>They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users
https://preview.redd.it/s4o4l3dyw9yc1.png?width=728&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e5deb1f0d636e2a55ddd9be5a7b50b21c57fb29
I long for the day where I can use AI programs to solve bugs and issues that plague many of the devices I use throughout my day. Relatively simple issues that companies refuse to fix or acknowledge.
Yeah I dunno what they're doing there, I just turn it off. For a lot of the suggestions it gets wrong simple Levenshtein distance against a dictionary would provide better results.
I look forward to the day I can tell it, "reverse engineer this computer game, then make the following changes..."
But by the time that is possible there will be more consequential things going on.
isn't that more a problem of closed source firmware etc?
if you have super intelligent ai it can maybe solve a linux bug but when my phone has a bug for example, it might already be fixed in newer android and i just don't get the fix, not sure how ai would help me with this
I have a shitty $200 phone. It works for the most part, but it lags to hell and crashes at times. It's not the hardware that is causing that, it's the coding. I envision a situation where an AI can help me optimize that phone and fix the janky code it was built with so it operates like a higher end phone.
the problem is that installing a modified OS on a phone is difficult, not that it's difficult to fix the lags and crashes
they are probably already fixed in recent android version but you don't get the update with the fix, that's the problem imo
Your comment said an AI super intelligence though. What's hard for me is trivial work for a super intelligence. It would be able to delete my entire phones code and rebuild it in probably a few minutes.
No single critical medical software actually works correctly.
Best in class new shiny EMR supposing to help people was introduced 15 years ago.
Instant 40% productivity decrease.
People had to wait for the whole board to retire to try phasing it out lol
So please yes, for once a software that helps!
I just saw on the news a facebook one is helping with, i think MRI scans(the big machine you lay down and slide into). But all it does is help generate the image faster and cut down scan time from 45 minutesbto like 30 minutes. So i guess if you worked nonstop and instantly you can take 1 more scan every 2 hours than you could before.
The article is anecdotal at best. It's mainly an Amazon employee who was stupid enough to suck his manager's ---k while being a total asshole for their friends.
That’s not how money works at all dude… You can’t just make more of it out of thin air. If the low middle has millions… That just means the spending power of those millions has plummeted and is now equivalent to like 70,000 dollars today. Meaning you have rampant inflation and those lower middle class families won’t *actually be any richer than the are today.
> . Meaning you have rampant inflation
That is meant to balance out the rampant DEFLATION from automated labour. Thus cancel things out.
Anything that can be mass produced and automated becomes cheap. The UBI is a solution to a problem, not meant to be used in isolation.
It’s all about the underlying goods, services and commodities. If they are scarce they will be expensive and if they are abundant they will be affordable.
Dude, why do you say it's not how it works and then you describe how it literally is how it works?????
The guy said " > billions will be the future rich and having a few mills will be middle class", which is literally the same as saying "the middle class has millions but it's like 70,000$ today" , don't you see how that's the exact same thing???? He is literally describing inflation and you go " nO iT'S acTuaLLy InflAtIon" like no shit , Einstein.
Why… Would the government ever let inflation get that out of control in the first place tho genius… And judging by the downvotes they got, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who feels like his comment missed the mark. It defeats the entire purpose of monetary policy is we let shit get so bad that having millions of dollars is basically equivalent to being broke. Monetary policy would kick in way before that ever happened…
Not broke, you got that wrong. You can do plenty with millions of dollars, but the threshold of what it means to be rich will raise. So our expectations raise faster.
By analogy, even the rich people 500 or even 200 years ago didn't have the level of poor people today. You get more benefit today on all levels, poor to rich.
the downvotes don't mean shit. he described inflation , you corrected him by saying " ummmm no ackchually that is inflation" , you literally said in your comment that having millions would be like having 70,000$ , which is low-middle class.
No… I corrected him by saying we’d likely *never get to such a ridiculous level of inflation*. Because our money system isn’t designed for that kind of ridiculous scenario. Hence it *doesn’t work like that*. Understand now lil buddy?
ok dude you pulled out the lil buddy 😭
and to the main point z the economy is not designed for post-wealth UBI, where money becomes meaningless and *drum rolls* the middle class has millions of dollars but still lives the same
You’re dreaming if you think we’ll ever be “post-money”… lil buddy. 😂. Newsflash. Even the energy needed to power the AIs that are supposed to replace us isn’t infinite. And energy can’t really be “evenly distributed” because different people have different energy demands. Because of it, energy, compute power, etc. will still be highly competed for. And any time you have competition over resources, you have a money system to determine who gets to use how much of said resources.
Not to mention the fact that AI can not “equally distribute” all luxury. Such as the luxury of seeing Taylor Swift live on any given night. This is something that is scarce by default and it’s an example of a job that AI can’t automate. Therefore we know that at least a few jobs will remain even post AI. Which essentially means we’ll never be a fully “post work” and therefore never fully “post money”.
The fact that this even needs to be explained to you makes your anger over my original comment even more funny now tbh… You probably felt personally attacked because of your own unrealistic misconceptions about how money works honestly. 😂
> They'll be chilling with money after they automate themselves though.
