CEOs Say AI Is Making Work More Efficient. Employees Tell a Different Story(www.wsj.com)
52 pointsby 1vuio0pswjnm715 days ago8 comments
  • happymellon15 days ago
    Most of the time large corporate CEOs appear to be just magic 8 balls, making decisions to ensure that the company doesn't end up with decision paralysis. AI reduces the amount they have to read before saying yes/no, so of course it makes their lives more efficient. Most of the time it doesn't even matter if they choose yes or no. Just that they pick something.
    • NedF15 days ago
      [dead]
  • elp15 days ago
    I think the real issue is that its still in its painful growth stage and we have a way to go until we will start to understand better where its good and where its a disaster.

    I have a co-worker who is really good at herding agents. I've seen him do work in an afternoon what would take more than two weeks without AI, but some of his other work ends up being so bad the rest of us want to string him up by his thumbs.

    Its impossible to tell from just looking before hand what the result will be.

    • e4015 days ago
      Sounds like it’s a force multiplier, both on the good and bad side. That lines up with what I have seen. It’s hard to tell if it’s a net positive or negative.
  • general146515 days ago
    If I would get suckered into paying lot of money for AI, I would definitelly try to convince myself that the AI is working.
  • avidiax15 days ago
    I would say that AI has not saved me any time as a developer. What is has done is allowed me to increase scope by doing tasks like documentation and prototyping/experimentation that I would not have found time for otherwise.

    Saying that the AI saves time is like saying that a printer saves paper.

    • xedrac15 days ago
      You say it hasn't saved you any time because you're doing more work now - e.g. documentation. I would say that's being pedantic, but I guess the expectations shift with it, so in practice, you can't just maintain your old output level and reclaim the saved time.
      • avidiax15 days ago
        I haven't seen our roadmap accelerate because of AI. I'm sure, given time, having the P2s like documentation and prototyping in place will yield dividends. But I still can't imagine even doubling our rate of progress.

        I am in an area that is bottlenecked on many things besides writing the code. Testing requires physical devices and realtime execution. So having the code 10x faster is little difference when the other processes take most of the time.

  • ottah14 days ago
    Overall it's a quality of life improvement but not a true efficiency boost. The problem is the review process to properly understand a change can take nearly as long as if I wrote it myself. Sometimes it's an accelerant some times I'm untangling a gordian knot of awful code.
  • wasmainiac15 days ago
    Obviously, C suite will allways be biased
    • simianwords15 days ago
      So will the workers be biased against AI
      • hdjdkdjh15 days ago
        Shed workers ... increase profit ... stock price go up ... Exec get bonus ... Economy fail ... Exec no care ... Exec have bonus and job still ...

        Honestly the caveman speak will get me marked down but fuck it.. It is transparent what they want....

        Ai has use but frankly until it can be trusted to actually follow the right path and skip around hard tasks make subtle bugs that can screw things up... It will get worse before it gets better....

        • simianwords15 days ago
          when has this ever happened? stop making things up in your mind
          • happymellon15 days ago
            It hasn't with AI.

            But it's exactly what the executives say, and why they are interested in AI.

            There is a post currently right next to this one on the front page about Autodesk showing a desire to use AI to fire workers.

            https://www.reuters.com/business/world-at-work/autodesk-lay-...

            • simianwords14 days ago
              i think workers getting fired is okay
              • happymellon12 days ago
                You are allowed your opinion.

                It doesn't stop this

                > when has this ever happened?

                Being wrong. They are excited for AI because they want to avoid employing people.

          • lambdaone15 days ago
            The subprime mortgage crisis that led to the Great Recession comes to mind.

            The destruction of Boeing for short-term profits.

            Private equity's destruction of public companies.

            The entire American health insurance system.

            • simianwords15 days ago
              do you think by and large this describes the american economy?
  • YoungX15 days ago
    The pain of using AI is only temporary—once you get the hang of it, your efficiency will improve significantly
    • wasmainiac15 days ago
      Not really, it still produces way too many errors to let run on its own. It’s just as useful as stack overflow was at its peak.