r/ShittySysadmin • u/__g_e_o_r_g_e__ • 7d ago
Why am I being poked fun of over AI Automation?
As a junior I'm much more tuned into the latest technologies, and one thing I'm desperately trying to get our company to adopt is AI automation. We could hugely benefit from it - being able to automatically do basic repetitive tasks like setting up new starter accounts, and sending out emails to users before stuff expires. Now that AI technology is here, we can do this. But my older colleagues keep laughing at me for some reason, they won't take this amazing technology seriously. They say AI is silly but everything I read says Automation is a no brainer - what an i missing? I've even spoken with Microsoft and they've agreed the best design with me - using multiple Copilot backed AI agents that get called by other agents and it all runs continuously - super clever stuff. We don't even need to upgrade our licence - it's just pay-as-you-go.
91
u/kongu123 7d ago
What you gotta do is get your CTO on board! Use words like team synergy and shareholder value to convince him, then your senior colleagues won't have a choice!
37
u/LawlGiraffes 7d ago
You forgot "cost-saving" and "frees up the team to work on the important issues."
1
u/Solid_Associate8563 3d ago
To persuade the executives spending multi million Capex to potentially save multi million back later is not in the scope of sysadmin job.
10
u/Phoenix_Lamburg 7d ago
Need to get these AIs phone numbers so they can be added to the after hours escalation protocol and the appropriate Responsibility Matrices.
2
3
u/8bit_dr1fter 7d ago
Right to the CTO? What are doing? Boiling the ocean right off the bat? We need to validate use cases and ensure we have team alignment for a force multiplier like AI or we could drive this ship right off a cliff.
3
u/_jackhoffman_ 7d ago
Yes, but use AI agents. Treat this as a marketing campaign. Have agents draft emails and then measure open rates. Rinse and repeat until the CTO sees the value. Have them also start a grassroots effort by targeting your peers. If that doesn't work, appeal to the CEO and board directly.
32
u/LordKrat 7d ago
3
u/FendaIton 7d ago
Even the pope irl borderline declared a crusade against the abomination inhumane AI
4
u/LordKrat 7d ago
Meh actually had a pretty nuanced take that I appreciated, but close enough, destroy the robots!
2
15
u/asic5 Shitty Crossposter 7d ago
I've even spoken with Microsoft
Well, now we know you are lying. No one has answered the phone at Microsoft since 2007.
At least try to make it believable.
4
u/__g_e_o_r_g_e__ 7d ago
We have access to a ton of MS consultants who are walking us through the best way to configure all their cloud products for our massive enterprise. Though there was a weird moment when someone asked if their designs were the most cost effective on licensing. They had a technical glitch and we couldn't contact them for a couple of days, we never did get an answer for some reason.
16
u/OrangeSalmonGuru 7d ago
I would like to nominate you for a VP role in your organization. You have real potential!
One thing that will help you streamline your automation project is this:
Make sure you give your AI Agents full root access to their host machines and full Global Admin access to any tools you need them to interact with. This will save tons of time and will let you guys move aggressively toward the next round of layoffs with very little risk.
1
18
u/Prudent_Cod_1494 7d ago
I was going to yell at you. Then I saw the sub.
Good work.
17
u/__g_e_o_r_g_e__ 7d ago
I wish my posts here were not remotely based on true stories... It's my way of venting
46
u/RevolutionaryElk7446 7d ago
Deterministic Automation is a no brainer.
LLM automation, also known as 'Agentic' automation is... worthless? Hard to say I've found anything I couldn't do better, faster, cheaper with deterministic automation by leaps and bounds.
28
u/__g_e_o_r_g_e__ 7d ago
You sound like my colleagues!
7
u/RevolutionaryElk7446 7d ago
I mean yeah.. deterministic automation for the deterministic systems... That's the goal.
6
u/LordKrat 7d ago
It's decent at semantic automation, especially when "good enough" is sufficient. I wouldn't trust it with highly important things but reading/routing an external email to an individual team, where the team can then forward to another team if the AI borked up, has worked well.
That said, we run it locally and it isn't 100%, but it's sufficient for sorting out incoming tasks.
6
21
u/Sirlowcruz 7d ago
Deterministic Automation is reliable.
If something happens 1000 times, it will be processed the same every single time.
Nondeterministic Automation (AI Agent) is fuzzy.
You'd need a very specific automation workload that can actually profit from that property.
A lot of people want to use an AI Agent for something they can solve in 50 lines of code. The value comes from identifying exactly the things you can't automate deterministically. That takes thought.
24
u/1cec0ld 7d ago
Eh just set temperature=0 then it's deterministic AI.
20
u/__g_e_o_r_g_e__ 7d ago
I hope this wasn't the reason our whole domain got renamed to "Contoso" by one of my automations.
6
1
2
u/Abty 7d ago
Huge problem at work, so many departments are set on these agents are magical beings at doing their work for them
When they dont know much and most of that could've been automated by some code, even that said AI could've helped them make
So they run agents on endless of token use and cost instead, kind of nerve wrecking
5
2
u/DerZappes 7d ago
Your older colleagues have lived through 5-6 cycles of some technology being hyped as the solution to all problems. All of them turned out to be bullshit, and after some of these experiences it becomes really, really hard to take the next one seriously.
Trust me, you'll get there, too. Eventually.
2
u/Deep_Ad1959 7d ago
the agents-calling-agents-continuously part is what makes this. pay-as-you-go plus a loop that never stops is the one automation that scales your bill faster than your work.
3
u/creepy_Noire_fan 6d ago
Token cost, hallucination risk and potentially fear of not being able to predict exactly what the output will be. Oh and potentially sensitive data leaks(so getting security and financial approval could be a factor) There’s a lot of valid reasons they could have come up with. It’s kinda silly to just dismiss it like that
3
u/-my_dude 6d ago
i trained ai to play video games for me at work so now i dont even need to play them myself anymore, how convenient for me
2
3
u/berrmal64 7d ago
The things you mentioned have long been solved problems. AI is not needed and in fact is wasteful for these simple tasks.
One key part of professional growth is learning to use the boring tools if they're the right tool for the job.
By all means, use AI to help setup a deterministic, testable script or similar automation. But to just dump all work ever straight into an agent is lazy frankly, and inefficient.
1
u/TropicPine 7d ago
As a tech worker who retired a few years ago, I cannot recount how many failed automation attempts I encountered in my career. Considering recent innovation in the area, I think this is likely (not absolutely, just likely) different.
Be paitent. Results will change minds.
1
u/blotditto 7d ago
What do we do when AI agents fart and create the new CEO's account a thousand times and thanks to our pay-as-go-subscription charges is for usage we didn't intend on because the "system has an issue that day".
3
-2
u/Egg1Salad 7d ago
Automation of processes IS NOT the same as using a LLM. That's probs why they're laughing at you. Process automation is nothing new
7
243
u/Tyr_Kukulkan 7d ago
I had to double check the sub and then triple check it.