Mastodawn

ketchup71 Feb 28

One thing we know about the mass tech layoffs attributed to "AI" is that they follow a trend of mass tech layoffs that firms were formerly forced to admit were the result of their businesses contracting sharply after the lockdowns ended, when users didn't need nearly so many cloud services. By blaming the continuing layoffs on "AI," companies whose business continues to contract can tell investors that they are on the bleeding edge, not the contracting tail.

1/

Cory Doctorow Feb 28

In related news: yesterday, Block announced it was firing half its engineers to make a "big bet on AI."

Block used to be called "Square" and it had a very successful business as a payment processor. It changed its name to Block when it went all in on crypto.

Block's mass "AI" layoffs coincide with a *50%* drop in Bitcoin, with concomitant collapses in other cryptos. Crypto market watchers warn that the industry is so overleveraged that this could lead to total collapse.

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Cory Doctorow Feb 28

And yet, we're told that Block - a company that is totally exposed to crypto volatility and would face a mass selloff by investors (and possibly a run) if news got out that it was in danger - undertook mass layoffs to "make a big bet on AI" (and not to paper over the terrifying prospects for its crypto-exposed business with high-gloss tales about being on the cutting edge of the Next Big Thing).

Roadskater, Ph.D.Feb 28

@pluralistic Yeah, I've had a long-time position in what are now XYZ shares and it looks like time to move on.

Last SaaS company I had shares in that fired a bunch of people in favor of AI is now down around 30% since the announcement maybe six months ago.

Warren Gallagher Feb 28

@pluralistic If this is what is going on, would it constitute an SEC violation?

Robert Banz Feb 28

@pluralistic Ah, Crypto and AI. Smells like a solid long term plan!

Tor Iver Wilhelmsen Feb 28

@target @pluralistic Yeah, crypto «code is law» is already full of bugs and exploits, imagine the future of vibe-coded rules.

kNeo gHau Feb 28

@toriver @target @pluralistic what bugs and exploits do Bitcoin or Ethereum have? I've never heard of those blockchains being hacked or taken offline, just 3rd party exchanges being exploited.

Three plus or minus five Feb 28

@target @pluralistic @toriver @kneoghau
That’s the point. You don’t need to hack the blockchain: you can just implement badly. Put bad stuff in, be bad about getting stuff out.

You’re only as secure as your weakest link in the whole process. Doesn’t matter how secure your vault is if your tellers are idiots.

Chidozie Nwobilor (he/him)Feb 28

@kneoghau @toriver @target @pluralistic blockchains have built in weaknesses compared to the financial systems they plan to supplant. For example, if someone steals your mastercard and buys a bunch of stuff, you can get those transactions undone, but on blockchain those transactions are permanent barring you convince the *whole* community to fork the chain.

That inflexibility extends to any of the smart contracts implemented on Ethereum. In Dan Olsen's Line Goes Up ( https://youtu.be/YQ_xWvX1n9g?si=Bq-g1I6PjqskySZC) he mentions a game released that released with several bugs that couldn't be fixed without forking and it went very badly for them.

Worse the smart contracts execute regardless of what the wallet owner wants ; the nft/crypto world has rediscovered the security bugs that plagued the early 2000s

Line Goes Up – The Problem With NFTs

YouTube

kNeo gHau Mar 1

@dagclo @toriver @target @pluralistic And a weakness of fiat currency is it can be rolled back. If a government entity (either your own gov, or America) doesn't like who you've (legally) sent money too they can block it, reverse it, or just steal it. Wikileaks was a prime example, adult games on steam, and even more recently Francesca Albanese. Most people don't consider this a bug or exploit in fiat currency.

Chidozie Nwobilor (he/him)Mar 2

@kneoghau @toriver @target @pluralistic The ability to roll back isn't a feature of fiat currency; it's a feature of how modern banking works. Your bank balance isn't a count of all the pennies the bank has in a vault somewhere; it's the net sum of all the transactions in and out of your account. When a bank wants to roll back a transaction, it either adds a reverse transaction or (if they haven't sent it off to be reconciled by the rest of the banks) deletes it. That isn't a feature of fiat currency (you can't do this with a dollar bill for example) and it's not something that cryptocurrency can prevent.
That's because one of the biggest weaknesses of our modern banking system is how much it incentivizes rent-seeking. Right now Fidelity sells cryptocurrency indexes which don't track who owns each individual bitcoin ( or ether, dogecoin , or what-have-you) but the owners of the buy/sell transactions. Fidelity does that for convenience because it and its customers want fast predictable transactions and fees

@toriver @target @pluralistic

Still seems like solid tech to me. My future grandkids will thank me.

@pluralistic why are we calling things "industry" that don't produce anything?

Dźwiedziu Feb 28

@yetzt
It produces pre-products for scams and bribes.
Also a foul smell.

