Dropbox is the next company firing a significant amount of people to pursue the magical dragon "AI". Dropbox. A service that people just want to store their files, sync properly and make them shareable.
Sure they need some bullshit generators. The whole tech sector is just brain worms these days.
@tante sorry you seem to have deleted that file a while ago. Here are some guesses I made regarding its contents based on its name and the places you appear to have frantically searched for it:
...
@tante i can see a lot of AI applications in dropbox specifically around search. But am not convinced that the investments needed here are connected to layoffs.
This is more like a convenient timing to do some cost cutting to boost shareholder wealth
I like the equation: AI = brainworms.
@mjgardner @tante The economic forces behind public punditry and analysis don't incentivize truth or correctness, and often discourage it. A few rare public analysts aim for correctness and rigor, but they're unusual and fighting against the system they're in.
Which... actually I suspect would argue against AI, since random generally-analysis-shaped output is less well tailored towards the needs and purpose of public punditry than what we actually have.
@mjgardner @tante They're pundit-*shaped*, sure, but the point of punditry isn't to fill air time/word count with blather, it's generally to push a particular agenda (or company, or client portfolio) which still requires more understanding of things than the current LLMs have.
...OK, actually, I think I may have argued myself out of this -- we would probably be net better as a species if punditry was random machine generated bullshit than what we have now.
The financial services industry has been ordered to orchestrate a recession for 2024.
It's all the Republican billionaire donors funding sedition can talk about.
Non-economists like real estate magnate Sam Zell adore it when their short sells come to fruition.
https://www.costar.com/article/1152237605/real-estate-magnate-sam-zell-moonlights-as-economist
@tante When businesses pursue endless growth, convenience and utility are no longer enough. Especially when incumbents like Apple and Google build in their own native storage solutions, chipping away at your market. So you're forced to innovate and become "more than just file storage," for better or worse.
I wonder what Dropbox AI will do.
@tante I'm so sick of companies going rouge and creating work for me when I have to move to a more ethical service.
This is why I tell people to use open source platforms, cause the likelihood of having to deal with garbage like this is far lower.
@tante discussing this on a different thread, but
I don't think they are doing any "AI"
I think they are just failing, firing people to cut costs, and using "AI" to cover it all up
I wouldn't take every announcement that a company is "pursuing AI" at face value
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