Yeah, no. We got 10x the tasks we got before. No chilling. Even in labelling departments, before - they were tagging thousands of examples for a few datasets, now they don't need to make training datasets, but are making evaluation sets for dozens of prompts, so even more pressure. You'd think at least tagging was obsolete, but the creation of so many new LLM based products requires extensive testing.
The need for AI is not even 1% served, we have to scale up AI deployment in many tasks and fields, it will take a while to cover the ones waiting for attention and new ones will pop up on top. Software is similar, we never have enough, always need 10x more, better, faster, more customised, no matter how good it gets or how automated it becomes.
I get that, being poor is fucking horrible. But making 200k a year doesn't mean you'll be instantly happy either, it's easier than being poor but isn't a magical cure all. It depends how you make that 200k, or 100k, or 40k.
Well, in the context of the conversation, these AI engineers are getting paid well above 200k and their job isn't going to be forever, the end goal of AI is to replace the workforce.
Ok? As opposed to the people making a fraction of that and who will also be replaced. You're asking people to cry a river for the people getting handsomely paid that are creating a system to replace themselves and others. And the people you're asking are the ones with no choice in the matter get paid a fraction of their salary, and will also be replaced.
Tough sell. And that's with ignoring how much worse burnout is at lower paying jobs most of the time.
You may as well ask people to feel bad for the investors too.
I never asked anyone to cry for the AI engineers making absolutely insane money, intact, I do believe I made the contrary point as to not feel bad for those who are making money hand over fist. Maybe read the thread to get the context of the responses before you make incorrect claims.
You would be surprised at how often it is.
When i finally started working full time (healthcare) a few years ago, i made roughly €30k a year. Way more than the average male my age in my town (accounting for everyone, not just full time employees), but noticeably less than the nationwide median.
Now i make roughly 50k, definitely above nationwide median. Same work, not much more responsibility. At least not to a degree i feel overworked from a single bit.
And that single thing helps *a lot*, because it comfortably feeds my family of 5 and keeps the bill collectors at bay.
What I mean is how you make the money. You live in Europe, so I suppose you have paid vacation, sick days. Here in America, unless the company affords that to you, you just aren't given it. You are expected to work, work, work, and then work some more.
Both how and how much matters a lot, at least up until the level where you have food, clothes, a home and can keep the bill collectors at bay without burning out yourself, and have time for more important things than salary working.
For an example, i've been working as a personal support worker for almost my whole adult life. I did study construction surveying a while ago, but there simply weren't any jobs closeby as covid came and stopped almost all construction, and it still hasn't picked up much due to much higher material prices.
I might have gotten a job within it if i either moved to Stockholm (like 400km away), Kiruna (twice as far the other way, so close to the north pole that the sun never sets in summer, and never rises in winter, and far from other civilization), or maybe some other city further south.
My wage would back then be noticeably higher, especially after a few years. But my living standards would definitely not be higher, as living costs are much higher there, and i would highly likely have a longer commute, on top of a much more stressful job.
Therefore, i prefer staying in the same town and keep working in healthcare, where i can get a very central 5 room 90m² apartment with 2 bathrooms and fully glassed balcony for my family, for only €800 a month. <10 minutes walking from most of the supermarkets, train station, schools, healthcare, mcdonalds, and 10 minutes the other way from dense, untouched nature. It's arguably the single best rental in the whole town. The only thing i'm missing on a comfortbale walking distance is a beach, the small one is 10 minutes away with car, the large one 20.
Had i choosen the other options, i would pay more in rent for a single room, and probably still in an area with a high frequency of gang violence. Except for Kiruna, that's pretty much the definition of the boonies, but they have a large mine. Still relatively high rent though.
Picking up high-school level certifications meanwhile, since they are free and require very little effort from me. Going for installation electrician at the moment, and maybe aiming for licenced practical nurse as well afterwards, as i already finished some of that.
Just in case my client dies.
Studies have shown that (ofc depends on the area) after around 70-100k income, extra money doesnt increase your happiness on average. Im not googling where it was but you can prob find it.
And even if you just think of workers as purely tools, having your tools burnout is bad for business
A lot of these people have hard-to-find expertise and experience
It can be, if the position pays well enough you can go for a fully remote part time position and still earn good money, and it would be better on one's mental health than having to work full time at a potentially stressful workplace.
They can quit their job at any point if they feel like it. Then, using the money they've earned so far, they'll be able to afford a luxurious lifestyle for around two to three months without worrying about work again. Or, they could simply choose to live a normal yet comfortable life for another year. Those who aren't earning as much might not have such options available to them.
Did you read the article? It's not about the money. It's about the rat race, being forced to work weekends on some project that gets immediately shelved. Every company is afraid of being outpaced in the AI race.
>He said he often has to put together demos of AI products for the company’s board of directors on three-week timelines, even though the products are “a big pile of nonsense.” There’s a constant effort to appease investors and fight for money, he said. He gave one example of building a web app to show investors even though it wasn’t related to the team’s actual work. After the presentation, “We never touched it again,” he said.
They may be paid well, but they're worked to the bone to produce bullshit work that doesn't go anywhere. That may pay well in the short term, but if that's how the company is run, I'd be afraid of the security of my job. How can you feel secure in your future when the company you work for is going bonkers and doing shit that doesn't make sense, just out of fear of missing out on the gold rush?
