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[–] 61 points 3 months ago* (5 children)

This is a company of really smart people who work really hard—coders, engineers, designers—people whose creativity and intellect is a part of their job.

Smart enough to see their work is causing massive harm on a global scale? I know we all need jobs because capitalism commodifies life, but we CAN choose where we work.

Edit to add: if these very smart people were able to land jobs at Meta, they're likely very employable elsewhere and the CHOSEto work for Meta.

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  • [–] 34 points 3 months ago* (3 children)

    Fully agree, while people losing jobs to ai is sad, i have zero sympathies for meta employees. They knew pretty well how insidious that company is, and as you said, they are smart enough to find a good enough job in another company.

    A bit off topic, but all this ai stuff replacing so many jobs is a bit baffling to me. At least for certain jobs. It's not like in the industrial revolution where you could see tangible results in production and efficiency. Even if it come at a terrible human cost you could see the cold logic.
    Here in change, they are firing good talent only to get a subpar costlier replacement. Sure there are some places where it works, but i don't believe it's yet to the scale where you would fire so many people.

    I suppose the wet dreams of a future with no employees is too good to pass.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    I heard some statements that the "AI" justification is just on paper. Maybe partly because it's an easy out, and/or to keep the stick bridge looking sustainable. But that it's in reality not directly tied to any specific takeover of these individuals' work being presently or immediately taken over, and likely not efficiently either, by software. I'm not too deep into the economy so please only regard this as speculation until you can verify.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago*

    Now that you tell me, I think i have heard about that before. It does make a bit of sense, there may be some of both things to this madness. While speculation i value the observation and i will keep it mind, thank you for sharing it.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago*

    For people who have been there for a while, remember that there's almost certainly an internal propaganda campaign trying to refute any negative stories that come out about Meta. I've heard enough from people who have interacted with Meta employees to know that it's almost a cult; and when you're getting paid twice a month, it probably doesn't feel as toxic and more transactional. That probably makes it more of a frog-boiling than it would seem from the outside; even smart people can get taken in by a cult.

    People who have started more recently, though, have less of an excuse.

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  • [–] 60 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (50 children)

    I work for a tech company that has an AI product (that i use and find valuable), and the execs are talking about investing more in their employees, not less. You'll never guess which. Not all AI companies are trying to automate the whole company. If you have these personnel assets, throwing that away is short sighted. You should be able to run circles around people downsizing if you just empower your employees to use AI when it actually does make sense.

    Im convinced AI is like the dot com bubble, not all offerings are worth what we are being told, but for some things its the only way that makes sense anymore. By 2030, this will settle into a new normal where these laid off employees will find work in related areas that weren't possible before, and the companies that overvalued AI will take a hit.

    Edit: if you downvote can you say why? Im no AI stan, I think its being mishandled all over, but I do see a few valid use cases. Id like to know if im missing something, or if people are just sick of hearing people talk about AI.

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  • [–] 45 points 3 months ago* (8 children)

    I think you're getting downvotes because you don't quite see how the increased productivity is the mirror image of layoffs. AI doesn't have to replace people to decimate a lot of people's lives. All it has to do is make some people more productive. Firms will layoff the remainder over the headcount needed to deliver with AI. That's the promise AI companies are selling and the layoffs are already happening in junior roles that. There's absolutely no guarantee that new demand for more software product would appear in the economy which would create jobs for those people. You think there would be but that's a bet and plenty such bets have ended up with permanently deskilled and downwardly mobile parts of the population in the past.

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  • [–] 22 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    So how does this differ from any innovation? This viewpoint feels "anti-innovation" not "anti-AI". Computers put a lot of people out of jobs, but we don't wish they would go away.

    My take: I don't hate AI, I hate the AI industry.

    I've worked with classic AI for a very, very long time, I was even writing sentence parsers back in the 90s. AI overall is fascinating and can do wonderful things in science, medical, and other fields, especially ML-based tools. A good example would be MRI scanning, or tools I've worked on that scan for inappropriate medication use to save lives.

    Some job loss with each phase of innovation is expected, but it's this blown up "AI can do everything" without errors BS destroying way too many jobs than makes sense that kills the industry for me.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago* (6 children)

    The difference between this and computers or any innovation and what its prior is the pace of change which determines the social cost. Few would object to innovation if the innovation replaced them as they retired from the workforce instead of forcing them to bear the social cost mid-life. A family, a community, a region that goes through serious deskilling event is't a happy place. All sorts of real measurements of misery and illness go up. So this process isn't popular and frankly it shouldn't be acceptable. The situation we find ourselves in North America, prior to the AI shift, is to a large extent the result of a string of such events. A situation where nearly half the population wants to see the other punished. AI is promising to do a massive shift and quicker than many previous events, including at the uppet end of the payscale.

    So yeah, it's not the technology, the innivation. It's how our capitalist systen rolls it out. At what social cost, borne by whom, and whom reaping the upside. AI promises a fast, painful change at a time when everyone is already struggling, without welfare to soften the blow, while concetrating the benefits in fewer hands. Benefits that also translate to power, economic and political. So people rightfully reject this proposition. The tech is getting tarred with it.

