As importantly, a 2-year-old company with a 22-year-old CEO, founded by three college dropouts, was just valued at $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco company, Mercor, pays doctors, lawyers and others to train AI so machines can perform like human professionals. This is part of a mad rush to fine-tune AI with true human expertise so it can do for free what junior employees do now — and, later, what senior ones get paid good salaries to do.
Why it matters: All of this amplifies publicly what we keep hearing from CEOs privately. Almost every company is planning to slow hiring in the short term, and operate with much smaller human workforces in the future.
wizzard419 on
The first steps didn’t actually involve AI. Companies have started thinking short term over strategic. As a result you are seeing low level, including entry, positions be eliminated from the company. The notion of a journey, promotion, etc. within the company is gone, it becomes someone else’s problem/job to level up the worker and provide them experience. When every company does this, you end up with no point for anyone to start.
grafknives on
I would agree with that premise, if we would see a dynamic growth on the market. That demand for those companies products and services.
But it doesn’t really look like that.Â
Elevator829 on
It’s definitely happening. Both my siblings have tech jobs and we’re recently laid off due to AI and outsourcing, now many people are fighting over the service jobs like bartending and retail. Great depression 2.0 here we come
weightyboy on
Mostly just excuses to not backfill vacancies and make the ‘lucky staff to have a job,’ work harder not smarter.
5 Comments
From the articleÂ
One of the most important real-time, real-world debates in America is whether AI causes a short-term job apocalypse among white-collar workers.
Two developments unfolding this week show urgent reasons for acute concern:
Amazon announced yesterday that it’s cutting 14,000 white-collar jobs. JPMorgan, Walmart and others have revealed plans to slow hiring. All cited AI. PwC, the accounting and consulting giant, cut staff globally, partly because of AI. Nestlé cut jobs, blaming automation.
As importantly, a 2-year-old company with a 22-year-old CEO, founded by three college dropouts, was just valued at $10 billion, according to The Wall Street Journal. The San Francisco company, Mercor, pays doctors, lawyers and others to train AI so machines can perform like human professionals. This is part of a mad rush to fine-tune AI with true human expertise so it can do for free what junior employees do now — and, later, what senior ones get paid good salaries to do.
Why it matters: All of this amplifies publicly what we keep hearing from CEOs privately. Almost every company is planning to slow hiring in the short term, and operate with much smaller human workforces in the future.
The first steps didn’t actually involve AI. Companies have started thinking short term over strategic. As a result you are seeing low level, including entry, positions be eliminated from the company. The notion of a journey, promotion, etc. within the company is gone, it becomes someone else’s problem/job to level up the worker and provide them experience. When every company does this, you end up with no point for anyone to start.
I would agree with that premise, if we would see a dynamic growth on the market. That demand for those companies products and services.
But it doesn’t really look like that.Â
It’s definitely happening. Both my siblings have tech jobs and we’re recently laid off due to AI and outsourcing, now many people are fighting over the service jobs like bartending and retail. Great depression 2.0 here we come
Mostly just excuses to not backfill vacancies and make the ‘lucky staff to have a job,’ work harder not smarter.