Comment on “AI took my job, literally”—Gizmodo fires Spanish staff amid switch to AI translator

LazaroFilm@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

• art@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  It’s a little dance called capitalism:

  1. Company becomes publicly traded.
  2. Shareholders invest in the company.
  3. The company aims to maximize profit.
  4. Growth eventually slows down because almost everyone who could use the company’s services already does.
  5. Shareholders expect returns on their investment.
  6. To increase revenue, the company must either raise prices for customers or reduce operating expenses.

  source

  • sacredbirdman@kbin.social ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    this plus:

    7. For many companies the majority of operating expenses are related to employees, so they will try to resist raising wages, preferably cutting them and/or firing people (also, union busting)
    8. Product quality will suffer
    9. They'll try to skirt regulations and lobby to overturn them
    10. In capitalism there's no such thing as enough when it comes to ROI so we go back to 6.

    source
• BrianTheeBiscuiteer@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  Money. No such thing as “enough” when you’re a corporation.

  source
• agent_flounder@lemmy.one ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

  They’ve always been this way.

  Companies as entities have no conscience and aren’t subject to the same punishments as people.

  If money is the sole driving factor then morality and ethics aren’t concerns unless they have a negative impact on the bottom line.

  Since sociopaths are common and commonly get the highest positions in corporations, they will lead the company in the direction of most profit or growing stock price, with all other concerns as irrelevant.

  If companies could enslave people they would make a lot more money and it is only law and the potential pushback affecting their profits that would give them pause. (See: the south pre 1860s, as well as numerous highly exploitative factories around the globe that made outsourcing so popular).

  If they could kill people to make more money, overall, they would do so (see: insurance companies)

  The more money a corporation has the better chance it has of bribing officials, buying favors, lobbying for favorable laws (or removing unfavorable ones), i.e. regulatory capture.

  I haven’t put a ton of thought into this but I think corporations and the lack of legal ramifications of breaking the law are major failings in modern capitalism. If a corporation breaks the law it should be sentenced to “jail” where it basically can’t sell, buy, earn, etc during the sentence. In most cases that would destroy it. In extreme cases it should be executed (disbanded).

  source

  • assassin_aragorn@lemmy.world ⁨1⁩ ⁨year⁩ ago

    Another good point of distinction – they aren’t chasing the highest profits, they’re chasing the highest short term profits. There is no universe where the cost of a massive failure is less than the cost of proper safety measures for instance, but because the execs don’t care about the long run, they’ll cut safety for temporary profit. They aren’t running these companies to be sustainable, but to squeeze as much value out as quickly as they can.

    It’s a giant fucking shame, because focusing on the long run would actually be way more employee and environmentally friendly.

    source