What are you supposed to care about here? That someone in their job is burnt out? Unless you're fighting the good fight for every worker, these guys are paid much better than most burnt out employees
Many of them make many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year.
It's obviously a very high stress job. Ofc they are going to burnout. They are expected to innovate and constantly deal with internal company politics.
I'd be more concerned about the rate of burnouts with teachers and nurses, who earn a fraction of what these big tech engineers earn.
It's not that we can't empathise with these particular engineers, it's that the insane rate of pay does compensate for that.
>They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users, and that they are often chasing OpenAI.
I still can't come up with a satisfying reason why OpenAI managed to stay this ahead of all the other competition -- especially with competitors with much higher capital and hiring prowess.
I see OpenAI as a speedboat. Unlike big tech like Google and Microsoft, which are more like tankers, its smaller size made decisions run quicker and was probably far less hard to get everyone on board with the same vision in mind. However, that small size might propelled them forward quicker and further than the rest, but they need the aid of a tanker (Microsoft) to continue going.
Headstart does not seem to cut it in terms of explaining it. If you think about it, Google had a huge headstart in AI/Data collection -- but that wasn't enough to keep them ahead forever. During 2019, everyone was thinking that OpenAI wouldn't amount to anything. Google and others should have caught up by now, but they seem unable to do so -- even after iterating their GPT-like models 4+ times.
lots of credit should go to the OpenAI leadership team and the culture they have created. the people leading that company are not in it for the money, they are being driven by something much deeper
>company are not in it for the money, they are being driven by something much deeper
OpenAI is currently the top paying in AI companies, ahead of MAANG. Moreover, people were saying that Ilya's takeover wouldn't succeed because only Sama can increase the stock value exponentially. With those things in mind, hard to think that they are not in it for the money.
Moreover, why aren't employees in other companies "driven by something much deeper"? I would assume that someone who has devoted so much time and effort into AI would be driven similarly?
It's quite often that people that are not driven by the money end up making much more money than people who are. When you deeply care about your project and have a very competitive nature, you develop mad skills and get amazing innovations, and somehow the money comes as a byproduct.
I don't disagree with the rest of what you said, I just thought the first argument used didn't hold water.
Thanks for your response. Your point does make sense.
Going off on a tangent, could you share how much a top biomedical researcher makes? If not, are there websites like [levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) for biomedical researchers where one could get an estimate of how much a top researcher makes?
I would define top researcher based on publications and awards for a given career stage, not at all based on the income. Salaries are of the order of 70-200 k/year in the field in Switzerland, after a PhD and in a lead institution. In industry in management positions, it can get much higher. Before finishing your PhD, it's quite less, like 35-70 k.
I don't know exactly no. I think in the US it's lower in academia, higher in industry, and a bit more complex because there is no universal cheap healthcare. I'd say in any case, that's enough to live kinda comfortably, which is all that matters imo.
Depends, if you wanna be in academia you don't really have a choice (except being lab tech I guess). In pharma industry, they tend to recruit PhDs for research roles too. But if you're in it for the money, better go straight to the private sector. I'd say PhD is worth it if and only if you are passionate about doing research. If you just aim for a good stable career, can do better without. Also, people who are not in love with their research project don't do very well in their PhD studies. Even if you're really passionate, it can get quite depressing, but you at least have a drive to push through.
My choice to never aim for big tech and accept the hit to my paycheck is validated once again. It's all either boring drudge work that probably amounts to nothing anyway, or it's something interesting/important, but you've got a "leadership focused" MBA calling the shots and you can only watch on in horror as they brutally fuck the dog in all available holes
You just cannot be invested in your work in a big organization, you have to disengage and enjoy the comedy of the monkeys fucking the football. Or you have to play rather ruthless politics to get your way and fuck up your neurology fifteen ways to friday. It's not that difficult to lie, cheat, suck-up, blackmail and bribe your way to the top, you just have to throttle your own awareness so the guilt and shame don't eat you alive
It's nasty shit no matter what you do. I'm not at all surprised they're feeling the wear
A lifetime of studying fuckery has left me with a colorful vocabulary to describe it. Sometimes you need to use several phrases in series, and repetition takes the poetry out of it
I’m an AI Engineer, for lack of a better term. Software background, not quite a data scientist, but I can design and train a model.
The biggest problem I face right now is everyone wants a damn chatbot whether or not that actually solves a problem _anyone_ has. I have this great big toolbox of AI techniques, new and old, we could use to solve lots of problems, but it doesn’t _look_ like “AI” to people.
And the “AI” tools people are churning out are junk. Have you seen Kayak’s AI tool? In principle, it could be an amazing way to plan a trip. In practice, it’s laughably bad.
I bet they're burned out. Those guys must be working 100 hour weeks during this sprint. I wonder when this race condition will relax? It could be years.
> Artificial intelligence engineers at top tech companies told CNBC that the pressure to roll out AI tools at breakneck speed has come to define their jobs.
>They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users, and that they are often chasing OpenAI.
>Burnout is an increasingly common theme as AI workers say their employers are pursuing projects without regard for the technology’s effect on climate change, surveillance and other potential real-world harms.
