I tried to have ChatGPT to build me a running schedule this morning. Nothing stunning, prety simple stuff - a few days I can't do, a few milages I wanted to achieve, a bit of loading management. 26minutes later I gave up on ChatGPT, which was really struggling to manage this simple task and hit up Gemini instead. Gave it the basic parameters and four iterations later it still couldn't do it.

I know AI can be really useful and I use it a LOT.

But seriously, I'm just not that worried about it destroying jobs.

You should be tho. It doesn't matter that it doesn't work, the execs who decide who to make redundant have drunk the kool-aid and are going to be making those cuts anyway.

Sure, they might be re-hiring in a few years when it turns out that "Oh shit, we've made a terrible mistake" but I wouldn't bank on it. More likely they'll just bury their heads in the sand, and try and gas light everyone into believing that everything has always been this bad, and we all have to live with terrible service that can't answer simple questions for a few more years until the whole thing finally collapses in on itself due to being totally unaffordable and we get a colossal stock market crash leading to even more layoffs.

This will end badly.

>” Sure, they might be re-hiring in a few years when it turns out that "Oh shit, we've made a terrible mistake"”

That will happen.

>” and try and gas light everyone into believing that everything has always been this bad”

Not so sure about this, however, they will gaslight everyone by complaining how difficult it’s to get good staff etc. etc. at the miserly rates of pay they want to pay (lower than they are paying today) so will start another round of off-shoring to whatever country is the cheapest.

>” This will end badly.”

It will start going bad a lot sooner than many think…

...10 to 19 percent service enshittification...

FTFY

I'd say you're being generous, and vastly underestimating the ensuing enshitification.

Just this week a colleague, who is trying to start a business/sideline for herself, came into my office asking for some help on her web site. She had successfully managed to use ChatGpt to create the basic site but was now facing increasing difficulty in adding the minor details and elements that would have made her site much better. But because she didn't have a clue about HTML, CSS etc ChatGPT could no longer provide useful feedback because she no longer knew which question to ask. Her frustration was extremely obvious as ChatGPT made he now feel like a fool.

( Her actual problem was that she had no idea what CSS was, what fluid layouts are, or even something simply as padding )

My colleague is by no means a fool but she successfully lulled herself into believing that IT was easy.

As I see it, when we remove the professionals we will only up end with a lot of useless idiots running around banging their heads on the wall. Company collapses will definitely ensue, as YODA once said, ChatGPT does not a company make..

Interesting your colleague has also fully taken on-board the AI hype and decided to DIY rather than use the web site builder tools from the likes of 123, Ionos etc.

Personally, I’ve been independently in business since 2009 and still don’t have a website…

Time to start a company specialising in wall resurfacing!

Execs whose awareness of how the company functions is "thin" (to be polite) are now getting rid of lots of employees, without actually checking that AI can actually replace them.

We now have three studies (MIT, UK government, and Yale) all saying "no measurable benefit".

I most sincerely hope that the blame comes home to roost in the right place. After all, the company now knows that removing those execs who recommended AI is the shortest route to significant savings...

By that I mean the projects I manage are not simple, linear jobs where stage 1 gets complete and then the next task opens up to another team etc etc until the project is completed.

The jobs are utter Chaos from start to finish, every single one has the same deadline - "as soon as possible"

Every single one has ill-defined scope and budget, each one relies on specialized knowledge of who can do what work in which countries, what networks can be used and what are the idiosyncrasies of those networks (yes, they are all documented, just that not everyone knows where they are documented!).

What contractors could be used, who can supply specialist parts or cables, who can create new items in SAP when the part you’re trying to order doesn’t exist yet.

Feed one of my projects to an AI and I fear there may be an explosion in some datacentre or other!

The only AI I want is for my Ring doorbell to recognise my family and I so that it doesn’t notify me every single time I come in and out of the front door!

My door bell-push doesn't have that problem.

My door knocker also doesn’t have that problem, also it is very good value as it came off my mothers parents house, 100+ years old and still working…

AI, AI -- Oh!

