Artificial Intelligence

[trueblue1234]

Most companies should be looking at AI in some format. The problem is that you don't know, what you don't know. So companies all know they need to be getting on board with AI but have no idea why or what it can do for them.

[seafoid]

AI is being used as an excuse by firms to lay off people they over hired during Covid.
It makes them sound cutting edge by claiming they are using AI to power ahead with innovation. In reality, most of them are grappling with how to make use of it.

British Telecom is laying off 42,000 workers and 10,000 of those are due to AI.

[imtommygunn]

Half of it is a front the AI replacing jobs thing. The bigger companies want to get more and more with less investment. The bigger companies are just trying to squeeze employees more. You can see a lot of companies stripping back to the bare bones.

[seafoid]

Half of it is a front the AI replacing jobs thing. The bigger companies want to get more and more with less investment. The bigger companies are just trying to squeeze employees more. You can see a lot of companies stripping back to the bare bones.

https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4e70c-7c28-424f-b345-9c84b8898939

BT is to slash up to 42 per cent of its workforce by the end of the decade as the UK telecoms group embarks on its most radical cost-cutting since it was privatised in the 1980s. The move comes two days after rival Vodafone unveiled plans to axe 11,000 jobs over the next three years to boost its flagging performance. Chief executive Philip Jansen said the group would become "a leaner business with a brighter future," adding that many of those reductions would come from the end of the full fibre rollout that the group was "spending a fortune on now".

[screenexile]

I don't know enough about it to implement it in a serious way in work.

I use it from time to time to draft things or give me an overview of some new legislation that's coming down the line but I can't trust it for much more yet. We had a company in and they weren't able to tell us in plain terms what process AI could replace and then how much money it would save in the long term.

It's still very new and I think it will gather pace and be able to manage some jobs but I can't see it taking over in the next year or 2. The other problem is where do you start? I get bombarded by reels from different AI companies offering to do different things and all charging so who should you use? If I use them for work processes how is the data protected?

I'm still very skeptical... is there anyone on here working in it or knows how to implement it into a traditional business?

[bennydorano]

In the private sector you earn your pay rise, no such thing as a carte blanche pay rise for everyone no matter how productive or not!

Even the Millions who earn NMW and wait for their annual inflation linked payrises?

[Eamonnca1]

I've been using Claude quite a bit, and my use of Google has dwindled.

I use it for writing code at work. It's been a while since I wrote any piece of code from start to finish. You still have to understand the underlying concepts and know what to ask it, but it does take out a lot of the grunt work.

When my test results recently came back from the hospital in medical jargon, I fed it into Claude to get it translated into plain English, and it worked a treat.

Very handy.

[Dag Dog]

AI is being used as an excuse by firms to lay off people they over hired during Covid.
It makes them sound cutting edge by claiming they are using AI to power ahead with innovation. In reality, most of them are grappling with how to make use of it.

British Telecom is laying off 42,000 workers and 10,000 of those are due to AI.

Or so they say. Can they be specific about what roles are now done by AI?

[Baile Brigín 2]

I don't know enough about it to implement it in a serious way in work.

I use it from time to time to draft things or give me an overview of some new legislation that's coming down the line but I can't trust it for much more yet. We had a company in and they weren't able to tell us in plain terms what process AI could replace and then how much money it would save in the long term.

It's still very new and I think it will gather pace and be able to manage some jobs but I can't see it taking over in the next year or 2. The other problem is where do you start? I get bombarded by reels from different AI companies offering to do different things and all charging so who should you use? If I use them for work processes how is the data protected?

I'm still very skeptical... is there anyone on here working in it or knows how to implement it into a traditional business?

In terms of data protection, there is a setting that means it doesn't 'save' your query for generative learning. If you trust them to do so is another day's work. Most corporates insist if you use AI yourself to enable that.

In terms of where things are, not far beyond individuals using it for emails, synopsis and coding/macros yet. Customer service places have been messing  with chat bots but the reception has been negative.

I'm hearing things about big data but that is limited in scope.

