Can't be forklift certified from home. AI and robotics ain't there yet. And even then they can work it from India.

Jul 26, 2023 18:08:30 GMT Gyro LC said:

Jul 26, 2023 5:46:55 GMT NATH45 said:

What's stopping all these companies offering WFH from just off-shoring everything to the cheapest option?

Public perception? Maybe.

I'm sure the shareholders wouldn't mind seeing a positive shift in profitability from eliminating a local workforce and all of the associated entitlements.

If you're crunching numbers from the bedroom, there's absolutely no reason a kid in India or China can't do the same for a fraction of the price.

Have you ever worked with off-shore teams? I have and it can be quite miserable. Some can be ok to work with but most of the time you get what you pay for. Plus, the off-shore workers are constantly leaving to new jobs so there's no continuity and you're always training new people, which is a blackhole for productivity.

It's painful. My previous employer's base support was Indian. " have you tried turning it off and on? " sure, the hole in the wall needs turning on and off.

Obviously for more important or critical tasks, you'd hire or contract out with a lot more tact. Looking for long term commitments and expertise.

Creative fields, programming.. alot of industries wouldn't bat an eyelid at hiring the most qualified individual for the role, regardless of location with the option of working remotely. Why shouldn't more traditionally localised businesses? The most qualified Injury Recovery Specialist I was working with was based in Perth, on the otherside of the country.

So in a sense, to stop employers looking else where, you need to weigh up how much value you add to the company or culture within the business.

But is it so difficult to do what you are asked of your employer? They're not asking you to climb scaffolding or dangle from windows with a rag on a stick.. they're asking people to go and sit in an office and contribute, beyond just crunching paperwork and pretending to care during zoom meetings.

Jul 26, 2023 21:25:45 GMT @ness said:

Can't be forklift certified from home. AI and robotics ain't there yet. And even then they can work it from India.

All jokes aside, AI has Hollywood scared.

What's stopping AI from writing corporate policy, or compiling reporting and delivering analysis? That's a task someone likely does every day in every organisation. AI would probably do it in a fraction of the time, with more detail, with zero emotion or justification and without crying about its 'BMM' or it's need to 'ease into the week' and it's cheap, long term.

It's already happening to some degree, but if organisations can find a way to streamline a process, they will.

Once upon a time, retail used manual ordering. Meaning someone was paid to walk around, count everything and create an order. Today, and for the better half of 20 years, an inventory system uses data to forecast and generate orders. Not a human being insight.

In the US people still do not want to mentor women after the #MeToo movement. That was the lesson many in corporate America took out of that conservation, it is better to just not mentor women to avoid any misunderstandings that will later cost you your job. And studies showed that their mentoring experiences plummeted afterwards.

And here we do not really do mentoring in these types of jobs. Remember we do not promote from within and mentoring is considered time off task, and if you have time off task it means you should be rewarded with another person's workload.

Your way is ideal absolutely no doubt about it and will produce the highest quality of worker. But that is not the goal of the American company. The goal is to get the cheapest worker of a sufficient quality to maximize profits.

And while the people at these companies may be liberal, once you get to the top, they are almost all conservative as conservatives policies means significantly more cash for the executives. Head of most companies are conservative donors and the holding companies that own them are almost always major conservative donors.

Jul 26, 2023 21:45:34 GMT NATH45 said:

But is it so difficult to do what you are asked of your employer? They're not asking you to climb scaffolding or dangle from windows with a rag on a stick.. they're asking people to go and sit in an office and contribute, beyond just crunching paperwork and pretending to care during zoom meetings.

If people want a job where they go into the office, then they should have one. If they want to work remotely then they should either negotiate with their employer to do so or find a new job.

If employers want their employees in an office, fine. They are likely going to have difficulty filling positions. A previous software company I worked for was anti-WFH. They made us return to the office as quickly as possible, April 2021. Within a year, the 50 person office was down to nine, as people left to other positions. I was part of the interviewing and hiring team there. We were able to hire about three people in a year because once the candidates found out there was no WFH (besides when you had a doctor appointment or something like that), they declined the position.

Jul 26, 2023 22:08:03 GMT NATH45 said:

Jul 26, 2023 21:25:45 GMT @ness said:

Can't be forklift certified from home. AI and robotics ain't there yet. And even then they can work it from India.

All jokes aside, AI has Hollywood scared.

What's stopping AI from writing corporate policy, or compiling reporting and delivering analysis? That's a task someone likely does every day in every organisation. AI would probably do it in a fraction of the time, with more detail, with zero emotion or justification and without crying about its 'BMM' or it's need to 'ease into the week' and it's cheap, long term.

