Spyke

Instead of looking for other avenues for growth, though, PwC found that executives are worried about falling behind by not leaning into AI enough.

These are the people in charge of the economy.

283
Akasazhreply
lemmy.world

You never lived through the dotcom bubble.

Or tulip mania

16

I definitely lived through the dot com bubble. My memory of that was people registering domain names liked beer(dot)com and selling it for millions of dollars

7

There’s a few other classic commodity trades in there. Orange juice rings a bell. The SPX box trade guy is really interesting. All sorts of incredible history on there

3
AA5Breply
lemmy.world

I do like to think I could have made money on that one and will always regret avoiding it. It was clearly always a bubble with nothing behind it (less than the current ai bubble), but at the same time was a huge long shot.

Like any bubble, you can make money if you’re in early enough but it’s absolutely critical to get out in time before everything comes crashing down. I try to avoid speculation bubbles because I’m not good at getting out in time. But for the bitcoin craze, I think it was much clearer than other bubbles. There was a clear transition where all the faithful were gone and it was pure speculation finance bros. Clearly it had jumped the shark but there was still opportunity to get out of the water

4

If it makes you feel any better, I was an early adopter, mined 36 bitcoins, got bored, heard years later that bitcoin was "a thing" now and never found my wallet.

4

Ha ha, so close to becoming ruling class ……. Looking at my cupboard of old computers where I want to look for old photos and stuff …. Yeah I’d lose my wallet too

1
lemmy.world

It’s a faith based economy, and when a large amount of participants will believe 2+2=5 there’s no limit to the fuckery you can do!

3

There is an incredible amount of incompetance in executive class America. The shit floats to the top, and after decades of ass kissing they get appointed CEO. It's just one get rich quick scheme after another. 2008 everyone invested in the Hah-vud algorithm for free money in debt derivatives without anyone validating the algorithm, and 17 years later, same shit with A1.

These clowns are all hot boxing their own farts on Linkedin.

2
ch00freply
lemmy.world

"Falling behind" is such a bullshit phrase.

59
ch00freply
lemmy.world

Specifically this context. Like "falling behind in school," I get. There are grades. Some people do better while some fall behind. It's a scaler value with a good end and a bad end.

But the AI bros are co-opting the phrase and presupposing that ALL OF TECHNOLOGY is on a linear scale where the good end is more AI shit and the bad end is less AI shit. They're using a scaler when they should be using a vector.

I've mentioned it before on here, but my cousin is taking an AI class in college. He tried to convince my business-owner uncle to let him create an agent for his company's website so he won't "fall behind."

My uncle owns a gas station.

34

Haha, alright — I totally understand what you mean. Yet another phrase co-opted by those that would rather spend their time seeming intelligent rather than being intelligent.

5
jj4211reply
lemmy.world

While it's felt so keenly now, it has always been a part of tech. Some amazing stuff comes out, and thus everything most be amazing and you can't afford to miss out.

In practice, if the tech is truly that great, then you can catch up real quick after waiting to understand if it is great. But everyone FOMOs constantly.

2

I think it's different this time around. Tech pundits might write "If Apple doesn't have a VR/AR product in the next six months, they're falling behind," but this is the first time in my memory that it's been tech companies staring down consumers and small businesses and saying "If you don't adapt to this technology, you will lose your job."

5

I think that definition of "falling behind" is exactly the FOMO that the tech giants want to sell to all the other companies.

I think the FOMO of the tech CEOs is the same as it ever was. Money. In this case it's "What if the magic thing that makes AI dominate the economy happens and I am not leading the pack at just that moment? I might not become one of the first trillionaires! 😭"

1

Send that cousin to trade school so he can telll your uncle to install EV chargers so he won’t fall behind.

1
lemmy.ca

It's the "sunk cost fallacy". They've already invested so much, that turning back now means a total loss...when success "might be" just around the corner, if they only invest a little more. In for a penny, in for a pound.

50

The mentality of the gambler. There's a lot of people out there who have this addiction and just aren't fortunate enough to have lucked into becoming a CEO. That's how you know it's a lottery, and being born into riches is a shortcut.

23
jj4211reply
lemmy.world

Not just sunk cost, they see all this apparent press, writers, business leaders saying they have fantastic results, so obviously they most be doing something wrong.

I have seen it over and over again in tech. People are told that everyone else in the world is doing great with some tech and everyone is so afraid they are "not getting" something they won't say anything or else they will pretend they also "get it" and it is awesome.

Not even things that have marketing spend behind it, some programming paradigm or whatever. Marketing spend makes it worse, but all by ourselves everyone seems to be afraid to somehow be seen as a clueless Luddite at any second.

It's really weird when you attend some talk where the guy talks up sonething or another and then in more casual private conversation basically admits straight up that he actually doesn't see the benefit, but feels like he has to dance the dance.

22

It's crazy how being a "leader" in tech just means latching on to the whatever the latest trend is while kissing maximum ass.

Almost none of these tech companies have their own vision anymore, they just mindlessly copy whatever FAANG or the current trendy startup does.