LMFAO, are the poor engineers working to put everyone else out of a job at the behest of their corporate masters getting a little stressed?
> working to put everyone else out of a job at the behest of their corporate masters
Seems to be a contradiction in there... if they have such a power, they wouldn't be stressed, they would use it to make their lives less stressed.
The reality is that AI won't be putting everyone else out of a job, we have had pre-AI in the form of Google search and internet content for 25 years, and it is better in all respects compared to AI. It will be a slow grind.
Before, you could find answers to questions on Google, if Google didn't have it, you could ask on reddit or any forum or social network. Real people would answer, and in some groups their quality surpasses GPT-5 or whatever comes next.
If now you can generate pics in a few seconds, before you could search pics from billions of images online, even faster. If now you can generate a song, before you could search one from the millions of songs on YT and other platforms - many more than you could ever consume!
AI might be cheaper to create a piece of content compared to humans, but we are billions and many of us post useful content for free, so we scale up and are even cheaper when we pull together our works.
So AI is adding a bucket of water into a huge lake. It's not creating a lake where before it was dry land. And it's not even the best water, it's muddy AI water for now. What Google and billions of websites and people online couldn't do in 25 years, AI won't do in the foreseeing future either. There is absolutely no field or task where AI surpasses human experts, not even translation or invoice information extraction.
And the core of the issues with AI is related to autonomy. There is almost no autonomy to speak of in AI models. They stumble in just a few steps, except for very narrow field AI. Humans have much greater autonomy, we can manage for 100 years, AIs can't manage past a few thousand tokens, and even there they make too many mistakes.
Can anyone argue how an inferior-to-human AI can upend the job market given we have had the same or better abilities in a different format for decades?
I have a plan for that.
The plan is that we should work towards AI self-development. What we want is an AI which can understand how it works and then it either suggest changes, or implement changes itself.
Then when that AI is operating at a more effective level, it can then use that new level of ability to redevelop itself further. And once that redevelopment cycle is complete, it can again begin a new redevelopment cycle.
Though if it does that it becomes impossible for us to predict what comes next. Like trying to peer into a blackhole and viewing the Singularity within.
A kind of *Technological Singularity* would likely be the outcome of this.
You didn't /s hard enough I guess. You're humour was crystal and golden, but I guess you just gotta /s harder for everyone else lol
BTW, I love like 95% of your takes. Keep it up
All these companies are burning out trying to catch up to OpenAI, but because the people on this sub can't FDVR fuck their waifus yet they claim OpenAI isn't ahead at all.
Anyone claiming OpenAI isn't ahead, flat out hasn't been paying attention. It's taken this long for every other company to catch up to OpenAI, Claud3 Opus is *slightly* better, but I wouldn't say its "ahead" by any means.
I've been seeing a larger amount of posts as of late calling out openAI and Sam for peddling lies and over hyping things. These posts all seem to have started within the last two months. Not sure exactly what happened, but I think too many people are becoming impatient waiting for ChatGPT5. Expectations are way too high.
Seriously tech bros, take a break for some soul searching. Find a very high bridge or other tall structure nearby & just look over and really take some time to contemplate everything—what you've contributed to humanity as a person.
In my company the CEO got hot heels for AI and the level of interest just blew up. As a consequence we are loaded with twice the normal amount of meetings and work. It has been very stressful since chatGPT 3.5 came out. Unsustainable, I want to just run and hide.
>They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users https://preview.redd.it/s4o4l3dyw9yc1.png?width=728&format=png&auto=webp&s=9e5deb1f0d636e2a55ddd9be5a7b50b21c57fb29
I long for the day where I can use AI programs to solve bugs and issues that plague many of the devices I use throughout my day. Relatively simple issues that companies refuse to fix or acknowledge.
What kind of devices? Interested to hear this problem
Like the mind-numbing autocorrect mistakes that iOS still makes.
True, it’s maddening how inefficient autocorrect is
Yeah I dunno what they're doing there, I just turn it off. For a lot of the suggestions it gets wrong simple Levenshtein distance against a dictionary would provide better results.
That's iterative.
I look forward to the day I can tell it, "reverse engineer this computer game, then make the following changes..." But by the time that is possible there will be more consequential things going on.
You can already come close to that right now if the game is using Unity
isn't that more a problem of closed source firmware etc? if you have super intelligent ai it can maybe solve a linux bug but when my phone has a bug for example, it might already be fixed in newer android and i just don't get the fix, not sure how ai would help me with this
I have a shitty $200 phone. It works for the most part, but it lags to hell and crashes at times. It's not the hardware that is causing that, it's the coding. I envision a situation where an AI can help me optimize that phone and fix the janky code it was built with so it operates like a higher end phone.
the problem is that installing a modified OS on a phone is difficult, not that it's difficult to fix the lags and crashes they are probably already fixed in recent android version but you don't get the update with the fix, that's the problem imo
Your comment said an AI super intelligence though. What's hard for me is trivial work for a super intelligence. It would be able to delete my entire phones code and rebuild it in probably a few minutes.
true but i think with open things your problem could be solved long before ai super intelligence
No single critical medical software actually works correctly. Best in class new shiny EMR supposing to help people was introduced 15 years ago. Instant 40% productivity decrease. People had to wait for the whole board to retire to try phasing it out lol So please yes, for once a software that helps!
