AI is only effective if used sparingly and cautiously by someone with domain knowledge who can identify the tasks (usually menial ones) that don’t need a human touch.
Companies That Tried to Save Money With AI Are Now Spending a Fortune Hiring People to Fix Its Mistakes
Submitted 5 days ago by tonytins@pawb.social to technology@lemmy.world
https://futurism.com/companies-fixing-ai-replacement-mistakes
Comments
jsomae@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
derpgon@programming.dev 5 days ago
This 1000x. I am a PHP developer, I found out about two months ago that the AI assistant is included in my Jetbrains subscription (All pack, it was a separate thing before). And recently found about Junie, their AI agent that has deep thinking (or whatever the hell it is called). I tried it the same day to refactor part of my test that had to migrated to stop using a deprecated function call.
To my surprise, it required only very minor changes, but what would’ve taken me about 3 hours was done in half an hour. What I also liked was that it actually asked if it can run a terminal command to verify thr test results and it went back and fixed a broken test or two.
Finally I have faith in AI being useful to programmers.
For a test, I took our dev exam (for potential candidates) and just sent it to see what it does just based on the document, and besides a few mistakes it even used modern tools and not some 5 year old stuff (like PSR standards) and implemented core systems by itself using well known interfaces (from said PSRs). I asked it to change Dependency Injection to use Symfony DI instead of the self-made thing, and it worked flawlessly.
Of course, the code has to be reviewed or heavily specified to make sure it does what it is told to, but all in all it doesn’t look like just a gimmick anymore.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Absolutely, this matches my experience. I think this is also the experience of most coders who willingly use AI. I feel bad for the people who are forced to use it by their companies. And those who are laid off because of C-levels who think AI is capable of replacing an experienced coder.
vivalapivo@lemmy.today 5 days ago
it doesn’t look like just a gimmick anymore.
It still does 😞
Awkwardparticle@programming.dev 4 days ago
The biggest point is that you must be an expert in the field you are using it in. I rarely get fooled by hallucinations and stupid bugs because they are glaringly obvious to me. The best use case is having the llm write code for using a library that has poor documentation, that am going to use once, and I am too lazy to learn. These tools are scary when used by juniors, they are creating more work for everyone by using llms to code. I just imagine myself using this when I was a fresh grad, it is terrifying. It would have only been one step up from vibe coding.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
I feel so bad for recent grads. First COVID then AI/LLMs, it’s such a bad time to be starting out. I feel so fortunate that I’m well into my career and can use AI responsibly without having to worry too much about it.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
may well be a Gell-Mann amnesia simulator when used improperly.
systemglitch@lemmy.world 2 days ago
AI now offers to post my ads for me on Kijiji. I provide pictures and it has been accurate on price, condition, category and description. I have a lot of shit to sell and was dreading it, but this use removes the biggest barrier for me getting it done.
Even helped me figure out some things I was struggling to find online for reference. Saved me at least an hour of tedium yesterday.
Excellent use case.
Vinstaal0@feddit.nl 5 days ago
Some good examples from the bookkeeping/accounting industry is automating the matching of payments to the invoices and using AI to extract and process invoices.
ipkpjersi@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
This is the best description of AI I’ve seen so far.
jsomae@lemmy.ml 4 days ago
In the situation outlined, it can be pretty effective.
rozodru@lemmy.world 5 days ago
As someone who has been a consultant/freelance dev for over 20 years now this is true. Lately I’ve been getting offers and contacts from places to essentially clean up the mess from LLMs/AI.
A lot of is pretty bad. It’s a mess. But like I said I’ve been at it for awhile and I’ve seen this before when companies were offshoring anything and everything to India and surprise, surprise, they didn’t learn anything. It’s literally the exact same thing. Instead of an Indian guy that claims they know everything and will work for peanuts, it’s AI pretty much stating the same shit.
I’ve been getting so many requests for gigs I’ve been hitting up random out of work devs on linkedin in my city and referring the jobs to them. I’ve burned through all my contacts that now I’m just reaching out to absolute strangers to get them work.
yes it’s that bad.
MangoCats@feddit.it 5 days ago
We’ve hired a bunch of Indian guys who are using AI to do their work… the results are marginally better than either approach independently.
Saleh@feddit.org 5 days ago
a negative times a negative is a positive?
merc@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Absent Indians using AI? The AI ouroboros?
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Retired dev here, I’m curious about the nature of the mess. Is it buggy AI-generated code that got into production? I know an active dev who uses ChatGTP every day, says it saves him a hell of a lot of work. What he does sounds like “vibe coding”, and as long as you just use AI for grunt work and keep a human is in the workflow to verify the code, I don’t see how it would differ from junior devs working under a senior. Have some companies been using poorly managed all-AI tools or what?
