The summer of layoffs is real.

  • reddig33@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Next year — the summer of rehires after CEOs learn employees can’t really be replaced by AI.

    • BJ_and_the_bear@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      It’s just a pretense to layoff staff and squeeze the remaining employees for more juice. They know it doesn’t work

        • The_v@lemmy.world
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          6 months ago

          Some?

          Never met one I would consider intelligent. They tend to excel at being related to people who own the company or kissing ass. Neither of of which takes that much brains.

          • blarghly@lemmy.world
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            6 months ago

            Idk, the ceo of my previous company was pretty intelligent. Taught himself software and built the company from the ground up. A bit too much into Jesus for my taste, but a good guy.

    • Tollana1234567@lemmy.today
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      6 months ago

      rehire h1b visa, for less benefits and salary you mean. this was always the endgame. maybe keep around some token more experienced citizens for good pr, more experienced as in the senior more technical staff that keeps everything from falling apart. healthcare is basically a skeleton crew in more specalized things labs.

    • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
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      6 months ago

      That is probably true in many case, buy to be fair there are some jobs that have had huge impacts due to LLM’s, like translation.

      These jobs have been changing quite a lot before this AI bubble mainly because advances in speech-to-text, but I see the LLM’s as final step. The translator need doesn’t fully disappear, but the workflow changes quite drastically and some labor heavy parts are going away.

      Note: I am not talking as AI being some hype AGI, just the LLM tech, which is basically advanced auto complete.

      • Rayquetzalcoatl@lemmy.world
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        6 months ago

        At my work we just did a project that included translating a website for multiple regions for a company. We used a translation service that doesn’t use humans. The Belgian, Dutch, German, French, and Italian teams complained that the translation was extremely weird and they had to manually overwrite the automated translations for the majority of the site (at least dozens of thousands of words) before launch.

        We’re still a ways off, judging by that anecdote.

        • Hotzilla@sopuli.xyz
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          6 months ago

          Using a bad translation/transcript as base for professional translator is still better than nothing. Like I said, translators are still going to be needed, but lots of the heavy manual work can be now automated.

          Also often when very domain specific language is used, the translation made by human can be bad, because they don’t know the proper terms. Of course good professional translators will ask these. It is also something that must be done with these dummy LLM models, you cannot just throw text into it and expect good results.

    • BrikoX@lemmy.zipOPM
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      6 months ago

      Many authors are required to use them whether they like or not. Not sure if that’s the case here though.

  • salacious_coaster
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    6 months ago

    That’ll teach the poors for getting all uppity with their living wage demands

  • blarghly@lemmy.world
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    6 months ago

    Almost certainly this is not actually due to AI. Instead, it is due to tarriffs, or unfounded optimism about AI. Smart companies can easily see the coming impact of tarriffs, and are culling their workforce in anticipation. Dumb companies hear about how “AI can do everything”, and are following suit. But telling everyone the layoffs are due to AI doesn’t scare off (most) investors. So stock prices can remain high for another quarter.

    • suicidaleggroll@lemmy.world
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      6 months ago

      Agreed. Not just tarriffs, but all of the government layoffs and funding cuts as well. I know a lot of people who have either been laid off, or their coworkers have been laid off, or they’ve had their funding cut and projects terminated in the last 5 months. It’s scary out there, hiring freezes across the board and layoffs every few months as companies are just riding on their capital while waiting for funding to resume, but there’s no sign of it happening any time soon, if ever.

      My company does mostly government contracting, we haven’t won a single contract in the last 8 months and supposedly we only have a few months of runway left before the big layoffs start. It’s not because contracts are being awarded and we’re just not getting them, it’s because all government spending has been shut off, which has trickle-down effects on thousands of companies across the country. My wife is in a completely different industry but is facing the exact same problems there as well. And none of it has anything to do with AI.

    • other_cat@lemmy.zip
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      6 months ago

      Supposedly, it’s due to AI chatbots replacing the need for as much staff, but I agree with @queermunist@lemmy.ml that the real cause is something else and AI is a smokescreen. Unfortunately, I don’t have any really good answers as to what, so take my comment with a grain of salt.