> "The findings suggest that targeted recruitment of 'wonky IT people' with specific skills in natural language processing, computer vision, and specialized frameworks like TensorFlow could be a subtle indicator of future stock performance, offering investors a new lens for identifying companies poised to capitalize on AI productivity gains."

> If there is any real effect here, I presume that it's basically just a peacock tail, or a cockatoo crest--a fundamentally useless but eye-catching feature that has no value except that it demonstrates that the company has ample resources to waste.

There ya go. They saw successful companies that don't mind tossing a bunch of stuff at the wall and seeing what sticks, and surprise, surprise, they like to throw a bunch of stuff at the wall and see what sticks. There's no analysis of how those "wonky IT people" help the bottom line. They just happen to be there.

This is like those studies done in the late nineties about offices with aquariums in the reception area tended to be more successful. No, more successful, i.e. more profitable businesses had a litt

Yes, hire some AI people, write a press release, see the value of the stock go up in the short term because you used the phrase "AI." Now you've added a cost to the business and no real additional value. Will definitely help if there is a quarterly bonus tied to stock price or some RSUs vesting soon. Will hurt the business in the long run. We just discussed this yesterday wrt Boeing and Intel.

This is actually normal in the world of these specific studies. They're ordered by a client, and they jury rig the study to come to the conclusion that client would prefer.

I don't know about roofing companies. But many plumbing and electrical companies have seen a huge influx of private equity money. If hiring an "AI person" would let you somehow make a pitch to venture capital for $50-$100M of investment, you could probably use that to grow your roofing company even if you never did anything with AI. Of course, maybe roofing can be improved with AI somehow. But I wouldn't know since I have no background in roofing (other than hauling up shingles one summer) or AI (other

> At a mid-sized company, this don't fly. I'm 35, 2 degrees, never stopped learning, and now I can do everything (except networking because fuck networking). I've seen every app, can disassemble and reassemble a laptop blindfolded, worked on every peripheral ever. 100% not joking when they cancelled the search for an additional IT person after I started working here because I was so fast at solving tickets while still doing high level stuff like desktop engineering and hardware repair and server maintenance. Find someone like me and you'll save half your staff budget in IT.

Lazy ass, you're doing the workload of 3 people and only getting paid for one person. Hahahahahaha. Make sure that CEO gets an extra yacht on you.

You are completely missing the point of the article though. The premise is hire "AI people" and stock market will think that you are doing "cutting edge AI stuff for the next century, look how fancy!" and the stock go up.

They never said "hire these people and your cost will go down" or "hire these people and your sales will go up". They said "hire these people and your *stock* will go up".

This reminds me of the metal company that renamed to have "blockchain" in its names a decade ago and saw its stock price

You joke, but the recycling industry is actually using AI to sort recyclables out of combined garbage/recycling waste streams.

So yes, the planet is actually being saved by AI.