Yeah no shit. You get people dependent on your product, then Jack up the price
Vibe management
Submitted 2 months ago by Track_Shovel@slrpnk.net to [deleted]
https://slrpnk.net/pictrs/image/5161dab6-0b22-4d5d-b036-2aa59dea1f20.png
Comments
Fishnoodle@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Hiro8811@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Corpo fell for the oldest corpo trick.
Bustedknuckles@lemmy.world 2 months ago
“Why did you destroy your company to just inflate your next quarter bonus?”
“It is my nature”
criss_cross@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s funny too because at our company people keep repeatedly asking “what are you gonna do when they predictably jack up the rates?”
And every time “don’t worry about that right now. We’re keeping a close eye on it. “
Uh huh.
dance_ninja@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And it’s from their own playbook
Flower@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
That was always the reason AI was put into everything.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This feels predictable. AI is one of, if not the most invested in yet unprofitable industries in the history of humanity.
The last few years have been the beta and the tech demo. But that is not paying for itself yet. US companies are competing with (and falling behind) Chinese state-sponsored companies. OpenAI in particular, a company whose revenue doesn’t even cover half of their operating costs, has extended themselves into owing more than a TRILLION dollars to the entirety of big tech who are building chips and data centers on these IOUs, and will need to be paid sooner or later. The bills will come due.
Other corporations are already paying massive bills for licensing, tokens, training, and infrastructure changes to accommodate this shift to AI while laying off massove chunks of skilled workers on the idea that AI is cheap and will get cheaper over time. But that is simply not the case. This is the “first taste is free” part of this deal. Once they have companies deeply invested in AI and have destroyed the fabric of the labor economy in favor of it, that price is going to skyrocket because OF COURSE IT WILL.
Maybe at some point this will all level out. AI bubble will pop. Prices will sky rocket. Companies will try to backpedal, which will be slow and difficult, they’ll end up paying AI companies huge sums while they work to decouple themselves after just forming the bond, they’ll also end up paying stupid money to professionals who are suddenly in high demand, and many companies won’t survive the chaos.
AI will eventually get cheaper (but probably never this cheap again, at least not in the near future), and it will probably be a permanent fixture in our lives and work to some degree. But it’s usefulness and cost effectiveness will be limited in scope, with specialized purposes. It will not ultimately be the great labor replacement companies think/thought it would be, even as stupid and short sighted as that desire is in the first place (if 30% of the global work force is unemployed, how do you think that will effect your revenue, morons!?). But that also is assuming that the coming chaos doesn’t turn out so bad that AI is permanently legislated into oblivion after the chaos it’s about to cause.
Ramenator@lemmy.world 2 months ago
AI is one of, if not the most invested in yet unprofitable industries in the history of humanity.
I think there are some Dutch tulip farmers who would like a word with you
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Not quite the same. The tulip industry was making money hand over foot. It was the speculators that ended up being shafted. Tulip mania was more comparable to the beanie babie craze, or even NFTs. AI companies, on the whole, are making no profit at all except.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 months ago
Didn’t that last a month (shorter by a factor of 50 so far)?
MeThisGuy@feddit.nl 2 months ago
hey you leave us out of this!
that was a long time ago, and now approx a 3rd of flowers worldwide come through here in one of the top ten largest open buildings in the world (still) and we invented the Dutch auction…so suck it
KernelTale@programming.dev 2 months ago
Folstar@lemmus.org 2 months ago
Good stuff. One small note: I’m not sure how useful the distinction of “Chinese state-sponsored companies” is in recent history when comparing to the US, let alone now. The US has retooled much of federal research engine toward promoting US AI. Even fired the NSB (among many other long standing, expert driven advisory boards) to replace it with a bunch of tech baron stooges. States are offering unprecedented payouts to data centers. The AI hyperscalers already have a bailout all but guaranteed when the bubble pops. It’s all state-sponsored, just with extra steps.
kryptonianCodeMonkey@lemmy.world 2 months ago
The Chinese AI companies being state sponsored just means that they can go longer and throw more money at development without turning profit than other investor driven companies.
The US is certainly throwing a bloated amount of money at AI too. And a much as it infuriates me, they’ll almost certainly absorb the bubble pop with tax another bailout for criminal corporate behavior. But it’s not quite been a direct pipeline of openly flowing cash, just yet. They’re still paying for discrete contracts which have to be approved in the budget. They’ve been massive contracts, but they’re still making these companies compete e each other for them too. Like with the recent flip from DOJ contracts with Anthropic to OpenAI, for example.