CabbageBeets Feb 28

@yetzt @pluralistic Every time I get a meeting invite for a "workshop" and there's not even a single pillar drill in the meeting room. Disappointment.

Fazal Majid Feb 28

@pluralistic Bryan Cantrill, someone with a clue, judging Jack Dorsey, someone definitely without but good at failing upwards:

https://bcantrill.dtrace.org/2022/11/05/twitter-when-the-wall-came-down/

"I, like many people, have a complicated relationship with Twitter. As Adam and I regaled in a recent Twitter Space, it started when debugging the Twitter fail whale in the offices of Obvious in 2007, where I became thoroughly unimpressed with their self-important skipper, Jack Dorsey. In part because I thought he was such a fool, I refused to join Twitter out of principle."

Twitter, when the wall came down | The Observation Deck

Ben Foote Feb 28

@pluralistic This guy? On an ayahuasca retreat?
https://elk.zone/mastodon.social/@obrhoff/116143435882924497

obrhoff (@[email protected])

Attached: 1 video · Content warning: Ball Slapping.

Mastodon

Avi Rappoport (avirr)Feb 28

@pluralistic Oh great, all those small businesses that use Square for credit card processing are now stuck.

Clinton Anderson SwordForHire Mar 1

@avirr @pluralistic

I'll cry for them as much as I cry for all the people who still use Shitter or Spotify....

Wulfy—Speaker to the machines Feb 28

COOL!

TIME TO GET IN ON THE GROUND FLOOR $19 #BTC AGAIN 😁👍💀

ElegantSimplicity Feb 28

Agreed - it's more of an easy cop out for terrible management than AI taking peoples jobs. The main jobs AI would actually be good at on it's own are middle management and sitting on the board.

GhostOnTheHalfShell Feb 28

@ElegantSimplicity @pluralistic

Yes, that’s true and upper management is beginning to figure that out. The fresh out of college prospects for MBAs might not be very good.

On the bright side may be smart. People would study in different topic although I think in these days, their personal motivations are still about wealth and power

Pēteris Krišjānis Feb 28

@pluralistic 💯☝️

@pluralistic very on point analysis as usual. Thank you!

Shephallmassive Feb 28

@pluralistic Yes in order to have integrated AI into everyday processes replacing employees inside a business- AI tooling is too recent. Critical Internal processes are often held together by a few key people and depend on smallish datasets that doesnt need AI to manage. More likely there are downturns. External expensive consultants may find valid AI use cases which result in advice on internal layoffs of business expertise-but this is not replacement by AI more like a power grab.

Paco Hope Feb 28

@pluralistic
No company has announced “thanks to AI, we have the same number of employees, but we have launched zillions of new services and are growing our product lines because of all the time our people get to spend innovating.”

I don’t know why that is.

wonkothesane Feb 28

@paco @pluralistic Cannot fave/boost this enough.

The proof of the pudding…

Andreas K Feb 28

@paco
That's not three rule that scapegoat #AI is playing in the traditional neoliberal decimation here.
@pluralistic

@paco @pluralistic

They don't want to earn more, they want to spend less...

Hugo Mills Feb 28

@theZosia @paco @pluralistic Oh, that's easy to do. Just shut down the company and cease trading. Total expenditure afterwards is zero.

Be careful what you optimise for. :)

Dr. Eric J. Fielding, PhD Feb 28

@paco @pluralistic Another way to explain the layoffs is, “we are spending billions of dollars on AI data centers, so we don’t have funds left to pay for human employees”.

@paco @pluralistic similarly no one has announced "thanks to AI we have moved to a 4 day workweek."

@paco @pluralistic

It's wild, it's almost like the companies going super hard for "AI" are just lying about their results. Shocking!

Zuri (he/him) ❌️👑 🕐 CET Mar 3

@paco @pluralistic "Thanks to AI, we can get allegedly more done (at least we feel this way) with less people (that we laid off) as can be seen by our profits (our money currently comes from subsidies)"

" Hey Mr. bigCorp CEO, now that you have invested a lot of the shareholder's profits into AI instead of dividends how many more employees will you be hiring to support all the new innovative products and when will we be seeing the lower prices on your current product lines?

or

How many top executives will no longer be needed?

Ben Foote Feb 28

@pluralistic But line must go up.

@benpocalypse @pluralistic

That's a much more pleasant adage than the older "what goes up must come down."

@pluralistic some of the best business leaders and educators have pointed out that layoffs are an act of last resort and you can't cut your way to greatness

Those thoughts echoed through my mind when the Block mass layoffs were announced.

Bo Tally Feb 28

@pluralistic Crypto is only worth what people are willing to pay for it. And people are getting less willing to pay for something with no government guarantees, and that appears to have been designed for drug dealers and money launderers.

Léonie Watson Mar 1

@kleinfreund @pluralistic It is, and always has been, a CapEx accounting move.