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> no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. In to

> no one is stating "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. In today's social climate claiming to replace humans with AI would attract the wrong kind of attention from politicians (during an election year) and from the public in general. This would be even more unwise to admit for a company like Google who's an "AI producer". They may leave such a language for closed meetings with potential customers during sales pitches though.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago
> and from the public in general Don't think the public will be that concerned about people in Google's salary bracket losing their jobs.
- ytss 2y ago
  The public might though be concerned that if they are being replaced, many in other positions at other companies will soon be replaced as well.
  - darth_avocado 2y ago
    That’s not how the mind works. People cheered when Elon fired 80% of the Twitter staff. No one cares when people with high paying jobs suffer.
    - mmcdermott 2y ago
      The people who cheered about the firing of 80% of the Twitter staff largely believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were being adversely affected by them. While Google may be seen with more wariness in tech circles, I don't think the average person believes that Google is actively harming them (again, rightly or wrongly).
    - almatabata 2y ago
      I think twitter is an outlier because people hated the employees already for various reasons. For example they thought that twitter had a bloated workforce because of videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs). And a lot of people heavily disagreed with how they handled moderation. You can take things like the hunter Biden laptop suppression or in the funny category you had the getting banned for saying learn to code (https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassment-ross/ https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassme...). Take random company without controversies and you will find less vitriol about them getting fired.
    - ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
      These aren't the same types of events. In Twitter's case, it was a one-off act, caused by one-off circumstances. With Google, it'd be more of a precursor to a new trend that might soon take root and impact me or those I care about.
- jl6 2y ago
  It’s a disservice to the public to assume they aren’t capable of understanding why AI job losses might be concerning even if they aren’t directly impacted. Most people aren’t so committed to class warfare that they will root for the apocalypse as long as it stomps a rich guy first.
  - tehjoker 2y ago
    Software engineers and grocery store workers are in different income brackets, but in the same class (labor/prolaterian). It is managers, executives, and investors that are in the capitalist class. Class is determined by your relationship to production.
    - barrkel 2y ago
      Software engineer salaries and stock compensation can be enough to shift alignment somewhat, especially after many years of capital accumulation.
      - tehjoker 2y ago
        if you make the majority of your earnings from passive income or you do not need to work to live you are more part of the leisure class
        barrkel 2y ago
        Two things: capitalists don't not work; and if you have a sizeable portfolio, you may not need to work and may earn plenty of passive income, yet still work because you add more value at the margin working than fiddling with stock allocations or angel investing or whatnot (vs index funds etc.).
        datavirtue 2y ago
        It's easy to get a capitalist to come out of retirement. Most of the time you just have to ask them to take a look at your business. Before you know it they accept a board position and shortly thereafter they are running point as President.
- pjmlp 2y ago
  No one cares about self checkout on supermarkets impact on their employees, until their employer does something similar.
  - alsetmusic 2y ago
    I care as a consumer who hates standing in long lines. My former bank branch had thirteen teller stations and two tellers. This wasn't on a bad day. This was for years.
- wbl 2y ago
  The bank tellers didn't go away: they just became higher paid and higher skilled when cash management was no longer the job.
- whatshisface 2y ago
  People in Google salary brackets get jobs at Google-1 salary brackets, pushing junior people at Google-1 to Google-2, all the way down to IT departments at non-tech firms. This impacts everybody who's in the industry or capable of switching.
- ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
  Why would the general public care about Google employees. Google is however a major saas provider. And people might start to worry that their employer is going to soon buy a subscription to whatever that that Google used to automate jobs.
rty32 2y ago
> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Depends on who you ask. If Trump wins and Elon Musk actually gets a new job, they would be bragging about replacing humans with AI all day long. And corporates are going to love it. Not sure about what voters think though. But the fact that most of these companies are in California, New York etc means that it barely matters.
- tjahg 2y ago
  [flagged]
  - lenerdenator 2y ago
    That would be the way someone with no real awareness of the philosophies and realities of the two parties in the US would see it. And to be fair, that's a good description of a large chunk of the American electorate. But you can't have a guy who literally used to relieve himself into a golden toilet take over your party and be anything but the party of big business and billionaires.
    - Thorrez 2y ago
      >Despite widespread rumors, there is no verified evidence that Trump actually owns a gold toilet. https://royaltoiletry.com/does-trump-have-a-gold-toilet-unpacking-the-myths-and-realities/ https://royaltoiletry.com/does-trump-have-a-gold-toilet-unpa...
      - lenerdenator 2y ago
        Fair enough. Still a guy who operated multiple luxury hotel and golf course properties that would laugh a working man out the front door if he asked for an affordable room.
    - deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
- ulfw 2y ago
lenerdenator 2y ago
> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Would it be? Do they care? Sam Altman's been talking about how GenAI could break capitalism (maybe not the exact quote, but something similar), and these companies have been pushing out GenAI products that could obviously and easily be used to fake photographic or video evidence of things that have occurred in the real world. Elon's obsessed with making an AI that's trained to be a 20-year-old male edgelord from the sewer pits of the internet. Compared to those things, "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" is absolutely anodyne.
- agentultra 2y ago
  100%. Altman encourages anyone that will listen to him that monopolies are the only path to success in business. He has a lot riding on making sure everyone is addicted to AI and that he’s the one selling the shovels. Google isn’t far off. Most capitalists have this fantasy that they can reduce their labour expenses with AI and continue stock buy-backs and ever-increasing executive payouts. What sucks is that they rely on class divisions so that people don’t feel bad when the “overpaid” software developers get replaced. Problem is that software developers are also part of the proletariat and creating these artificial class divisions is breaking up the ability to organize. It’s not AI replacing jobs, it’s capital holders. AI is just the smoke and mirrors.
- ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
  Sam's company is not a multi-trillion dollar behemoth that employs hundreds of thousands and has practical (near-)monopoly on a huge swaths of the digital economy.
burningChrome 2y ago
>> Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. When I was working in RPA (robotic process automation) about 7 years ago, we were explicitly told not to say "You can reduce your team size by having use develop an automation that handles what they're doing!" Even back then we were told to talk about how RPA (and by proxy AI) empowers your team to focus on the really important things. Automation just reduces the friction to getting things done. Instead of doing 4 hours of mindless data input or moving folders from one place to the other, automation gives you back those four hours so your team can do something sufficiently more important and focus on the bigger picture stuff. Some teams loved the idea. Other leaders were skeptical and never adopted it. I spent the majority of those three years trying to selling them on this idea automation was good and very little time actually coding. Its interesting seeing the paradigm shift and seeing this stuff everywhere now.
- aleph_minus_one 2y ago
  > Even back then we were told to talk about how RPA (and by proxy AI) empowers your team to focus on the really important things. As a non-politically savy person ;-) I have a feeling that this is a similarly dangerous message, since what prevents many teams to focus on really important things is often far too long meetings with managers and similar "important" stakeholders.
  - ethbr1 2y ago
    The reason you don't lead with headcount reduction is two-fold. 1. Almost every business has growing workload. That means reassigning good employees and not hiring new headcount, not firing existing headcount. Unipurpose, low-value offshore teams are the only ones who get cut (e.g. doing "{this} for every one of {these}" work). 2. Most operational automation is impossible to build well without deep process expertise from the SME currently performing it. If you fire that person immediately after automating their task, what do you think the next SME tells you, when you need their help? Successfully scaling operational automation programs therefore rely on additional headcount avoidance (aka improving their volume:employee ratio) and value measurement (FTE-equivalent time savings) to justify/measure.

