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IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.
by jcfrei 1y ago
IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had.
- ckorhonen 1y agoI don’t fully agree. Yes, AI can be seen as a cheaper outsourcing option, but there’s also a plausible future where companies lean more on outsourced engineers who are good at wielding AI effectively, to replace domestic mid-level roles. In other words, instead of nullifying outsourcing, AI might actually amplify it by raising the leverage of offshore talent.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- PhantomHour 1y agoConsider the kinds of jobs that are popular with outsourcing right now. Jobs like customer/tech support aren't uniquely suited to outsourcing. (Quite the opposite; People rightfully complain about outsourced support being awful. Training outsourced workers on the fine details of your products/services & your own organisation, nevermind empowering them to do things is much harder) They're jobs that companies can neglect. Terrible customer support will hurt your business, but it's not business-critical in the way that outsourced development breaking your ability to put out new features and fixes is. AI is a perfect substitute for terrible outsourced support. LLMs aren't capable of handling genuinely complex problems that need to be handled with precision, nor can they be empowered to make configuration changes. (Consider: Prompt-injection leading to SIM hijacking and other such messes.) But the LLM can tell meemaw to reset her dang router. If that's all you consider support to be (which is almost certainly the case if you outsource it), then you stand nothing to lose from using AI.
- thewebguyd 1y ago> But the LLM can tell meemaw to reset her dang router. If that's all you consider support to be (which is almost certainly the case if you outsource it), then you stand nothing to lose from using AI. I worked in a call center before getting into tech when I was young. I don't have any hard statistics, but by far the majority of calls to support were basic questions or situations (like Meemaw's router) that could easily be solved with a chatbot. If not that, the requests that did require action on accounts could be handled by an LLM with some guardrails, if we can secure against prompt injection. Companies can most likely eliminate a large chunk of customer service employees with an LLM and the customers would barely notice a difference.
- gausswho 1y agoAlso consider the mental health crisis among outsourced content moderation staff that have to appraise all kinds of depravity on a daily basis. This got some heavy reporting a year or two ago, in particular from Facebook. These folks for all their suffering are probably being culled right now. You could anticipate a shift to using AI tools to achieve whatever content moderation goals these large networks have, with humans only handling the uncertain cases. Still brain damage, but less. A good thing?
- brandall10 1y agoIn a vacuum, sure. But when you take two resources of similar ability and amplify their output, it makes those resources closer in cost per output, and in turn amplifies the risk factors for choosing the cheaper by cost resource. So locality, availability, communication, culture, etc, become more important.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoI see it the other way around. An internal person with real domain knowledge can use AI far more effectively than an outsourced team. Domain knowledge is what matters now, and companies don’t want to pay for outsiders to learn it on their dime. AI let's the internal team be small enough that it's a better idea to keep things in house.
- FirmwareBurner 1y agoLemme know when robots will make your sneakers and T-Shirts and pick fruits from fields at a competitive price to third world slave labor.
- cantrevealname 1y ago> AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had If we project long term, could this mean that countries with the most capital to invest in AI and robotics (like the U.S.) could take back manufacturing dominance from countries with low wages (like China)?
- daymanstep 1y agoChina has more robots per capita than the US And the idea that China has low wages is outdated. Companies like Apple don't use China for its low wages, countries like Vietnam have lower wages. China's strength lies in its manufacturing expertise
- mensetmanusman 1y agoWestern engineers worked relentlessly on knowledge transfer to China to do so, it might be easy to bring back with the 10x industrial subsidies that the CCP provided to do so.
- daymanstep 1y agoAnd the US is already starting to do it, for example partnering with South Korea or Japan to rebuild American shipbuilding.
- signatoremo 1y agoManufacturing expertise that have been transferred from the West over the last 40 years. Knowledge and expertise are fluid, they can go both way, they can be transferred to other countries as well, India, Vietnam, etc. The world doesn’t stand still.
- daymanstep 1y agoI don't get why I was downvoted. I didn't say anything that contradicts what you just said.
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- Aurornis 1y agoDepends where you draw the line. I would expect countries like China will continue to leverage AI to extend their lead in areas like low cost manufacturing. Some of the very low cost Chinese vendors I use are already using AI tools to review submitted pieces with mixed results, but they’re only going to get better at it.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- xenotux 1y ago> IMHO this is going to be part of a broader trend where advancements in AI and robotics nullify any comparative advantages low wage countries had. Then why hasn't it yet? In fact, some lower-wage countries such as China are on the forefront of industrial automation? I think the bottom line is that many Western countries went out of their way to make manufacturing - automated or not - very expensive and time-consuming to get off the ground. Robots don't necessarily change that if you still need to buy land, get all the permits, if construction costs many times more, and if your ongoing costs (energy, materials, lawyers, etc) are high. We might discover that AI capacity is easier to grow in these markets too.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoHard to honestly say if China is low wage. On one hand, their wages have risen as the work force has shrunk now for a few years and tasks are being outsourced to other countries. On the other hand, their currency is pegged meaning that the earning power of the workers should be much higher so that they can afford the things they are making and transition to a consumer driven economy.
- datavirtue 1y agoThey are very much devaluing their currency. This is all the rage and I expect a currency devaluation race as the US tries to deal with crushing government liabilities.
- nradov 1y agoIt's not just China and the USA. Pretty much all countries want to devalue their currency to improve their balance of trade in a race to the bottom. Logically not everyone can win the race.
- mensetmanusman 1y agoSomeone needs to figure out the best hack for what to do with high value currency.
- burnerRhodo 1y agoit's wierd because where before, i've never had a offshore "VA" nor did I think they'd be useful. But after AI, I can just get the VA a subscription to Chatgpt and have them do the initial draft of whatever i need. ChatGPT get 80% of the way, VA gets the next 10 (Copying where i need it, removing obvious stuff that shouldn't be client facing, etc.), i only have to polish the last 10%.
- kjkjadksj 1y agoThey will still be the cheaper countries to run your ai models and robotics factory by a longshot compared to the western world.