To think we need to stop letting socially maladjusted techbro types control organisational restructuring and AI rollout programmes

[CurdinHenry]

Work exists for people and societies of people, it doesn't exist to serve some unseen capitalist machine.

It's time we stopped allowing the weirdest among us to dictate what structures and organisations are like.

Ai is fine as a tool but it's only a tool so employers should not be using it to replace humans.

Hard agree, especially after the Hugging Face issue

AI is being introduced as a tool to assist lifeguards in swimming pools. There will be a phasing out of lifeguards and swimming teachers will be expected to do 2 jobs. Teach and lifeguard. With the back up of smart watches and management ready to run in with defibrillator etc.
As someone who works in this industry, it scares me, because customers can be volatile enough without expecting swimming teachers to be lifeguards, too.
Management think it's a fabulous addition to the industry.
I'm not convinced.

Surely this remains a risk because a swimming teacher can't also be scanning for drowning swimmers??

but the issue is companies have always used machines to replace workers, eg back in the time of arkwrights mills and cromwells mills etc, Ai is just the modern spinning jenny so to speak

Yes, it frankly scares me that governments are just letting themselves be scared off of regulating anything by threats of 'But what if we're not competitive with China?!'

I think one of the big problems is that, in the past, a tech like AI would mostly have been developed in research/academia before being released to the public. But it's been almost entirely developed by commercial interests which results in outcomes that are about fitting people and society around the tech that's flung at them, not designing it for people and society.

When I think of the techie types I know personally, their priorities and their values, I worry about the kind of world we are allowing them to create for us.

Tech, AI etc should be the servant, not the master.

There’s plenty of highly skilled powerful women working in AI alongside those guys. Get ready folks because it’s coming in incredibly fast and is going to completely change our society in the next couple of years in ways many people
cannot fathom yet.

Highly suggest following the tech leaders on X and the Moonshots YouTube podcasts for up to the minute news because everyday something incredible seems to emerge.

Life is going to be very different for us all.

@CurdinHenry
I have been informed the the AI software via the teacher's smartphone will trigger information to management. The AI cameras round the pool do the scanning.
At present, teachers in the water need a lifeguard on poolside. Teachers on poolside will not require a lifeguard. This Will change and most lifeguards will be phased out at some point. Apparently any AI installed will learn how a pool works so less rushing to the pool for a non accident, eg big splashes , not a panicking swimmer.
I'm still not convinced 😐

The company my husband works for has been really brazen and upfront about the fact they’re cutting thousands of jobs (global company) in order to free up funds for AI development. It makes me feel decidedly uneasy.

Uneasy?? It should make you sick! All these close to retirement management guys waving it through don't seem to have wondered what will fund payout of their pensions.

It is like the Spinning Jenny if the cost of operating the spinning Jenny cost more per use than the cost of paying people to do the same job and produce the same output. And if instead of costs coming down over time they kept going up. And if the company renting it to your factory initially charged a flat charge for unlimited use but then switched to a token based model where it charged for each spool of yarn spun
And if sometimes, for no reason at all, the Spinning Jenny randomly produced something you hadn't asked for or gave out all your classified information to a hacker.
And if the people selling the spinning Jenny kept excitedly talking about how it might well destroy the whole world and for some reason this made you want it more....

And the spinning Jenny caused droughts with the water it needed to run

AI is massively over hyped by dummies. The trouble is we will let dummies have the floor.

but they said that about nukes, and society still built them, they said it about air travel and we have planes etc

It's like the twilight zone - the least thoughtful people in our society creating a prison for everyone else

im guessing the token based model is to slow ai and also make more profits

thats always been the case with any new tech, eg tv was the first

I think a lot of people just feel a bit helpless/ uneducated/ don't want to get involved in it all.

Complacency, basically.

What are you doing about it other than starting mumsnet threads?

We didn't replace workers with planes because planes are better at flying than people so it's surely only a matter of time before they become better than people at everything. We also didn't fire all the people working in random jobs in advance to raise money to buy planes which would surely be able to spin cotton and so double entry bookkeeping by then.

It's not that AI doesn't have uses. It does. The stupidity of firing people in advance because "AI will do their jobs" is the problem. Especially when it is more expensive a lot of the time than the equivalent cost in human labour.

What do you think I should do? I know more about AI than most people I know. I know its useful applications and its serious limits. But it's not the problem - the management consultants rebranded as AI thought leaders (and the guys becoming billionaires off the back of the hype) who are leading the enshittification of society are the problem.

My main objection is to the exclusion of human being from planning. AI can make things work a lot better in tandem with people and that's what we should be after. Not same old shit and an entire generation of unemployed people.

And if embraced, the US based billionaire owners of the Spinning Jenny will become multi billionaires while the local young folk here are unemployed. Apart from the human suffering element, this will bring a heap of social problems and put massive financial pressure on each country but the profitable owners won't give a shit because its outside their jurisdiction

I do think there’s a lot of general fear around AI and your thread and ones like it are symptomatic of that fear, the majority of people haven’t really educated themselves on the profound benefits that are coming to society.

Do some research outside of the MSM and Daily Mail type articles and you will see there’s a HUGE tidal wave of technological advancement in robotics, AI, longevity, medicine, energy production and storage that are going to be very present in our lives within the next decade.

I don't know what you should do or what anyone should do. I don't think most people know.

That's why I'm asking someone who started a thread about it 😆

I'm not scared of AI. I'm scared of human beings being idiots about AI in a way that will ruin all our lives.

Your kids are not going to be paying the bills by training prompts.

How will the ordinary people sacked from professional jobs afford to access these "amazing developments"?