whywhywhywhy 2y ago

> and from the public in general Don't think the public will be that concerned about people in Google's salary bracket losing their jobs.

ytss 2y ago
The public might though be concerned that if they are being replaced, many in other positions at other companies will soon be replaced as well.
- darth_avocado 2y ago
  That’s not how the mind works. People cheered when Elon fired 80% of the Twitter staff. No one cares when people with high paying jobs suffer.
  - mmcdermott 2y ago
    The people who cheered about the firing of 80% of the Twitter staff largely believed (rightly or wrongly) that they were being adversely affected by them. While Google may be seen with more wariness in tech circles, I don't think the average person believes that Google is actively harming them (again, rightly or wrongly).
  - almatabata 2y ago
    I think twitter is an outlier because people hated the employees already for various reasons. For example they thought that twitter had a bloated workforce because of videos like this (https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=buF4hB5_rFs). And a lot of people heavily disagreed with how they handled moderation. You can take things like the hunter Biden laptop suppression or in the funny category you had the getting banned for saying learn to code (https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassment-ross/ https://reason.com/2019/03/11/learn-to-code-twitter-harassme...). Take random company without controversies and you will find less vitriol about them getting fired.
  - ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
    These aren't the same types of events. In Twitter's case, it was a one-off act, caused by one-off circumstances. With Google, it'd be more of a precursor to a new trend that might soon take root and impact me or those I care about.
jl6 2y ago
It’s a disservice to the public to assume they aren’t capable of understanding why AI job losses might be concerning even if they aren’t directly impacted. Most people aren’t so committed to class warfare that they will root for the apocalypse as long as it stomps a rich guy first.
- tehjoker 2y ago
  Software engineers and grocery store workers are in different income brackets, but in the same class (labor/prolaterian). It is managers, executives, and investors that are in the capitalist class. Class is determined by your relationship to production.
  - barrkel 2y ago
    Software engineer salaries and stock compensation can be enough to shift alignment somewhat, especially after many years of capital accumulation.
    - tehjoker 2y ago
      if you make the majority of your earnings from passive income or you do not need to work to live you are more part of the leisure class
      - barrkel 2y ago
        Two things: capitalists don't not work; and if you have a sizeable portfolio, you may not need to work and may earn plenty of passive income, yet still work because you add more value at the margin working than fiddling with stock allocations or angel investing or whatnot (vs index funds etc.).
        datavirtue 2y ago
        It's easy to get a capitalist to come out of retirement. Most of the time you just have to ask them to take a look at your business. Before you know it they accept a board position and shortly thereafter they are running point as President.
pjmlp 2y ago
No one cares about self checkout on supermarkets impact on their employees, until their employer does something similar.
- alsetmusic 2y ago
  I care as a consumer who hates standing in long lines. My former bank branch had thirteen teller stations and two tellers. This wasn't on a bad day. This was for years.
wbl 2y ago
The bank tellers didn't go away: they just became higher paid and higher skilled when cash management was no longer the job.
whatshisface 2y ago
People in Google salary brackets get jobs at Google-1 salary brackets, pushing junior people at Google-1 to Google-2, all the way down to IT departments at non-tech firms. This impacts everybody who's in the industry or capable of switching.
ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
Why would the general public care about Google employees. Google is however a major saas provider. And people might start to worry that their employer is going to soon buy a subscription to whatever that that Google used to automate jobs.