It's already happening to some degree, but if organisations can find a way to streamline a process, they will.

Once upon a time, retail used manual ordering. Meaning someone was paid to walk around, count everything and create an order. Today, and for the better half of 20 years, an inventory system uses data to forecast and generate orders. Not a human being insight.

The AI thing is hollywood is really fucked up and Flash was the breaking point.  As it stands now, if you preforms in a movie as a character, the studio owns the rights forever to reuse that character in any movie without paying you a second time.  That is what they are pissed off at.  It is not so much about AI, but about image rights.  Believed if nothing is done, studies can replace most background actors in a few years time with current AI tech, meaning cast of movies really reduces to people with significant speaking parts.

The talk of AI replacing jobs really feels like a lot of people were exempt from the tech and automation job replacement wave of the last 40 years and are really waking up to the fact they are not as irreplaceable as they assumed.  Frankly, if your job can be done by a computer, than a computer should be doing your job.  They are 100% consistent, and never tire.

Jul 26, 2023 22:48:30 GMT Gyro LC said:

Jul 26, 2023 21:45:34 GMT NATH45 said:

But is it so difficult to do what you are asked of your employer? They're not asking you to climb scaffolding or dangle from windows with a rag on a stick.. they're asking people to go and sit in an office and contribute, beyond just crunching paperwork and pretending to care during zoom meetings.

If people want a job where they go into the office, then they should have one. If they want to work remotely then they should either negotiate with their employer to do so or find a new job.

If employers want their employees in an office, fine. They are likely going to have difficulty filling positions. A previous software company I worked for was anti-WFH. They made us return to the office as quickly as possible, April 2021. Within a year, the 50 person office was down to nine, as people left to other positions. I was part of the interviewing and hiring team there. We were able to hire about three people in a year because once the candidates found out there was no WFH (besides when you had a doctor appointment or something like that), they declined the position.

This is happening all over too.  Working in office adds costs and adds in unpaid transportation time, which essentially reduces your pay.  Jobs can demand workers back, but they cannot force people to work for them.  And in a workers market, you fuck around, you will quickly find out and see your company collapse as people offering WFH take the qualified workers from the market.

Jul 26, 2023 22:53:47 GMT c said:

Jul 26, 2023 22:08:03 GMT NATH45 said:

All jokes aside, AI has Hollywood scared.

What's stopping AI from writing corporate policy, or compiling reporting and delivering analysis? That's a task someone likely does every day in every organisation. AI would probably do it in a fraction of the time, with more detail, with zero emotion or justification and without crying about its 'BMM' or it's need to 'ease into the week' and it's cheap, long term.

It's already happening to some degree, but if organisations can find a way to streamline a process, they will.

Once upon a time, retail used manual ordering. Meaning someone was paid to walk around, count everything and create an order. Today, and for the better half of 20 years, an inventory system uses data to forecast and generate orders. Not a human being insight.

The AI thing is hollywood is really fucked up and Flash was the breaking point.  As it stands now, if you preforms in a movie as a character, the studio owns the rights forever to reuse that character in any movie without paying you a second time.  That is what they are pissed off at.  It is not so much about AI, but about image rights.  Believed if nothing is done, studies can replace most background actors in a few years time with current AI tech, meaning cast of movies really reduces to people with significant speaking parts.

The talk of AI replacing jobs really feels like a lot of people were exempt from the tech and automation job replacement wave of the last 40 years and are really waking up to the fact they are not as irreplaceable as they assumed.  Frankly, if your job can be done by a computer, than a computer should be doing your job.  They are 100% consistent, and never tire.

The actors strikes reminds me of the Luddites smashing automation equipment because it was eliminating jobs.
Its funny how those who might have sneered at blue collar workers all face the same threat eventually

Flash literally just did what they were afraid of though. Flash used AI versions of actors, some dead, without paying claiming they owned the rights to the image.  

And replacing background actors with AI has been slowly creeping into films as it is.

These are cases of SAG actors losing potential jobs.

But even then, AI was one of 8 pages of demands from the guild. A lot of the other demands were very justified. And costs were less than .1% of profits a studio makes to fulfil. But the studios will find out, as those who comply with the demands will have their work exempted from the strike and get to release to an empty market.

If studios want actors, they need to create an environment they want to work in.  Or they do not get them.  They are free to scab all they want.  Get a high school drama kid to take a lead role in a blockbuster and see how well it sells.  Or try to sell an indian star to the conservative market.