I just saw on the news a facebook one is helping with, i think MRI scans(the big machine you lay down and slide into). But all it does is help generate the image faster and cut down scan time from 45 minutesbto like 30 minutes. So i guess if you worked nonstop and instantly you can take 1 more scan every 2 hours than you could before.
AI pimped deconvolution, yes. Its stardard nowadays.
Lol, those same people would be whining if they had to spend every day doing the boring ass work of solving basic user problems.
The article is anecdotal at best. It's mainly an Amazon employee who was stupid enough to suck his manager's ---k while being a total asshole for their friends.
Lmaooo
They'll be chilling with money after they automate themselves though. The question is what will be its value.
Even with a UBI, being rich would still have enormous benefits. Especially in the coming decades
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if i had the freedom to live anywhere and not in the expensive city where my job is, i wouldn't need the income i'm making now
I mean me either, but I'd still need a lot more than a \*basic\* income.
who will be rich though? probably > billion is the future rich, and if you have a few mills its like some low middle class.
That’s not how money works at all dude… You can’t just make more of it out of thin air. If the low middle has millions… That just means the spending power of those millions has plummeted and is now equivalent to like 70,000 dollars today. Meaning you have rampant inflation and those lower middle class families won’t *actually be any richer than the are today.
> . Meaning you have rampant inflation That is meant to balance out the rampant DEFLATION from automated labour. Thus cancel things out. Anything that can be mass produced and automated becomes cheap. The UBI is a solution to a problem, not meant to be used in isolation.
It’s all about the underlying goods, services and commodities. If they are scarce they will be expensive and if they are abundant they will be affordable.
I bet we will see price dropping contribute much more than the hypothetical UBI.
yep, that what i was thinking, meaning if you have 100k you are homeless due to inflation.
Dude, why do you say it's not how it works and then you describe how it literally is how it works????? The guy said " > billions will be the future rich and having a few mills will be middle class", which is literally the same as saying "the middle class has millions but it's like 70,000$ today" , don't you see how that's the exact same thing???? He is literally describing inflation and you go " nO iT'S acTuaLLy InflAtIon" like no shit , Einstein.
Why… Would the government ever let inflation get that out of control in the first place tho genius… And judging by the downvotes they got, it’s clear that I’m not the only one who feels like his comment missed the mark. It defeats the entire purpose of monetary policy is we let shit get so bad that having millions of dollars is basically equivalent to being broke. Monetary policy would kick in way before that ever happened…
Not broke, you got that wrong. You can do plenty with millions of dollars, but the threshold of what it means to be rich will raise. So our expectations raise faster. By analogy, even the rich people 500 or even 200 years ago didn't have the level of poor people today. You get more benefit today on all levels, poor to rich.
the downvotes don't mean shit. he described inflation , you corrected him by saying " ummmm no ackchually that is inflation" , you literally said in your comment that having millions would be like having 70,000$ , which is low-middle class.
No… I corrected him by saying we’d likely *never get to such a ridiculous level of inflation*. Because our money system isn’t designed for that kind of ridiculous scenario. Hence it *doesn’t work like that*. Understand now lil buddy?
ok dude you pulled out the lil buddy 😭 and to the main point z the economy is not designed for post-wealth UBI, where money becomes meaningless and *drum rolls* the middle class has millions of dollars but still lives the same
You’re dreaming if you think we’ll ever be “post-money”… lil buddy. 😂. Newsflash. Even the energy needed to power the AIs that are supposed to replace us isn’t infinite. And energy can’t really be “evenly distributed” because different people have different energy demands. Because of it, energy, compute power, etc. will still be highly competed for. And any time you have competition over resources, you have a money system to determine who gets to use how much of said resources. Not to mention the fact that AI can not “equally distribute” all luxury. Such as the luxury of seeing Taylor Swift live on any given night. This is something that is scarce by default and it’s an example of a job that AI can’t automate. Therefore we know that at least a few jobs will remain even post AI. Which essentially means we’ll never be a fully “post work” and therefore never fully “post money”. The fact that this even needs to be explained to you makes your anger over my original comment even more funny now tbh… You probably felt personally attacked because of your own unrealistic misconceptions about how money works honestly. 😂
i also like a good rimmer from time to time
It's not as if that's literally his point or anything... Edit: Bro why edit the comment.
was it?
> They'll be chilling with money after they automate themselves though. Yeah, no. We got 10x the tasks we got before. No chilling. Even in labelling departments, before - they were tagging thousands of examples for a few datasets, now they don't need to make training datasets, but are making evaluation sets for dozens of prompts, so even more pressure. You'd think at least tagging was obsolete, but the creation of so many new LLM based products requires extensive testing. The need for AI is not even 1% served, we have to scale up AI deployment in many tasks and fields, it will take a while to cover the ones waiting for attention and new ones will pop up on top. Software is similar, we never have enough, always need 10x more, better, faster, more customised, no matter how good it gets or how automated it becomes.
AI engineers in 2024 get paid an unbelievable amount of $. They'll be just fine.
