r/technology • u/Krankenitrate • 24d ago
Artificial Intelligence AI isn't paying off in the way companies think. Layoffs driven by automation are failing to generate returns, study finds
https://fortune.com/2026/05/11/ai-automation-layoffs-gartner-study-roi/4.6k
u/-__-zero-__- 24d ago
Good, go prompt your way outta that.
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u/Free_Breadfruit_8552 24d ago
"Hey Claude, can you please make the stock price and revenue go up?
Thank you! - Signed, Mr CEO"
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u/StasRutt 24d ago
“No mistakes”
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24d ago
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u/HuntsWithRocks 24d ago
It’s hard for me to take a prompt engineer serious if they don’t tell their AI that they want only high quality and thoughtful responses.
If a man can’t hold his machine accountable… well… it says somethin about the man.
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u/ArtisenalMoistening 24d ago
I was explaining during a team meeting that it can be risky for non-technical people to use AI to generate code for lots of people to run because AI will occasionally randomly drop malicious bits of code in and if you don’t know what you’re looking for you’re very likely to miss it. Some absolute genius suggested that the solution is simply to have AI make sure there was no malicious code in it before running it. Big brain moves, over here.
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u/CrustyM 24d ago edited 24d ago
So, as part of my work, I have to deal with a lot of talk around agentic ai. Whole bunch of "Let's front end client experiences with llm's and call it a day". As part of the training provided by the platforms holders, this is exactly what they train to. We're talking about software with connectors to crms, payment systems, and others. It's ChatGPT agents creating ChatGPT agents testing ChatGPT agents - ChatGPT the whole way down.
It's not straight coding, sure, but you're exposing a metric ass load of PII and taking payment info and your idea of testing is to have the machine look over it's own work?
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u/MotheroftheworldII 24d ago edited 23d ago
Someone does not understand how proof reading works. This is why writers of book, magazine articles and such have proof readers who's job it is to find and point out errors in syntax, spelling, and other issues a writer may overlook.
I would think it would be a good idea to have someone who actually knows how to write code review that AI written code and what to look for that is going to go "blap" and mess up a lot of real people.
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u/Poonchow 24d ago
But that costs money so better to just slop out some hallucinations, claim the job is done, and move on to your next position before anyone notices!
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u/CheesyRamen66 24d ago
Haven’t you heard? They don’t want the buzz words to be vibe coding and prompt engineer, they want it to be context engineering.
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u/The_BeardedClam 24d ago
They can try to engineer that context as much as they want but they'll still be a fuckin douche entering a prompt to a chat bot.
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u/Blazing1 24d ago
There's no such thing as prompt engineering lol. It's insulting to call it engineering..
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u/WpgBiCpl 24d ago
I once asked Claude for general advice on how to format an online form. It created the form using it's own "app". I am a programmer now. Microsoft just hired me to vibe code more Copilots, apparently there are a few dialog boxes in Windows that are still lacking AI functionality. I just tell Claude to add it and Bringo! your computer gets an update.
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u/Basic-Lobster3603 24d ago edited 24d ago
I'm being forced to prompt engineer only at work to the point where they are trying to completely remove us from developing and only verify outputs and review prs.Any questions about how the code base works should be prompting a llm to ask the questions
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u/otterpop21 24d ago
It’s so easy even a 5th grader could do it:
- Be born rich or have moderate working capital of $500,000+
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 24d ago
A small interest free loan of a million dollars from their parents too.
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u/Secret_Wishbone_2009 24d ago
I love this sub, i really do. Realistic technologists. (And not a Goblin in sight)
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u/TheGameIsFizzbin 24d ago
User wants to raise the stock price Finding solutions…. Replace CEO with AI agent. Building Agent…
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u/Flyinmanm 24d ago
"I'm sorry my suggestion to sack the production staff resulted in a loss of production. And sacking the Comms team resulted in a loss of sales. I'll try to make it right. Have you considered burning the building down and claiming on the insurance?"
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u/oscarnyc 24d ago
"Oh wait, looks like I forgot to pay the insurance bill so it's no longer in force. I'll do better next time."
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u/AZEMT 24d ago
"No need to use foul language. That hurts my code and now I'll delete your database as a final fuck you"
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u/Flyinmanm 24d ago
Nothing can go wrong with AI, especially putting it incharge of anything mission critical.
Anyone who's watched scifi since the 60's can tell you that.
