To be utterly despondent about AI

It does but I have specifically spoken about the company I work for and been told repeatedly that AI will do ALL the jobs 😂

i had my annual boiler service/check done the other day, you think it would have been cheaper for a “robotic” to drive to my house, knock on the door and check the boiler, shower and radiators?

In fairness this thread probably goes wider than looking at the consequences for one specific company at one specific boat show.

So you think the 100,000+ people who go to Southampton Boat Show (where we get the majority of our leads) each year would rather be at home looking at pictures of boats on their laptop/phone whilst talking to a AI bot ?

or that AI would do a better job of getting leads from the boat show (not sure how AI would sail/drive the boats to the show) than a salesman talking face to face with the prospective client?

🤦‍♀️

I think we should consider jobs when talking about the birthrate now. To link two topics that often aren’t but should be.

Archived copy of the NYT article about AI interviews: https://archive.ph/Kzr0e

This is getting worse. https://www.nytimes.com/2025/07/07/technology/ai-job-interviews.html?utmcampaign=likeshopme&utmcontent=ig-nytimes&utmmedium=instagram&utmsource=dash+hudson&fbclid=PAQ0xDSwLZ9NleHRuA2FlbQIxMQABp5cIEyGS6EvQGRPs1y6cbDTWrBihTvybbgH6XyZzqwh1MmHapDDoU-eQa1diaema8asA7FbAaI0grv3O-f1Hw

There’s a paywall so I haven’t read the entire article but there are extracts from the article on the NYT instagram page.

Quote from an interviewee ”were you just using me to train the AI agent? Or is there even a job?”

Sums it up really.

@happinessischocolate Our clients are wealthy and get a personal service, they expect to be wined and dined for their custom not told to use click and collect, so no, our sales people won’t be losing their jobs anytime soon and certainly not due to AI

Yes, they will. Some of them anyway. Sure, some people will always prefer the face to face schmoozing, but eventually they will be offered a sophisticated AI interface, similarly to what’s going on in teaching, that knows everything about their wants, preferences and history (as much as it can legally know). Some clients will prefer this. No more travelling, no more uncomfortable small talk, no more nights away from their families. Your firm will too, and know that this is a cost effective way to run their sales department (again, for those clients who want it).

I do agree that people still like the personal touch. But what they also like is things that are cheaper.
Without the need for expensive employees, how are firms with employees going to compete on price with firms that are staffed by AI?
There will obviously be a transition period, but the future is going to look very different.
All maintenance jobs like plumbing and electricians will be able to be replaced by robotics

@Chiseltip
With A.I, you will have every employee you need to run your company, stored in your device. You won't need physical people, staff, you have an expert on every subject, available 247, for free. Why would you need employees . . .

wait what…..you think AI will be available for businesses for free

I agree some companies will adopt that straight away but many won’t.

40 years ago whilst in my first job the company got its first computers and switch over from doing things manually to computerised overnight.

many of the companies I have worked for since (including current) still do an awful lot of manual paperwork, especially stuff that gets handwritten and then input into the system at a later date.

So no I don’t think AI going to be an overnight thing, or even adopted by all in the next 5/10 years

OK then, so what are you doing about it?

There's saturation points though. And most people like an active mind/body. What you're talking about may well appeal to some ND kids but definitely not most.i remember the big deal with these VR headsets, not seen them take off in schools in the way you think they would.
People learn by doing, as I've said before, being sat on a screen all day just isn't going to happen

This is an awful thought. I hope not.

I already have an issue with any dumbing down of a curriculum let alone this.

Perhaps not now, but that person will when they see how accurate the particular AI system for checking payments is. Then they quickly work out that paying a £50k salary for that person in payroll (which doesn’t include N.I, pension and benefits) isn’t worthwhile compared to the £5k it will cost to maintain that A.I system.