rty32 2y ago

> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Depends on who you ask. If Trump wins and Elon Musk actually gets a new job, they would be bragging about replacing humans with AI all day long. And corporates are going to love it. Not sure about what voters think though. But the fact that most of these companies are in California, New York etc means that it barely matters.

tjahg 2y ago
[flagged]
- lenerdenator 2y ago
  That would be the way someone with no real awareness of the philosophies and realities of the two parties in the US would see it. And to be fair, that's a good description of a large chunk of the American electorate. But you can't have a guy who literally used to relieve himself into a golden toilet take over your party and be anything but the party of big business and billionaires.
  - Thorrez 2y ago
    >Despite widespread rumors, there is no verified evidence that Trump actually owns a gold toilet. https://royaltoiletry.com/does-trump-have-a-gold-toilet-unpacking-the-myths-and-realities/ https://royaltoiletry.com/does-trump-have-a-gold-toilet-unpa...
    - lenerdenator 2y ago
      Fair enough. Still a guy who operated multiple luxury hotel and golf course properties that would laugh a working man out the front door if he asked for an affordable room.
  - deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
ulfw 2y ago

lenerdenator 2y ago

> I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. Would it be? Do they care? Sam Altman's been talking about how GenAI could break capitalism (maybe not the exact quote, but something similar), and these companies have been pushing out GenAI products that could obviously and easily be used to fake photographic or video evidence of things that have occurred in the real world. Elon's obsessed with making an AI that's trained to be a 20-year-old male edgelord from the sewer pits of the internet. Compared to those things, "we've replaced X% of our workforce with AI" is absolutely anodyne.

agentultra 2y ago
100%. Altman encourages anyone that will listen to him that monopolies are the only path to success in business. He has a lot riding on making sure everyone is addicted to AI and that he’s the one selling the shovels. Google isn’t far off. Most capitalists have this fantasy that they can reduce their labour expenses with AI and continue stock buy-backs and ever-increasing executive payouts. What sucks is that they rely on class divisions so that people don’t feel bad when the “overpaid” software developers get replaced. Problem is that software developers are also part of the proletariat and creating these artificial class divisions is breaking up the ability to organize. It’s not AI replacing jobs, it’s capital holders. AI is just the smoke and mirrors.
ahmedfromtunis 2y ago
Sam's company is not a multi-trillion dollar behemoth that employs hundreds of thousands and has practical (near-)monopoly on a huge swaths of the digital economy.

burningChrome 2y ago

>> Even if that's been happening, I don't think it would be politically savvy to admit it. When I was working in RPA (robotic process automation) about 7 years ago, we were explicitly told not to say "You can reduce your team size by having use develop an automation that handles what they're doing!" Even back then we were told to talk about how RPA (and by proxy AI) empowers your team to focus on the really important things. Automation just reduces the friction to getting things done. Instead of doing 4 hours of mindless data input or moving folders from one place to the other, automation gives you back those four hours so your team can do something sufficiently more important and focus on the bigger picture stuff. Some teams loved the idea. Other leaders were skeptical and never adopted it. I spent the majority of those three years trying to selling them on this idea automation was good and very little time actually coding. Its interesting seeing the paradigm shift and seeing this stuff everywhere now.

aleph_minus_one 2y ago
> Even back then we were told to talk about how RPA (and by proxy AI) empowers your team to focus on the really important things. As a non-politically savy person ;-) I have a feeling that this is a similarly dangerous message, since what prevents many teams to focus on really important things is often far too long meetings with managers and similar "important" stakeholders.
- ethbr1 2y ago
  The reason you don't lead with headcount reduction is two-fold. 1. Almost every business has growing workload. That means reassigning good employees and not hiring new headcount, not firing existing headcount. Unipurpose, low-value offshore teams are the only ones who get cut (e.g. doing "{this} for every one of {these}" work). 2. Most operational automation is impossible to build well without deep process expertise from the SME currently performing it. If you fire that person immediately after automating their task, what do you think the next SME tells you, when you need their help? Successfully scaling operational automation programs therefore rely on additional headcount avoidance (aka improving their volume:employee ratio) and value measurement (FTE-equivalent time savings) to justify/measure.