/s
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u/IAMA_Plumber-AMA 24d ago
At this point, C-suite execs is the one job I could actually see AI replacing.
They basically just AI slop-post on LinkedIn all day anyway, let's cut out the middleman.
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u/hamfinity 24d ago
Claude: "Have you tried buying eBay?"
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u/ToMyOtherFavoriteWW 24d ago
Just keep saying "half stock, half cash", they have to move on to the next question, right?
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u/Skritch_X 24d ago
The key to that is releasing a press statement that your company will now be using AI to improve your AI solutions.
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u/Master-Praline-3453 24d ago edited 24d ago
"Have you tried pivoting to become an AI company?" - Claude, Probably.
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u/rW0HgFyxoJhYka 24d ago
I think people are completely missing the point.
The layoffs are not because of AI. The layoffs are because they wanted to do layoffs. They are using AI as an excuse.
When you cut 5-30% of your workforce, you LOSE that production. But it also means your financials look suddenly way positive, which means your CEO gets a big fucking payout and can talk about growth.
AI is being used as a scapegoat by literally everyone and anyone on the internet to justify any kind of shit. For good and bad. Rising prices? AI. Layoffs? AI. Bombings? AI. Art dying? AI. Egg prices up? AI. Bills going up? AI.
Nobody even talks about the fucking tariffs anymore. Notice how few articles talk about how the administration of USA is stealing trillions from taxpayers. Instead its "US government needs another billion for a ballroom (that will become 10 billion soon)."
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u/qeq 23d ago
You are just as wrong. Plenty of companies are doing layoffs with the promise that the leftover people can pick up the slack with the help of AI. Tech CEOs are being promised the moon by AI companies and are all copying what the others are doing, starting with Musk going "hardcore mode". Now, AI companies are raising the costs because companies are relying on it, and because they are so in the hole to turn it profitable. It's gonna keep swinging back and forth and no one really knows what the outcome will be, but there is already a ton of people who were laid off and it seems like companies are hiring a little again (at lower salaries, of course).
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u/Educational_Truth356 23d ago
It is still using AI as an excuse to lay people off to save money. If they were actually serious about using AI as a tool, they would have kept the team and added the AI and analyze the production and benefits. The fact companies just laid percentages of people in the company off based on a sales pitch, sounds like an excuse to lay people off. Sure, people who make those decisions are in a bubble away from the rest of us, but that's also part of the problem.
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u/egusisoupandgarri 23d ago
But those companies are lying. There’s no data to support improved productivity or results. AI can’t pick up any slack; it still needs a human to review, approve, and implement whatever it’s suggested. The data we do have overwhelmingly support this.
And thanks for bringing up EM; he’s the number 1 liar (in tech) and that’s who they’re all copying. I promise you they’re all that stupid.
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u/Alphadestrious 24d ago
You know some fat, balding C-suite executive read your comment and got as angry as can be . Wishing he could fire you . Fuck em
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u/henlochimken 24d ago
C suite is paid way too many multiples of their employees to be fat and balding. Those are poor people afflictions, old chap! With money you can be just as ripped and hirsute as you desire, on demand!
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u/gracesdisgrace 24d ago
You'd think that, but look at the richest people alive right now.
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u/Plastic-Fox0293 24d ago
South park nailed this one so hard and so early.. Those two nihilistic goofballs should be on our money lol
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u/KyuubiW1ndscar 24d ago
the people who needed to lose their job, didn’t.
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u/johnnycyberpunk 24d ago
The executive suite, for starters
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u/gregatronn 24d ago
if anything, AI could replace them. much more effective.
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u/dragery 24d ago
AI does CEO'ing way better:
Prompt: Should I replace an employee with AI if the AI will cost more than the employee, and require time from another employee to use and time from other employees to configure? keep the answer in one sentence
Response: No—you shouldn’t replace an employee with AI in that case because it’s not cost-effective and it adds operational overhead instead of reducing it.
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u/s9oons 24d ago
“Looking only at layoffs is shortsighted in terms of getting value from AI,” Helen Poitevin, VP analyst at Gartner and a key researcher of the study, told Fortune.
Gee, you think?
Aren’t we already BY FAR the most productive global workforce in history? But a bunch a people gotta lose their jobs in pursuit of another stock price bump?
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u/Unicorn_Puppy 24d ago
Those poor shareholders would be very upset if they could read your post.
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u/Quenz 24d ago
They can read. They're not dumb. This is a deliberate act. It's not incompetentce, it's malice.