GojuRyu@lemmy.world 5 days ago
An example from work a few weeks ago. I fixed some vibe coded UI code that had made it to prod. The layout of the UI was basically just meant to be an easy overview of information relevant to an item. The LLM had done everything right except it assumed a weird mix of tailwind and bootstrap, mixing and matching css classes from both. After I implemented the classes myself it went from a single column view to grids and nested grids grouping the data intuitively. I talked with the dev who implemented it, and basically it was just something quickly cobbled together with AI until it was passable. The AI had added a lot of extra that served no function and that didn’t conform to a single css framework, but looked like it could. For months noone questioned it despite talk about that part of the UI needing a facelift.
I don’t know how representative it is, but about half the time I’m thoroughly confused about a piece of code and why it was written the way it was, the answer has turned out to be AI. And unlike when a developer wrote it, there rarely is any reason to have written it the weird way.
rozodru@lemmy.world 4 days ago
essentially, from what I’ve been dealing with, most if it is their offshore people using the AI to completely do the job from start to finish and no one is verifying anything. So it’s not even vibe coding, it’s “here’s a prompt, build it, i’m pushing it to production” coding.
Knock_Knock_Lemmy_In@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Think of AI as a hard working, arrogant, knowledgeable, unimaginative junior intern.
The vibe coding is great for small, self contained tasks. It doesn’t scale to a codebase (yet?).
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
They learned that by the time all of their shitty decisions ruin everything, they’ll be able to bail with their golden parachute while everyone else has to deal with the fallout.
Grimy@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I imagine you aren’t talking about large companies that just let ai loose in their code base. Are these like companies that fired half their staff and realized llms couldn’t make up for the difference, or small companies that tried to make new apps without a proper team and came up short?
rozodru@lemmy.world 4 days ago
primarily medium to large companies. the smaller startups seem to know better. the former laid off a bunch of staff and in most cases offshored the work to people who ONLY use AI to build things. A few rare cases it’s been a Project Manager who paid for a Claude.ai subscription and had it build things from start to finish then push to production. If I see something that has a gradient background I know they had Claude build it.
Landless2029@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Sounds like you need to start a company and per diem staff.
Two9A@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Would you happen to be willing to throw work to random out-of-work devs who aren’t in your city? I may know a couple over here in England…
traceur301@lemmy.blahaj.zone 5 days ago
Send them my way! I’m freelance currently and good at cleaning up that kind of stuff
dependencyinjection@discuss.tchncs.de 5 days ago
Throw us some work if you like, although I already work as software engineer but wouldn’t turn down a side gig cleaning up after LLMs.
spankmonkey@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Sometimes it is a bunch of Indian guys pretending to be AI!
ICastFist@programming.dev 4 days ago
How much is the pay for those gigs?
ArchmageAzor@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Vibe coding is 5% asking for code and 95% cleaning up the code, turns out replacing people with AI is exactly the same.
Peerpeer@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Jup. But the same goes for developers that go way too fast when setting up a project or library. 2-3 months in and everything is a mess. Weird function names, all one letter vars, no inversion of control, hardcoded things etc. Good luck fixing it.
gravitas_deficiency@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
This is what I fight against every goddamn day, and I get yelled at for fighting against it, but I’m not going to stop. I want to build shit that I can largely forget about (because, you know, it’s reliable and logically extensible and maintainable) after it gets to a mature state, and I’m not shy about making that known. This has led to more than a few significant conflicts over the course of my career. It has also led to me saying “I fucking told you so” more than a few times.
MangoCats@feddit.it 5 days ago
Stack Exchange coding is 5% finding solutions to try and 95% copy-pasting those solutions into your project, discovering why they don’t work for you, and trying the next solution on the search list.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I’m still not sure how this is any different than when I used stack exchange for exactly the same thing.
Well, SE code usually compiled and did what it said. I guess that part is different.
Saleh@feddit.org 5 days ago
Practically negligible then…
However how the heck have you all been using stack exchange? My questions are typically something along the lines of:
“How to use a numpy mask with pandas dataframes”
Not something that gives me 50 lines of code.
iAvicenna@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Ah so AI does create jobs, it’s the Zorg logic
GaMEChld@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Jean-Baptiste
Emmanuel
Zorg
cyrano@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
millie@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
Pretty damn good jobs too, tbh.
logicbomb@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Same thing happened with companies that used outsourcing expecting it to be a magic bullet.
otacon239@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I worked in one of these companies. Within months, we went from a company I would be proud to recommend to friends to a service I would never use myself, just due to the horrendous route they took to hire overseas support.