Just dealt with this forward deployed engineer bullshit created by Palantir. My company spent six months "exploring" this concept that makes absolutely no sense for us because we already have an established product with thousands of customers... And it took them that long to figure this out. But hey Palantir did it and they're the trendy guys right now, so we should try it too so we can also be cool.

Not related to AI but we're in fully brainwashed mode on that too.

4
Rhaedasreply
fedia.io

A common phrase of mine is, "the truth is, there is no bus driver at the wheel".

16

I thought it was Sandra Bullock and Keanu Reeves driving this thing!

4
Ruxiasreply
lemmy.world

Truly the only group of people worthy of marching us into the sea.

4
lemmy.world

Rich people: Debunking the idea that the rich are the smartest since about 10,000 BCE.

179
pilferjinxreply
piefed.social

And a granny state to bail them out if they lose all their money at the casino.

23

This metaphor made me laugh and cry at the same time. Granny state indeed. I remember seeing those old folks in Vegas and being horrified about that future. My fear created an entire economy out of that old person at the slot machine stereotype.

3
leminal.space

Tech CEOs are a cancer on society and the planet. Ruining everything just to make fake numbers go higher.

99
Rozaŭtunoreply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

Tech CEOs are a cancer on society and the planet. Ruining everything just to make fake numbers go higher.

22
lemmy.world

The alternative is running everything by committee, which isn't always practical.

1
mercreply
sh.itjust.works

You can have a single person in charge without them having the title "CEO".

Making your title CEO is also basically accepting a lot of the cultural baggage that comes with the term.

1
lemmy.world

That's all it is, semantics and connotation. The person in charge of the whole thing is by definition CEO unless it's a board.

1

It's sad how few of you have taken the time to research or attempt to start a business. Of any sort.

People aren't evil for selling a service and registering it as a corporation which often requires a CFO and a CEO/President, even if the business has only a couple people. A lot of these businesses struggle financially just as much as any welfare recipient.

Do you think the only people who aren't evil are the non-industrious? It comes across as pathetic parasitic envy.

-3
Yana_reply
lemmy.ml

I hope we find a way to cure it

5
lemmy.world

Luigi found a pretty good solution.

But, all jokes aside, the best solution is to start taxing these fuckers as hard as possible.

13
Yana_reply
lemmy.ml

What we really need is to speedrun evolution, and reach the next step sooner, where greed is no longer a factor and things are more globalistic, etc. You know, something sensible. Otherwise, it's just a cycle that repeats, even with people like Luigi appearing every now and then, and society cheering them on. The next cycle is behind the corner, at any time. We have to break the cycle with radical changes to human behavior and motivations in general.

1

You don't have to take things so literally. Let's say it so that everyone is happy: evolution is on a spectrum

That wasn't the point of my comment at all.

1
lemmy.world

When we have the potential to reach post-scarcity, scarcity will become artificial solely for the purpose of wielding influence or expressing power.

3

Not really. There are many resources on the planet that are finite. Silicon and Helium for example.

1

Evolutionary changes take millennia to happen. Even if you speed run things it will still be centuries before there's a change. You could try to manually curate genetic changes, but we've tried that, it was called Eugenics and led to Nazis.

What we really need to do is accept that humans are still animals, and have all kinds of flaws due to our animal natures. We need to come up with ways of accepting and working with our animal natures. Males are inevitably going to try to do things to attract female attention so that they can "mate". So, maybe try to make it so that the things that work are taking care of needy people, rather than driving a big pickup truck or shooting a gun. Or, in the case of CEOs, accumulating absurd amounts of money.

3
lemmy.ca

I'm starting to think that most "business" leaders have the skills of a Trump. It's all puffery.

62
Johnreply
lemmy.ml

Have you ever talked to a CEO? Like, sit down and talk face to face? Their are dumb as rocks. They are dumb as rocks and make all the money, and just move around from company to company, running them into the ground.

54
melsaskcareply
lemmy.ca

Yes. Yes I have. And I agree with you. The "starting to think" is an old Norm McDonald trope.

20

Yes. My last 3 were excellent businessmen and treated employees exceptionally well.

The one before that was a buffoon, but that was a tiny 13-person company. Our main vendor said, "He's a man who has found great success despite himself."

5
Soggyreply
lemmy.world
  • some exceptions for CEOs that actually founded the company they remain in charge of, but they're in the minority for sure. There's probably variance by sector as well.
4
Johnreply
lemmy.ml

All CEOs need to be [redacted]

4
Soggyreply
lemmy.world

Maybe I'm just too close to the non-profit side of things to see it as a simple binary.

2

"Non-profit" is a tax classification, not a description of their business motives. I'm not saying that all non-profits are bad. They definitely help people. But many are absolutely profit-driven, with their CEOs making a shitload of money. CEOs, by and large, profit off the exploited labor of their employees.

1

They don't get anything done they just ask other people to do stuff. Their job is to nag you and stress you out until you do stuff

12

During americas “great” years a lot of the research and development was guided by long term USA policy. We are no longer guided by any sense of what’s to come. It’s a greedy grab all free-for-all. No rules no restrictions, just have fun and make lots of money.