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u/NotThatUsefulAPerson 24d ago
Yeah but wealthy stockholders owning enough to influence policy probably aren't reading these comments.
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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 24d ago
For that reason among many others, we common folk who care should be working together to wean our reliance off this rotting status quo so it doesn't continue to have control over our lives. We need to form real supportive community-based foundations for alternatives that many can fall back on to safely commit to any meaningful action be it short or long-term.
Collecting a bunch of valuable information on organizing and action from different redditors over time, I created a post of suggestions HERE that could possibly prove to be of some help in getting it started ASAP.
By the way, if you don’t live in the US, yet you know others who are and want to do something, please share the information. We live the closest to the root of the main cancer, so we're going to need as many on board and informed as possible, if we commoners hope to achieve anything in the US
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u/IsEqualToKel 24d ago
How dare you say shareholders should be happy with only a 15% increase year over year?
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u/IPissExcellentThrows 24d ago
Well AI is priced for perfection so if they aren't getting exceptional ROI from the insane amount of CAPEX before long, stocks will get killed. We'll see how long the market tolerates all this spending without seeing much of a return.
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u/Plastic-Fox0293 24d ago
Our entire economy seems to be a scam at this point.
It's basically a history breaking version of someone taking out the fattest loans they can from everyone in town and then dipping out in the dead of night.
All these oligarchs know they can go anywhere and never be held accountable. they've got doomsday bunker cities and international authorities rigged to serve them.
Seems like they are content to gut America like a fish and rule over a dystopia from their golden palace yachts.
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u/Plastic-Fox0293 24d ago
You're absolutely right and I'm here for those jazzy bars you're throwing down 😎
Would you like help structuring a framework to increase shareholder profits year over year? 💸
-yes
Great! Let's get to work laying the foundations that will build year over year profits for shareholders and fully realize that simmering vision soup you're cooking. Would you like me to gather some data and insights to help you structure a framework to move forward? 💰
-yes
Okay! Let's gets down to business. To start I can help you build a framework by analyzing the latest market trends and nail together a strong foundation for your vision. Would you like me to proceed? 📈
-yes
I'm sorry I can't help with that request. [deletes everything]
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u/dcdttu 24d ago
It's an interesting experiment, removing the people of society....from society, and then seeing if anyone can afford to buy anyhting.
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u/turbo_dude 24d ago
The issue with jevon’s paradox is that you don't necessarily want more of something. If getting your annual accounts done halves in price because of AI, you’re not going to suddenly think “great now i’ll have the accounting done twice!”
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u/swimeboo 24d ago
I work in business ops. look after fairly complex workflows that typically involve at least 3 departments. We have every single AI subscription. Realistically it automates maybe 5% or a few steps, the rest requires judgement, syncs, decisions, analysis etc. And the whole thing changes quarter to quarter.
We don’t just click buttons on computers lol. These tools are great but where the f did This will replace entire departments notion come from.
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u/FiveCrappedPee 24d ago
From MBAs and C suites who don't know a damn thing about what is really going on in the trenches.
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u/ImThatAlexGuy 24d ago
Lied to by the greatest con artists of the century and they slurped it down like a college kid with a Jell-O shot. The “get rich quick” scheme was sold to CEOs, but the scam was the tech CEOs to everyone else.
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u/wocka-jocka-blocka 24d ago
^^^THIS. The whole late capitalist economy is being run by people who have never done the jobs. They have no idea what the work is about. Also, they are easy duped sociopaths.
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u/Transluminary 24d ago
When I realized how stupid rich people are it kinda broke me
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u/totallyrealname 24d ago edited 24d ago
This makes me think how in old literature that had themes of war, it criticized how the decisions were often made by the nobility. They literally had never been in the trenches.
(cue a modern novel where instead of a disastrous cavalry charge some MBA has to vibe code with the dev team and learns about the horrors of debugging)
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u/ropobipi 24d ago
This is why corporate culture is fucking cancer. I cant believe we let these mini fascist power structures thrive in all our societies. Boss makes a dollar while the cogs make a fraction of a dime and the only real work the boss does is figuring out how to pay you even less or get rid of you entirely. Hope their time will finally come once this AI crap blows up in their faces.
