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OpenAI eats jobs, then offers to help you find a new one at Walmart
- nerpderp82 1y agoThe endgame for all AI companies is to replace all of labor. Everyone's use of AI through their chat and api endpoints is training those replacements right now.
- SwtCyber 1y agoAnd when the dust settles, the same companies will turn around and sell us the cure for the problem they engineered
- avodonosov 1y agoAnd capcha forces users to train neural networks for free, planning to then replace the users with those neural networks :) Moreover, website ovners even pay for capcha. It should be other way around - people participated in training the neural nets should share profit and owhership of the networks, at the very least.
- deleted 1y ago[deleted]
- mensetmanusman 1y agoIt turns out you can’t have a thriving economy if everyone is just working at service jobs as floor stockers and barista’s. If we are lucky, AI provides a huge accelerant to being able to insource manufacturing with advanced automation. This is an energy saving play to reduce the total distance that objects are shipped which wastes a lot of energy especially as the objects are of lower value.
- SwtCyber 1y agoIt's like setting your house on fire and handing you a fire extinguisher... for a fee
- zingababba 1y agoThe OpenAI blog post seems equal parts desperate and gross to me. A jobs platform and certifications? They want act as the certifying body attesting that 10 million Americans have achieved 'AI fluency' by 2030 as well as act as the intermediary in matching these individuals up with corporations apparently desperate for their fluency? "Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us—from shift workers to CEOs—will have to learn how to work in new ways." - Thank god for OpenAI. This whole thing looks like someone wrote it up, pasted it in an AI, asked "How's this look?" and got back something like "Looks absolutely perfect!" and hit publish.
- madamelic 1y agoEither I am mistaken that Walmart was offering store associate type jobs or the author doesn't realize Walmart has software engineering teams. Quite a few non-tech companies have very hip, modern, and high-power tech teams behind them. https://github.com/walmartlabs https://github.com/walmartlabs Walmart has been doing this level of work since at least 2013/2014 to my knowledge so it's not something new. Getting a job on the Walmart engineering team doesn't seem like such an awful thing. Other notable call-out: Domino's. A few years back (... like a decade ago ._.) I had done a re-write of a node.js wrapper for the Domino's API and the team seemed very supportive and proud of what people did with it. The REST API was actually quite good and didn't try to throw up roadblocks.
- fnordpiglet 1y agoIt’s got a metaphorical name - a bait - for your clicks.
- nunez 1y agoWalmart Global Tech (what Labs was called) got gutted in the layoff-palooza last year. https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate https://www.cbsnews.com/news/walmart-tech-layoff-corporate. Heavy outsourcing, too, so I've heard. I also believe that Walmart is trying to consolidate everyone into their Bentonville HQ; gl trying to get engineers in SFBA to move out to Arkansas!
- no_wizard 1y agoThey don’t want SFBA engineers for the most part now, they want so called “dark matter” developers, meaning they’re primarily recruiting from the Midwest, upper South, and rust belt states where opportunities are more scarce
- nunez 1y agoHonestly, that's great. Lots of smart folks in the Prairies/Ozarks, and much cheaper to live there also.
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- ChrisArchitect 1y ago[dupe] Some more discussion: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45131262 https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=45131262
- 1970-01-01 1y agoIsn't this just a subset of software eating the world?
- odie5533 1y agoI don't understand how people can sit in these comment sections pretend AI isn't affecting productivity and the job market. Do we all just imagine the insane level of AI usage is only affecting high school students, and somehow doesn't affect employees? It's clearly having a huge impact on large portions of the job market.
- moduspol 1y agoI think current implementations of AI are vastly overhyped in the market. There's a huge gap between what people think or expect from AI and what has been delivered, and the deliveries are not likely to catch up in the short or medium term. There are remarkably few success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. The best examples we've got are marginal (and conflicting) improvements in software developer productivity. I'm 100% willing to believe some fewer people are getting hired because many employers are actually drinking the kool-aid: they think they won't need them in 3-6 months. I also think fewer people are getting hired due to other economic conditions (e.g. tariffs). Still others see the writing on the wall (AI bubble pop is imminent, recession likely incoming) and don't want to hire for that reason. In any case, I don't think it's because of AI itself.
