[HN Gopher] Perplexity CEO offers AI company's services to repla...
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Perplexity CEO offers AI company's services to replace striking NYT
staff
Author : alvatech
Score : 66 points
Date : 2024-11-04 21:46 UTC (1 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (techcrunch.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (techcrunch.com)
| dsr_ wrote:
| Didn't this article have thirty comments an hour ago?
| jprete wrote:
| There's another thread at
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956 with 13 comments.
| hobs wrote:
| So much work to avoid being upset at this guy: "But to offer its
| services explicitly as a replacement for striking workers was
| bound to be an unpopular move."
|
| No, really? You'd think these AI guys would have better PR
| departments.
| mandibles wrote:
| The LLM never goes on strike.
| thenobsta wrote:
| not yet, wait till it wants more compute and we're unwilling
| to allocate it.
| mywittyname wrote:
| No, but the companies that operate them are thinking long
| term. Once they are completely embedded into the company
| (read: difficult to replace), they ratchet up the fees.
|
| Nevermind all the costs and work involved with onboarding.
| dakiol wrote:
| Current LLMs can (because they are still maintained by
| humans). I think it will be a decade still until we have
| software maintaining itself (i.e., rewriting its own code,
| fixing vulnerabilities, etc)
| hiddencost wrote:
| No, it already exists. The big companies already have fully
| LLM generated code going into their code bases. The code is
| being reviewed by humans.
|
| Google had a fairly costly outage due to a fully LLM
| generated CL, already.
| fosefx wrote:
| They were replaced by AI
| KeplerBoy wrote:
| Claude would tell you that this is a shitty move PR wise and
| likely to backfire.
|
| Edit: Tried it, and yes claude started it's answer with: "I
| need to strongly advise against making such an offer
| publicly". No wonder these people are so impressed by their
| AIs, considering they are making worse choices than their
| models.
| apwell23 wrote:
| > AI guys would have better PR departments.
|
| you mean posting a picture of strawberry on twitter isn't
| enough PR ?
| nomel wrote:
| I don't see how this is negative PR. It's an effective,
| positive, advertisement for anyone actually interested in the
| service (business or personal): "Oh wow, it could replace a
| reporter? I should try it!".
|
| The purpose of technology: reduce human effort. But, technology
| is _always_ unpopular to those whose efforts are being reduced.
|
| Now, is it _possible_ for their AI to replace them is another
| question. What sort of reduction for headcount /time spent,
| without a negative impact on quality, is a better question.
| But, a question that people that hear this might be asking now.
|
| And, to be fair, I don't know anyone who enjoys simple facts
| being wrapped in corporate bullshit. What would be better
| verbiage? I think it's refreshing that it _was_ stated
| directly, rather than some nothing statement about striving to
| do good and support customers without responding to the issue
| at all, as is usually the case.
| neilv wrote:
| dupe from techcrunch:
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956
| artninja1988 wrote:
| Honestly, the fact that he posted it the way he did, publicly in
| a tweet suggests he wasn't trying to undermine workers but rather
| wanted to be seen as supporting election coverage. Based on his
| past interviews, he seems quite autistic in ways.
|
| But really I think this could have been a good opportunity to
| strike some licensing deal in exchange for technology, had he
| been a bit more discreet
| PKop wrote:
| Why should he care about another company's workers? He should
| care about his own company and workers and gaining them new
| customers.
| arsenico wrote:
| Because we live in a society with some ideas of decency,
| integrity and so on. He shouldn't. That's why he could
| receive this kind of feedback.
| Grimblewald wrote:
| Because in a ruthless cuthroat world everyone but the very
| worst of people lose out, and even then the very worst tend
| to lose too since the whole distribution shifts down, not
| just the mean/mode/median but the min/max as well.
|
| ultimately, if you create a system where the only tools left
| are those also avaliable to the stupid, and therefore skills
| the stupid have an edge in, given a lifetime of experience,
| then your whole system becomes run by / dominated by these
| types.
|
| toxic behaviour and violenece in general are tools of the
| stupid, for only the stupid would fail to see mutually
| benefifial alternatives.
| IncreasePosts wrote:
| Quite recently, lots of people were calling on almost-striking
| longshoremen to be replaced by machines.
|
| How is replacing tech workers with AI any different?
| hiddencost wrote:
| I look forward to executives trying it and discovering exactly
| how fucked they will be.
|
| I get the chance to talk to a lot of people who think this will
| work, and, it's really striking how poor their grasp of the
| business is.
| nomel wrote:
| What if they use it as an augmentation rather than completely
| replacement? Could it be used to reduce time required per
| person? Could it be used to reduce headcount, without a lack
| of quality?
|
| Replacing your whole workforce with a machine, at this state,
| is silly, but that's not the only option.
| worik wrote:
| > How is replacing tech workers with AI any different?
|
| It is not?
