Submitted 7 months ago by L4s@lemmy.world [bot] to technology@lemmy.world
https://www.businessinsider.com/google-lay-offs-voice-assistant-bard-roles-contractors-2023-11
Google lays off employees working on its voice assistant::Up to 20 employees working on Google’s Assistant team have been cut.
I’m sorry, I don’t understand. But would you like to hear why employees working on its voice assistant are being played off by Google?
I’m about to throw my google speakers away at this point. I feel like they are becoming more and more useless. Voice commands used to work fine, but lately this is a standard occurance.
“Hey google, turn on the kitchen lights.”
“I’m sorry. It looks like that device hasn’t been set up yet.”
“Hey google, turn on the kitchen lights.”
“Power controls are not available at this time.”
“Hey google, turn on the kitchen lights”
…lights turn on…
Alexa is the same and used to work fine. My favorite is “Alexa, turn on the fan” turns on the fan in my mother’s room but “Alexa, turn off the fan”correctly turns off the fan in my bedroom. I ended up getting a HomePod and using home assistant to add all my devices to HomeKit. Shit on Siri all you want but at least she can turn the right devices on and off and on first try.
same. throwing out my speakers as they understand less each day as it feels. now its only a clap light switch and everything else, i at least have to ask 2 times
I’ve never before been so glad to read about someone else’s misfortune. Mine have been doing this for MONTHS and I thought it was just me imagining things
Unplugged mine last week. Fuck em.
Every time I hear about some proprietary thing getting effectively bricked by the company that sold them so they don’t have to support them forever, I wonder “what did you think was going to happen?”
Even worse, they laid them off by having the voice assistant call to inform them.
“Would you like to reply?”
“… I don’t know, but here’s what I found on the web.”
Google replaced them with Google Assistant. It can now take care of its own development.
It’s like Skynet is The Wizard of Oz, but really it’s just Clippy behind the curtain.
Not sure why you’re being down voted. It’s certainly possible they’ve gotten to a point where Bard can handle what 20% of staff were doing.
The AI itself is downvoting
I hope it’s the one’s who decided to make it so sensitive. I don’t need to be lectured by a fucking robot when I tell it to fuck off. I didn’t mean to summon it in the first place now it’s just going to take longer to go away.
This is the best summary I could come up with:
Google has laid off a handful of employees who worked on its voice assistant, Insider has learned.
The total number of affected employees could not be learned, but the internal document claimed up to 20 individual contributors were laid off.
The document is compiled by employees and collates information posted internally and externally about job cuts.
Google previously announced its plans to overhaul its Assistant with features powered by generative AI, some of which have begun rolling out.
In August, the company said it would eliminate “a small number” of roles as part of the renewed focus.
Contact reporter Hugh Langley at hlangley@protonmail.com or on the encrypted messaging apps Signal and Telegram at +1 (628) 228-1836.
The original article contains 326 words, the summary contains 116 words. Saved 64%. I’m a bot and I’m open source!
Just got this blog article in my email from Google, might shed some more light as to why this layoffs happened.
malloc@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Seems like all Fortune 500 companies are laying off 5-10% of their staff every year to pump end of year report.
Have seen cuts across multiple industries. Not just tech.
andallthat@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Have seen that too. The canned press release from all of them is something like “as part of our continued effort to make the org more efficient we have aggregated tram X with team Y and as a result a handful of roles were no longer needed. Our company remains focused and confident in our growth”. Has AI taken over the PR department too?
From what I can see, this is not even about individual performance. It looks like a continuous game of musical chair where an entire team here and there is suddenly decimated or completely removed with non-existent internal communication.
flamingo_pinyata@sopuli.xyz 7 months ago
They find it easier/cheaper to lay off a bunch of people and then hire again.
Hiring costs for new people don’t factor in financial reports apparently.
Sir_Kevin@lemmy.dbzer0.com 7 months ago
The bigger the company, the more they see people as just a headcount. Your performance doesn’t matter, your name is unknown, you’re not even a number, you are 1 of x number of y’s.
malloc@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Most of f500 is overrated. At a certain point, only driving the stonk is the main motivator to do anything.
surewhynotlem@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Gotta love the stock market. It incentivizes gaming the numbers like this
malloc@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Pump the stonk 📈🚀🌕
TheDarkKnight@lemmy.world 7 months ago
My company hasn’t! Fingers crossed!🤞
malloc@lemmy.world 7 months ago
Good luck