“Widespread impact of AI” I know it’s helping people a lot already but is it actually causing layoffs?

Zetobal 3y ago

These are opportunity layoffs and everyone who says otherwise is delusional.

infotainment 3y ago
Yup, companies realized they could blame nonexistent “adverse macroeconomic conditions” to ditch a bunch of staff with zero bad PR and did it.

lifestyleguru 3y ago

Layoffs might be premature but everyone's LinkedIn news feed says clearly that AI is taking over everything.

thinkharderdev 3y ago

My (uninformed) guess would be that approximately 0 of these layoffs we because of AI. If anything the recovery in tech stocks partly due to AI hype prevented a lot more layoffs at big tech companies.

ReptileMan 3y ago

Just talked with a friend from VMWare they are to be laid off soon after the acquisition. It went like this - they prohibited usage of chatgpt, but we continue to use it at my team - because the AI won't take my job, but the programmer using AI will do. It is a tremendous force multiplier. It will take time to run trough organization - but if you are not the steamroller you will be the asphalt. And it will destroy a lot of the white collar bullshit jobs.

pylua 3y ago
The U.S. tax base may implode if that is the case.
spaceman_2020 3y ago
This is what it is: a massive force multiplier. It speeds things up like nothing before it. Cookie cutter code that you would have to otherwise write can be offloaded to AI flawlessly. Boring stuff like writing unit tests is easily AI’s domain. Among small startups and entrepreneurs, it can also increase speed of execution. Instead of handing off instructions to a designer (IF you have one already - otherwise you have to find one) and waiting for the results, you can tinker around with prompts and get what you want within hours. More than the cost, it eliminates another source of friction.
skepticATX 3y ago
> but the programmer using AI will do. Where exactly will these magical programmers come from, if not the existing pool? That is the fundamental flaw with this argument - there are not tens of thousands of people with not enough skill to be currently employed, but enough skill to out-compete current programmers as long as they can use GenAI. If these tools get orders of magnitude more powerful then maybe we can have a real discussion about the number of programming jobs diminishing, but that hasn't been the case yet. The reality is that for a typical software developer, you're looking at a single digit increase in productivity if you use Copilot. ChatGPT provides even less productivity increase right now.
- baby_souffle 3y ago
  Sure , existing pool. But if I and co pilot can do double the work per unit time compared to just me, suddenly the pool is twice as large as it needs to be. Am I 2x productive? Depends on what I’m doing. But at almost no point since adopting copilot have I become 0 percent more productive so the pool is somewhere between 1 and 50 percent bigger than needed.

gumballindie 3y ago

Not really. But it is trendy to assume so. In the real world ai is mostly used by inexperienced people that after a while realise it doesnt work as advertised and pester colleagues with annoying questions on how to fix its broken code.

hotpotamus 3y ago
I have to say that it's been bizarre watching people say how much of a "game changer" LLMs are. There is clearly an advance there, no doubt, but it hasn't really been able to solve any actual problems that I have.
- gumballindie 3y ago
  There’s a lot of marketing around llms, with related spam everywhere. For a while i tried using chatgpt for instance as a replacement for google search, but it fails even at that. I do still use it for basic queries but can never be trusted to be reliable.
  - elforce002 3y ago
    Same. Heck, I went to SO just to find an obscure piece of info that help me solve my issue and saved me 1 or 2 days of asking chatGPT the "right" question. ChatGPT is good but you need a "Jarvis" type AI to be Tony Stark and even then Tony must point it in the right direction.
    - DrSiemer 3y ago
      It's a common argument here: "LLMs are overhyped, because they could not solve my super niche issue". Their current status is basically "very junior programmer with a photographic memory, who has read a sizable chunk of the internet". They are excellent if you regularly need to implement code that has been done before.
      - elforce002 3y ago