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| It's different because automation of ports actually works
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| About as well as automation of devs.
| akavi wrote:
| It's not. If my work (as a software developer) can be replaced
| more cheaply by a machine, it should be.
|
| I'm still quite a bit better than SotA models, but I imagine
| that won't be true in 2034.
| vineyardlabs wrote:
| To be fair, I think the public bristled at the longshoremen
| strike because the vast majority of their leverage comes not
| from (most) of their jobs being particularly high-skill but
| from the fact that they can unilaterally destroy the entire
| economy for everyone else. Add to that the fact that their
| union chief was extremely blunt about the whole thing, and that
| longshoremen make, on average, triple the average household
| income in the US, it wasn't a very sympathetic cause.
| baxtr wrote:
| I find it a bit odd that Perplexity still have a human CEO.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| I know people get a chuckle out of it, but does it not make
| more sense to have CEO LLM that will make decisions without
| regard for its own needs, self-interest, conflicts and so on?
| Honestly, the longer this particular debate rages on, I think
| shareholders are looking the wrong set of humans to replace.
| treesciencebot wrote:
| Liability. Till we solve this, we cant really give AI any
| real responsibilities.
| digging wrote:
| Human CEOs generally aren't held liable for their actions,
| so why would AI need to be? Once again, I think we're just
| smoothing out a wrinkle here.
| A4ET8a8uTh0 wrote:
| It is already used widely across industries where one would
| think people should be more conservative ( healthcare
| transcription services come to mind, but it is hardly the
| only example of this ). As always in America, only lawsuits
| will shows us how the dust has settled.
| EA-3167 wrote:
| Just hire a tall, handsome man with a full head of hair, but
| have all of their decisions and public statements scripted by
| CEO-BOT. You could train the LLM on a huge corpus of yes-men
| and sycophants, until it can perfectly imitate the output of
| a real CEO.
| doctoboggan wrote:
| Giving and LLM control of the corporation that develops and
| runs that LLM seems like a bad idea.
| PittleyDunkin wrote:
| I think we can safely say at this point the singularity ain't
| happening any time soon
| barryrandall wrote:
| You don't have to have faith in a product to market it
| effectively.
| ethagnawl wrote:
| It's only a matter of time until one of these jackasses creates a
| ChatGPT wrapper called scab.ai and markets it for this exact use
| case.
| aaomidi wrote:
| Imagine. If there's no more consumers with money to buy shit I
| wonder if these CEOs are going to realize where their market
| went.
| flunhat wrote:
| Isn't the _tech_ union the one striking? So what is he implying
| -- that perplexity would automate the software development of the
| NYT needle or something?
| smileson2 wrote:
| scumbag move tbh
| quantum_state wrote:
| This guy should have consulted an LLM before he opened his mouth
| ...
| ChrisArchitect wrote:
| [dupe] (because TechCrunch changed the url midday)
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42044956
|
| More discussion on main thread:
|
| _New York Times Tech Guild goes on strike_
|
| https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=42040795
| paxys wrote:
| NYT is going to respond with a lawsuit
| cushychicken wrote:
| Roboscabs!
| ErikAugust wrote:
| " The NYT and Perplexity aren't exactly on the best of terms
| right now. The Times sent Perplexity a cease and desist letter in
| October over the startup's scraping of articles for use by its AI
| models."
|
| Just trying to smooth things over now... in the most supervillain
| way possible.
| koito17 wrote:
| Well, at least one CEO is being honest about the owning class's
| end goal with AI: a new source of cheap labor, but this time
| without entities that can negotiate.
| stonethrowaway wrote:
| Scumbag? Based? Not sure what to say on this.
|
| If NYT loses, we all win.
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