16
lemmy.world

If trump can graduate with a IVY league degree, that says a lot about the (trogolydite) IVY league grads.

11
lemmy.world

We said the same thing about bush! Clearly they lost their luster damn near a century ago.

8
Taniwha420reply
lemmy.world

Ivy League schools were never about education. They've always about making connections with other elites.

15

and suckering in the actual talent/smart kids, to be exploited by those elites with connections

8

Ivy league degrees are only impressive if you're poor. Any idiot multimillionaire or above can buy one for themselves.

5
lemmy.world

Those who advocate for AI the most are the ones who understand it the least.

CEOs aren't in the positions they hold because they're qualified to lead corporations. They're there solely to figure out the best way to exploit workers legally, and illegally without getting caught. Replacing the workforce with LLMs is all they care about. Makes that job a million times easier, even if it isn't working.

56

An anecdote in agreement:

The CEO of my company left in September 2025. For years leading up to that, there were 3-4 layoffs/riffs (edit: yearly) of approx. 5% reductions (edit: per reduction). Never hired more US employees except for VP and C-level until we became very top-heavy. What jobs they do replace are primarily India and some in Argentina, many are contractors. They "cook the books" by avoiding taxes and "creatively" avoiding reporting gains/losses due to having a large amount of contractors. 2025 ended up losing a ton of customers due to churn (i.e. leaving or not renewing contracts). Most of our customera are US or North America-based and the contractor teams have such high turnover that customers are sick of us not supporting them well anymore.

Know where that former CEO is now? An AI startup.

39

Well a CEO sees something that just generates a wall of text without soul and a tenuous connection to facts, but overwhelmingly confident? As good as the typical CEO then so must be good at everything.

10

Hang on tho they also have the job of figuring out how to trash the environent without getting caught

2

And that's why the (imo) wrong title of AI is so bad. They don't care and think it IS intelligence and kinks (which are objective attributes of llm) can be worked out.

1

Majority of CEOs tried to use Ai on the wrong level of their company: at the bottom.

53

The next big thing is NI: natural intelligence! Replace you hallucinating AI with a person that can solve problems without hallucinating (usually)!

52
leminal.space

Ah man I can’t wait for the advertising to pick up on this.

“Has AI crapped the bed again? Here at “local store” we have genuine authentic humans to interact with”

22
TrooBlooreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

A car dealership here has started running podcast ads to that effect. Kinda rides the line between "we're your local car dealer" and "we're actually people".

8

Where I’m at there’s a bank running adds along the lines of:

Other banks: (nerdy boring voice) “we could start an investment plan into thiscoin or thatcoin,… (list of puns on bitcoins)”

Our bank: (normal voice)“So how’s it been? What can I do for you today?”

Love it

6
lemmy.dbzer0.com

How could they have possibly thought AI would make them money? Lmfao. It sucks power and water just to give wrong answers or generate "art" with terrible attention to detail...

49
MBechreply
feddit.dk

It's because they have no idea what "AI" actually is. They think you tell it to make profits, and it just does so. Anyone who has used any kind of "AI" for an hour knows that it's mostly just shit at everything except the absolutely most basic shit.

24
lemmy.today

They have no respect for the work of their employees, so they thought that they could be easily replaced by a computer program. They were so excited by the prospect of handing over ALL of our jobs to AI, that they far overextended themselves.

Now they are going to crash and burn because they bet AGAINST every worker in America, and LOST.

I hope it hurts them really, really badly. We should respond to their financial pain by laughing at them, and taking away their fortunes and their companies, since they have demonstrated so clearly that they can't be trusted to handle the American economy responsibly.

8
lemmy.world

Some applications of AI are pretty neat. For example the DeepL translation tool. I convinced my employer to spend money on that. And they make 55 million in profits.

But forcing AI down our throats, like Google does with those horrible auto-dubbed videos? There's no way that will ever be profitable

13
Fridgeratrreply
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Yeah there are definitely some cool uses, it seems like analysis/processing uses are pretty good, but generative ones are not.

9
InputZeroreply
lemmy.world

The AI models that are used for molecular research are literally remaking our understanding of biology and medicine. I don't know why the big AI corporations don't point to that as an example of the benefits of AI. I guess cause that doesn't help them to exclude the proletariat from their profits.

7
lemmy.today

probably it has problems of its own, and it will likely require a scientist to fact checks any thing the AI makes, it also depends if a journal is finicky enough to accept a paper that the experiments are done by AI. pretty niche, i doubt its using the commercial ones like OPENAI/ GOOGLES,,or other. its probably made for that specific purpose of that research field. a small subset of users, so unlikely to generate profit that way because thats asmall group of "customers using a niche AI, and likely its proprietary to the UNiversity that made it anyways.

3

It definitely has its own problems, and the results are thoroughly investigated by the researchers. But yeah it's very niche, however most models are freely shared between teams. I mean it has to be to get through peer review.

1
ZDLreply
lazysoci.al

DeepL isn't what is being touted as "AI" this week, though. DeepL is based on older translation technology (by which I mean "far more reliable").

