Post AtjoetLZXaHEmpjfpw by skjeggtroll@mastodon.online
(DIR) More posts by skjeggtroll@mastodon.online
(DIR) Post #Atjj6xwTRxRnQD02qG by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-05-04T02:35:45Z
0 likes, 3 repeats
1. Replace workers with AI. 2. Now instead of wages you pay a company for AI services.3. Despite the likely decline in quality of the work, suppose you become dependent as a company on this service. Suppose you make it work.4. AI is heavily subsidized by venture capital, its priced lower than the cost to provide the service to attract early adopters (and to lock companies like you in.)5. Inevitably the AI bubble bursts, AI services jack up their prices.How is paying rent better than wages?
(DIR) Post #AtjjGjpglO5uYeUBOq by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-05-04T02:37:31Z
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I can understand the urge to cut the cost of wages. Wages are the greatest expense for most companies. But, they have to know it's not gonna "get cheaper" it will get more expensive. Maybe they plan to retool their production process two times over? Seems inefficient.
(DIR) Post #AtjjKC0OTToQnp8knQ by hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange
2025-05-04T02:38:06Z
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@futurebird No benefits, no unions, no back talk. Rent is way cheaper than fully-loaded salaries.
(DIR) Post #AtjjLwTBCt0hCNRGeu by nazokiyoubinbou@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T02:38:24Z
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@futurebird Darned good points. (Except LLMs are not AI and it's not ok to let them keep calling them such.)A company that has workers who are trained and experienced in working with its needs has greater independence. By relying on another company to do everything for them, they actually not only lose that independence, but they risk that the other company now has the means to simply replace them...Actually, I believe I have heard examples of this happening in the past (albeit not LLMs.)
(DIR) Post #AtjjNjZO8gvllmCIFM by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-05-04T02:38:43Z
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People keep saying this is like buying machines to replace factory line workers, but it's not. It's renting machines to replace workers. And renting them from people who are on the verge of becoming desperate since they aren't making a profit.
(DIR) Post #AtjjPGPlVagFvRQRw8 by Chip_Unicorn@im-in.space
2025-05-04T02:38:59Z
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@futurebirdI have never met a C-suite executive who could think more than a quarter ahead.You're assuming that those executives will be around for more than a quarter, and won't have cashed out and are sipping margaritas by their Olympic-sized pool.
(DIR) Post #AtjjTcVRJZeHbE9nGa by hal_pomeranz@infosec.exchange
2025-05-04T02:39:49Z
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@futurebird Maybe they don’t care about long term. Maybe they just want to boost their short term numbers, cash out, and leave somebody else holding the bag.
(DIR) Post #AtjjYcKVOj6CV5QRGK by troublewithwords@wandering.shop
2025-05-04T02:40:39Z
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@futurebird And these are all companies who are fighting unions because they don't want anyone to have any kind of power over them. Just wait until their Do Stuff bill doubles overnight.
(DIR) Post #AtjkBI6wVL6F5RWT32 by jrdepriest@infosec.exchange
2025-05-04T02:47:42Z
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@futurebird That's the plan.Fire everybody. Use genAI to produce mediocre results for less money.When the price goes up, "fire" the genAI and rehire the desperate former workers who never found another job for even less.
(DIR) Post #AtjkDGunvBTTxPn0hk by virtualinanity@toot.community
2025-05-04T02:48:02Z
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@futurebird someone needs to show me the math for like replacing checkout counter workers earning $20-25/hr including benefits versus installing millions of dollars in specialized equipment plus the compute for these AI auto checkouts - not even including model training! Plus inevitably just paying foreign workers to review the recorded video when the models fail.
(DIR) Post #AtjlF0N6V6j7BKPtqq by futurebird@sauropods.win
2025-05-04T02:59:36Z
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@virtualinanity Automated checkout was supposed to reduce the number of cashiers needed at stores. But now they need a person to fix the machines and people to help the people using the self-checkout... meaning it didn't really reduce labor costs much at all. Things like checking ID, reversing charges all require an employee. And in most stores they still need to have some regular checkout since some customers just CANNOT do it.
(DIR) Post #AtjlOYlhz2AET4TuOO by DrSuzanne@ohai.social
2025-05-04T03:01:16Z
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@futurebird I am living for the day the bubble bursts. Getting my popcorn ready for the show.