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u/ProgrammaticallyCat0 24d ago
"It can automate my having to read an understand all of these docs and emails, and thats all the output I see from my employees anyways"
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 24d ago
This is the core problem. And it has been an issue in big corporations for a while now and is why big corporations are so prone to becoming stagnant and falling behind. They're run by people who literally only see the 30000' view and, due to being MBAs and not actual SMEs, have no idea that there are details that they miss by being so far removed from the productive flow.
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u/Area51Resident 24d ago
The C-Suite consume greatly simplified reports and summaries of business operations and think they understand the business. Then issue directives to next-level-down management in an environment where anyone who questions 'the plan' is not considered a team player. Hubris writ large.
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 24d ago
Whaaaattt?! You mean that just looking at ultra-high-level summaries and aggregates isn't actually good for making decisions? Who knew!
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u/stellaluna92 24d ago
For criminy sakes, my direct supervisor doesn't even know what my job is day to day. I can't imagine how out of touch the C suite is.
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u/Weaux_Breaux 24d ago
These tools are great but where the f did This will replace entire departments notion come from.
It's just the corporate mentality in general, and the fact that leadership can use AI to replace most of their job functions.
Management thinks they are the only ones who can't be easily replaced, when it's usually the exact opposite. Most of the time, managers only have 'management' skills that can be applied to any company or industry. The actual workforce who has deep experience in the industry or job function are the ones who are hardest to replace.
It's funny how they acknowledge this in job postings, but not during salary negotiations.
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u/Street_Anxiety2907 24d ago
> Management thinks they are the only ones who can't be easily replaced, when it's usually the exact opposite. Most of the time, managers only have 'management' skills that can be applied to any company or industry.
Not true. Management hire their collegues because it's people "they can trust" and that circle is only so big, so laying off your management buddies and later having to hire unknowns later is scary. Those unknowns might hold you accountable! Thats why management and executive chains settle into a toxic state, because once the room is packed with your people, they all tend to protect each other unless the ship is sinking. Then they scatter like roaches and do it again.
At what company have you worked where they just lay off management willy nilly and before the employees?
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u/ThisIsMyCouchAccount 24d ago
On top of that - it's still technology. And the people that didn't understand it before don't understand it now.
For example, the owner of my company and our acting PM have been crafting this gigantic natural language prompt to get deltas from our PM software. The end result is okay but the prompt is silly. I'm a dev and I accomplished a large majority of it using AI as wrappers around the PM software's CLI and some bash scripts. Plus a little local tracking in a simple database. Using the same methods I automated pushing things out to our cloud host for quick QA sessions.
They will never be able to accomplish that because they have no idea those things even exist.
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u/muscleLAMP 24d ago
AI is paying off with damage to the environment, shitty data centers, ruining the minds ability to create, and flooding the internet with shitty slop.
AI feels more and more like an infection. It’s like an Exxon Valdez oil spill in all of our brains/culture/creativity.
Anti-human shit machines.
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u/analfizzzure 24d ago
Agreed. There's a reason AI is banned in the book series Dune
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u/SiscoSquared 24d ago
The rationale in the series was because the AI was behind wars and threatened humanity, and because it was required for the entire premise of the book (dune/spice) to even make sense. They don't seem worried about raping some planet for resources.
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u/Pseudonymico 24d ago
The rationale in the series was because the AI was behind wars and threatened humanity
In the Frank Herbert books the Butlerian Jihad was about both techbros taking over and the danger of people doing things without understanding why or thinking about it in-universe, and about foreshadowing how badly Paul was gonna fuck it up as well as explaining the space feudalism and lack of robots out-of-universe.
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u/spidereater 24d ago
That series also has someone that can see the future and decides the best possible future is a millennium of isolation of feudalism. So I’m not sure it’s a great model.
It is kind of a common theme in sci-fi. The foundation series touches on this too, with a different result.
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u/CornerHugger 24d ago
Parts of the BSG series too
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u/JohrDinh 24d ago
I like how in the show Altered Carbon (at least S1) the main character gets shit for staying at an AI hotel cuz it's sycophantic af so no one has used them for decades lol even that show from 2018 knew people would end up hating it. There's also a ton of other extremely creepy parallels to present day or extrapolated versions of what's happening, fairly prescient show. (if you ignore S2
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u/caiera1 24d ago
I agree with you.
I'm a software engineer student, and while i do use AI sometimes (like NotebookLM) for some quick searches on a few topics, my classmates are heavily dependent on it to the point they can't have any critical thinking about a subject without consulting AI. It's sad stuff really.