Jul 26, 2023 23:55:19 GMT c said:

Flash literally just did what they were afraid of though. Flash used AI versions of actors, some dead, without paying claiming they owned the rights to the image.  

And replacing background actors with AI has been slowly creeping into films as it is.

These are cases of SAG actors losing potential jobs.

But even then, AI was one of 8 pages of demands from the guild. A lot of the other demands were very justified. And costs were less than .1% of profits a studio makes to fulfil. But the studios will find out, as those who comply with the demands will have their work exempted from the strike and get to release to an empty market.

If studios want actors, they need to create an environment they want to work in.  Or they do not get them.  They are free to scab all they want.  Get a high school drama kid to take a lead role in a blockbuster and see how well it sells.  Or try to sell an indian star to the conservative market.

Yes, but to arc up over this will just see a drive towards ai generated actors.
One or two stars then ai generated supporting cast overlaid over generic actors.
That way you get continuity of product without being held captive to the supporting cast.

This is what automation did in Industry turned trades into machine attendants.
It's unavoidable.

The issue is not in relation to AI created actors. The issue is now if you did a single movie, the studio owns that image of you for AI use in future films. So Affleck's Bruce Wayne could appear in any future film the studio does as a background actor via AI legally right now. They need a waiter in a film to bring the romantic leads wine, Affleck's take on Bruce Wayne could appear as a generic waiter without paying Affleck.

And that is what the studios want to do, reuse the likeness of actors, not use AI to create new ones. Flash was the first time they actually did it in a major way, and as predicted, the Reeves family, John Wesley Shipp, and others were not paid for their appearances in the film since it was an AI likeness of them that appeared.

Jul 27, 2023 0:53:54 GMT c said:

The issue is not in relation to AI created actors. The issue is now if you did a single movie, the studio owns that image of you for AI use in future films. So Affleck's Bruce Wayne could appear in any future film the studio does as a background actor via AI legally right now. They need a waiter in a film to bring the romantic leads wine, Affleck's take on Bruce Wayne could appear as a generic waiter without paying Affleck.

And that is what the studios want to do, reuse the likeness of actors, not use AI to create new ones. Flash was the first time they actually did it in a major way, and as predicted, the Reeves family, John Wesley Shipp, and others were not paid for their appearances in the film since it was an AI likeness of them that appeared.

This won't impact big stars, it will be in their contracts how their image is and isn't used.
The issue is that it is turning acting into a commodity, the same way it will do to a thousand other professions.
The best still have a job, but the rest don't.
It's why you don't need to be trade qualified to work on a car assembly line, the machine does the work... How is this different?

In manufacturing there is a job of a toolmaker to produce the moulds, but once you make the mould the parts can be produced in volume.
This is why an average person can afford a car.
With AI we will probably get an average person able to afford making a movie.

The use of their likeness was not in contracts for the last 100 years though, only recently have they included. So all past performances are open to be reused as AI for future films. They want to be paid when their image is used. That is the main issue. And they do not believe that studios should be able to use their image from past films in the manner they are now without paying them.

And this is a red line demand, so either the studios give this shit up, or they just do not have America actors anymore. This is the issue with the absolutely most support in the strike, which is why it gets the media attention and the other demands get glossed over.

With entertainment evolving, most actors hedge now anyway with modeling, streaming, non-traditional entertainment work like TTRPG's and other shit. A lot of this crowd can go indefinitely without Hollywood gigs, or just work internationally.

Now that all studios are running streaming content, they cannot do the same if they want to retain customers.  

Jul 26, 2023 23:37:50 GMT iNCY said:

Jul 26, 2023 22:53:47 GMT c said:

The AI thing is hollywood is really fucked up and Flash was the breaking point.  As it stands now, if you preforms in a movie as a character, the studio owns the rights forever to reuse that character in any movie without paying you a second time.  That is what they are pissed off at.  It is not so much about AI, but about image rights.  Believed if nothing is done, studies can replace most background actors in a few years time with current AI tech, meaning cast of movies really reduces to people with significant speaking parts.

The talk of AI replacing jobs really feels like a lot of people were exempt from the tech and automation job replacement wave of the last 40 years and are really waking up to the fact they are not as irreplaceable as they assumed.  Frankly, if your job can be done by a computer, than a computer should be doing your job.  They are 100% consistent, and never tire.

