UK Politics

[steviewevie]

I am very much an AI sceptic. Think the disadvantages outweigh the advantages. And the fact that it seems to be this unstoppable thing so we have to get ready for it such a wtf...

[steviewevie]

Streeting for PM

etc

https://www.theguardian.com/politics/2026/may/20/burnham-to-back-shabana-mahmoods-immigration-changes-allies-say

[Ryan1984]

Not sure shouting abuse at a woman deserves to be celebrated, but that’s the country Reform want.

[Crazyfool01]

My prediction , I try to remain optimistic ....Farage has f**ked it and stands down in next month or so ... 23rd June would be great NIge the anniversary of him f**king us over and my 50th , then gets arrested and blames the establishment . Labour get second term with Burnham as PM 

[mattiloy]

15 hours ago, lost said:

 

Must be building all those datacentres for shits and giggles.

What are you on about? Building datacentres leads to broad unemployment? Or what’s your point?
 

AI as it is today is largely making white collar workers more productive rather than making them redundant. If a company becomes more productive it’s revenues will grow, if it’s growing it’s more likely to hire than fire.

[lost]

8 hours ago, mattiloy said:

If a company becomes more productive it’s revenues will grow, if it’s growing it’s more likely to hire than fire.

 

Its going to increase its costs unnecessarily? Whilst another company that purely uses AI will have lower labour costs and therefore be able to supply the goods or services cheaper than the company thats just hiring because its making money. Doesn't take a genius to work out what happens to that company. 

[steviewevie]

Burnham looking like continuity Starmer, Streeting talking about rejoin and a wealth tax.

Burnham for PM. 

[steviewevie]

Just now, lost said:

 

Its going to increase its costs unnecessarily? Whilst another company that purely uses AI will have lower labour costs and therefore be able to supply the goods or services cheaper than the company thats just hiring because its making money. Doesn't take a genius to work out what happens to that company. 

There's two ways this could go, AI replaces people, or AI becomes another tool and changes how people work.

 

I expect it will be a bit of both. I know in my work there are some people very keen on getting on top of using AI. Being an jaded, old grump I can't really be arsed with it....talking to this stupid thing and it responding like it's my mate.

[steviewevie]

 

[lost]

15 minutes ago, steviewevie said:

There's two ways this could go, AI replaces people, or AI becomes another tool and changes how people work.

 

I expect it will be a bit of both. I know in my work there are some people very keen on getting on top of using AI. Being an jaded, old grump I can't really be arsed with it....talking to this stupid thing and it responding like it's my mate.

 

Its changing how people work now and then the next iteration is to replace people. If one person using AI can do the same work as 10 without it then the company then doesn't need 9 people.

 

I think a good example is the outsouring since the 2000's. In the same way a chinese or Indian worker is cheaper than a British worker an AI agent will be cheaper than any human worker. Those companies didn't keep their factories open in the north of England because "they were making money" What instead happened was the cost of those goods and services collapsed for consumers.

Edited May 21 by lost

[steviewevie]

2 minutes ago, lost said:

 

Its changing how people work now and then the next iteration is to replace people. If one person using AI can do the same work as 10 without it then the company then doesn't need 9 people.

 

I think a good example is the outsouring since the 2000's. In the same way a chinese or Indian worker is cheaper than a British worker an AI agent will be cheaper than any human worker. Those companies didn't keep their factories open in the north of England because "they were making money"

I guess there's going to be a lot of plumbers, care workers, teachers etc...until the robots replace them too.

 

Or maybe someone, somewhere has a rethink on this...progress isn't always good...but they won't because $$$.

[mattiloy]

40 minutes ago, lost said:

 

Its going to increase its costs unnecessarily? Whilst another company that purely uses AI will have lower labour costs and therefore be able to supply the goods or services cheaper than the company thats just hiring because its making money. Doesn't take a genius to work out what happens to that company. 

 

AI is a tool, not an employee.

 

Put it like this - say you have like in the case of meta a load of programmers whose job suddenly got loads easier because generative AI is able to do much of the drone work of writing programs for them. At the moment you hire the programmers, or indeed anyone, because they presumably generate more income than they get paid.