This is a shell game. Every time there's a wave of "AI" it's some new tech that shills sell as the answer to "real" computer intelligence. (It can never possibly be this, of course, because we can't even define intelligence properly, not to mention making an artificial version of it.) There's certain levels of hype. There's a bubble (usually far smaller than this one, of course). Then the bubble pops and we enter the next AI Winter.

The small use cases for which the new technology is actually useful, however, loses the AI monicker and is just called "software". Like what used to be AI for doing dynamic adjustment on pictures for night shots, HDR, etc. is no longer shilled as AI. It's just ... software that my phone has built in.

So currently "AI" means "LLM" outside of some very specific academic environments. DeepL is just software that (mostly kinda/sorta) works.

4

Huh. That's new. When I first tried DeepL it was not LLM. That's an intriguing development.

I will update my mental database accordingly.

2

It's seeing a vision of the future and the technology that will transform it but not having the patience to let it happen and wanting to jump right to printing money. I think the fact that it happened to the internet should show that even incredibly useful tech can go through this process. It happened with video games, too. They see the potential but their eyes are only on the money, so they don't have the ability to meet that potential.

And in the case of the metaverse, they killed it off entirely by wanting to build a virtual storefront and advertising space before building a virtual space people would want to visit. Facebook thought the idea would sell itself just based on pop culture, despite none of the pop culture versions involving just a headset and trackers to enter a world you can only see and hear, but not touch (even though it might inconsistently react to your touch). The tech wasn't there but FB had FOMO and wasted billions chasing it anyways.

Exact same thing is happening with AI. LLMs improved by leaps and bounds, and once it was conversational, people with money went all in on the idea of what it could become (and probably still will, just not anytime soon and it won't be chatbots, actually I suspect we might end up using LLMs to communicate/translate with the real AIs, though they'll likely be integrated into them because that communication is so useful).

They don't understand that it takes more than just having a good idea or seeing tech before it explodes, you have to have passion for that tech, a passion that will fight against the urge to release it to make money, not a passion to release it regardless to make money sooner and the intent to fix it up later.

It's why they are trying to shove it into everything despite no one wanting it, because they think the exposure will drive demand, when it's actually exposure to something desirable that drives real demand. And exposure is instead frustrating or dangerous because it's often wrong and full of corporate censorship (that hasn't once been accurate but has always been easy to bypass any time I've run into it).

I just wonder if MS bet the farm on it, or only bet a survivable loss. Like is the CEO just worried about his job or the entire company's future?

5

It's simple. They thought they would fire everyone and replace them with chatbots. All the admins? Chatbots. All the bookkeepers? Chatbots. Purchasing? Chatbots. Assembly lines? Robots running chatbot software.

It never occurred to them that training on large datasets does not make for good decision-making. It just makes the chatbot more wordy.

1
canofcamreply
lemmy.world

I do think it's disingenuous to downplay how effective AI can be. If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested.

And the art, whilst not as good or as ethical as human art, can still be high quality.

Being against AI is completely valid, but disparaging it with falsehoods does nothing but give the feeling that you don't know what you're talking about.

1
lemmy.ml

If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested.

I think that speaks to how bad search engines have gotten, not really to how good AI is. Google used to work. I promise! It used to not just be ads and SEO garbage, if you knew your special search operation functions you could find exactly what you were looking for every time. It's only because they enshitified the platform that AI search even makes sense to use.

They'll enshitify AI search soon enough and we'll be right back where we started.

5
canofcamreply
lemmy.world

Sure, but what I am talking about outperforms any search engine in history. If you have a specific question you will get a specific answer with AI, and usually it will be correct. If you use a search engine you can come to the same answer but it will definitely take you longer.

I'm not defending the use of AI, I'm just saying, the quality of them is not the issue. They are becoming extremely high quality with their answers and usefulness. The problem is with the ethics and energy usage.

-2
lemmy.ml

It used to be that the first couple results would answer the specific question, as long as you knew how to format the question in the correct search terms and with the correct special operations. What might take longer is refining the search to get extremely specific results, but that was usually only necessary if you're writing a paper or something.

But you shouldn't just trust whatever the AI says when you're writing a paper anyway, so that's not really different.

AI does allow you to skip all that and just ask a plain language question, but search didn't used to take so long if you knew how to use it. It worked.

3
canofcamreply
lemmy.world

Yes it worked, and still required you to dig through the answers to find the answer yourself. That is the difference. AI will search for you and collate the results to give you the definitive answer. I'm not saying searching didn't work, or doesn't even work today, I'm just saying AI is more efficient and effective and pretending it isn't is simply wrong and / or lying.

You shouldn't just trust whatever the AI says

And you also shouldn't just trust random things you read on the internet, so I'm not sure exactly what point you are making here. I've never advocated for that. I also am not sure why you keep explaining to me how good search engines used to be, seems like a strange aside considering you don't know how long I've been on the internet for.

0
lemmy.ml

I can't tell if you've forgotten how good search was, are too young to know better, or were never good at using search.

