this post was submitted on 29 Jan 2024
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This has been my general worry: the tech is not good enough, but it looks convincing to people with no time. People don’t understand you need at least an expert to process the output, and likely a pretty smart person for the inputs. It’s “trust but verify”, like working with a really smart parrot.
AI can't replace a person just yet, but it can easily augment a persons output so only a quarter as many workers are needed. Yes, this has happened throughout history, but AI is poised to displace workers across almost every industry.
I generally agree. It’ll be interesting what happens with models, the datasets behind them (particularly copyright claims), and more localized AI models. There have been tasks where AI greatly helped and sped me up, particularly around quick python scripts to solve a rote problem, along with early / rough documentation.
However, using this output as justification to shed head count is questionable for me because of the further business impacts (succession planning, tribal knowledge, human discussion around creative efforts).
If someone is laying people off specifically to gap fill with AI, they are missing the forest for the trees. Morale impacts whether people want to work somewhere, and I’ve been fortunate enough to enjoy the company of 95% of the people I’ve worked alongside. If our company shed major head count in favor of AI, I would probably have one foot in and one foot out.
Doesn't have to be so obvious as, "We're cutting people because of AI." My team has gradually shrunk over the last few years, not due to AI, with no intention of replacing people that leave occasionally. AI could easily be a way to regain productivity losses after running a skeleton crew for months or years. Same effect, but the layoffs were front loaded.