 

Lets say you have 5 of those programmers get paid 100 dollars an hour but generate 150 dollars an hour. Your costs are 500 dollars and their output is worth 750 dollars.

 

Suddenly the programmers are say 5 times quicker, 5 times more productive, their deliveries increase 5 fold.

 

So suddenly each programmer is getting paid 100 dollars but generating 750 dollars.

 

You could sack 4 programmers and you would be generating 750 from your one remaining. Your profit is 650 dollars.

 

Or you could keep all programmers and generate 3750 at a cost of 500 dollars. Your profit is 3250.

 

Which is better?
 

The only time when AI should lead to job cuts is where the job is able to be completely automated by AI and those employees can’t be reskilled and put to work on something else. This is not the case for most white collar jobs.

Edited May 21 by mattiloy

[gary1979666]

48 minutes ago, mattiloy said:

 

AI is a tool, not an employee.

 

Put it like this - say you have like in the case of meta a load of programmers whose job suddenly got loads easier because generative AI is able to do much of the drone work of writing programs for them. At the moment you hire the programmers, or indeed anyone, because they presumably generate more income than they get paid.

 

Lets say you have 5 of those programmers get paid 100 dollars an hour but generate 150 dollars an hour. Your costs are 500 dollars and their output is worth 750 dollars.

 

Suddenly the programmers are say 5 times quicker, 5 times more productive, their deliveries increase 5 fold.

 

So suddenly each programmer is getting paid 100 dollars but generating 750 dollars.

 

You could sack 4 programmers and you would be generating 750 from your one remaining. Your profit is 650 dollars.

 

Or you could keep all programmers and generate 3750 at a cost of 500 dollars. Your profit is 3250.

 

Which is better?
 

The only time when AI should lead to job cuts is where the job is able to be completely automated by AI and those employees can’t be reskilled and put to work on something else. This is not the case for most white collar jobs.

 

I get what you're getting at, but it assumes infinite demand. With the efficiencies made by the AI, there may only be the capacity in the market for the work of 3 of your programmers.  Then a year down the line, the efficiencies have it down to 2.

 

I work in finance in industry and can see jobs disappears over the next few years with AI.  It'll start with a lot of the data entry type roles - with e-invoicing, OCR, mobile expense tools, general automation - some roles will stay to oversee it, but way fewer handle turners.  Then the middle layer of Excel monkeys producing reports with shrink.  You'll still have the higher level roles, but quiet what the career path will be to those roles, when there's hardly any jobs for the grads at the base level.

[lost]

1 hour ago, mattiloy said:

 

AI is a tool, not an employee.

 

The internet is just HTML - 1995

 

Quote

Put it like this - say you have like in the case of meta a load of programmers whose job suddenly got loads easier because generative AI is able to do much of the drone work of writing programs for them. At the moment you hire the programmers, or indeed anyone, because they presumably generate more income than they get paid.

 

Lets say you have 5 of those programmers get paid 100 dollars an hour but generate 150 dollars an hour. Your costs are 500 dollars and their output is worth 750 dollars.

 

Suddenly the programmers are say 5 times quicker, 5 times more productive, their deliveries increase 5 fold.

 

So suddenly each programmer is getting paid 100 dollars but generating 750 dollars.

 

You could sack 4 programmers and you would be generating 750 from your one remaining. Your profit is 650 dollars.

 

Or you could keep all programmers and generate 3750 at a cost of 500 dollars. Your profit is 3250.

 

So using your example before AI companies would look to hire infinite number of programmers because profit is always there. This clearly isn't the case. What your missing is demand. Companies need a certain number of programmers based on the demand for their service from the consumer, the consumer will migrate to the company that offers that service for the cheapest price hence the one with the lowest cost base. 

Edited May 21 by lost

[steviewevie]

Good effort Shabana

 

[steviewevie]

 

[steviewevie]

[kaosmark2]

3 hours ago, gary1979666 said:

 

I get what you're getting at, but it assumes infinite demand. With the efficiencies made by the AI, there may only be the capacity in the market for the work of 3 of your programmers.  Then a year down the line, the efficiencies have it down to 2.