I'm telling you that you didn't have to "dig through the answers" if you formatted the search well. It worked. You obviously couldn't trust everything you read on the internet, but the tricky part was formatting. No digging was required once you were good enough at key words, syntax, and search functions ("" , + - site:). Search results were incredibly efficient and effective. It was amazing.

AI is now maybe as efficient and effective as search results used to be. That's it. They ruined search and gave us AI.

And they'll ruin AI too, just you watch.

1

You had to "dig through answers" as in, you got your answer, in the form of a website that you then had to click into and scan for the answer.

AI is far more efficient. I can't tell if you are delusional or just willfully ignorant. Ask a question and in two seconds you have a succinct answer with all of the information that using a search tool (now, and in the past) would provide you.

I also don't disagree that they will 'ruin AI', I'm not defending it or the creators of it in the slightest. I am simply saying it can be an extremely effective tool and it is without a shadow of a doubt better than using a search engine to get the answer to a question.

1

If you ask certain AI a question, it will give you a faster and better answer than using a search engine would, and will provide sources for further reading if requested

Gemini will give you the wrong answers and the wrong references.

LLM is just a fancy Google search, because it can go into databases and XML files but asking it to connect the dots with a conclusion and decision is very dangerous.

1
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Majority of CEOs discover they are completely incompetent frauds to the point of literally deserving the death sentence

There, fixed the headline.

46

Majority of CEOs discover something plebs like you and I knew all along the whole time.

17
sureshot0reply
discuss.online

dbzer0 instance is always so brave, or maybe you just don't feel fear.

-8

Oh I feel fear.

I can just do systemic analysis and cost benefit analysis.

And I can face the facts that I see, the fear that I feel, and be brave enough to say what I really think about it.

Bravery is not a lack of fear, it is being scared as hell and doing the thing anyway.

These people, in the current system, are essentially untouchable.

And if left unchecked, they will kill millions, and then billions of people through their individual and collective compounding incompetence and greed.

The needs of the many outweigh the needs of the few.

7

Just stand by lowly worker and they'll let you know what your next opinion should be.

7
lemmy.zip

Instead of looking for other avenues for growth, though, PwC found that executives are worried about falling behind by not leaning into AI enough.

“A small group of companies are already turning AI into measurable financial returns, whilst many others are still struggling to move beyond pilots,” said PwC global chairman Mohamed Kande in a statement. “That gap is starting to show up in confidence and competitiveness, and it will widen quickly for those that don’t act.”

PwC also pointed out that most companies were lacking the “AI foundations, such as clearly defined road maps and sufficient levels of investment” to realize a return.

And I imagine the only reason I'm drowning is that I didn't bring enough gallons of their energy drink into the sea with me. Wow.

34
mander.xyz

A small group of companies are already turning AI into measurable financial returns

Who, other than companies selling AI to other companies?

7

Who, other than companies selling AI to other companies?

I'm sure that's what they're talking about.

I haven't seen any company selling end users AI at any price that looks like it could actually turn a profit.

It feels so very bubble.

3
MoreMagicreply
feddit.nu

You can’t usually replace people with AI per se, but there is a lot of routine work you can do more efficiently with the help of AI. And that in the end reduces needed staff.

1

A surprising percentage of that routine work that can be machine assisted is already automated. Even an agentic AI LLM doesn't do anything a clever bash script couldn't. (And bash does it without hallucinations.)

So the opportunity is that a we can automate things that were not worth automating, before.

But the challenge is that anything with crazy good returns on efficiency is likely to already have been automated better.

So we have a really expensive tool hunting for huge efficiency gains among the scraps leftover from earlier better automation solutions.

6
lemmy.ca

And watch them get crazy bonuses anyways and suffer no consequences.

32
discuss.online

I support abolishing the death penalty except for two cases.

1: war criminals (think what Israel is doing and their disgusting behavior) and anyone committing crimes under the auspices of the state expecting that protection to allow them to escape. 2: high ranking political and economic figures who fuck things up on purpose for profit.

Even mass shooters and serial killers do far less damage to society than a single one of those fucks.

10

Someone still needs to be the executioner. Nobody should have to carry that burden.

Put them to work. And I mean basic hand labour.

Plowing fields, harvesting crops, buildings houses, paving roads, etc.

3
Goldholzreply
lemmy.blahaj.zone

The AI tech comps are having too huge losses to be bailed out into a stable position

2

Well then get ready for nationalization of the AI companies with whom the military and intelligence agencies have contracts and have failed too big to bail.

1
lemmy.world

They will blame workers for not figuring out how to extract the value that all their bank accounts demand is there.

32
jj4211reply
lemmy.world

We've gotten that at work, they are trying to figure out how to fix the metrics to figure out who may not be using AI enough. They bought all the AI stuff for everyone and their metrics even say most people are using it, but it's not seeming any better.

So obviously they need to catch people that are doing only token LLM usage and get them to use it more....

3

Is this real? What industry? I need to know to make sure I never go do business there

6

Yea I'm also hoping more people include what industry they are in with the adopting AI. Who is doing this stuff?