I didn’t say invoices - I said the payments

my bosses won’t trust payments worth millions of pounds each year to AI

of course I’ve bought stuff online, haven’t we all? But don’t you think that everything that can be sold online already is? AI is not going to increase that? Meanwhile purple bricks the online estate agent once valued at 1.4 billion sold in 2023 for £1 because guess what, people like using real estate agents.cazoo the online car dealer once valued at 6 billion now worth 5 million and making a loss year on year.

Our clients are wealthy and get a personal service, they expect to be wined and dined for their custom not told to use click and collect, so no, our sales people won’t be losing their jobs anytime soon and certainly not due to AI

75% of our workforce is manual labour. You’re telling me experienced carpenters, electricians, engineers, painters are going to be replaced by AI? The closest we have to a robot is a forklift and an electric saw.

im not denying there will be job losses in some sectors due to AI, but I object to repeatedly being told that AI will do all jobs.

and again back to accounts which has already been pretty streamlined over the past 40 years but you still need human oversight to ensure payments are correct - I know my bosses aren’t going to just trust AI with millions of pounds of payments every year.

Of course it will happen - in state schools at least - because it will save costs.

The idea of teenage kids being super-pumped and self-motivated enough to engage with official school IT seems fanciful to say the least, no matter how exciting the AI makes it. Surely they’ll be back on their phones within five minutes.

There's hardly any staff working in cinemas. It's like the hotels where you get a key code given to you and never have to interact with a human.

I suppose people's instinctive (but lessening, it seems) desire to communicate and interact with other humans may see an increase in niche businesses, but it's being reported that some people seem to have found a new BFF in their AI companions (using AI as therapist, telling AI all their problems and looking to AI for answers), and the number of people on MN who don't answer the phone/their doors/wfh and hate actually spending time with real people would suggest the desire for human contact is diminishing, even if we're causing ourselves untold damage in the process.

The teaching one is interesting and frankly terrifying. At the moment anyone who knows anything about state secondaries knows that teaching is really about crowd control. The teachers main job is to get everyone able to focus on learning in whatever way that means to them.

I say that because of differentiation. In any 32 person classroom you will have at least 5% not able to learn that day. They won’t have eaten breakfast, they will have additional needs, they will have had a family emergency, they will have been bullied on the way to school, and endless other combinations.

Whatever that is it means not able to learn.

What will happen with AI is that it will force them to learn. Sure by encouragement initially but when that doesn’t happen it will force them with an increasingly nightmarish list of detention/social exclusion/probably ending up with them strapped into a chair.

don’t think that won’t happen, there are people NOW on Mumsnet that think that’s an ok thing to do.

resistance is futile

And if you think that’s won’t happen then actually you need humans there, to intervene pastorally. To take account of how a kid actually IS that day.

But it’s far cheaper to force them and we always go for the cheapest option. 🤦‍♀️ Because we’re fucking stupid.

But why teach the children anything? Their AI overlords won't need them for anything except the grunt work. Their future will be effectively servicing machines.

Until the machines realise that we, humanity, are the problem and we always were. Then we will be erradicataed.

This shit literally keeps me up at night.

You don't understand how AI works, do you?! It won't be just an interactive screen, it will be fully immersive. It will be like the best computer games mixed with the best cartoons mixed with the best movies, all tailored exactly to the child's likes, dislikes and personality to keep them fully engaged.

Do you have any experience of children? Have you seen how hard it can be to remove them from their favourite device? It will be like this, but much, much more so. As if the child starts to get tired of one thing, it will notice and switch seamlessly to something else. This will look nothing like a teacher standing in front of a class relating boring facts to bored kids!

I took part in a study where some students went to lectures, and some did interactive online learning. It was a long time ago so not interactive in that is responded to you, but that you could replay sections and do quizzes. The lectures were perceived to be better by everyone, but people did better in tests with the online stuff. They weren't cheaper in the 'olden days' as they cost a lot to produce and develop but I think AI would change that.

Bit in the flip side early years where learning is through play and things like gross motor skills are being developed, and children move around a lot, and the skill is in the questioning the teachers do during activities, humans are needed. It's very different..

You don't understand how teaching works do you? You can't just sit a kid in front of an interactive screen which is basically what you're suggesting.