this post was submitted on 01 Sep 2023
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I came here to say this. We've had threats of "AI" for a while, and initially, it should have been better, but it wasn't. Look at the latest voice assistant from your favorite large corporation spy gadget, like an echo dot. The voice assistant sucks. It constantly misunderstands you, half the time you get feedback like "I don't understand" despite asking for something you've asked for before, in the same way you've asked before, and had it do something before, but now, no, fuck you.
Responses are repetitious and boring, like "playing (song) by (artist) on (streaming service)" or "turning on x lights".... Always the same, always boring. Ask about almost anything beyond a function, and usually you get a quote snippet from a webpage you've never heard of, which only mentions whatever you asked for and doesn't provide any actual information 90% of the time. It would be more useful for it to respond with "I found this on the web" followed by the sounds of hippos farting.
This is the "AI" we had until now, and it's the AI we constantly interact with. None of the star trek computer level intelligence where you can ask your assistant to increase the illumination, and have it do something because it understands the intent behind what you're saying, not just running a select statement on your literal words... And that's even if it understands at all. You don't see Will Riker standing there arguing with the computer like "no, I asked for a coffee" while the replicator is populated by a cookie.
Then LLMs go into widespread use and the system shits out stuff like chat GPT which most people can't seem distinguish from talking to a person, and now we live in this hellscape. AI chatbots are now selling us shit, replying to our emails, posing as real people even....
And I'm just talking about speech-based AI.... Don't get me started on the insanity of image AI.
You don't have to look at things like that. Think of a different voice assistant. The one at every telephone system at every big corporation that's now "intelligent."
That used to be a person.
AI is already taking away jobs.
Many of those jobs were already killed off by IVR systems.
Any company that still has a live "operator" type job.... Well, it's usually piled onto another role, like receptionist. Many small to mid sized businesses basically hire a receptionist as a catch all for other jobs. Someone to accept deliveries, answer the phone, greet people coming in, do little odd jobs around the office.
Reduction of the workforce by turning a once straight forward job like receptionist into an agglutination of smaller jobs that they don't want to have to pay someone to do, is the norm. Eliminating positions and entire swarms of people with a single individual who both doesn't really do a job, but does every job.