2

And here is the umpteenth reason to think that C-suites run only on nepotism and empty promises: they're filled with people who are actively bad at their jobs. But while the rest of us gain skills and hone them to try and make a handful of extra peanuts, the guys in the corner offices get handed jobs by family members or friends, simply because it is their destiny to have it.

And thus they never have to be good at it, and any competition for it is artificial, and you end up with people holding the reins of entire companies who have literally no idea the consequences of their decisions or the impact of their policies.

AI has never delivered a return -- at all -- and most of these people probably cannot even define how it works or what benefit it is meant to bring, outside of "replace people with machine, bring more $$$, why use more people when less people do trick?".

28
lemmy.world

Why so we the tax payers can bail out the fuckers again 😭 this isn’t a bubble it’s just financial engineering that’s increased the rate of wealth transfer and power accumulation.

Edit: that is to say… it looks like a bubble, but it’s actually just the financial system working as intended. It just seems odd because of the immense wealth concentration and how all that wealth is piling in.

4

Lemme rephrase then: please let this be the end of the AI craze.

I don't want AI in every goddamn product. I hate how hardware prices have skyrocketed. And I hate how these assholes flood request every vulnerable webpage they can find.

Financially speaking they can become either rich or broke for all I care. I just want the old internet back.

5
IronBirdreply
lemmy.world

crashes are the only time plebs (who know how the casino works) actually have a shot at true financial freedom

i have made more the last 3 months than i'v made the last 3 years working, and i haven't even done anything risky like short stuff

wages are capped, hence why capitalists call it the labor trap. nobody has ever gotten rich working overtime, all that gets you is an early grave

0
pawb.social

Most plebs can't afford to make smart bets, even sure wins, because they have no money to invest with. Maybe a couple hundred here or there but there is no real way for normal people to strike it big from an economic crash.

The establishment absolutely can and does profit from the crashes, though, and they pass any losses along to us.

We need a revolution.

2
IronBirdreply
lemmy.world

nah, you don't get it. when you actually know how it works, you start doing challenges like "how much $ can i turn this 50$ account into in X time period". anyone with decent trading experience should be able to turn 50$ into 5000$ easy.

it's a bull market, impossible not to print $ unless you have a major gap in knowledge on how it all works

obviously we need a revolution, but until such time as that happens...all these rich cunts ratfucking public $ throw it into the stock market cause they have nowhere else to spend it, so...you want their $...learn how the markets work and grab a chunk for yourself.

Reminiscences of a Stock Operator is solid primer, century old book that's essentially a tongue-in-cheek wolf of wallstreet/guidebook to just how rigged everything is. the game being rigged it what makes it so easy to make $...it's not a game of chance. means you just need to learn how it's rigged, to position yourself to scalp $.

-5
Soggyreply
lemmy.world

Every single time I see someone talk like this it is entirely without examples or explanation. Just "if you really understand the market like I, a genius, do..."

4

because you can't tell someone the truth, only show them the way.

you need to have 100% confidence in what your doing, and the only way you have that when gambling with actual $ (especially $ you might need, for those not born with silver spoon) is when you figure it out yourself.

"investing" on someone elses tips without understanding the underlying mechanics is how how you end up losing everything/bagholding for some wolf masquerading as a shepherd

-1
pawb.social

I'm sorry, but I don't think everyone can turn a 1000% return "easy" without insider knowledge. Wall street brokers who are paid high six figures regularly underperform index trackers.

It's always possible to get lucky or to make profits from predicting the markets and seeing where stocks are overvalued and undervalued, but if you are both cash poor and time poor as 90% of the working class are, it's really not an opportunity available to you

1
IronBirdreply
lemmy.world

very basic math and a rudimentary understanding of the markets should prove undeniably to anyone that beating 10-20% in a year is easy as hell. just 1 10% gain a month (truly easy to do) would be roughly 250%...

1000% in couple months is just your training wheels coming off. cash/time poor i understand, that's where i started too...started trading during breaks/down time. those "active funds underperform the market" soundbites your familiar with only applies to large cap fund managers and shit mate, those funds aren't designed to beat the market...they're designed to minimize risk and fluctuations in value for shitloads of $, while still increasing relative to inflation

most brokers don't get paid to actively manage shit anyway, they're getting paid to essentially oversee a block of accounts/deal with clients/facilitate special orders etc. but i can guarantee you one that is being paid to actively manage wouldn't have a job very long if they couldn't beat a sp500 etf...

-1

I am hugely skeptical of this - it'd be super easy to forge a +69420% screenshot or even to use a stock trading simulator to fake a more real looking portfolio, but I'll put that aside and assume good faith - how long have you been investing for?

1

Bro how do you figure? You know who does well after crashes? JP MORGAN. Not you lmao. Delusional. The SP500 has doubled since 2022 it’s tripled since 2019.

Now the rich people saw their wealth grow by a huge factor during this time. How did you do? Did you double your accounts? Was that worth more than a million dollars? If not wtf are you talking about?

