this post was submitted on 05 Jun 2024
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Work Reform

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A place to discuss positive changes that can make work more equitable, and to vent about current practices. We are NOT against work; we just want the fruits of our labor to be recognized better.

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[–] [email protected] 27 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Penny wise and pound foolish. They can’t resist the opportunity to exploit, even if it costs the company in the long run.

[–] njm1314 15 points 5 months ago (2 children)

Everyday the idea of an AI CEO sounds less like a joke and more like a great fucking idea.

[–] logi 11 points 5 months ago

At this point it would be most likely to be an LLM which just emulates what it has seen CEOs do in its training data and would do the same sort of thing.

[–] fubbernuckin 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

And more like a nightmare for the rest of us.

[–] [email protected] 5 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Hard to see how it could perform any worse, and the wage savings could be allocated to the people actually doing the work.

Yeah sure... The savings would go to buybacks or dividends, of course.

And that's still a better use of funds than wasting them on an overcompensated CEO.

[–] fubbernuckin 2 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Well the goal of an ideal CEO is to pull more money into the company and give as little out as possible. If we saw more AI CEOs we would just have further wealth disparity in our society and workers at those companies would be paid less as the AI would optimize their pay for maximum company profits. It would be everything we hate about capitalism but amplified, and the person who owned the AI would get paid even more for doing even less.

[–] [email protected] 1 points 5 months ago (1 children)

Correct, but often the actions of CEOs are performative and don't actually support the goal of bringing money in. They like to put on a show of being ruthless, and often behave more psychopathic than an "optimal" business AI would.

For example, it's been proven that employee retention is one of the #1 ways to boost productivity. Costco is one of the few companies with a CEO which truly believes in this and despite paying higher wages than any other grocer they are one of the top performers in my investment portfolio.

Remote work? Totally profitable and AI would maximize it instead of forcing workers back to the office to "put them in their place"

4-day week? Also proven to be a net gain as workers are rested and motivated.

A "cold and calculating" AI would be far more likely to make reforms that benefit both the company and the employees, as it isn't motivated by power structures or the need to look ruthless. Cutting pay is a losing move as it loses talent more than it saves money, and deep learning algorithms would realize this easily.

Also the "person who owns the AI" would actually be the shareholders, who are often ordinary investors. Rather than funneling money to bloated C-suites, the money would be more likely to circulate in the economy through dividends.

[–] fubbernuckin 1 points 5 months ago

This sounds like a rather idealistic outcome to me. Sure those things might happen, but dependent and scared wage slaves work for much less cost.