The line of tech work I was in required about a month of training after passing the interview process, and even then you had to take a test at the end to prove you’d absorbed the material before you ever spoke to a customer.
When they outsourced, they just bought a company of like 30 people in an adjacent industry and gave them a week of training. Our call queues were never worse and every customer was angry with everyone by the time they talked to someone who had training.
I don’t blame the overseas agents. I blame all the companies that treat them like cattle.
expatriado@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Or more generalized: management going all in in their decisions, forgetting there is a sweet spot for everything, and then backtracking losing employee time and company money. Sometimes these cause huge backlash, like Wells Fargo pushy sales practices, or great loses, Meta going all in on Metaverse
Jhuskindle@lemmy.world 4 days ago
Same thing happened during the outsourcing craze of early 2000s. Everything and I mean everything moved to India or Philippines. There’s even a movie about it because it was so common. I and everyone else lost our jobs. about a year later the contracts expired and we all got jobs back and outsourcing is used in balance. Eventually ai use will be balanced I hope. It cannot replace us. Not yet anyways.
skozzii@lemmy.ca 4 days ago
AI needs to be used as a tool for workers, not a replacement for workers. They will figure it out.
jjjalljs@ttrpg.network 5 days ago
All the leadership who made this mistake should be fired. They are clearly incompetent
But i guess it’s always labor that pays the price
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
What’s sad is that the AI hype did inflate stock prices.
Most c suite’ job is to look out for the interests of investors.
Technically they did a good job. I hate capitalism
0x0@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
The power to fire lies within the leadership themselves though…
Oh, you mean an actual fire?! I like your way of thinking.
Tollana1234567@lemmy.today 5 days ago
thats because the main peddlers are the ceo/csuites of these tech companies, and the customers arnt people like you or me, its other corporate heads. in case of palintir it would be the government.
psycho_driver@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Let them burn.
AnotherPenguin@programming.dev 5 days ago
Deserved and expected
some_guy@lemmy.sdf.org 5 days ago
Companies with stupid leaders deserve to fail.
Lost_My_Mind@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Well what ends up happening is some company will have a CEO.
He’ll make all the stupid decisions. But they’re only stupid from everybody ELSES perspective.
From his perspective, he uses AI, tanks the companies future in the chase of large short term stock gains. Then he gives himself a huge bonus, leaves the company, gets hired somewhere else, and gets to say “See how that company is failing without me? That’s because I bring value to the brand.”
So he gets hired at the neeeext place, meanwhile that first company is failing because of the actions of a CEO no longer employed there, and whom bailed because he knew what was coming.
These actions aren’t stupid. They’re plotted corruption for the benefit of one.
AnarchistArtificer@slrpnk.net 5 days ago
What’s really stupid about this cycle is that some of these fail-upward executives genuinely believe the crap they’re spewing. Weirdly, I think I respect the grifting executives more
The_v@lemmy.world 5 days ago
No that never happens /S
I used to work with a supplier that hired a former Monsanto executive as their CEO. When his first agenda came out I told their sales team them they were idiots to have fun looking for a new job a few months.
The CEO bailed after 2 years to start his own “consulting business.”
1 year later the company lost 75% of their market share and was laying off people left and right. They are still afloat barely.
After a couple years “consulting”, the CEO went to another company in 2023. He didn’t bounce fast enough and got caught on this one. He was fired 2 weeks ago and the company shut their doors except for a handful of staff to facilitate the firesale of the companies assets.
reluctant_squidd@lemmy.ca 5 days ago
The even brighter side of it is that it should be easier to spot these companies when job hunting.
IMO: Demand higher wages and iron clad contracts from them because they already demonstrated how they feel about paying people.
They’ll surely cut anyone they can again as soon as they can.
TuffNutzes@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Very expected. It’s fine. I’ll come back at 10 times my previous rate. And you’ll thank me for it.
KbSez@piefed.social 5 days ago
no surprise
bridgeenjoyer@sh.itjust.works 4 days ago
Hope they lose billions!!
_haha_oh_wow_@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
AI: The new outsourcing?
TankovayaDiviziya@lemmy.world 5 days ago
McNamara fallacy at its finest. They hear figures and potential savings and then jump into the hype without considering the context. It is the same when they heard of lean manufacturing or Toyota way. Companies thought it is cost saving rather than process improvement.
Phoenix3875@lemmy.world 5 days ago
The BBC report cited mainly focused on the marketing industry, with the fixing mistake people being the copywriters. This gives a strong vibe of Madman, where you have the “old-fashioned” copywriters and the tension between market research.
devolution@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Kinda like Wal-Mart trying to “save money” with self check out and now they are walking it back.