(DIR) Post #AtjoKsulRG2xebektc by vruz@mstdn.social
2025-05-04T03:34:14Z
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@futurebird Oh, yet another fucking stupid take on the magical mystic AI.Do you guys listen to yourselves?Sick to death of American obscurantism from the right and the "left"Guys, you won't have a country soon, use your brains for once.
(DIR) Post #AtjoetLZXaHEmpjfpw by skjeggtroll@mastodon.online
2025-05-04T03:37:52Z
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@futurebird Even if, for the sake of argument, you ignore the real cost of LLM compute and assume the bubble won't burst -- your whole business has now changed to be just reselling LLM compute: You've become a middle-man that adds little to no value and only exists until your customers realizes they can just buy directly from the source, or your LLM provider decides they'd rather keep your profit margin for themselves.
(DIR) Post #AtjqUH3DGmh71fDHEG by dank@jorts.horse
2025-05-04T03:58:10Z
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@futurebird management has been aggressively pushing to opex vs. capex for at least the last 30 years.. from most employees being contractors, to magic beans, it's all the sameshort term gains with terrible long-term prospects. but they've learned they won't be held accountable. at worst they might have to change jobs and probably end up making more.
(DIR) Post #AtjqZ2Qp3Drb8JWnU8 by Seruko@mstdn.social
2025-05-04T03:59:11Z
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@futurebird 6. The AI company now in a very real and possibly legal sense - own what and how you do business
(DIR) Post #AtjtOdSLM0wediyEqm by dohbuheee@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T04:30:56Z
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@futurebird not even. It's more like renting slaves to replace labor, but neither really exists, and your product is still crap.
(DIR) Post #AtjuR3qYJ1TV1P0y5g by soulexpress@musician.social
2025-05-04T04:42:32Z
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@futurebird Venture capitalists have the same MO as drug dealers, don't they?
(DIR) Post #AtjwIxoZ35gDuBLqeu by lorgonumputz@beige.party
2025-05-04T05:03:31Z
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@futurebird Furthermore:Tech companies who stop using traditional means and, instead, move to using LLM services have given up their ability to do work over to the LLM vendors.Once the subsidy from VCs ends the price will go up drastically - what choice will they have but pay it? They laid off all of their workers who knew how to make things happen.
(DIR) Post #Atjwu3Qf8ZBG25rEiu by jwcph@helvede.net
2025-05-04T05:10:14Z
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@futurebird Exactly. Even in the best case scenario for #AI, businesses are going to end up literal hostages. You'd think all those business school alumni could figure that out.
(DIR) Post #AtjzSOxjmZj8ZVplia by Haste@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T05:38:49Z
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@futurebird Sometimes I think it’s for the spite of keeping money out of laborer’s hands… they’re find with paying a fortune to another executive for their tool, just to keep the poors poor.
(DIR) Post #Atk30VlXIJm9Nc5DsW by gimulnautti@mastodon.green
2025-05-04T06:18:39Z
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@futurebird And that’s the benign side of the argument, really.There’s a darker side, where psychopathic & narcissistic leaders can maintain companies whose mode of operation goes way beyond anything a real human would ever work for.The elimination of moral human agency will enable actors whose cruelty will go beyond anything ever experienced by humanity so far.Stuff of nightmares.
(DIR) Post #Atk3jae401XRXp5Dm4 by os_sci@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T06:26:47Z
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@futurebird This is one if the the main reasons why #AI must be open source. May the #Foss be with you.
(DIR) Post #Atk5oe4GtvYZW3scwS by KatS@chaosfem.tw
2025-05-04T06:50:07Z
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@futurebirdAFAICT the answer to the riddle is that these execs are not thinking like rational businesspeople, however much they might speak and justify themselves in those terms.It's about screwing people over, disempowering them, and replacing them with obedient machines that can't talk back. An LLM will never outmanoeuvre you in office politics, or threaten your bonus.
(DIR) Post #Atk6JPbAkPypcKwKTw by kamstrup@fosstodon.org
2025-05-04T06:55:41Z
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@futurebird in many European countries (I don't know much about the US or UK), we not only have worker rights, but also the reverse: There are laws protecting the employer against unfair retaliation from the workers. Changing to renting AI throws these rights out the window.It boggles the mind that anyone is willing to take that risk.Much like crypto completely does away with consumer rights and protections in the banking system.