Accounting bodies have given a hard no. People just won't pay lawyers for AI content. Banks are already to the bone staff wise, no jobs to automate.

Medicine looks to be genuinely about to be transformed but that is human in the loop, no jobs should go.

I suspect many companies will use AI as an excuse to lay off with no real detail as to specifics.

For now it is individuals mostly using as a timesaving tool.

[DaleCooper]

Like the public sector many private companies are overstaffed. Musk fired 80% of staff, though tech maybe an outlier example.

Its better to have ppl doing BS jobs or makework than the UBI fantasy though.

AI will do great things as helpful assistant. In MRI and CT scans it can identify various ailments even when contrast is ramped up near 100% [unreadble by humans].

The Superintelligence Demigod the California tech nerds worship wont be coming.

[ONeill]

I asked it if Tyrone was deadly and it said it wasn't.

[93-DY-SAM]

I asked it if Tyrone was deadly and it said it wasn't.

There you go then. It's foolproof.

[tbrick18]

I don't know enough about it to implement it in a serious way in work.

I use it from time to time to draft things or give me an overview of some new legislation that's coming down the line but I can't trust it for much more yet. We had a company in and they weren't able to tell us in plain terms what process AI could replace and then how much money it would save in the long term.

It's still very new and I think it will gather pace and be able to manage some jobs but I can't see it taking over in the next year or 2. The other problem is where do you start? I get bombarded by reels from different AI companies offering to do different things and all charging so who should you use? If I use them for work processes how is the data protected?

I'm still very skeptical... is there anyone on here working in it or knows how to implement it into a traditional business?

I think this is a typical example of where a lot of companies are.
They take the view of we have to use AI, which type, which tool etc.
It's not a new phenomenon - in IT there was always that tendency in a lot of spaces to let technology be the driver to change something.
The approach needs to be more around trying to understand or solve a business problem/need first, then deciding if a technology solution is required and then deciding what tech and why.
The AI (or any tech) first approach is wrong, needs to be business first.

Otherwise it's a bit like saying that you have to work out reason to buy the latest ferarri once released as it's the fastest and best, but you have 6 kids and a dog to transport around so what you actually need is a van. (Personal experience example  )

*EDIT - In terms of data protection, don't put anything sensitive into Claude, ChatGPT, CoPilot.....you're exposing that data to the web and even with toggling the settings to not save your history, it's still risky. Most orgs that use these tools for business purposes have enterprise accounts, not exposed to the same level. Some go further and build their own Language Models to sit in the background.....pro's and con's for that of course in terms of cost and effectiveness, but can be very specific to your business.

[tbrick18]

Half of it is a front the AI replacing jobs thing. The bigger companies want to get more and more with less investment. The bigger companies are just trying to squeeze employees more. You can see a lot of companies stripping back to the bare bones.

https://www.ft.com/content/b8d4e70c-7c28-424f-b345-9c84b8898939

BT is to slash up to 42 per cent of its workforce by the end of the decade as the UK telecoms group embarks on its most radical cost-cutting since it was privatised in the 1980s. The move comes two days after rival Vodafone unveiled plans to axe 11,000 jobs over the next three years to boost its flagging performance. Chief executive Philip Jansen said the group would become "a leaner business with a brighter future," adding that many of those reductions would come from the end of the full fibre rollout that the group was "spending a fortune on now".

As an ex BT employee - they have been struggling for profit for some time and the share price has not grown, despite the change of CEO's. In Belfast, they have been gradually loosing people and laying people off without replacing them - even though when I was there it was considered to be the "goldilocks zone" where cost and productivity was much better than anywhere else in the UK. BT's core business was always network and infrastructure and datacentres. When I joined they wanted to move into Applications, service and bleeding edge tech, but they did that by partnering with other companies more than investing internally. As Cloud became more prominent, BT infrastructure wasn't always the answer any more and I see just last week they sold off their Irish datacentre business. The rollout to fibre will futureproof them to some level, but naturally with the completion of that they won't need the same people on the ground (through Openreach).
There's also the India approach - lay people off in more costly regions, then replace them gradually in India at a much lower cost point.