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  • [–] 16 points 3 months ago (20 children)

    When does it “actually make … sense”?

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  • [–] 15 points 3 months ago (14 children)

    I can only say I find it useful for coding, and its way faster to ask it questions instead of searching documentation. It can read the code base, and explain it to me instead of me trying to understand the cryptic 2 and 3 letter variable names the last a hole used, in their 57 state state machine, all states just numbered, no names (why a state machine in python? Some people...) Then when I want to change something in the code that is substantial, I can ask it to write a draft that I then refine, saving keystrokes on boiler plate. It can suggest data structures and algorithms I've not yet used or heard of, and then I can learn about them, making me smarter as well.

    I did this all on my own before with a lot of grep and find commands, reading python/perl/c++/tcl/git/cvs documentation. Then tracking down someone to explain the piece Im not understanding. It turns a few weeks worth of hard effort into a relaxed few days of feeling more productive.

    Even just linting, I can ask it, why is this function not giving me the expected outcome (in terms that simple), and it finds the 1 off error faster than me, like in 5 sec in 500 lines of code.

    Its like having someone with perfect recall that has read all of the code base, and all comp science info on the web, sitting next to me. Its not a great coder, but I can get the information i need to be the good coder I am faster than google and grep. Not using it now is like insisting that O'Reilly books (which i have read for fun in the past) are better than searching the online docs or google.

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  • [–] 3 points 3 months ago (3 children)

    as someone who would also reach for a state machine when doing simple parsing... what's the better alternative in python?

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    I also find it very useful to bounce ideas, like an interactive rubber duck. Even when it’s wrong it can help me think out loud or elaborate ideas. It’s also very useful to help me set up tests, raise and delete environments, write documentation, etc. all things that I can do on my own, it can help make implementation faster. AI can be useful when you use it like a tool. I know it can and will make mistakes, but like all tools it can help make things faster when used correctly.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (8 children)

    AI could make sense one day if it comes with UBI to compensate its social impact and if it optimizes enough processes to compensate for its ecological footprint. We are far* from this and there's nowhere enough political pressure to make it happen.

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  • [–] 14 points 3 months ago (7 children)

    You're assuming AI will successfully replace enough jobs to have a social impact. You're buying into the hype. I can't think of a single job it can replace.

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago

    I can't think of a single job it can replace.

    Me either and I don't think it ever will reach that. We're already seeing diminishing returns.

    The thing is it doesn't need to replace a full job. If it improves productivity by 10% then that's the number that will either lose their job or just not get hired in the first place.

    I'm sure these are very worrying times for folks in college, especially computer science and the arts.

    UBI seems like the only long term solution to me.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago)

    It already has a social impact on the people's whose intellectual property was pirated, the employees traumatized by nsfw filtering tasks and the reduction of white collar junior recruitment (probably non junior too?). I know some people think it's just a bubble, companies are waiting to see what happens and the job market will recover. I am doubtful of it.
    My tech company is pushing us to use it so they provide the top tools. From what I have observed, I have little doubt it will replace a lot of the designing, engineering, coding and communication time. Yes, you will still need some knowledgeable person to guide and review, but less than before. Similarly to how you need less people to build a car today than you did in the 50', and even less for an electric car, because so much more is automated.
    So far automation and the internet did create more better paid jobs than it destroyed, maybe it will happen with "AI" too, but I am skeptical.
    Finally, in my opinion, UBI and work time reduction with equivalent quality of life is a desirable future.

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  • [–] 9 points 3 months ago

    It's going fully replace a LOT of jobs, and as future iterations learn more and more, it will replace even more complex jobs. You are underestimating the Ferengi's compulsion for more wealth. They will let quality slip significantly, if it means higher profits.

    In a few years, they be gaslighting us that double digit unemployment is perfectly normal in a healthy, high-tech society.

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    [–] 30 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Wow he really reminds me of someone

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  • [–] 28 points 3 months ago*

    It's a Golden Age for corporate execs right now - no matter how they fuck up everybody will blame it on AI.

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  • [–] 12 points 3 months ago (4 children)

    Anyone has a link to the original? Couldn't find it with a basic search.

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  • [–] 26 points 3 months ago (1 child)

    Basic searches haven’t been working well for me either lately. I tried running the query through a basic AI-First Conversational Agentic Experience but it just keeps saying to stay where I am and that the police are on the way? Weird

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  • [–] 10 points 3 months ago* (last edited 3 months ago) (2 children)

    and reassigned another 7,000 to train AI models.

    They didn't fire those who train the AI. They fired those who don't.

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  • [–] 7 points 3 months ago

    I feel like we've been seeing AI coding doing a shit job at big corporations, i.e. Microsoft. My expectation is that the harder Meta leans into AI, the worse their products will get, and they'll start begging their employees to come back--and I hope they get the finger in response.

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  • [–] 4 points 3 months ago

    Man that's an awful video, but I do agree with it.

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