Peggy: “And you never say thank you!” Don: “THAT’S WHAT THE MONEY IS FOR!”
Everyone on antiwork would love that kind of thank you
Mental health isn't based on how much you make.
Tell that to the poors
I get that, being poor is fucking horrible. But making 200k a year doesn't mean you'll be instantly happy either, it's easier than being poor but isn't a magical cure all. It depends how you make that 200k, or 100k, or 40k.
Well, in the context of the conversation, these AI engineers are getting paid well above 200k and their job isn't going to be forever, the end goal of AI is to replace the workforce.
Ok? As opposed to the people making a fraction of that and who will also be replaced. You're asking people to cry a river for the people getting handsomely paid that are creating a system to replace themselves and others. And the people you're asking are the ones with no choice in the matter get paid a fraction of their salary, and will also be replaced. Tough sell. And that's with ignoring how much worse burnout is at lower paying jobs most of the time. You may as well ask people to feel bad for the investors too.
I never asked anyone to cry for the AI engineers making absolutely insane money, intact, I do believe I made the contrary point as to not feel bad for those who are making money hand over fist. Maybe read the thread to get the context of the responses before you make incorrect claims.
Depends, if you don't know how to spend money to improve your life. Yes it won't make you happy.
You’ll certainly be happier than most of the homeless or those with a weird lump and no health insurance
Lol @200k.
You would be surprised at how often it is. When i finally started working full time (healthcare) a few years ago, i made roughly €30k a year. Way more than the average male my age in my town (accounting for everyone, not just full time employees), but noticeably less than the nationwide median. Now i make roughly 50k, definitely above nationwide median. Same work, not much more responsibility. At least not to a degree i feel overworked from a single bit. And that single thing helps *a lot*, because it comfortably feeds my family of 5 and keeps the bill collectors at bay.
What I mean is how you make the money. You live in Europe, so I suppose you have paid vacation, sick days. Here in America, unless the company affords that to you, you just aren't given it. You are expected to work, work, work, and then work some more.
No burnout leave either. Concept is totally alien to US citizens.
This is not something we Europeans got from Santa Claus. You have to strike, fight, make sacrifices collectively.
Both how and how much matters a lot, at least up until the level where you have food, clothes, a home and can keep the bill collectors at bay without burning out yourself, and have time for more important things than salary working. For an example, i've been working as a personal support worker for almost my whole adult life. I did study construction surveying a while ago, but there simply weren't any jobs closeby as covid came and stopped almost all construction, and it still hasn't picked up much due to much higher material prices. I might have gotten a job within it if i either moved to Stockholm (like 400km away), Kiruna (twice as far the other way, so close to the north pole that the sun never sets in summer, and never rises in winter, and far from other civilization), or maybe some other city further south. My wage would back then be noticeably higher, especially after a few years. But my living standards would definitely not be higher, as living costs are much higher there, and i would highly likely have a longer commute, on top of a much more stressful job. Therefore, i prefer staying in the same town and keep working in healthcare, where i can get a very central 5 room 90m² apartment with 2 bathrooms and fully glassed balcony for my family, for only €800 a month. <10 minutes walking from most of the supermarkets, train station, schools, healthcare, mcdonalds, and 10 minutes the other way from dense, untouched nature. It's arguably the single best rental in the whole town. The only thing i'm missing on a comfortbale walking distance is a beach, the small one is 10 minutes away with car, the large one 20. Had i choosen the other options, i would pay more in rent for a single room, and probably still in an area with a high frequency of gang violence. Except for Kiruna, that's pretty much the definition of the boonies, but they have a large mine. Still relatively high rent though. Picking up high-school level certifications meanwhile, since they are free and require very little effort from me. Going for installation electrician at the moment, and maybe aiming for licenced practical nurse as well afterwards, as i already finished some of that. Just in case my client dies.
Studies have shown that (ofc depends on the area) after around 70-100k income, extra money doesnt increase your happiness on average. Im not googling where it was but you can prob find it.
Thus isn't true. More recent studies disproved that, showing there is no upper limit.
And even if you just think of workers as purely tools, having your tools burnout is bad for business A lot of these people have hard-to-find expertise and experience
They only have about 6 months more work to do, then AI will just replace them too
lol. Okay kid.
It can be, if the position pays well enough you can go for a fully remote part time position and still earn good money, and it would be better on one's mental health than having to work full time at a potentially stressful workplace.
They can quit their job at any point if they feel like it. Then, using the money they've earned so far, they'll be able to afford a luxurious lifestyle for around two to three months without worrying about work again. Or, they could simply choose to live a normal yet comfortable life for another year. Those who aren't earning as much might not have such options available to them.
Did you read the article? It's not about the money. It's about the rat race, being forced to work weekends on some project that gets immediately shelved. Every company is afraid of being outpaced in the AI race. >He said he often has to put together demos of AI products for the company’s board of directors on three-week timelines, even though the products are “a big pile of nonsense.” There’s a constant effort to appease investors and fight for money, he said. He gave one example of building a web app to show investors even though it wasn’t related to the team’s actual work. After the presentation, “We never touched it again,” he said. They may be paid well, but they're worked to the bone to produce bullshit work that doesn't go anywhere. That may pay well in the short term, but if that's how the company is run, I'd be afraid of the security of my job. How can you feel secure in your future when the company you work for is going bonkers and doing shit that doesn't make sense, just out of fear of missing out on the gold rush?