- odie5533 1y ago> There are remarkably few actual success stories of AI actually replacing employees directly. If I employ 100 people, and AI makes them 10% more productive, then I only need 90 people now to do the same work. AI doesn't have to replace people 1:1 for it to result in job losses. It just needs to increase productivity (or be seen to even). And you might think 100 people that are 10% more productive now I have 110! But that's not how corporations work. When they have extra money, they don't invest it in R&D. They do stock buybacks. And when they have extra productivity, they do layoffs and stock buybacks.
- moduspol 1y ago> If I employ 100 people, and AI makes them 10% more productive, then I only need 90 people now to do the same work. I think it's yet to be seen that AI actually makes people 10% more productive, and further, that getting a task done 10% faster actually means they have 10% more time that is actually used for additional tasks. And more bluntly: I think if it actually were happening, it'd be a lot more plainly obvious to all of us. The pressure from the C-suite to integrate AI into our workflows has been widely noted.
- mnky9800n 1y agoI’m not convinced matching users to jobs is the next vertical for OpenAI. To me it seems like it’s randomly grasping at straws.
- DeepYogurt 1y agoWhy doesn't openAI launch a github competitor where you describe a project you'd like to exist and they serve it up?
- insane_dreamer 1y ago> At OpenAI, we can't eliminate that disruption. The irony. More accurately should have said , "At OpenAI, we're at the forefront of that disruption. "
- tqi 1y agoWhich is it, AI projects have delivered no value or AI is eating all jobs??
- ang_cire 1y ago"Eating jobs" and "zero value" are the same thing. You're probably thinking 'profit' rather than 'value', but profit and value are different, and M$ is a great illustrator of this; destroying the value of their acquisitions in favor of short-term profit (often by cutting jobs).
- seu 1y ago"At OpenAI, we can't eliminate that disruption. But what we can do is help more people become fluent in AI and connect them with companies that need their skills, to give people more economic opportunities." I love it when companies do something and at the same time say, that they cannot do anything about it. Like Microsoft recently firing tons of people while posting record profits and making up some lame excuse about things being the way they are.
- 6510 1y agoFun thought of the day: Do a basic income and pay salaries in stocks.
- dvfjsdhgfv 1y agoFor a brief moment I was fully convinced it was The Onion.
- amelius 1y agoFor full irony they take your data, then use that data to replace your job.
- SwtCyber 1y agoFull irony mode unlocked: they mine your data for free, feed it into a black box, then pop out a model that can do your job
- apwell23 1y agothey don't even replace any jobs, they suck out all money out that was previously going to employ people doing useful things. I feel like we need a new word for money going to datacenters instead of paychecks. 'AI taking jobs' implies AI is doing the work , which is not the case.
- milkshakes 1y agowhat does this even mean?
- apwell23 1y agowhat part is not clear to you?
- milkshakes 1y agowell, for one, "datacenters instead of paychecks" is nonsensical. openai doesn't operate their own datacenters, they in fact write checks to people who do, who in turn write their own checks to their employees. it sounds like you don't believe datacenters are "useful", either. that's a pretty hot take IMO.
- apwell23 1y ago[flagged]
- milkshakes 1y agohttps://openai.com/index/expanding-economic-opportunity-with-ai/ https://openai.com/index/expanding-economic-opportunity-with...
- x187463 1y agoHow many jobs have they actually 'eaten'? For now, we mostly have AI labs and those in proximity claiming some number of jobs will be obsolete, but the actual job loss has yet to manifest.
- SwtCyber 1y agoWe've definitely seen impact in areas like copywriting, customer service, and basic coding tasks, but it’s more nibbling at the edges than wholesale devouring
- eatsyourtacos 1y agoWell I'm part of a small few person team- I had a junior developer helping me who left. And I literally don't need someone like him anymore because I can do anything that he was doing via AI faster and better because it's under my control. I can have a 20 minute conversation and code revision that would have taken days for someone junior to code and would have probably been not done right (by 'right' I mean how I want it to be done, not necessarily wrong) To think the same isn't happening all over the place and will only continue is ignoring just how powerful this tech is.