" Roles centered on routine analysis, [...] transactional support "

Both of these roles only work in the real world if they're capable of effectively identifying and addressing unexpected edge cases -- the very thing that the LLM is incapable of as it operates on statistical probabilities, and edge cases by definition have low probability.

Pretty sure AI is going to struggle to climb a ladder and perform safety checks on various types of equipment. I think most of the jobs at my company are safe.

And, when it comes to IT and admin roles there is little fat to trim without cutting services used by the rest of the business.

> a sharp increase in workforce overcapacity by 2028 as productivity gains accelerate,

But that doesn't lead to redundancies. If productivity keeps pace there is no reason to cut jobs. It only needs new roles to appear. Mostly ones that contain the letters "AI" in the job description.

Half of C-Suite are creaming themselves over what they perceive as cost reduction and whatever bonus there is tied to it. The other half are beginning to realize AI is failing to give them the return on investment they were expecting, but it will be a cold day in hell before they will admit it. Trouble is, by the time it gets to the point where it can no longer be hidden, there won't be anyone left to fix the mess left behind.

'AI' technology and its applications are in a transitional state. As during the early days of other, now well established innovations, 'AIs' impact is yet to be known.

Assuming 'AI' can substantially reduce drudgery (white and blue collar) and increase productive efficiency, there are lessons from the past to ease the transition. One such is the upheaval leading to Luddites and social disorder. Similarly, former 'Fleet Street' newspaper owners met bitter resistance when skilled, and very highly paid, hot-metal press workers were displaced. Many other transitions took place more slowly, were widely welcomed, and whilst unpleasant for some individuals they did not engender broad social upheaval.

Unfortunately, the ethos of neoliberalism has introduced a 'divide' far more pernicious than the former 'class struggles' emanating from the 19th century. The new economic and social order is overtly predicated upon a crude misunderstanding of Darwinian Evolution in terms of 'nature red in tooth and claw' which leads to a "may the Devil take the hindmost" attitude, itself an expression of "I'm alright Jack". For example, in the UK all major political parties subscribe to a corrupted, indeed moribund, version of market-capitalism, one set to foster an 'Ayn Rand' kind of dystopia for the '99.99%'.

Many people prospering from 'liberalisation' of the City of London, and similar elsewhere, don't grasp they are 'useful fools' for a powerful new 'elite' bearing no likeness to 'breeding', aristocracy, or pretence of betterment for all mankind. They will be discarded. Their only difference from their underlings being the longer time before their families descend into penury. That applies also to so-called 'leaders' such as Mr Blair, Mr Starmer, the Johnson creature, Le Macon, Metz, von der Leyen, and many others across the globe, but especially in Western nations.

A potentially profound innovation like 'AI' - in the right hands capable of transforming for the better the prospects for all mankind - must be handled at societal level. That is not intended to knock genuine entrepreneurs, but neither should they be placed on pedestals. Unfortunately, other perhaps than in China, there is little chance of wisdom prevailing. The so-called 'democratic world' is saddled with the ridiculous mechanism of 'universal franchise representative democracy' which is an easily manipulated plaything for 'professional' politicians 'on the take' from their true masters. Ironically, that need not be so should modern technology (e.g. the Internet) be used to draw in the experience of intelligent and educated people endowed with probity.

As matters stand, nobody need to fear the consequences of redundancy and poverty arising from 'AI' if it were grasped that 'AI' may offer a sensible means for re-ordering the global economy (and the distribution of income/opportunity that offers) to relieve people of tedium, and to enable a substantially greater proportion to deploy hitherto buried aptitudes.

They have the nerve to state that AI will boost jobs... Perhaps in the warped mind of Starmer and Rachel from Accounts but not in the rest of us.

We are doomed I tell ye, doomed with this lot in charge and Farage is not the answer. He'll just follow the commands of his dear leader, the Mar-a-largo cheater at Golf and sink us faster that Drumpf is doing to the USA.

Both my wife and I have taken early retirement due to our teams being decimated or eliminated due to the AI craze.

I can say the results I see from Amazon searches are going downhill.

Managerial confidence on the results of AI are currently not based on results seen in reality resulting in massive lost of institutional knowledge.