1
lemmy.dbzer0.com

Who'd have thought that a million monkeys banging on a million typewriters was not the best way to accomplish Hamlet?

24

If you make a billion attempts at hamlet one of them has to be good right? …. Right?

3
lemmy.zip

Sounds good. Then, they'll finally move away from AI and we will all stop having AI being shoved down our throats. I'm sick and tired of all these AI chatbots in places where we don't even need them.

24
lemmy.dbzer0.com

"Instead of looking for other avenues for growth, though, PwC found that executives are worried about falling behind by not leaning into AI enough."

14

Oh no they are shit afraid of what happened to companies that didn't survive the shift into digital that happened around 2000s.

The truth is, many companies didn't try that transition and disappeared or went from their peak to being 2nd class. But also, lots of companies put in large amounts of money the wrong way and the same thing happened. Guess history repeats itself and every ceo is finding out they didn't get where they did because they're smarter than their peers the way they strongly believed before.

6

It's gambling all the way down, thinking they will be the ones that will win big and everyone else fail.

6
Joeffectreply
lemmy.world

I was thinking about this recently... and in the early 2000s for a short time there was this weird chat bot crazy on the internet... everyone was adding them to web pages like MySpace and free hosting sites...

I feel like this has been the resurrection of that but on a whole other level... I don't think it will last it will find its uses but shoving glorified auto suggest down people's throats is not going to end up anywhere helpful...

A LLM has its place in an ai system... but without having reason its not really intelligent. Its like how you would decide what to say next in a sentence but without the logic behind it

6
lemmy.world

The logic is implicit in the statistical model of the relationship between words built by ingesting training materials. Essentially the logic comes from the source material provided by real human beings which is why we even talk about hallucinations because most of what is output is actually correct. If it it was mostly hallucinations nobody would use it for anything.

-1
Joeffectreply
lemmy.world

No you can't use logic based on old information...

If information changes between variables a language model can't understand that, because it doesn't understand.

If your information relies on x being true, when x isn't true the ai will still say its fine because it doesn't understand the context

Just like it doesn't understand things like not to do something.

2

most of the things you want to know is literally all old information some of it thousands of years old and still valid. If you need judgement based on current info you inject current data

0
Aulireply

Well people use it and don't care about hallucinations.

-1
discuss.online

And they never add anything of use. They are like an incredibly sophisticated version of Clippy... and just as useless.

4

Clippy being useless was okay because it was the 2000s. In this time and age though? Meh.

Also, people HATED Clippy. They always hated AI.

1

Majority of people that aren't out of touch with reality are completely unsurprised.

24
lemmy.world

My company is forcing that everybody use AI by having weekly reviews. They expect throughput of 2-4x hahahahaha

21
Leonreply
pawb.social

My company recently had a workshop on how to fit AI into extant workflows. We split into groups, got assigned a workflow (in my case completely unrelated to anyone in my group's actual subject area) and then had to figure out where AI could enhance the workflow.

It went about as well as you'd expect. Someone asked an LLM for input, and the input that came along was about as irrelevant as the rest of our ideas were.

Took two hours in total and we were about 30 people, so say 60 billable hours spent on nothing. That's a 1½ work weeks for a single person. Brilliant use of everyone's time.

11

One of the new engineers tried to get AI to draw him a technical drawing of a part so he could pass it down to the machinists to make.

It took him about 4 times longer just cleaning it up and trying to make it make sense than it took the other new engineers to just draw the parts in inventor.

Then when we got the print we had to go back to him about 4 times to get clarification on the bizarre details that he'd included.

12
titanicxreply
lemmy.zip

But the good news is you all got to fuck around for an hour and a half and get paid for it. Take advantage of those opportunities every moment you can.

5
kiagamreply
lemmy.world

Develop and manage a very big website and all systems for the retail stores. It's nuts.

1
reddig33reply
lemmy.world

And then they will ask us all to bail them out when it still doesn’t work.

10

And they're gonna get bailed out. Most of the people in government use a Windows computer. Azure has special datacenters for running government VMs and apps. If Microsoft fails, then the US government is at risk, and they fucking know it.

1
fedia.io

The hope still holds that this AI bubble will pop before anything truly terrible can come of it, then it can go back to serving the niches its actually helpful for, rather than being used to screw with everyday working people, and we can all live happily ever after.

16
Thorryreply
feddit.org

Machine learning has niches it's useful in (although it has sometimes been the hammer that makes everything look like a nail). Large language models on the other hand? I haven't seen them be useful in anything. Any results they generate are questionable at best and a lot of the time just plain wrong. With all the costs and other downsides, I think we should classify them as a failed technology and stop using them. The only reason anybody uses them today is the huge amount of marketing behind it and the fact the technology is being given away for almost nothing. If the actual cost would be charged, I doubt there would be a lot of interest. We've seen all those AI companies struggling to generate any revenue, their costs are in the billions and their revenue from AI products is in the millions, it doesn't add up.