- _DeadFred_ 1y agoAnd when you are out sick, can AI do his role? When you are on vacation, can AI do his role? When you leave, can AI at least help define/interview your replacement, like he could have, even if he's too junior to step into the role? There is so much else that people do. So many details that are just being ignored because of short term 'gains' that justify ignoring so many details.
- Sherveen 1y agoYou aren't taking what he said seriously. The junior could also get sick, present management issues, etc. If this person plus a junior represented "1.3 engineering knots," he's saying... "actually, I'm still 1.3 engineering knots without him." When this person leaves, they go find someone else who is 1.3 engineering knots. The junior represented .3, without the 1., it doesn't matter that much. Headcount strategy shifts.
- 101008 1y agoWhy a company like OpenAI, that is so big and has a clear challenging goal, cares about online academies, etc? What's the % they can get from it? It's even worth it? They should focus all their minds to their (demanding) main goal, but it seems they are distracted with this stupid things. This sounds so weird to me, and I feel I am missing something.
- splatzone 1y agoIt feels like a proactive PR move to me. When the shit hits the fan in a few years and jobs are vanishing, they can point to this as one of the many examples of how they're fighting the good fight for humanity
- empath75 1y agoProbably because they have thrown as much money and manpower as they possibly can at the core problem and investing more into it is diminishing returns. Building out a platform is the logical next step and there are probably 100s of revenue positive businesses they can build on top of it by just throwing some software developers at the problem. They are going to be releasing a _lot_ of products over the next few years that aren't just "GPT 6" or whatever. You might as well ask why google built an ad company or email or video, or a browser or a phone OS etc, when they should have spent more money on their core search engine.
- keiferski 1y agoIIRC this is a background premise in William Gibson’s The Peripheral. Most jobs are either for a tech company, or at a Walmart-esque store that has eaten all other retail.
- nicce 1y agoI haven’t read the book, and I should. The series was really good. Too bad they cancelled it for being too expensive.
- an0malous 1y agoPeople don’t cancel things because they’re expensive, costs are a known and predictable quantity. They cancel things because they don’t make enough to justify the costs.
- apocalyptic0n3 1y agoIn this case, it actually was due to unknown and unpredictable costs. They were about to start production on S2 when the strikes hit. They delays spiked the costs of an already expensive show (S1 cost an estimated $175M) which made it less tenable for Amazon. This happened to quite a few shows during the pandemic and during the strikes – renewed because it made financial sense, then pandemic/strike spiked the cost, and then they canceled the renewal.
- keiferski 1y agoI liked the first half of the series, but it gradually became a generic superhero show. The book, however, is excellent- definitely recommend.
- lagniappe 1y agoOr you end up as one of the hired goons of Corbell Pickett, one of the greatest bad guys of all time (only slightly below Clarence Boddicker).
- A_D_E_P_T 1y ago
- colesantiago 1y agoNice tongue and cheek from the Register and OpenAI to tickle the 'doomer' narrative. But reality is that there will be new high skilled jobs from AI thanks to Jevons' Paradox, the more companies using AI will lead to a huge demand for highly skilled people who can use AI in more ways than we are today. Not so much about being replaced, but there will be new jobs for people to do. I guess for those people being 'replaced' it is a 'skill issue'
- esafak 1y agoWhat kind of new jobs?
- ryaniscool 1y agoThere is something kafkaesque about these giant tech companies restricting what you can talk to the AI about under the name of ethics while at the same time openly planning to replace you in the workforce.
- an0malous 1y agoWhile training their models on pirated and scraped content
- SwtCyber 1y agoIt's like being lectured on ethical behavior by the thing that's actively eating your lunch
- muldvarp 1y agoWhy do you think automating software development is any less ethical than automating other jobs (which many software developers actively engaged in)?
- elevatortrim 1y agoAutomating software development is not unethical. The unethical bit is allowing resource flow default to those who own the means of production. As a software developer, when I automate someone's job, say of a cashier, I do not start to get paid their salary - my salary stays the same. This is different for capital investors and shareholders. They keep the cashier's salary (not directly but ultimately). This results in an increasing concentration of wealth, creates lots of suffering and destabilises the world. That is where it is unethical.
