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Meta is planning sweeping layoffs as AI costs mount (www.reuters.com)
submitted 8 months ago by to c/technology@lemmy.world
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[–] 70 points 8 months ago* (5 children)

AI expected to create efficiencies

Couldn't help but chuckle at that bullet point. We should know by now that AI creates lots of cognitive debt and unstable, vibe-coded software, as well as making people stupid. But one thing it absolutely doesn't seem to do is make things more efficient long term.

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  • [–] 20 points 8 months ago (2 children)

    See we replaced people with costs to run virtual people that would make oracle blush. Are the virtual people any good? Goodness no.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago (1 child)

    Oh, but they provide hallucinations and bug-ridden, incomprehensible code faster than anyone! That's progress, right? Right?

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago

    Through great effort we have molded this once analog curiosity into a digital ouroboros... to very nearly duplicate Kyle from accounting!

    ... Admittedly this would be the Kyle following the unfortunate kick to the head from that clydesdale.

    Nevermind that! We've gone ahead and laid off the rest off accounting and now Kyle² is wielding immesurable power to... Oh. Oh dear.

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  • [–] 3 points 8 months ago* (last edited 8 months ago)

    Layoffs aren't caused by AI efficiency. It's the reverse. Layoffs and other aggressive cost-cutting cause CEOs to blather about future AI efficiencies.

    Efficiency is how CEOs justify being still able to run (no, GROW) their companies with 40% less people. Besides AI, there are the dear old "you have to work harder" efficiency (see: 996 culture or Uber ) and the organizational efficiency where they are all "removing managerial layers to enable quicker execution" (see Amazon for instance).

    See how these things became all fashionable again at the same time with tech company CEOs? It's because they are just excuses and hopes, at this point. And AI is the least bad-sounding of them, because it smells like progress, magic and automation (while even the most rabid of investors will recognize that working employees to death doesn't scale beyond the limited numbers of hours there are in a day).

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