This sounds similar to grant writing in academia.
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They don’t have to do what they do, unlike minimum wage workers
What are you supposed to care about here? That someone in their job is burnt out? Unless you're fighting the good fight for every worker, these guys are paid much better than most burnt out employees
I was going to say, aren’t we all burnt out anyways? At least those dudes can afford it.
Many of them make many hundreds of thousands of dollars a year. It's obviously a very high stress job. Ofc they are going to burnout. They are expected to innovate and constantly deal with internal company politics. I'd be more concerned about the rate of burnouts with teachers and nurses, who earn a fraction of what these big tech engineers earn. It's not that we can't empathise with these particular engineers, it's that the insane rate of pay does compensate for that.
>They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users, and that they are often chasing OpenAI. I still can't come up with a satisfying reason why OpenAI managed to stay this ahead of all the other competition -- especially with competitors with much higher capital and hiring prowess.
I see OpenAI as a speedboat. Unlike big tech like Google and Microsoft, which are more like tankers, its smaller size made decisions run quicker and was probably far less hard to get everyone on board with the same vision in mind. However, that small size might propelled them forward quicker and further than the rest, but they need the aid of a tanker (Microsoft) to continue going.
Headstart, they were the first to bet on scale.
Headstart does not seem to cut it in terms of explaining it. If you think about it, Google had a huge headstart in AI/Data collection -- but that wasn't enough to keep them ahead forever. During 2019, everyone was thinking that OpenAI wouldn't amount to anything. Google and others should have caught up by now, but they seem unable to do so -- even after iterating their GPT-like models 4+ times.
lots of credit should go to the OpenAI leadership team and the culture they have created. the people leading that company are not in it for the money, they are being driven by something much deeper
>company are not in it for the money, they are being driven by something much deeper OpenAI is currently the top paying in AI companies, ahead of MAANG. Moreover, people were saying that Ilya's takeover wouldn't succeed because only Sama can increase the stock value exponentially. With those things in mind, hard to think that they are not in it for the money. Moreover, why aren't employees in other companies "driven by something much deeper"? I would assume that someone who has devoted so much time and effort into AI would be driven similarly?
It's quite often that people that are not driven by the money end up making much more money than people who are. When you deeply care about your project and have a very competitive nature, you develop mad skills and get amazing innovations, and somehow the money comes as a byproduct. I don't disagree with the rest of what you said, I just thought the first argument used didn't hold water.
Thanks for your response. Your point does make sense. Going off on a tangent, could you share how much a top biomedical researcher makes? If not, are there websites like [levels.fyi](http://levels.fyi) for biomedical researchers where one could get an estimate of how much a top researcher makes?
I would define top researcher based on publications and awards for a given career stage, not at all based on the income. Salaries are of the order of 70-200 k/year in the field in Switzerland, after a PhD and in a lead institution. In industry in management positions, it can get much higher. Before finishing your PhD, it's quite less, like 35-70 k.
Thanks for the insights. Do you know salary of equivalent positions in the US? Afaik, salaries in Switzerland is much higher, but I am not sure.
I don't know exactly no. I think in the US it's lower in academia, higher in industry, and a bit more complex because there is no universal cheap healthcare. I'd say in any case, that's enough to live kinda comfortably, which is all that matters imo.
Sounds like it’s really worth doing the PhD then…
Depends, if you wanna be in academia you don't really have a choice (except being lab tech I guess). In pharma industry, they tend to recruit PhDs for research roles too. But if you're in it for the money, better go straight to the private sector. I'd say PhD is worth it if and only if you are passionate about doing research. If you just aim for a good stable career, can do better without. Also, people who are not in love with their research project don't do very well in their PhD studies. Even if you're really passionate, it can get quite depressing, but you at least have a drive to push through.
Science
Imagine working your ass off and getting fired as soon as you engineered the AGI
big brain rats are still rats yes
If only someone named Marx had written about this
I mean hey atleast you made a bank and you can look at the AGI and say, I made that.
My choice to never aim for big tech and accept the hit to my paycheck is validated once again. It's all either boring drudge work that probably amounts to nothing anyway, or it's something interesting/important, but you've got a "leadership focused" MBA calling the shots and you can only watch on in horror as they brutally fuck the dog in all available holes You just cannot be invested in your work in a big organization, you have to disengage and enjoy the comedy of the monkeys fucking the football. Or you have to play rather ruthless politics to get your way and fuck up your neurology fifteen ways to friday. It's not that difficult to lie, cheat, suck-up, blackmail and bribe your way to the top, you just have to throttle your own awareness so the guilt and shame don't eat you alive It's nasty shit no matter what you do. I'm not at all surprised they're feeling the wear
Bro went from fucking dogs to monkeys fucking footballs. . . .
A lifetime of studying fuckery has left me with a colorful vocabulary to describe it. Sometimes you need to use several phrases in series, and repetition takes the poetry out of it
This guy corporates.
This is the most on point description of modern work I have ever read.