Sludgehammer@lemmy.world 5 days ago
At least in my area they’ve decided to walk back the walk back.
They went from “Self checkouts are now only for ten items or less” to “Self checkouts are permanently closed” and now they’ve gone to “Self checkouts can be used for any number of items and also we added four more”.
redsunrise@programming.dev 5 days ago
I wonder if there’s a market here. I feel like a company that cleans up AI bullshit would make bank lol
MagicShel@lemmy.zip 5 days ago
You son of a bitch, I’m in!
Nah, I came here to make this comment and you already have it well in hand. It’s not really any different other than the marketing spin, though. Companies have always had bad code and hired specialists to sort it out. And over half of the specialists suck, too, and so the merry-go-round spins.
fluxion@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Oh noes, who could have seen this coming
oppy1984@lemdro.id 5 days ago
What these companies didn’t take the time to understand is, A.I. is a tool to make employees more efficient, not to replace them. Sadly the vast majority of these companies will also fail to learn this lesson now and will get rid of A.I. systems altogether rather than use them properly.
When I write a document for my employer I use A.I. as a research and planning assistant, not as the writer. I still put in the work writing the document, I just use A.I. to simplify the tedious data gathering and organizing.
LovableSidekick@lemmy.world 5 days ago
And no doubt struggling to blame their bad decisions on each other and preserve their salary bonuses.
Mushroomm@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
They should have just asked me. I knew that would be the result years ago. Writing has been on the screaming wall of faces
JoMiran@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
AI: Confidently Incorrect
funkyfarmington@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Yet their reputations will somehow never return…
vala@lemmy.world 5 days ago
Hiring people at lower wages that is.
MisterNeon@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I hope this is true. I would like to have a job again.
kescusay@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It’s true, although the smart companies aren’t laying off workers in the first place, because they’re treating AI as a tool to enhance their productivity rather than a tool to replace them.
ShittyBeatlesFCPres@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I don’t know if it even helps with productivity that much. A lot of bosses think developers’ entire job is just churning out code when it’s actually like 50% coding and 50% listening to stakeholders, planning, collaborating with designers, etc. I mean, it’s fine for a quick Python script or whatever but that might save an experienced developer 20 minutes max.
And if you “write” me an email using Chat GPT and I just read a summary, what is the fucking point? All the nuance is lost. Specialized A.I. is great! I’m all for it combing through giant astronomy data sets or protein folding and stuff like that. But I don’t know that I’ve seen generative A.I. without a specific focus increase productivity very much.
Photuris@lemmy.ml 5 days ago
Productivity will go up, wages will remain the same, and no additional time off will be given to employees. They’ll merely be required to produce 4x as much and compensation will not increase to match.
It seems the point of all these machines and automation isn’t to make our individual lives easier and more prosperous, but instead to increase and maximize shareholder value.
pelespirit@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Does anyone have numbers on that? Microsoft just announced they’re laying off around 10k.
Grandwolf319@sh.itjust.works 5 days ago
Idk about engaging productivity.
If your job is just doing a lot of trivial code that just gets used once, yeah I can see it improving productivity.
If your job is more tackling the least trivial challenges and constantly needing to understand the edge cases or uncharted waters of the framework/tool/language, it’s completely useless.
This is why you get a lot of newbies loving AI and a lot of seniors saying it’s counter productive.
burgerpocalyse@lemmy.world 5 days ago
jobs are for suckers, be a consultant and charge triple
MisterNeon@lemmy.world 5 days ago
I’m absolutely not charismatic enough to pull that off.
yggstyle@lemmy.world 5 days ago
It’s technically closer to Schrodinger’s truth. It goes both ways depending on “when” you look at it. Publicly traded companies are more or less expected to adopt AI as it is the next “cheap” labor… so long as it is the cheapest of any option. See the very related: slave labor and it’s variants, child labor, and “outsourcing” to “less developed” countries.
The problem is they need to dance between this experimental technology and … having a publicly “functional” company. The line demands you cut costs but also increase service. So basically overcorrection hell. Mass hirings into mass firings. Every quarter / two quarters depending on the company… until one of two things becomes true: ai works or ai no longer is the cheapest solution. I imagine that will rubberband for quite some time. (saas shit like oracle etc)
In short - I’d not expect this to be more than a brief reprieve from a rapidly drying well. Take advantage of it for now - but I’d recommend not expecting it to remain.
CosmicTurtle0@lemmy.dbzer0.com 5 days ago
The line demands it go up. It doesn’t care how you get there. In many cases, decreasing service while also cutting costs is the way to do it so long as line goes up.
See: enshittification