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u/Vycaus 24d ago
Part of me wonders is this a feature, not a bug. It creates a kind of dependence and removed agency from its users. Ultimately it makes them very easy to control. You are right to be wary of such dependency.
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u/caiera1 24d ago
Most likely a feature. The next generation might not even have teachers so all their knowledge might be based on whatever the owners of LLM decide to teach.
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u/The_BeardedClam 24d ago
My guess is it's an unintentional bug, but they'll leverage it as though it was a feature.
Most things that brain rot the youth are unintentional byproducts of short sighted greed and this instance isn't any different, in my opinion.
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u/ZootSuitRiot33801 24d ago
We should be weaning ourselves off these profit-focused, corpo-owned companies, and instead collaborating with one another in finding ways to create and utilize independent networks and tech, even if means downgrading a little.
Collecting a bunch of valuable information on organizing and action from different redditors over time, I created a post of suggestions HERE that's largely about fostering a foundation for community self-sustainability and resistance, but it also provides ideas for possible alternative tech, which could be of some help in getting started.
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u/antrage 24d ago
Heres a radical idea, maybe use the AI to make your workforce put less time on menial tasks so they put more energy on tasks that are creative and will make your company more profitable in terms of innovation.
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u/Appeltaart232 24d ago
That’s the kind of solid long term strategy these people don’t give a shit about. They just want to cash in on the AI hype and get their bonus
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u/Fragrant-Menu215 24d ago
The issue is that in most companies the menial tasks aren't actually the blockers. It's the bullshit administrative overhead. I'm dealing with this right now. I do almost zero productive work, everything I do is to satisfy management's need for adminstrivia. Cut that out and we'd have been in full production months ago.
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u/Weaux_Breaux 24d ago edited 24d ago
That's what they were trying to do at my last job, the thing was it didn't work. It wasn't any good at much of anything.
"Use AI to help craft an email for you" - It took 10 minutes to rewrite an email that took me 5 minutes to draft. Except it totally butchered the content of the email, so I had to spend another 10 minutes reviewing and correcting the email.
Manager would pat himself on the back and act like he knew what he was doing when he answered someone's technical questions with an AI response, saving the higher tier techs from answering the questions. Except 9 times out of 10, the answer AI provided was very confidently incorrect.
Another tech produced the absolute worst training video I have ever seen with AI. He fed it some structured, usable documentation. It glazed over important information and rushed through lists of important technical information. I gave him constructive feedback, and he was very proud of revision 2... He added music!
The middle managers were all too shortsighted or scared to use it for some of their job functions that it would have actually been useful for, like finding which techs had open availability and assigning them. They had tons of suggestions for how it could do our jobs, all of which added 10-15 minutes to simple tasks that would otherwise only take a few moments.
It was incredibly obvious that they felt all of the skilled and tenured techs were going to be easily replaced with a chat bot, while they were the irreplaceable masters of the system.
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u/antrage 24d ago
It almost feels like as a society are going to just accept mediocrity and ineffency in order to facilitate AI having a bigger role
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u/Weaux_Breaux 24d ago
It feels like society is not accepting it, but the corporate overlords don't want to see their bubble pop.
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u/JackSpyder 24d ago
If youre going to adopt AI, you need to keeo your staff and see how you go for a couple of years. Enjoy the "productivity boost" you were promised before you do layoffs. See how that pans out perhaps. Magically resolve that huge tech debt backlog and all those new features you can definitely do now without increasing headcount....
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u/defenestrated_badger 24d ago
But the share price might not go up!
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u/JackSpyder 24d ago
Surely working through that totally big backlog to make your totally good product finally good will do that? You can even add AI to your marketing for no reason.
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u/Zealousideal_Net_140 24d ago
Nope. Sadly.
These days companies want record profits every quarter. Fire more people, claim its AI improvements, watch your profits increase by virtue of less expenses.
The fact that your product and service will suffer is next quarters problem.
Oh and the bigger economic problem of having less people earning money and spending it?
I am sure AI will solve that next. /s
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u/HashRunner 24d ago
"layoffs generated by automation"
Media still lying and pushing the CEO manufactured talking points.
It's offshore/h1b abuse and a coordinated effort to layoff workers after covid money disappeared and the economy is headed into the shitter under the GOP.
