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From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a bo
by nlpnerd 2mo ago
From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI.
"Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models or supervising AI agents. Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says more “high-value” work, such as accountancy or engineering, is going offshore in part because “AI is a leveller. You can now teach someone complex stuff quickly” and still get it done more cheaply than in America or Europe. Some of this is done at so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India and also now growing in the Philippines."
It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy".
- downrightmike 2mo agoOoph, now the AI will be wrong and the human won't know it. And that's running our... let me see... life saving care. Cool. cool. cool.
- decimalenough 2mo ago"Computer says no" has been a trope of terrible customer service long before AI.
- kombookcha 2mo ago"Computer says no" is about unhelpful bureaucracy. Being knowingly locked to a specific procedure and unwilling to divert from it is a different thing from mistakes being made that you are blissfully unaware of. The problem is now invisible and the patient is dying for no reason anyone can discern.
- gfrecvh 2mo agoThe people who say "computer says no" are also unaware that's a problem. It's invisible to them. To them the process is the point. I think that two arent as different as you believe.
- kombookcha 2mo agoWell, possibly. To paraphrase the great American philosopher Donald Rumsfeld - there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. And making the actual process a black box for the people managing it will create a lot more Unknown Unknowns.
- TeMPOraL 2mo agoThe "unhelpful bureaucracy" arises precisely because the process is structured so there's no point in the chain that can actually consider and solve your problem directly. The process is the point, outsourcing work to the opposite end of the globe has long been a perfect way to guarantee no it's robust against errors like "compassion" and "helpfulness", and that's as true of LLMs performing those functions tomorrow as it was of people doing it yesterday.
- seanmcdirmid 2mo agoHas anything really changed for transparency?
- dyauspitr 2mo agoYour average devs are wrong more than the AI is at this point.
- eru 2mo agoAt a former job for a regional bank in South East Asia my boss used to joke that outsourcing is really great for the company, because now they can fail to deliver their software projects for cheaper.
- watwut 2mo agoThis is not about development. This is about rubber stamping insurance denial by an unaccountable system.
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoIf you sell something in the US, and a customer sues you, going to court and saying you are not accountable because the work was performed by someone in another jurisdiction is not going to go well for you. The only time that works if you have no assets or presence in the US, or I guess you have an in with the US president.
- watwut 2mo agoIt is about a.) avoiding criminal liabilities for frauds by the insurance company b.) facilitating desirable fraud by employees while keeping plausible deniality. It is super hard to build class cast action and suing companies for denied insurance claims is also quite hard - and super expensive. Besides, the current management dont need it to go on forever, they just need it to go on for now. If company gets to pay fine 20 years later and you already pocketed the bonuses and salary, why would you care?
- dyauspitr 2mo agoYeah, paradoxically Indian software outsourcing is growing. I guess the way the companies are thinking about this is we need some sort of human oversight for all the work the LLMs are doing, might as well pay someone the least amount possible to do that.
- Ekaros 2mo agoDon't understand why this should not have been obvious. If you have technology that allows expensive workers to do things cheaper why wouldn't same technology allow cheaper workers to do stuff even cheaper... And cheap is good...
- energy123 2mo agoCan you explain why freelance writing and translation is being destroyed: > https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/publications/winners-and-losers-of-generative-ai-early-evidence-of-shifts-in-f https://researchprofiles.ku.dk/en/publications/winners-and-l... Surely, AI helps them do stuff even cheaper, and cheap is good, so their business should be booming?
- choilive 2mo agoI know a freelance translator and they have more business than ever, AI being "mostly" right is not good enough in many businesses. You need oversight and most importantly - accountability in the form of a human that can put their stamp of approval.
- Ekaros 2mo agoCheaper price doesn't always lead to as large increase in demand. There is only so much writing and translation that is needed. So lowering price does not mean that same amount or more money is spend. On other hand companies getting these services cheaper can mean that they have less pressure to increase prices. I think whole Jevon's paradox is misapplied. More efficient use of coal leads to more use cases as they become profitable. Which there was lot of. With many other things like writing or translation there might not be more use cases.
- jesse_faden 2mo agoI visited India recently and when I saw just how many companies have a GCC there I was mindblown. Lots of cool offices, engineering and technical roles, great work life balance and generally a different vibe. Literally every company that I could recognise had a back office there.
- watwut 2mo ago> Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools So, insurance claims are handled by people who operate in different legal system and by unaccountable undererministic system. And people are pressured to perform fast. This is not about "automating complex task". This is about "create accountability sink for fraud we want them to do and create system that will perform said fraud".
- lotsofpulp 2mo agoThe insurance company is still liable in US courts for products or services sold in the US, just like any other business is liable regardless of where or who does the work. Also, pretty sure denial of coverage letters have to be endorsed by US licensed doctors and pharmacists, at least in any half decent state.
- ygouzerh 2mo ago> It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy". I think as well there is currently the following: AI still needs an operator, in the same way than a bulldozer needs a bulldozer operator. And like with bulldozer, there are always something that business stakeholder wanna dig, now that digging is faster.
- duncangh 2mo ago“Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says” How is this HIPPA compliant? Please tell me there’s an aspect of HIPPA that requires sensitive data to be only accessed and processed by Americans on shore. You’d think the multiples we pay on health care for worse outcomes would at least be supporting our own domestic middle class with this sort of basic back office white collar work
- deleted 2mo ago[deleted]
- nylonstrung 2mo agoThis is already common for both HIPAA and financial data, it usually comes down to the offshoring site meeting compliance guidelines and functioning like a "clean room" with data leak prevention in place Also though, I don't think there is anything inherently less secure about a Filipino handling my data than an America
- SloppyDrive 2mo agoWe have moved some "low cost" work from India to other reigons, now that translation is improved... At the same time, we are reducing the proportion of outsourced work, because a local team with LLMs are dramatically more capable... There so many benefits to how you can organize a smaller high-skill team. I would put a 10-man team with the current tooling on par with a 10 high skill + 80 low cost heads even 5 years ago.