 

I work in finance in industry and can see jobs disappears over the next few years with AI.  It'll start with a lot of the data entry type roles - with e-invoicing, OCR, mobile expense tools, general automation - some roles will stay to oversee it, but way fewer handle turners.  Then the middle layer of Excel monkeys producing reports with shrink.  You'll still have the higher level roles, but quiet what the career path will be to those roles, when there's hardly any jobs for the grads at the base level.

The issue is that while AI can do the work of 5 junior employees, someone can only develop the skills to become a more senior employee by doing that junior grunt work. And the AI has to be overseen by someone with experience.

 

We're going to have 3-10 years of fewer jobs, then a panic in the market when there aren't enough skilled people to actually oversee things.

[Crazyfool01]

really massively conflicted over Labour Party they are clearly doing some good , but really struggling with some of the other shite they do .... demonising migrants etc and falling into reform playbook .... the above graph shows I think that they need to appeal more to the left as thats where the vote is going , Id do anything to stop reform though and realise that ill never feel like every policy suits me 

[kaosmark2]

3 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

really massively conflicted over Labour Party they are clearly doing some good , but really struggling with some of the other shite they do .... demonising migrants etc and falling into reform playbook .... the above graph shows I think that they need to appeal more to the left as thats where the vote is going , Id do anything to stop reform though and realise that ill never feel like every policy suits me 

I'm not in the slightest bit conflicted. They're just straight up evil now. 

 

I never thought I would miss Theresa May for her treatment of migrants and minorities.

[gary1979666]

6 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

The issue is that while AI can do the work of 5 junior employees, someone can only develop the skills to become a more senior employee by doing that junior grunt work. And the AI has to be overseen by someone with experience.

 

We're going to have 3-10 years of fewer jobs, then a panic in the market when there aren't enough skilled people to actually oversee things.

Exactly the point I was making.  Can see it happening in so many fields - law, labs, HR, finance, general admin, ...

[Crazyfool01]

2 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

I'm not in the slightest bit conflicted. They're just straight up evil now. 

 

I never thought I would miss Theresa May for her treatment of migrants and minorities.

conflicted in that the tories / reform are umpteen times worse ...... greens would be my vote policy wise but the media will absolutely ruin them by the time of next election .... ill end up back as Lib Dem no doubt as thats choice in my area .... The tory party never had a single policy that appealed 

[kaosmark2]

3 minutes ago, Crazyfool01 said:

conflicted in that the tories / reform are umpteen times worse ...... greens would be my vote policy wise but the media will absolutely ruin them by the time of next election .... ill end up back as Lib Dem no doubt as thats choice in my area .... The tory party never had a single policy that appealed 

Doesn't matter, they've crossed at least 5 red lines for me. They are evil, and I will call them evil. I'm not going vote for evil.

 

Labour are worse than Theresa May and Iain Duncan Smith on treatment of minorities. Immigrants, the disabled, queer people, all of these were treated better by the government 10 years ago, which introduced "go home" vans and got called out by Amnesty.

 

I don't care that the Overton window has shifted this much that this is what's expected, I will not stop calling out Labour for being straight up evil.

[lost]

14 minutes ago, kaosmark2 said:

The issue is that while AI can do the work of 5 junior employees, someone can only develop the skills to become a more senior employee by doing that junior grunt work. And the AI has to be overseen by someone with experience.

 

We're going to have 3-10 years of fewer jobs, then a panic in the market when there aren't enough skilled people to actually oversee things.

 

Sadly that sort of thing has been happening in IT with outsourcing for 25 years. Alot of the entry level positions went out to India in the 2000's. Even when the mid-level roles remained, If a career is the rungs of the ladder and you remove the 1st and 2nd then if company A needs someone to move from the 2nd to the 3rd rung they can argue they can't find anyone on the 2nd here and so bring someone over on a work permit. 

 

When I retired in my mid-40's I was the youngest person in the team and the youngest in the last 3 jobs I took.

[steviewevie]

Labour are basically satanist fascists.