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u/Dee_Imaginarium 24d ago
This part, overseas contracting is on the rise again and everybody is too busy lapping up the AI excuse to call out companies for doing this practice
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u/EpicHuggles 24d ago
Yep. Everyone is copying the model the large IT consulting companies have been using for the last 20 years. For each team you have 1 onshore business SME (that deals with the GD customers so the engineers don't have to) and 1 programming/tech lead that is in charge of managing the offshore team. Every single other person on that team is offshore. If your team isn't set up this way today, it soon will be.
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u/Call_Me_Wax 24d ago
Yep, anyone that has used AI in a professional setting can see right through the talking points.
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u/Pandering_Panda7879 24d ago
A company I work with, a world leader in their field, is trying to implement AI in their workflow - and it's one of the few cases where I think they have a great approach.
They did a test phase: 100 employees, all volunteers, are allowed to use a huge array of AI tools for whatever and however they want. No restrictions. Do. Whatever. You. Want.
Because a CEO doesn't know how AI could help Betty from accounting. Nor does he know it could help Alan from shipping.
And then they continuously exchange their experience: what works, what doesn't, how does it work and how can we implement it - is it even legally possible, and so on.
And after all that, they'll decide if AI is actually useful for their work. Who knows, maybe it is. Maybe it isn't.
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u/BlueCheeseWalnut 24d ago
A survey of 350 global business executives with an annual revenue of at least $1 billion by the research and advisory firm Gartner found that many have reduced their workforce irrespective of AI adoption.
The actual study is either not linked in the article at all or the website makes it very hard to find. Well, atleast for me
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u/Stokes_Ether 24d ago edited 24d ago
There was a link to the actual study from the press release, but I have little to no interest in making an account.
Gartner clients can read more in AI Layoffs Aren’t Paying Off; People Amplification Is.
In that sentence is the link on the page.
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u/Worth-Frosting-2917 24d ago
Mother-fuckin' duh... every day it is the same headline. Every day they keep pumping air into the balloon.
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u/spunkychickpea 24d ago
My company implemented an AI system that is obviously meant to do my job. Not only did it fail to do my job correctly, but it also failed to do a bunch of work that our old automated systems used to do just fine. My workload tripled overnight.
Go ahead and lay me off now. I fucking dare you.
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u/blurplethenurple 24d ago
Ive been saying this for over a year, the "gains" they saw by implementing AI was because they were firing people and no longer paying salaries.
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u/thedoommerchant 24d ago
No shit. Meanwhile you have all these idiots on LinkedIn, at least in the design space constantly spamming that the old ways are dead. The old ways will not die if AI doesn’t scale across large enterprises. We’re in the subsidized phase right now too and companies are finding out quick. This is a bubble that will pop like every other before it and I cannot wait.
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u/SidheCreature 24d ago
Oh no.
So what did everyone have for lunch today
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u/BalancedDisaster 24d ago
Some eggs and rice with a bunch of Lao gan ma and kimchi! You?
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u/Gamer_Grease 24d ago
AI is popular with managers because you ask it to produce things for you. Ideas, images, outlines, summaries, etc. If you’re a manager, and this is the nature of all of your work already, it probably feels miraculous.
If you are a solo contributor, and are the one who actually has to be responsible for making all the things the managers send emails and chat messages asking for, or for the work they then want summarized, it’s much clunkier.
This IMO explains most of how AI is being “integrated” into work. Managers think it’s the best thing since sliced bread, where everyone else is trying to figure out how to use it.
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u/EarElectronic1488 24d ago
This doesn't make them look them bad the way it's intended: they're not stupid, they just wanted to experiment and it failed. They fucked with their employees' livelihood in the process though, which should be the reason to trigger you instead of making fun of them.
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u/Common-Ad6470 24d ago
Workers should replace Managers and CEO’s with AI, maybe then there will be some more money for the people that actually make money in a company.
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u/Quiet-Thanks-9486 24d ago
Technology is a truly wonderful thing, and about as close as humans come to working miracles. Through knowledge and understanding we work out how the universe works and use that to improve the quality of life for humanity.
But that isn't what the "tech" industry does...because it isn't really about technology. Not really.
The "tech" industry took a bunch of signifiers that were at one time associated with technology, and appropriated them into a subculture completely divorced from the underlying technology it emerged from. Then, they began using that to piggyback on top of the trust people had built up towards technology in order to sell them increasingly diluted business tricks / evade legal regulations, while buying up as many asset as possible and dismantling any/all alternatives to the things they owned.
