FOR THE PING!
Posted on 07/24/2024 7:23:13 AM PDT by Red Badger
Editor’s note: This is a lightly edited transcript of the accompanying video from professor Peter St. Onge.
Big Tech is slashing jobs—half a million and counting. And it’s blaming artificial intelligence.
A new study by Layoffs.fyi reports that layoffs in the tech industry have exceeded 100,000 so far this year —and keep in mind that the year’s only half over. That’s on top of 212,000 tech layoffs last year. And 165,000 in 2022.
Recent layoffs include Microsoft and Facebook, which each cut 10,000 jobs. Cisco dropped 4,000, Intuit 1,800. Even Amazon and Apple are laying off.
Part of this is the slowing economy, part of it is the hangover from the 2020 hiring binge. But what’s interesting is that now Big Tech is blaming AI for the mass layoffs.
Microsoft announced a multibillion-dollar investment into AI the same day it announced those 10,000 layoffs. Facebook announced plans for “investing heavily in AI” in the same letter it used to lay off 10,000 workers. Intuit followed its mass layoffs by declaring that companies that don’t go all-in on AI will die.
Essentially, tech companies are slashing entire armies of workers and replacing them with a few people who can use AI. The net is a wipe-out in tech jobs—half a million and counting. In fact, for the first time since the 2000 dot-com bust, IT unemployment is actually higher than U.S. unemployment overall.
When I used to give career advice to my MBAs, I joked that going into tech is like becoming a stripper—you make a lot when you’re young, but it goes down fast. Even today you can find former senior programmers driving an Uber or mowing lawns, aged out of a fast-changing industry.
That’s about to get a lot worse.
Of course, AI has its own problems, including hallucinations that invent information and phenomena that don’t exist. Google pulled an AI blunder after it assured users that cockroaches living in a penis is totally normal, indeed that’s how they got their name.
Chatbots have gone rogue, cursing out and threatening users or writing poems about how bad their company is. Lawyer chatbots invent cases. Air Canada’s chatbot promised customers refunds that didn’t exist—which the airline had to honor.
Still, AI is improving faster than human programmers are improving.
Moreover, tech is just the canary in the coal mine, given how rote many tech jobs are. A recent study by Citibank found that 54% of the jobs in banking can be replaced by AI, and another 12% augmented by AI —so lay off the current worker and hire somebody else. That’s 66% of jobs at risk of replacement or elimination.
Many industries are more like banking than tech in terms of workflow, so that could come to a whole lot of layoffs.
So what’s next, brought to you by Unchained.com? Technological unemployment is centuries old, from the mechanization of agriculture to container shipping to the internet. Usually, the tech itself makes us richer, which leads to new jobs that actually pay better.
But there are also failures where the old jobs went away and nothing replaced them. Detroit with cars, or the forest of factories that used to exist in South Philly or Baltimore. New jobs were created, sure, but they went to Dallas or Atlanta—places that were more business-friendly than the big government dystopias of a Detroit or a Baltimore.
So artificial intelligence is a threat to jobs, but it’s not the tech that’s the problem. It’s the mountain of regulations and taxes that threaten to turn America into a continent-sized Detroit.
Soon, millions of government “employees” will be unemployed, deservedly so. The same with those in the propaganda media. What will become of them?
World wars, starvation and death is coming at a massive scale.
ANOTHER EXAMPLE OF WHY BIDEN’S UNEMPLOYMENT/EMPLOYMENT NUMBERS ARE A COMPLETE HOAX.
This is the white collar equivalent of people being paid to dig ditches with shovels rather than an excavator. There are a lot of “jobs” being done manually that could be accomplished better and faster with automation.
Thanks to Red Badger for the ping!
So artificial intelligence is a threat to jobs, but it’s not the tech that’s the problem. It’s the mountain of regulations and taxes that threaten to turn America into a continent-sized Detroit.
same with AI
AI has a mind of its own......................
The one way AI is indirectly responsible at Big Tech is that AI is *taking away* resources from other divisions. They are building large AI platforms which is a huge investment. It comes at the cost of shutting down divisions that were considered low priority. I know Google did this last year and the year before. Sundar Pichai himself wrote about it. It’s not that AI is replacing the jobs gone. Those jobs are gone to *fund* AI.
Maybe blame pajeets?
Yes, it will greatly increase productivity, but those below today's average will be in trouble.
Just wait until all the ‘little’ AIs start joining together...............
Is it all AI?
Or have we gotten to the point that low expectations and long waits are the norm?
Productive people become even more productive and less productive people get fired.
This is not a bad thing.
................
disagree.
They are grading on a curve.
A+ stay
A- leave
not much difference
BTTT
Soon, millions of government “employees” will be unemployed, deservedly so. The same with those in the propaganda media. What will become of them?
.................
are you hallucinating???
Good point -- AI is just one factor among many.
I had to learn the Hollerith Code on 80 column punched codes.
Assembler language was a real bear on cards... Cobol and Fortran were not that bad...
I think when the first auto OBD scan tools came out, I am sure plenty of folks made the same pronouncements..."The computers will tell us exactly what is wrong with your cars\trucks and basic mechanics can fix those issues". Well, how did that work out? AI is simply a tool and will never replace actual humans. To say otherwise is hype and marketing by the tech monopolies. AI is a convenient punching bag for Currys who can't scam their way into American companies anymore with their fake resumes, spurious degrees, and middling intellects. I will not hire H1B Indians or DEI types. My perfect candidate is a guy in his 40s with 20+ experience in multiple projects and a track record of being tenscious on projects and getting things delivered. The Curry mumblers can work for $35 per hour at the big consulting firms. When they fail, I swoop in with my my guys and rescue your project.
This is a broad generalization, but let's say that a workplace starts using AI. And, as result, some workers, using AI, become significantly more productive, such that it quickly becomes apparent to management that there is now a larger staff than is needed to produce the same amount of work.
Who gets fired or transferred? The workers who are using AI to become significantly more productive or those who have not?
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