7
4amreply

The reason big tech is so into LLMs is so they can analyze YOUR data, to make it more appealing to sell to marketers and governments, and to make your rent the privilege from them. Look at every “AI shoved into product unnecessarily”, “app that could run locally being cloud based (especially storage)” and “replaces decision making with our enhanced workflow”; look at every “just one more data center bro please we need to out-bid the entire consumer market, both home and enterprise on-premises” with this in mind. The big picture starts to make sense.

8

Large language models are very good at translations, probably their only potential profitable use.

2

The only thing I have used AI for is making furry porn. And even then I am really bored with it.

15
lemmy.world

I’ve found it semi useful and have been impressed by the increasing utility. I’d pay $2-5 a month for it probably. I like chatting with it and educational topics. business wise it’s good for marketing, redundant writing, discussing ideas and getting quick synopsis on thought projects.

I think if Facebook is a trillion dollar company from monopolizing and selling ads, than the LLMs create a similar value case. They can be used to create cheap botnets for “organic” advertising. Not sure what kind of moat that offers but damned if everyone doesn’t want AI chatbots running 24/7 propaganda campaigns rn.

-4

Yeah, the issue is that the amount you'd be willing to pay for it ($5) is a fraction of a fraction of the cost it takes to provide the service to you. It is a completely non-viable business.

Of course, a lack of viability has never stopped anyone from profiting, our economy is really more of a pyramid scheme when it gets right down to it.

5

I did not realize that lol. I wonder what my actual GPT usage has cost over 3 years. I live in Maine and the median wage is around $20 an hour. So idk nothing is designed for my economy.

1

I also find it moderately useful but there’s no way I’d pay for it. The problem is I rarely find general purpose ai useful, but only in a context. I like it for summarizing meetings, I like its input to code reviews, I like it as another approach to searching large content, I like it for programming language switching. But I’m not going to pay separately for all the places I find it useful

2
Aulireply

Sure but your 2-5 dollars a month is not covering your use of it. Hatfpt was not making money on their $200 plan.

2
lemmy.world

We are a LONG way from AI being cheaper than an underpaid office drone or service worker. Maybe we could convince the AI companies to support unions and drive up wages so AI looks more affordable by comparison. Better working conditions and fewer people wasting their lives on jobs that can be automated.

12
Aulireply

The problem is AI companies are not paying their share. And it gets passed onto us. They don't make money know what about if we make them pay their electricity cost instead of spreading it onto everyone else. Then they would have to charge real prices for customers and let's see how that works out.

2

Well duh. There's not much money to be made. Most of the money here is going to be made by firing employees. Which they will then need to rehire later often at increased salaries to bring talent back into the building where llm has fallen short, which is a lot.

10

Look on the upside folks, at least RAM, GPU, and storage are wildly expensive. That's great for the economy and reduces the instances of people being mind-controlled by violent video games!

/s

10

I'm sure that AI would be willing to sacrifice all those human CEOs jobs that failed at leading this AI revolution forward to AI CEOs who will be able to harder bigger faster stronger as we have been told about all other human endeavor.

9
lemmy.ca

Wait. Wait wait wait. You're telling me there's no way to make money from AI Becky videos of huge women falling through unrealistic floors, or 1000kg humans hang-gliding?

Or of weirdly unphysical cats greeting their owners?

Come on. It's the future bruh

9

You joke but it seems like there are a lot of successful content farms making a lot of money on a lot of viewers across the internet right now. The other thing is countries and companies will use chat bots to astroturf the internet. There's clearly lots of value for AI, it's probably just not right for your business. But the biggest budgets in the world would love to get some subscriptions to mass propaganda broadcasting.

How much is it worth to buy the next election in any country?

1

Maybe those Grok images of naked children are the future.

God I hope the /s is obvious

1

Oh poor thing, here let me play you the world's smallest violin so you can cry me a fucking river.

7

Maybe they are actively trying to make the crash happen while Trump is still in office to bail them out.

7
lemmy.ml

This literally happened few hours ago. I had a biggish json I wanted to convert it to PowerShell format I thought llms will be good for this so I tried and then spent 30 mins trying to debug why it was failing. Turnsout it moved 1 of the position of a nested object and screwed up the format.

1

For scenarios like this I’ve had better luck telling ai to write utility code to do the conversion

2

A couple weeks ago I was working with another developer, and we realized we had to change a string's format slightly. He was like "I'll do it in chatgpt!". I just did it in python. Mine worked. His, we would've had to check carefully.

1

No 😅

But it's awfull how poeple don't trust anymore others poeple when they are real...

We need to take care to.not deshumanise..

 😬

1
lemmy.sdf.org

So in Texas the powerball reached over a billion dollars recently and a single person claimed the jackpot with a single ticket using AI to generate the winning numbers. Besides that I have seen no other real profit in the real world. Gotta figure out how they did it before the bubble pops I guess.

-4

Given that all lottery draws are equally likely, you'd want your own to be numbers that no-one else has chosen, so that if you win you wont have to share it so many ways. Don't choose numbers that are birthdays, for instance. But "generate six numbers completely at random" is such a bad ask for an LLM that I can't even - it's likely to pick ones it's seen before in its training data, which is the worst possible selection.

2