The actors strikes reminds me of the Luddites smashing automation equipment because it was eliminating jobs.
Its funny how those who might have sneered at blue collar workers all face the same threat eventually

It's interesting that not a single celebrity was leading the charge for minimum paid workers (I could be wrong) but leading the charge in Hollywood was someone reportedly earning $1.5m an episode in 98/99, and worth something like $25m now.

I get it, it's for the greater good. But it's a little bit like Metallica losing their minds in the early 2000s over MP3s.

This is a union dispute though, why would their union care about what people in other fields make?  When a field is completely unionized this is what happens when companies do not give into worker demands, you get a total strike, and workers stop working for you.

Really got to love where America is now.

If you work a blue collar job and are upset with your pay, you should have gotten college degree so you could be hired for a better job.

If you go to college and got a degree but are still upset with your pay, you should have not went to college and gotten a blue collar job instead to learn a trade.

So glad people are still quitting jobs at the drop of a hat. People love to shit on workers, but the entitlement of companies is so out of control.

Federal reserve report on work from home dropped.

42% of companies that demanded a return to office are seeing higher than expected quit rates. 29% are struggling with recruitment now. Moreso 76% of workers say if offices return to office only policies they will leave.

Workers on average consider a return to work as the same as being asked to take a 3% pay cut.

For new hires, 42% of workers said they will not accept an office only job.

In an environment with more jobs that skilled workers to fill them, it is clear what is causing the decline in productivity seen from companies that demanded people return to the office. They lack the staff to return to ideal staffing levels and it is now hurting their production levels.

fortune.com/2023/08/01/research-damaging-results-mandated-return-to-office-worse-than-we-thought-rto-remote-work-careers-leadership-gleb-tsipursky/

Seeing some really interesting shake ups appearing in tech. Google worker are leaving. Other major tech companies are seeing workers leave as well due to return to office mandates. Likely gonna take their skills and experience to small companies now. Will end up as a major downward infusion of talent, which will likely lead to an innovation boom. Coupled with the mass layoffs earlier this year to shore up stock prices for a recession that never came, tech workers got really shaken up before companies.

Meanwhile for grocery groups, they are associating increasing pricing as a way to offset losses due to lower volume of sales and are planning another price of price hikes to keep profit flowing. Kraft, Campbell and other groups say they are committed to increasing margins and will be increasing prices again in the near future. They justify the increases by saying their competitors increased prices in reaction to their price hikes. So prices will keep increasing until net profit decreases. Biden will of course get blamed for this max greed inflation.

On the flip side, the term greedflation for increasing prices as far as possible will stick. Call it what you want, but ultimate it is greed driving max possible profit margins at the cost of national inflation. Likewise rate hikes are also here to stay since companies will not yield on pricing.  Until they yield, they will take a penalty on their investments.  

Industrywide we are seeing record levels of stock buybacks and investor dividends.  

Times are changing for tech.

I'll attempt a simple analogy. Maybe it's a metaphor..

It takes a lot of people to build a house. But once that house is built, you don't need all of those people anymore. Maybe you need a builder to do some renovations, maybe you need to do some upkeep. Maybe you employ a groundskeeper. But the house is built.

Now, there's people out of work. Unless of cause they start building another house.

The social media age was one house, the dotcom era before it was another.

My advice would be to all of these incredibly smart people would be to pivot while it's in its infancy and start building the next house - AI.

Aug 6, 2023 0:04:24 GMT NATH45 said:

Times are changing for tech.

I'll attempt a simple analogy. Maybe it's a metaphor..

It takes a lot of people to build a house. But once that house is built, you don't need all of those people anymore. Maybe you need a builder to do some renovations, maybe you need to do some upkeep. Maybe you employ a groundskeeper. But the house is built.

Now, there's people out of work. Unless of cause they start building another house.

The social media age was one house, the dotcom era before it was another.

My advice would be to all of these incredibly smart people would be to pivot while it's in its infancy and start building the next house - AI.

That's a great analogy, the only part that's a little worrying for IT workers is that AI can build its own house.
Network infrastructure, coding and database management will all become AI driven. You will have senior coders running people generating code with AI, probably need very few people.

Twitter is also a great example of how many people you need to actually keep a technology platform running. It seems the FANG companies were hiring to justify their share price.

The clients for IT remain humans though and the humans who need IT will likely still need IT workers.

And AI CAN do all of those things, but only along a set path. If you want customized options you will need a human team still. A lot of what people are thinking AI can do, it simply cannot do at this point, and is not likely to do based on the way neutral networks work.

Aug 6, 2023 0:04:24 GMT NATH45 said:

Times are changing for tech.