In China, they’re buying in supporting the entire industry. They’re building infrastructure for AI data centers, giving them grants and subsidies, have direct ownership in the companies, and had made specific carve outs in their laws to give AI development deregulated room to do what it needs. I’m not in favor of either approach. Just pointing out that China’s approach does seem to have been an advantage in the AI race, or at least was enough of one that they made up a ton of ground, and maybe passed their US counterparts.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
They fired the wrong people. Go higher!
anon_8675309@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I like how they say “now” like the billionaires won’t keep jacking the fees up.
NotASharkInAManSuit@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s almost like it was an obvious and stupid pile of lies and shit the entire time. If only literally everyone with a brain had been pointing that out literally the entire time, then we could have done better, right?
bigbangdangler@reddthat.com 2 months ago
Maybe… just maybe… the ones at the top with all the money should not be the ones with the least knowledge and the worst skillsets.
FinjaminPoach@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Does AI cost more than humans primarily because of greed (i.e the AI companies demand a high profit margin now) or because of energy costs (i.e AI is so wasteful with energy, so polluting, that it costs more than human workers)
i078@europe.pub 2 months ago
Given the ai companies are running at al loss, it’s fair to assume which if these is likely
pennomi@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is a common myth, inference is not typically run at a loss, despite claims. It’s only a loss if you include staff and ongoing training costs. They could lock in their models now and be profitable if they wanted to.
Clent@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
The AI companies bet on efficiencies occurring that have not materialized.
Flower@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Costs. AI companies have been running at a big loss using investment money trying to scale quickly and conquer the market. That always comes at an end and something closer to the real costs has to be paid.
bluegreenpurplepink@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Here’s a third reason AI costs more than humans: for each mistake that AI makes they’ll have to hire several people to fix them. Eventually, they’ll just have to hire people to watch the AI and try to prevent the mistakes before they happen.
It will be like a much more complicated version of having to babysit your Roomba. Sometimes the Roomba just gets stuck and sometimes the Roomba spreads fecal matter all over the entire house.
ol_capt_joe@piefed.ee 2 months ago
They just say a number. If nobody pays, it’s too high. If everyone pays, it’s too low. Aim is for i) highest market share, ii) max ARR, and iii) highest margin.
They’re selling the idea that a machine costs less than a human. They’re Walmart, humans are mom-and-pop shops. Once the competitors are gone, they charge whatever they want (you pay or you close out). Fuck them.
Two_Hangmen@midwest.social 2 months ago
I remember companies doing this with cloud services.
CEO: Get rid of everything on-prem, the cloud sales person said cloud is cheaper!
First year cloud coats are more than 3 year depreciation of on-prem equipment
CEO: Huh…welp it’s impossible for me to be wrong, so we’re just going to say it was cheaper.
hark@lemmy.world 2 months ago
These companies have been tokenmaxxing i.e. judging employee performance based on how many tokens they use, so employees are incentivized to use up as many tokens as possible, even if it doesn’t actually improve productivity (and can actually result in the opposite).
T00l_shed@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Which happens often when you focus too hard on kpis.
luciferofastora@feddit.org 2 months ago
My favourite quote about analytics:
“A measure that becomes a target ceases to be a good measure.”
elbiter@lemmy.world 2 months ago
It’s not about the money, it never was. If it were a matter of costs, subcontractors would have never existed.
They just have wet dreams of businesses that run without having to rely on humans. That’s all.
Humans ask for raises, get sick, want vacations or just want to get the fuck out of there and do something else than working. That’s communism, in their book: You all not being a bunch of docile slaves.
I don’t know who is gonna end up buying the products they sell, anyway…
matlag@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
We’ve seen that trend for decades already. Neo-liberalism was all about trickling up wealth created by work.
But you see that in all advanced economies: commoners budget are tighter and tighter as cost of life increase faster than wages. That’s the expected outcome of neo-liberalism.
Now politicians pretend the housing crisis is an anomaly and car makers wonder why sales are slowing down. AI is bad, but it only accelerates and amplifies what was already happening.
dangling_cat@piefed.blahaj.zone 2 months ago
The fact that piece of algorithm is getting paid more than a human being, who eat, live, love, is outrageous. Humans are the worst.
yermaw@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Just to twist the knife, the algorithm was likely trained on the replaced workers behaviours
SpacetimeMachine@lemmy.world 2 months ago
And likely does the job worse.