(DIR) Post #Atk7n8m7xcrK5Ansbw by rhelune@todon.eu
2025-05-04T07:12:14Z
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@futurebird @virtualinanity Also it is the customers doing the cashiers' work for free, not the machines.
(DIR) Post #AtkBFdIAORvUhQ4Em8 by kobold@social.troll.academy
2025-05-04T07:50:58Z
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@futurebird No wages == no paying customers.....it is really that simple.
(DIR) Post #AtkDNjSHYwNA2TmxbE by _XCM@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T08:14:50Z
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@futurebird We have seen a similar approach in IT. Companies thought they were smart by firing 90% of the technical staff, remove servers and storage, move everything to the cloud, and hite cheap offshore support.The results long term have been mediocre support, skyrocketing cloud costs, vendor lock in, and total lack of oversight as company data now is stored on someone else’s servers.But it looked good on spreadsheets.
(DIR) Post #AtkEYm2gNrwpCbdxyq by canleaf@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T08:28:05Z
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@futurebird 4. if something goes wrong, blame the (DEI or low performing) workers. 5. cancel DEI, make it harder for marginalized communities to find a career.
(DIR) Post #AtkLcKTxUckUZ12no0 by _XCM@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T09:47:11Z
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@futurebird I think the biggest difference is scale.24/7 availability without burnouts and ridiculous human requirements such as time off and maternity leave.Some say AI should augment human skills.So then we can relax while the AI does the job.In reality, humans will just be given more work.
(DIR) Post #AtkNEtNqHLaHlb8SPI by AzureArmageddon@mastodon.online
2025-05-04T10:05:17Z
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@futurebird If AI was primary developed in the open instead of behind the closed doors of companies named "open" then nobody could charge monopolistic prices for it but nobody thought that far.
(DIR) Post #AtkOc2ADtqNbc4McaW by joriki@infosec.exchange
2025-05-04T10:20:44Z
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@futurebird the high price and low quality will hit the sweet spot where a company can't justify hiring people to replace the AI, but the quality is just low enough to bleed the company to death
(DIR) Post #AtkT3VHs7xXbZaIOAa by roknrol@beige.party
2025-05-04T11:10:30Z
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@futurebird Wages come with expectations of time off, benefits, and "understanding" when life jumps up and gets in the way.
(DIR) Post #AtkU1HZkEhsUQD9zY8 by paco@infosec.exchange
2025-05-04T11:21:20Z
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@futurebird There is this trend in business the las 30 years of rent-don’t-own. I do IT and this is “the cloud.” Rent servers, don’t own them. There’s the whole Office365 and every other software-as-a-service (SaaS) industry. Streaming music and film. Everyone wants recurring revenue, not capital investment. It drives subscription models in your products because everything underpinning your business is in a subscription, too.There’s a principle that someone who specialises in something (computers, staffing, medical testing) will optimise it better than you can and make it cheaper, more efficient. But the myth is that they will share the resulting cost savings with you. Instead, they try to lower costs -for them- without changing the price -for you-. That’s where profit comes from, after all. So people figure outsourcing is somehow good. Because they think it saves their business money and they get better service from a specialist. I’m sure that’s true sometimes. But mostly this seems like an unproven religious belief.
(DIR) Post #AtkYRIv6GAWhwAoR04 by syntaxseed@phpc.social
2025-05-04T12:10:48Z
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@futurebird 💯. Companies have no clue what they're losing by replacing workers with AI.- AI will never sanity check or push back on company decisions.- AI will never tell managers: "this is confusing" or "customers will hate this".- AI will never innovate new ideas while working on an existing one. - AI will never identify friction for users or biases (in fact it will create them).- AI won't be your first-round testers as something is being built.-AI won't give u free advertising.
(DIR) Post #AtkZlrKa87w4PI63H6 by freequaybuoy@mastodon.social
2025-05-04T12:25:45Z
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@futurebird And your company, what does it do, and what does it sell, and to whom? Because if no one's paying wages, who has the money to buy your stuff?
(DIR) Post #Atkd1i9IKu6KQQ4FhQ by frankcat@mstdn.social
2025-05-04T13:02:13Z
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@futurebird to quote JD “We pay rent for industrial robots to make shit that we have no money to buy” AI and industrial robots don’t buy anything except electricity. Go figure!