I'll attempt a simple analogy. Maybe it's a metaphor..

It takes a lot of people to build a house. But once that house is built, you don't need all of those people anymore. Maybe you need a builder to do some renovations, maybe you need to do some upkeep. Maybe you employ a groundskeeper. But the house is built.

Now, there's people out of work. Unless of cause they start building another house.

The social media age was one house, the dotcom era before it was another.

My advice would be to all of these incredibly smart people would be to pivot while it's in its infancy and start building the next house - AI.

You're not wrong, but a house doesn't change all that drastically once it's built.

Big tech is more like a car, where the model gets a refresh/complete changeover every few years. No car (aside from maybe commercial vans) looks like it did 10-15 years ago, they'd appear dated and sales would go down.

Tech companies have to constantly refine and innovate or be left behind for the next big thing, like Myspace to Facebook to IG to Snapchat to TikTok to whatever the hell is coming next, Ustream to Youtube.

The point being, AI is in its infancy.

It won't replace human beings for a long, long time because we are just entering into the design, pioneering and innovation stages. We are building the AI house.

I know AI invokes images from Science Fiction, but ignore that and start thinking about how AI will be utilised by business and industry in streamlining ordering, inventory, forecasting, etc or bettering the systems already in place. There are so many possibilities.. or how connectivity will be become the standard in homes and offices beyond the Nest and Mesh and basic extenders everyone is using today. People will need to design, build and implement all of this and thus an entire industry will grow around it. An electrician will wire your new home, the plumber will lay the pipes.. the connectivity technician will arrive and install a fully tailored, personalised AI driven system that maintains and monitors your internet and internal connectivity, security and sustainability (lighting, power, solar) and more. It will manage your home so you don't have to.

So ignore the doomsday scenario and think about the endless commercial and personal potentials of AI and it's application in the real world.

AI is another piece of automation. And it is very good at doing simple tasks with limited options.

I suspect in the very near future you will start to see companies go under out of nowhere because they are using AI and hit a local minimum problem, or an identification problem, where AI gives the wrong answer, locks up for seemingly no reason or gives an impossible outcome. And if this happens in an automated system it can be disastrous. Looks at Musk's cars slamming into emergency vehicles because it does not see orange flashing lights as being part of a car.

My favorite part of AI, is AI operates with an acceptable error threshold that most people are not aware exists. Use this when mistakes cost cash, you need to be prepared to lose the error threshold due to mistakes it will make. Want it to build a database, you will need to accept part of that database will likely be built wrong and drop data as a result.

Give AI existing blueprints and it can properly replicate the building to spec, but it cannot really design a new one. So even though a tech company could, in theory, lay off the bulk of its workforce once its core product is up and going it would IMO be its death knell because you're losing the people to come up with its next innovations, or to fix bugs.

Found an issue with the house after a month where its plumbing isn't angled correctly and can cause a sewage backup? AI ain't fixing that for you.

Also by the time we get to the point of magic box AI, which is what some think AI is, we also have reached sentient AI. And sentient AI almost everyone believes will be the end of the human race as AI will simply no longer need humans at all and can self-replicate.

Recent study show 80% of bosses regret promoting return to office when they did, saying it cost them employees and made recruiting their replacements extremely hard.

One of the main complaints on management side of work from home, is the problems of making investments in the corporate real estate market not knowing where they can employees into an office.

www.cnbc.com/2023/08/11/80percent-of-bosses-say-they-regret-earlier-return-to-office-plans.html

Posting the same article every week skewed with a slightly different perspective isn't going to change the fact eventually everybody is returning to the office.

37% of total jobs that can entirely be done from home and 25% of people work entirely from home right now. That is 67% of jobs that can be done entirely from hole, are. Majority of the 33% of other jobs now hybrid 2 to 3 days a week.

This is not looking at a full return to office. Force your workers back and without fail you lose 30% to 50% of them. Most work from home do not live in the same state as the office, some not even the same country. It is cheaper to quit your current job, than move. Plenty of jobs that are fully remote. And this is why majority of workers even in companies that demand people return to the office are still working from home. Read the old fine print. Only locals are made to return to the office. The rest get to keep working from home as they were.

This is why each week there is a study getting major news coverage that shows the fight against work from home is counterproductive. All this does is bring a minority of your staff back and pisses them off so they look for a new job. No one wants to work remote in an office.

I mean if you got the resume to demand it, go for it. Much like AEW and the Twitch clauses from years ago, if you can dictate the terms you do.