18 pointsby nlpnerd3 hours ago2 comments
  • nlpnerd2 hours ago
    From a recent article in The Economist. It turns out that once again many of the jobs that people predicted would be eliminated by AI have instead received a boost, at least for now. This closely follows another recent report on how Indian BPO firms are surprisingly thriving due to AI.

    "Moreover, AI is helping offshore workers in the Philippines do new, more complex jobs. They are picking up work training AI models or supervising AI agents. Hospitals in America are increasingly outsourcing the checking of insurance eligibility and filing of medical records to Filipinos packing AI tools. Mr Gallimore says more “high-value” work, such as accountancy or engineering, is going offshore in part because “AI is a leveller. You can now teach someone complex stuff quickly” and still get it done more cheaply than in America or Europe. Some of this is done at so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India and also now growing in the Philippines."

    It seems like AI has incidentally commoditized the complement (procedural knowledge), and in turn created greater demand for inputs like human judgement and "empathy".

    • jesse_faden23 minutes ago
      I visited India recently and when I saw just how many companies have a GCC there I was mindblown. Lots of cool offices, engineering and technical roles, great work life balance and generally a different vibe. Literally every company that I could recognise had a back office there.
      • eru7 minutes ago
        What's a GCC?
        • lmz4 minutes ago
          > so-called global capability centres, captive back offices that are booming in India ...
          • eru3 minutes ago
            Thanks a lot!
    • dyauspitr31 minutes ago
      Yeah, paradoxically Indian software outsourcing is growing. I guess the way the companies are thinking about this is we need some sort of human oversight for all the work the LLMs are doing, might as well pay someone the least amount possible to do that.
    • downrightmikean hour ago
      Ooph, now the AI will be wrong and the human won't know it. And that's running our... let me see... life saving care. Cool. cool. cool.
      • decimalenoughan hour ago
        "Computer says no" has been a trope of terrible customer service long before AI.
        • kombookcha36 minutes ago
          "Computer says no" is about unhelpful bureaucracy. Being knowingly locked to a specific procedure and unwilling to divert from it is a different thing from mistakes being made that you are blissfully unaware of. The problem is now invisible and the patient is dying for no reason anyone can discern.
          • gfrecvh20 minutes ago
            The people who say "computer says no" are also unaware that's a problem. It's invisible to them. To them the process is the point.

            I think that two arent as different as you believe.

            • kombookcha17 minutes ago
              Well, possibly. To paraphrase the great American philosopher Donald Rumsfeld - there are known knowns, known unknowns, unknown knowns and unknown unknowns. And making the actual process a black box for the people managing it will create a lot more Unknown Unknowns.
      • seanmcdirmid39 minutes ago
        Has anything really changed for transparency?
      • dyauspitr30 minutes ago
        Your average devs are wrong more than the AI is at this point.
        • eru6 minutes ago
          At a former job for a regional bank in South East Asia my boss used to joke that outsourcing is really great for the company, because now they can fail to deliver their software projects for cheaper.
  • MiroslavPokornyan hour ago
    YT videos from Philippines would disagree.
    • eruan hour ago
      People love to complain.