LurkingLuddite@piefed.social 2 months ago
Executives are the worst. There are many, many great people in the world, but for some fucking stupid reason we let executives and politicians run roughshod over everyone and everything…
musicjunkie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I for one think it’s pretty bad ass that humans are able to build sophisticated enough tools to replace “brain” jobs. Not sure how AI is a humanity bad moment unless you are someone with a make-believe job being replaced by AI
PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
I’m sure this comment will go down well with Lemmy.
MTK@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Add to that the fact that hiring and training a new employee usually costs between 5-10 times more than retaining an employee (from hire to fully trained)
end_stage_ligma@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Yet they never seem to act like that. They punish you for loyalty.
shalafi@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Not just hiring and training! You also have to start paying state unemployment tax on that new hire. In Florida the first $7,000 is taxed on each new employee. Then there’s loss of efficiency, and related items. On top of that, if your turnover is high, your payroll company will up your rates because they’re working harder and you’re a PITA employer. I’ve sat meetings where we decided exactly that.
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 months ago
CEOs learning
Bet
thatKamGuy@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Cap?
MajorasTerribleFate@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
No, ong
SubArcticTundra@lemmy.ml 2 months ago
The fact that it is just a cost comparison, however much humans might still be winning it roght now, is the fundamental problem.
CH3DD4R_G0BL1N@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
Costing more to do less was kind of written on the wall of capitalism’s halls the whole time, so are we really surprised?
Diplomjodler3@lemmy.world 2 months ago
But they got to fire a lot of people which is their favorite thing to do.
voidsignal@lemmy.world 2 months ago
AND it’s shit
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 2 months ago
Perhaps it is my bias as someone who studied AI at the university, but I never believe it when someone claims to loose job due to AI. AI never fired you, AI never managed to replace you. Your manager is just bad at making business decisions, as most managers are nowadays. Current rich world of big successful companies was built on competent managers, those people are now either dead or too old to work and their replacements will drive us back to the medieval times while pretending they know best.
There are good, valid, profitable uses for AI. They are not pushed by big companies, rather utilized by small actors who fly under radar.
rob_t_firefly@lemmy.world 2 months ago
If your new work colleague Gerald introduces himself by knocking you over the head with a frozen chicken, it’s as correct to say “ow, I’ve been hit with a chicken!” as it is to say “ow, I’ve been hit by Gerald!”
If your boss says “I’ve hired this guy Gerald to do your job instead of you because I can pay him less, you’re fired!” you can say “damn, I’ve lost my job due to Gerald!” just as much as you can say “I’ve been fired by my boss!”
So, losing your job because your management has made the shitty decision to use AI instead of employing you can be accurately described as “losing your job due to AI.”
Anyway, fuck the boss and fuck Gerald.
bitjunkie@lemmy.world 2 months ago
So few people seem to have an innate understanding that two things can suck simultaneously
HrabiaVulpes@europe.pub 2 months ago
That sounds just like an excuse to hate one more person…
Corkyskog@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
You’re smart. The market needs a major correction and everyone knows its coming. But now with the advent of AI, you can fire people and pretend it’s a good thing and keep your stock price high!
Zink@programming.dev 2 months ago
You would THINK that of all people on the planet, CEOs should understand the enshittification strategy.
…Or the board of directors, or the major investors, etc.
If you outsource the entire value chain of your $million/billion business to the $trillions guys, how do you think that will go? What would YOU do in their place knowing you have all the leverage and none of the risk (re: the smaller companies being bled dry and left to rot)?
It’s funny to see it happen to other predatory tech companies like uber though.
matlag@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
“Of course it can’t happen to me! It only happens to my idiot users, and I am not an idiot!” [expense blows out of control] “We’re going to have to let go more people for budget reasons. You see people use tokens, and tokens are expensive! We’ll have less people who will use more AI to replace them, I was told the last version improves further productivity!”
orioler25@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Pretty sure the point was to drive down the price of labour?
Jarix@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Not the only point. No one to complain or so you when you say to do something immoral ,unethical, illegal, hateful, or just plain old evil.