(DIR) Post #AtkdRpokRmF1jouiaO by montyontherun@bitbang.social
2025-05-04T13:06:55Z
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@futurebird plus all the people you inevitably have to hire, to supervise and correct mistakes
(DIR) Post #Atkea1R9ELFI2tLK0e by lo_fye@mastodon.cloud
2025-05-04T13:19:38Z
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@futurebird @baldur That has been many a company’s dream since long before subscription pricing became the default. They’re still thinking they’ll own the intelligent robots, which will be durable & high quality, with low maintenance costs.
(DIR) Post #AtkenZw2HJ4AnwFqm8 by sollat@masto.ai
2025-05-04T13:22:05Z
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@futurebird And the machine makers can decide at any moment that the model you’ve built your service around is no longer available due to maintenance issues or because they’ve decided to pivot. And then you’re SOL.
(DIR) Post #AtkxvZFyaAqm986Y1A by SynAck@corteximplant.com
2025-05-04T16:56:25Z
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@futurebird It's also seen as a way to shift blame when something goes wrong. I don't think that this is a primary motivation, but I would say that it's more prevalent than one would think. These landlords want to be seen as "responsible owners" when things are going well but as soon as something goes poorly, they want someone/thing else to yell and scream at (whom they don't have to look in the face) to get things going. It's about being able to shift the blame and causality away from themselves when something goes wrong. And, to be frank, most business types are too dumb to realize that they've been sold on a promise of "new efficiencies" that will never be delivered.What is that old saying, "A poor workman blames his tools?" I believe that this is one of the main ideas driving this "AI" adoption in business - what these people really want are tools for which they can take credit but then also blame as being "faulty" when their own ineptitude causes problems. That's all that this whole "AI" bubble is about - they don't want to augment or improve human capability or even efficiency, they want automated slaves to do their bidding 24/7/365, and screw the actual human workers. Having a workforce that won't talk back and demand rights is more valuable to them than hitching their wagons to the providers of those tools.It has never been about long-term efficiency or sustainability. It has always been about short-term, quarter-to-quarter profit and being able to get out with their money before that rent really comes due.
(DIR) Post #AtlRIIoUmVkoTnRZgm by jonpsp@mstdn.social
2025-05-04T22:25:29Z
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@futurebird if only people had learned from using cloud providers
(DIR) Post #AtoiwxZGxS899iAxhQ by veroandi@mastodon.social
2025-05-06T12:27:27Z
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@futurebird And because people have lost their jobs and have no money, they can't buy the company's product!
(DIR) Post #AttAKgRPlFD0NmsQRU by log@mastodon.sdf.org
2025-05-08T15:52:44Z
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@futurebird Because the rent money circulates to the people who might ask you to serve on their board of directors, instead of maggoty proletarians who will just vote to take away your right to snort cocaine off the ass of a burning planet. It's that velocity/proximity aspect of recirculating money--usually better to pay $100 to your best bud the next street over than $10 to someone 8 time zones away, because some of that $100 comes right back.
(DIR) Post #AttE1bNwjafP15PZ1E by MishaVanMollusq@sfba.social
2025-05-08T16:34:30Z
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@futurebird @catsalad 99% of CEOs hate other people especially those below them in the Hierarchy
(DIR) Post #AtuWRPC4g2rh4FGv7w by BonehouseWasps@mastodon.social
2025-05-09T07:35:30Z
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@futurebird What if the AI just *goes away*? What if Anthropic simply can't afford to keep the lights on at those data centres? There aren't many people who can bail them out (again) and they've yet to make anything even resembling a profit.
(DIR) Post #Au0ozxyqoNG4vSTZ7A by bobthomson70@mastodon.social
2025-05-12T08:31:45Z
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@futurebird You identify well the elephant in the room. As the old ad said, “Where’s the beef?” Except it’s now, “Where’s the business model?” Contemporary tech seems to address this key part last. Arse, elbow. Elbow, arse.
(DIR) Post #Au0uTMhkSxxbm7JXSS by wyliecoyoteuk@mastodon.org.uk
2025-05-12T09:33:05Z
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@futurebird Of course the logical end is that nobody has a job and so they can't buy the products.Who would have guessed that the logical effect of AI will be UBI.