I attended a library vendor AI demo/upsell today and I wish I could explain to them that everything they are selling could be achieved by hiring like two more people in our library
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I'm saying something almost exactly like this in a presentation I'm giving in a few weeks. Would you mind sharing some specific thoughts on this so that I can cite you instead of just saying "think about it, you know I'm right"?
And yet this entire team was dedicated to exploring, developing, packaging and marketing a tool that would need constant updating to use the latest models, at unstable pricing because nothing can be predicted as far as costs, using ridiculous amount of resources…all for what? Two people?
See: a demo of a cataloging tool that was supposed to use image analysis to create basic catalog records that assigned different format library terms to the same file formats but identified a 20th c tuberculosis sanatarium patient record as a mid 19th c Freedman's Bureau record with "86% confidence"
Exactly. I wouldn't even mind if they pitched it as "this isn't ready for prime time but if you help us test it we will either pay you or give you a strep discount when it is" bc in our case at least it's ITHAKA but my god
What I'm hearing is that your management can reduce staffing costs by 4 FTEs just by purchasing a couple more licenses! wOn'T sOmEoNe PlEaSe ThInK oF tHe sAvInGs!!!
And you never know when the company could go under or they just stop updating it and discontinue it in such a way that it is bricked completely. Or they start demanding your patrons data.
I spent a hot minute in like 2010 working for a company selling tabletop restaurant ordering devices and I won’t claim that I made a great moral leap when I figured that getting single moms fired who worked for less than minimum wage plus tips was bad. But it was
For cheaper!! Because people have to eat regardless of if you pay them whereas AI companies go out of business and stop doing whatever they’re doing and the founders just live off their trust funds for a while or whatever
They likely know this and also are capitalizing on admin/org/government resistance to ever creating and filling new positions. Hell, we can't even get retirees and promoted folks replaced.
The problem with the drive toward AI implementation in the majority of scenarios where it makes less sense than just hiring a few more skilled people, is that decision makers are being influenced (or outright coerced) into AI adoption by shortsighted Accelerationists who just want to replace people.
I'm very sympathetic to the post-scarcity thing where it's feasible, but it requires that 1) the new labor-saving technologies be free and open source, and 2) that all the efficiencies be passed onto either consumers, or workers through shorter hours for the same pay, and not enclosed for rents.
They’re either true believers in Accelerationism and the ‘AI Singularity’ like Musk, Thiel, et al, or they’re simply convinced that the most efficient way to grow their wealth is by replacing the people that don’t look like them (and who they’ve never understood how to control) with AI.
Most of the decision making isn’t driven by “what is best for the end user or consumer in the short- or longterm”, it’s driven by “what is best for the organisation’s short term bottom-line or the decision maker’s personal wealth”.
We are fighting a class war against people that worship technology.
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(Or something like that. QuoteAI might not have gotten it exactly right.)
We are fighting a class war against people that worship technology.