Not having to worry about hire/fire cycles, can just turn off and on as needed. Can make AI work 24 hours a day everyday assuming you have lobbied to get unfair access/cost to/on the energy
And you can have it tell you anything you want it to when you have board meeting
orioler25@lemmy.world 2 months ago
I’m not sure how you don’t think that all translates into labour value. These are expenses and the fake narrative that this technology is even capable of labour is itself oriented around making human labour less valuable. It’s always been about reaping even more from the only resource they have difficulty owning completely.
ZILtoid1991@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Rule: if something looks too good to be true, then without any further evidence, it’s likely too good to be true.
Prove_your_argument@piefed.social 2 months ago
Don’t worry, when they hire back their humans they will be paying them 25%+ less after adjusting for inflation.
olafurp@lemmy.world 2 months ago
This is what happens when you reward people based on token usage. People no joke can just put in before every PR “review every detail, be very thorough, make sure it fits into everything, check for every possible undefined behavior etc.” while giving the model a massive doc with list of all files in the project.
Not even sure if they check the prompts because “review formatting of the entire codebase” is also super heavy in a large repo but if prompts get checked it’s an obvious token sink.
The model will just ransack the whole project every time through the whole stack when you could enforce a contract with a couple of tests with strict input validation.
Uber has the dumbest AI policy in the industry.
DanceMomsSavedMe@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Hahahahaha their greed knows no bounds and they couldn’t help but reach and reach and reach further in until they ruined the one actual selling point they had of AI “replace the slaves cheaper!!” They cried waving their arms around “This is the new thing!!” “You won’t have to pay people anymore! Think of the profits!!”
And then they went and fucked it up because of how obscenely and unapologetically greedy they are in every single thing that they do. Hahahahahaha oh god, the irony is almost tangible enough you could put it on a plate and eat it.
Good for us, the actual workers of the world. But wow, they are so greedy they couldn’t even replace us all with robots effectively because they just want more and more and more and more and more and…
davidagain@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Most LLM setups were running at about a 95% loss. That’s unprecedentedly humongous.
Subscriptions were going to need to go up 20-fold just to break even.
Valmond@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
Rehire and Replace the CEO with AI 😁
PartyAt15thAndSummit@lemmy.zip 2 months ago
Too easy.
Elting@piefed.social 2 months ago
The tech sector had been over hiring for a decade. The cutbacks were inevitable in any course. Whats funny about it is that by using AI as a standover they are enshittifying their product faster and costing themselves more in the process than if they had just started firing people.
Nonpaywalled version of that article: https://archive.is/HolQ7
LodeMike@lemmy.today 2 months ago
“Overhiring” has the same ethos as “overvalued” - completely made up and dependent on random people’s opinions.
Elting@piefed.social 2 months ago
There is a degree of subjectivity to it, but at some point you pass a threshold where it should become obvious to most people. When I was in college, a CS degree was the one degree everyone knew would land you a well paying job right from graduation. It had been like that before I got there, and it was like that after I left. That isn’t the case anymore, and you can’t blame it all on AI.
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=0tLEszJs7hc
This is a good video that shows how the industry has been changing.
Lydia_K@lemmy.world 2 months ago
They don’t care, they don’t want to be in the writing software business or in the human resources business. Cloud is more expensive but they didn’t care because they didn’t want to be in the data center business.
zeroConnection@programming.dev 2 months ago
An OpenAI investor told Axios that the shift could benefit them, since they view Codex as superior to Claude Code at maximizing tokens efficiently, cutting down on usage costs.
Oh boy, wait till he learns about Chinese models. American AI companies are in deep trouble 🥳
jaggedrobotpubes@lemmy.world 2 months ago
AI + UBI
A great pairing.
Who doesn’t like a great pair?
_stranger_@lemmy.world 2 months ago
Those same managers eleven seconds later when they get an ad for a new startup making the same obviously empty promises as the last startup:
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tempest@lemmy.ca 2 months ago
They love those the most because they integrate them and then use it to justify a promotion or move so they can get out of Dodge before the inevitable explosion happens on the next guys watch. The next guy blames the previous guy and then repeats the process.
W98BSoD@lemmy.dbzer0.com 2 months ago
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RVGamer06@sh.itjust.works 2 months ago
this better not awaken anything in me
basxto@discuss.tchncs.de 2 months ago
is dhat two things edited together?