- muldvarp 1y agoIn that case pretty much any automation is unethical, isn't it?
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- bgwalter 1y ago"AI will be disruptive. Jobs will look different, companies will have to adapt, and all of us – from shift workers to CEOs – will have to learn how to work in new ways," she said in a blog post. We don't have to do anything. People always listen to this propaganda from the wealthy and think the latest gadgets are inevitable. We can go on a general strike until copyright is restored and the "AI" companies go bankrupt. Journalists can write sharper and sharper articles. You can refuse to use "AI". If mandated in a job, demonstrate that it slows you down (probably true anyway). You can demand an investigation into Suchir Balai's demise (actually Elon Musk recently endorsed a tweet demanding just that; you can, too). You can boycott robotaxis. You can stop watching YouTube channels that do product placement of humanoid robots. You can do a lot of things.
- muldvarp 1y agoThis won't happen. Even if western countries will outlaw LLMs (they won't, people care about unemployed software developers just as much as most software developers cared about unemployed translators), China won't. And why would we even do that? Because software developers like their cushy job and don't want to do blue-collar jobs?
- bgwalter 1y agoChina FOMO? Xi Jin Ping has warned twice about an "AI" bubble: https://www.ft.com/content/9c19d26f-57b3-4754-ac20-eeb627e8723e https://www.ft.com/content/9c19d26f-57b3-4754-ac20-eeb627e87... https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-has-a-different-vision-for-ai-it-might-be-smarter-581f1e44 https://www.wsj.com/tech/ai/china-has-a-different-vision-for... China restricts "AI" across the country to prevent cheating: https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/china-restricts-ai-across-the-country-to-prevent-kids-cheating-america-could-learn-from-it/ https://nypost.com/2025/08/19/world-news/china-restricts-ai-... Why would we do that? Because we can! Why would we let some rich brats who have never created something and just steal human knowledge get even richer and control and surveil us all?
- jplusequalt 1y ago>Because software developers like their cushy job and don't want to do blue-collar jobs? In the US of A, most blue-collar jobs: 1. Pay less 2. Offer poor, or zero benefits 3. Are hard on your body Not to mention that if suddenly millions of people flood the markets for blue-collar work, then wages will drop further in those fields. Why would you expect someone to be comfortable with that future?
- kordlessagain 1y agoThe amount of arrogance in technology is staggering. Instacart IPO'd. OpenAI hit $300B valuation. Different companies, different industries—yet look closer and you'll find the same names signing both checks.
- ai-christianson 1y agoWe're replacing managers with AI at our startup.
- beng-nl 1y agoReally? Can you tell us more about that?
- ai-christianson 1y agoYeah we spawned an agent, his name is Jeremy, that runs 24/7 and coordinates work within the team. He reaches out to individuals on the team (via email) and we interact with him, things like: - "Hey Jeremy, I completed <X>, what should I look at next?" - "Jeremy, who's currently working on <Y>" He's backed by db so it ends up being way more powerful than something like trello or Jira. This is one of our agents we use internally to dogfood our product (gobii dot ai). We spun up the agent, told it that its job was helping coordinate and prioritize work within the team, and authorized it to contact the relevant team members. Now we all just email to/from the agent (would love Discord or Slack, but we don't have that quite yet.)
- jackthetab 1y agoTres cool! Can you point me in the direction of how to do that? We're a small, bootstrapped company and could use a manager like that.
- ai-christianson 1y agoOn our site there's a discord button feel free to jump on our general chat or dm me!
- barrenko 1y ago> Linear mcp
- daedrdev 1y agoWhy are people saying its AI and not the current administration running the economy into the ground?
- alexashka 1y agoBecause the 'trend' of the economy going into the ground has been consistent for decades.
- daedrdev 1y agoA few years ago the economy was adding a lot of jobs and the wage gains for the poor were rapidly outpacing inflation
- johnnyanmac 1y agoIt can be both. It's not even really "AI" if we're being honest here. AI is just the excuse given for what all companies want to do right now. The government doesn't need AI to do the slashing and burning, though.