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Used to be a very important and popular job. They required a degree of trust and must be pretty skilled to connect so many calls. Yet direct dial made their job obsolete and historic. I bet if we went back in time, they were worried about what job they'll do next. Does that mean we shouldn't be able to just make a call on our own?
I wonder if we can draw any parallels between that and AI today. Hmmmmm. Just food for thought.
Jeremy Falcon
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Technological advances always displace people's jobs and in theory creates new jobs, though not as many and often requiring significant retraining / new skills.
I tend to be less concerned with AI per se and more concerned with the robotization of lots of things (which, yes, AI plays a part in of course) and the droves of people that will be replaced, a significant number being in service industries.
We're not looking at / planning for the social shifts that will result.
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Marc Clifton wrote: We're not looking at / planning for the social shifts that will result.
Tru dat buddy. And unfortunately, the masses will have to learn the hard way over and over again that change is coming.
People have always attempted to pass off "menial"* work onto others since like forever. Doubt human nature will change in our lifetime.
Say for instance, you know once robotics are cheap and advanced enough, everybody will want a robot maid like the Jetsons. Being a made is a service but that will die out eventually too.
* I say menial in quotes because jobs like farming is one of the most honorable jobs out there. But even robots will replace some of that grunt work too.
Jeremy Falcon
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I think the parallel lies in the fact that switchboard operators were only employed until their jobs could be automated. That was just a matter of time and, I think, inevitable.
Some people are definitely in positions where their day-to-day tasks can be automated. It won't be pleasant for them, and probably not pleasant either for the people who would've used their services. Maybe that's the real impediment preventing it from having taken place already on a large scale.
But then there's also a whole category of people who could be replaced by machinery, where cost is the only thing getting in the way. I remember reading an article some years ago, I think involving McDonald's CEO, saying if he could replace people in their kitchens with a $30,000 machine, he'd do it in an instant. The fact that he came to an exact figure means he's already done the calculation and he's just waiting for it to become cheap enough.
Some people's days are numbered for sure.
I wouldn't want to be an unskilled kid quitting school today at the age of 18.
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Have you read the book, Linchpin: Are You Indispensible[^], (2008) by Seth Godin
By coincidence I am listening to it for the 11th time -- yes I'm serious.
I read this book twice and now I listen to it every year, at least once, since I first read it.
Here's a gem:
Linchpin: The difference between what an employee is paid and how much value she produces leads to profit. If the worker captures all the value in her salary, there’s no profit.
As a result, capitalist profit-maximizing investors have long looked for a way to turn low-wage earners into high-value producers. Give someone who makes five dollars a day an efficient machine, a well-run assembly line, and a detailed manual, and you ought to be able to make five or twenty or a thousand times what you paid in labor.
The author is not saying this is a great idea.
He is saying it is "the way the system works".
And when a system works, the people are going to work the system.
People who understand that are going to "work the system" with AI.
Yes, it is too bad. It's why we all have to grow / get skills that AI cannot reproduce easily.
I understand you are one of those who thinks this too and who has skills.
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Maybe it's just me. 10 years ago, I would occasionally poke around DICE and it seemed like real people and companies were posting jobs. Now? Not so much. This is what I see on every posting: "Employers have access to artificial intelligence language tools (“AI”) that help generate and enhance job descriptions and AI may have been used to create this description."
As soon as you go to dice, you get an immediate idiot pop up "is there something I can help you with?" Don't worry, I'm not picking on dice, so many sites and companies have this turd it is a joke. Worse, most of the HUMANS you talk to after getting through the bot are as dumb as a brick as well. Just didn't want to offend bots out there.
The last thing I am going to do is submit anything to a recruiter. Anyone else seeing the AI "revolution" just automating shoveling BS?
Charlie Gilley
“Microsoft is the virus..."
"the problem with socialism is that eventually you run out of other people's money"
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I saw a description recently along the lines of AI enables the wealthy to gain access to skills while denying the skilled access to wealth. Kind of see what they mean.
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Alister Morton wrote: I saw a description recently along the lines of AI enables the wealthy to gain access to skills while denying the skilled access to wealth. Kind of see what they mean.
It's true, but unfortunately in business the labor side of it has never been seen as "valuable" as the business / non-contributor roles. Whether someone agrees with that or not doesn't matter. It is what it is. But from a value perspective, that's how a lot of people think - even if it is shortsighted.
As far as AI changing things, can you blame businesses? If you wanted to buy a car and paint it yellow because your customers love yellow cars... and from your perspective it's the same exact car you're buying... either for 3 million and headaches (tech staff) or $30/month... what would you pick?
They way I see it is, is that's not so much screwing over the skilled. It's that the required skill set for success is changing. We're not the first generation to see change happen. It's inevitable, you either get with the times or just die out. Circle of life.
Jeremy Falcon
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Fair warning, long winded... 
As AI becomes more prevalent, real human interaction will be the next cool thing. Right now, AI is only as good as the person using it. Even that will change in the future. We lived in a time where it was tech and gizmos and took for granted some things. Times change. Life is cyclical. Not saying tech isn't still cool, but we've as a society have gotten used to it. We live in a time where the geniuses are hated and the stuff we do consume is just rehashed over and over again as we stream Netflix and get fat.
Tech is repeatedly new, but not novel... in a manner of speaking. iPhone 27 now with a new camera... again. PS7 with better graphics but the same exact types of games... again. What we lost was the "real". AI will make this worse with spam, garbage, nonsense, etc. I agree, but it's also a result of the tech space being polluted. AI is just a tool - for now. Back in the 70s, all you had to do was say tech and you were paid a nice salary. Then the money grabbers came in and polluted the industry. That's finally changing, and it's great. Time to weed out the people in it for the wrong reasons.
