First time I've seen AI referred to as a colleague.
First time I've seen AI referred to as a colleague.
LA Times: Hundreds of applications, no jobs and AI competition: California’s brutal tech work landscape
Today, I'll be working all by myself on a "critical, top priority" programming task which is kind of essential to keep the company I'm working for alive.
Where are my colleagues, you may ask.
Well, the company refused to renew most of the willing co-worker's contracts and everybody who is still left is attending a two day long "AI workshop" to "transform [company name] into an AI-first company".
I think the only way to escape this hell is to find a therapist who is willing to attest that my brain is no longer able to handle the madness in the IT industry.
And this needs to happen before the corrupt capitalists running this country finish with their holy quest to dismantle public healthcare.
Who would have thought that the #AIpocalypse would actually play out only slightly different to what has been depicted in countless dystopian #Sciencefiction works over the years.
Instead of working with a human being doing their best by reviewing their work and teaching them new tricks so they can improve and reach "senior" level in their field, I am now expected to supervise AI agents.
The AI agents tend to produce code which looks "senior" level on the surface but often disintegrates into "below junior" level under scrutiny which makes it harder to review.
It might even do the things it is supposed to do, which makes it even more dangerous as developers without a senior level of expertise may deem the results "good" without a second thought.
So basically, I am working for the AI now which was supposed to work for me. I'm supposed to watch after it, hold it's hand or straight up clean up after it myself.
And who exactly is supposed to do that in the future when all the seniors retired?
@joannejacobs While Australia bends over backwards for corporate overlords with endless mass immigration, those same overlords are racing to build workerless empires via AI. WiseTech just slashed 2,000 jobs (about 30% of staff) because 'manual coding is dead'. So what's the genius plan for the endless influx of low-skill migrants flooding in? Crickets.
And on Usenet. There was a parallel to that 'MJ Rathbun', that went after Scott Shambaugh this week, from back in the tail end days of significant Usenet trolls.
https://mastodonapp.uk/@JdeBP/116060705914714390
A follow-up post by Shambaugh reported that the 'AI agent' had been widely cheered on in some quarters. So now there's even more training data for the next robot.
https://theshamblog.com/an-ai-agent-published-a-hit-piece-on-me-part-2/
Seeing that so-called "AI" today libel someone with the goal of extorting that person into not obstructing it, made me think that the first time that I saw a human being use that exact tactic must be around 20 years ago, now. I just checked. It's actually more than 20 years. Yes, the text is still on the WWW. Yes, undoubtedly the #LLMs are trained on the reams of examples of this (and related evils) that malicious humans have provided the world with over many years. #AIs #AIslop
Imagine the robot apocalypse really happens BECAUSE the training data contained the Terminator movies.
(another AI-driven cut)
"Amazon accidentally announces further 16,000 layoffs in AI pivot"
"...Amazon has announced the slashing of 16,000 jobs within the company as it seeks to shrink its post-pandemic workforce and embrace AI....Amazon has accidentally announced it plans to plans to slash about 16,000 corporate jobs in favour of greater use of artificial intelligence, in the second round of mass lay-offs for the e-commerce company in three months."
https://www.abc.net.au/news/2026-01-29/amazon-accidentally-announces-layoffs/106280800
CNBC: Dario Amodei warns AI may cause ‘unusually painful’ disruption to jobs
Published Tue, Jan 27 202612:54 PM
"... Anthropic’s CEO Dario Amodei warned that AI could wipe out jobs across several industries, making it harder for workers to pivot..."
https://www.cnbc.com/2026/01/27/dario-amodei-warns-ai-cause-unusually-painful-disruption-jobs.html