alt Hacker NewsI think we are struggling to achieve payoff within the tech sector.
There have been wins with the customer facing side of the business, but the development team seems to be the biggest problem right now despite the direct & obvious applicability of these tools. I know they aren't a special unicorn edge case because I was very rapidly solving their issues before they stopped handing me things that revealed the lethargy.
Within the sector where these tools definitely work, the biggest barrier to effective adoption is figuring out a way to undermine the various ideological high grounds. I have found the most effective argument to untangle this knot to be something approximating:
Challenge:
"Why should I adopt or help to implement technology that might eventually replace my job?"
Response:
"Because refusing to won't protect your job. It puts everyone's job at risk."
It doesn't matter if you protect your job (not using AI) if the entire company goes to the bottom of the ocean as a consequence. The neat thing about this is that your job is part of the set known as "The Company" and if that ceases to exist, so does your job. Good luck suing a dissolved entity for unemployment or whatever. There is enough competition in most markets to punish anyone who thinks they can win on virtue alone.
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I personally have no problem per se with AI rendering certain tasks or even jobs economically redundant (although I am sceptical about many of the grander claims). What I do find tough to take is that the benefits will accrue to companies who have effectively stolen (and continue to steal) the intellectual output of everyone based on some bullshit fair use ruling for AI training. Hopefully the latter will get walked back and mechanisms and systems will be out in place to more fairly reward human intelligence.
> It doesn't matter if you protect your job (not using AI) if the entire company goes to the bottom of the ocean as a consequence.
The vast majority of entire companies are going to the bottom of the ocean regardless of what individual contributors do.
Once you can replace nearly every job at a company, the company doesn't need to exist. Companies are just collections of experts, if AI replaces all the experts then it replaces the whole company.
So I've adopted the accelerationist mindset of: yes, this is absolutely going to replace my job, but it is going to replace everyone else's job too so fuck it I'll use it and we'll all go down to the bottom of the ocean together.
tl;dr you are economically worthless and should give up
What a grim outlook.
If the options are 1) watch the economy become more k-shaped as my status erodes and I'm made precarious 2) drag down aggregate output but be better off relative to everyone else than in the first scenario, why would I not go with option 2 from a purely self-interested, rational perspective? I jus think this is assuming a level of selflessness most people are not capable of but maybe that's too cynical of me