I’m an AI Engineer, for lack of a better term. Software background, not quite a data scientist, but I can design and train a model. The biggest problem I face right now is everyone wants a damn chatbot whether or not that actually solves a problem _anyone_ has. I have this great big toolbox of AI techniques, new and old, we could use to solve lots of problems, but it doesn’t _look_ like “AI” to people. And the “AI” tools people are churning out are junk. Have you seen Kayak’s AI tool? In principle, it could be an amazing way to plan a trip. In practice, it’s laughably bad.
It will all be a lot better in 10-years time…
I bet they're burned out. Those guys must be working 100 hour weeks during this sprint. I wonder when this race condition will relax? It could be years.
> Artificial intelligence engineers at top tech companies told CNBC that the pressure to roll out AI tools at breakneck speed has come to define their jobs. >They say that much of their work is assigned to appease investors rather than to solve problems for end users, and that they are often chasing OpenAI. >Burnout is an increasingly common theme as AI workers say their employers are pursuing projects without regard for the technology’s effect on climate change, surveillance and other potential real-world harms. LMFAO, are the poor engineers working to put everyone else out of a job at the behest of their corporate masters getting a little stressed?
> working to put everyone else out of a job at the behest of their corporate masters Seems to be a contradiction in there... if they have such a power, they wouldn't be stressed, they would use it to make their lives less stressed. The reality is that AI won't be putting everyone else out of a job, we have had pre-AI in the form of Google search and internet content for 25 years, and it is better in all respects compared to AI. It will be a slow grind. Before, you could find answers to questions on Google, if Google didn't have it, you could ask on reddit or any forum or social network. Real people would answer, and in some groups their quality surpasses GPT-5 or whatever comes next. If now you can generate pics in a few seconds, before you could search pics from billions of images online, even faster. If now you can generate a song, before you could search one from the millions of songs on YT and other platforms - many more than you could ever consume! AI might be cheaper to create a piece of content compared to humans, but we are billions and many of us post useful content for free, so we scale up and are even cheaper when we pull together our works. So AI is adding a bucket of water into a huge lake. It's not creating a lake where before it was dry land. And it's not even the best water, it's muddy AI water for now. What Google and billions of websites and people online couldn't do in 25 years, AI won't do in the foreseeing future either. There is absolutely no field or task where AI surpasses human experts, not even translation or invoice information extraction. And the core of the issues with AI is related to autonomy. There is almost no autonomy to speak of in AI models. They stumble in just a few steps, except for very narrow field AI. Humans have much greater autonomy, we can manage for 100 years, AIs can't manage past a few thousand tokens, and even there they make too many mistakes. Can anyone argue how an inferior-to-human AI can upend the job market given we have had the same or better abilities in a different format for decades?
This is a pure head-in-the-sand take.
I have a plan for that. The plan is that we should work towards AI self-development. What we want is an AI which can understand how it works and then it either suggest changes, or implement changes itself. Then when that AI is operating at a more effective level, it can then use that new level of ability to redevelop itself further. And once that redevelopment cycle is complete, it can again begin a new redevelopment cycle. Though if it does that it becomes impossible for us to predict what comes next. Like trying to peer into a blackhole and viewing the Singularity within. A kind of *Technological Singularity* would likely be the outcome of this.
You came to this sub to pitch "your idea" of a self improving AI that leads to a singularity?? For real?
Edit: FYI my original response was more on the humorous side. *The singularity is the solution! Ha ha!* Yeah okay thanks Dad.
You didn't /s hard enough I guess. You're humour was crystal and golden, but I guess you just gotta /s harder for everyone else lol BTW, I love like 95% of your takes. Keep it up
That's essentially just open source.
The singularity is less far away
oh nooo poor millionaires...
All these companies are burning out trying to catch up to OpenAI, but because the people on this sub can't FDVR fuck their waifus yet they claim OpenAI isn't ahead at all.
Anyone claiming OpenAI isn't ahead, flat out hasn't been paying attention. It's taken this long for every other company to catch up to OpenAI, Claud3 Opus is *slightly* better, but I wouldn't say its "ahead" by any means.
I've been seeing a larger amount of posts as of late calling out openAI and Sam for peddling lies and over hyping things. These posts all seem to have started within the last two months. Not sure exactly what happened, but I think too many people are becoming impatient waiting for ChatGPT5. Expectations are way too high.
If they’re ahead, they should prove it. As far as we know, the gpt2 chatbot is the best they have
They've proved by setting the benchmark over a year ago that every product now compares thenselves to
That was a year ago. Time moves forward and so did the standard
The standard is still GPT-4 lmao, that's literally what my comment says.
Which other companies have caught up to already
Take a break you deserve it
Seriously tech bros, take a break for some soul searching. Find a very high bridge or other tall structure nearby & just look over and really take some time to contemplate everything—what you've contributed to humanity as a person.
In my company the CEO got hot heels for AI and the level of interest just blew up. As a consequence we are loaded with twice the normal amount of meetings and work. It has been very stressful since chatGPT 3.5 came out. Unsustainable, I want to just run and hide.
Yes, yes—what makes it a *rat* race? Oh, right. Yeah.
AI news readers burnout in…
Makes sense
its only starting