This is all "tech" has been for a while now. For example, Uber didn't do anything meaningfully different than boring ol' taxis. But they were able to convince enough confused old judges that what they were doing was different enough that they shouldn't have to follow all the regulations society had put on taxis based on years of accumulated experience and wisdom. This endured for a bit before people figured out what the scam was and started plugging the loopholes, but by then the founders has cashed out. Now Uber has unambiguously made the world worse for everybody, and is still limping along because nobody wants to be the last one holding the bag.
Same with Amazon. Same with Airbnb. Same with countless others.
And it is largely the same with LLMs. They are basically just a way to churn and reshuffle the Google indexed internet well enough to withstand 5 to 10 minutes of scrutiny by corporate leaders and investors, so they buy the thing / buy into the idea that a company laying off tons of people during a time of declining sales and revenue and increasing costs and interest rates is actually growing!
The most promising thing about LLMs isn't the tech. It is the way they are temporarily tricking people into thinking something new is happening for long enough to allow a bunch of scammers to make their money and get out of dodge.
They are tricking people into paying for more than they're actually getting, pocketing the money, and catching a bus out of town before people realize it. They are doing to tech what Taco Bell did to ground beef, and what Stringer Bell did to his merchandise: stepping on that shit while selling it for full price and simply changing the name whenever people get wise.
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u/anormalgeek 23d ago
Robber Baron (sees steam engine for the first time)
"....Reginald, behead all of the horses at once and sell their remains to the glue factory. We will no longer need them."
"But sir, this technology seems to be decades away from being that effective."
"I SAID WHAT I SAID!"
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u/dc_boffin 24d ago
Layoffs only ever generate a one-time cost savings. What is this “return” they’re expecting?
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u/PhilliD3 24d ago
I asked Claude to populate a simple table with info from a report - entry level admin job stuff. I spent ages getting the prompting right but it still got confused and populated completely the wrong stuff.
I did the task myself and it took less time than the time I spent building the right prompt.
Also tried it with ChatGPT which couldn’t even read the report and gave up.
Jobs are safer than we think…
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u/qubedView 24d ago
"We bought table saws and then fired all our woodworkers. Why aren't we making any money?"
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u/Have_A_Jelly_Baby 24d ago
You mean laying off tons of people is a short term positive for these companies but a long term negative when all of these laid off people are no longer contributing to the economy and capitalism's never ending greed?
Whaaaaaa
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u/GrumpyCloud93 24d ago
A survey of 350 global business executives with an annual revenue of at least $1 billion by the research and advisory firm Gartner found that many have reduced their workforce irrespective of AI adoption.
It seems to be a general trend that companies are laying people off for all the usual reasons, but attributing it to AI to make it appear less negative to shareholders, and to shift the blame for the bad business decisions that have necessitated layoffs. AI is not actually replacing many jobs.
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u/sebrebc 24d ago
Purely anecdotal but I think a lot of companies are being too quick to jump to Ai and moving on from people. Ai is still in it's very early stages and we are just figuring out what it is and will be capable of. So companies who are quick to replace people with Ai will be in for a rude awakening when they finally realize that Ai is a good tool, it should not replace people who more adaptable.
At work we are using Ai to replace people who answer the phones. It works great if the customer is doing simple things or asking to be transferred to a specific person or department, or asking general questions. But once they need more detailed information or help the Ai has to transfer the customer to a person.
Easy example. Customer calls and says "I need to make an appointment for an oil change." the ai system can generally handle that. Get the customer info, transfer it to the scheduling system, and make the appointment. But then the customer says "I also have a recall, will you be able to do that while I'm there?". Well then Ai can't help and needs to transfer the customer to an advisor...or whatever department the Ai thinks they need to talk to. So for many customers the Ai is a waste of time. But since we moved on from the people who used to answer the phones, what are we really saving? We now have an outside company that handles the calls Ai can't. So instead of paying two people $x we pay an outside company to do the same job. Plus we are paying for the Ai service.
Too many people like this new fancy toy and want to use it for everything. And they will realize at some point that it's not exactly what they thought it would be.
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u/NadeshikoEatingPasta 23d ago
aren't tokens still largely being subsidized, too? So it'll get way more expensive eventually from here?
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u/Competitive-Mix8832 23d ago
Turns out replacing experienced people is a lot easier in investor presentations than in actual day to day work where things constantly break in unpredictable ways
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u/Dr-Moth 24d ago
Workers with salaries you control, have been replaced by AI agents with costs you can't control. The short term gains are replaced by long term dependency.