This over abundance is great in a way. It'll make the crap very obvious. Since life is cyclical, once it gets really bad people will eventually wake up. I'm not hating AI btw, it'll do a better job than the generic, lazy, carbon copy recruiters. And if it weeds out the people that only got into tech for money... great. It's a good thing. But, it will also make real, genuine stuff more valuable as it also pollutes the ecosystem even more like like a crappy, spammy website does today. And just be another cog in the system of blah mixed with a few actual key players while the rest of the space is polluted.
Which is to say, get people on the phone. Be nice to recruiters (the good ones). If they're cool peeps, keep in touch even if you don't need a job. If you don't know anyone yet, there is more than on job site: dice, indeed, monster, Google, etc. Times change, some times that used to be good aren't any more. But knowing people will never change. All industries change, but if I were a gambling man, I'd bet the next wave of tech will be the opposite of what we've seen and more of a shift towards getting back what we've lost - human connection. It'll probably be expression through tech, but connection is the goal. If a recruiter asks you questions, take it as a complement. Human connection will never go out of vogue. I'm not saying be their BFFs, but be friendly and memorable. If the ones you do talk to are terrible, ignore them and move on... they're just a distraction.
Long winded way of saying, human connection is the next wave man. The blah spam is only going to get worse. For you typical LOB job, if they still exist in the future, will have such generic posts for them. Specializing will still happen, but for your run of the mill LOB type apps that can be generated by AI, nope... that's going away. It's not 20 years ago anymore. Human connection, communication, and prompt engineering is the future unless you specialize. Even web development, despite being so popular, will eventually succumb to AI generating cookie cutter sites too.
P.S. If you've talked to any recruiters in the past you liked, give them a call if you still have their number.
Jeremy Falcon
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Jeremy Falcon wrote: I'd bet the next wave of tech will be the opposite of what we've seen and more of a shift towards getting back what we've lost
That day can't come fast enough, bro.
Tech today is making me hate people. It makes me want to dissociate from tech, as I'm deep into it, have made a career out of it, but what people do with it nowadays is NOT what I signed up for. People who know me are surprised and sometimes don't believe me when I say (for one thing) I'm very much against social media in all its forms, thinking I'd be all in, while in reality nothing could be further from the truth. It's not a case of cognitive dissonance, I don't sing its praises. I don't think Mark Zuckerberg is our lord and savior, I view him more like the anti-Christ. Seriously.
It used to be only nerds "got" tech. Then "the rest" got involved, and now it's all about me, me, me, my number of subscribers, my views, and smashing the Like button. The one word that always makes me roll my eyes nowadays is "influencer". FOAD already, you're not exerting any sort power over me, in fact the more involved you get into your own sh*t the more pathetic I think you are.
In a group at a table in a restaurant, I'm the one guy left who isn't glued to his phone and would rather have a face-to-face conversation. People sitting at the same table texting each other make me want to take their phone out of their hand and place it in their drink.
I'm just hoping that this next wave of tech you're forecasting has nothing to do with people and anticipating their every want and need. That's profiling, we're already there and it's the nastiest thing that's happened to civilization.
So IMO if the next wave of tech is the opposite of what we've seen, then it has to be something that leaves people out of it and does NOT make the individual the center of the world. I don't know what it'll be, and I don't how we get there. But I think the solution has to be less tech, and less trying to "connect people", not more.
And that doesn't make one a luddite.
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charlieg wrote: Anyone else seeing the AI "revolution" just automating shoveling BS?
Nothing can generate more BS per unit of time than a computer.
But as people in that field have already realized (and voiced their concerns about), when it starts feeding itself it dilutes its own value.
There are some useful applications, but generally speaking I think it'll just implode upon itself and it'll be good riddance.
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At home document appeal can be difficult to overcome (11)
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I'm going to leave it for the moment - I can't justify the middle bit!
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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what the appeal bit ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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I have the beginning and end too, and definition. but...
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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Which bit can't you see ? is it the appeal bit ?
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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same as OG's solution immediately below
Software rusts. Simon Stephenson, ca 1994. So does this signature. me, 2012
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OK, I'll my my (hopefully wrong) solution:
At home IN
document appeal DOMIT (I can't justify this at all!)
can be ABLE
difficult to overcome
INDOMITABLE
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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It's the right answer
At home IN
document DOM
appeal IT (as in the it factor)
can able
Maybe not the best written clue 
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
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Maybe not ... but it worked.
I'd probably have gone with "D" and "OMIT" rather than "DOM" and "IT" though working the clue with just "D" would probably have been a fair amount of work.
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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I had intractable, but could not figure out either the tract or the able parts.
leaving out 500 for D OMIT
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I'm a bit rusty - you have the makings of a better clue than mine there 
In a closed society where everybody's guilty, the only crime is getting caught. In a world of thieves, the only final sin is stupidity. - Hunter S Thompson - RIP
modified 2hrs 15mins ago.
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"TRACT" works for "Document" - it means a pamphlet or leaflet.
I'm rusty as well ... 
"I have no idea what I did, but I'm taking full credit for it." - ThisOldTony
"Common sense is so rare these days, it should be classified as a super power" - Random T-shirt
AntiTwitter: @DalekDave is now a follower!
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Wordle 1,215 3/6*
🟨🟨⬛🟩⬛
⬛⬛🟩🟩🟩
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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Wordle 1,215 3/6*
⬜⬜🟩🟨⬜
🟨🟩🟩⬜🟨
🟩🟩🟩🟩🟩
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