Define stupid: https://www.google.com/search?q=shopify+financials
MangoCats
joined 2 months ago
Vibe management (and investment) is a time honored tradition. It brings you such magnificent results as Theranos.
We hit rock bottom a long time ago: https://dealbreaker.com/2007/10/icahn-explains-why-are-there-so-many-idiots-running-shit It takes power tools to make progress in the bedrock.
Well, first the CEO is asking for proof of a negative, so anyone with a logical brain cell just has to shake their head and repeat "it's for the paycheck."
We can assume CEO means "show me you tried to use AI and it's not working well enough," which isn't all that bad of a directive but it's got the huge gaps of "do your people really know how to use AI?" and "are they using the correct, latest versions of AI for the task they are attempting?" But, it may stand up a few use cases for AI that would have otherwise used expensive meat sacks to do what must be fairly boring rote recitation work if they can be adequately replaced by AI.
The problem comes when senseless metrics get pushed down that amount to: a certain number of AI projects must be greenlighted, regardless of how dreadful they are in practice.
AI is a tool, it can save labor, it can relieve human employees of tedious work, it can't do everything. All this "big personality" top level management of large and very large organizations with broad stroke metrics leads to mass stupidity when the underlings blindly follow orders, and I suspect - within its limitations - AI will always follow orders, so getting AI into middle management will only magnify the idiocrazy.
We are ants in an anthill. Gears in a machine. Act like it.
See Woody Allen in AntZ (1998 movie)
Adapt early instead of desperately forcing against it.
There should be a balance. Already today's world is desperately thrashing to "stay ahead of the curve" and putting outrageous investments into blind alleys that group-think believes is the "next big thing."
The reality of automation could be an abundance of what we need, easily available to all, with surplus resources available for all to share and contribute to as they wish - within limits, of course.
It's going to take some desperate forcing to get the resources distributed more widely than they currently are.
You’re using it wrong.
Your use case is different from mine.
Fast fashion (and everything else in the commercial marketplace) needs to start paying for their externalized costs - starting with landfill space, but also the pollution and possibly social supports that are going into the delivery of their products. But, then, people are stupid when it comes to fashion, they'll pay all kinds of premiums if it makes them look like their friends.
30 years ago I did a few months of 70 hour work weeks, 40 doing data entry in the day, then another 30 stocking grocery shelves in the evening - very different kinds of work and each was kind of a "vacation" from the other. Still got old quick, but it paid off the previous couple of months' travel / touring with no income.
That is also true, the cotton gin wasn't the total economic turning point, and the Civil War pre-dated automation's economic turning of the corner against some economic measures of slavery's cost, but slavery has very difficult to quantify costs, it was an entrenched lifestyle much more than a pool of day labor hanging out at Home Depot waiting for work, where both employers and employees could easily change their ways on very short notice.
After the Civil War it looks like "free person" cotton harvesting labor persisted until about 1926 - that could have changed earlier, but farm owners needed a kick in the butt to figure out how to improve:
https://www.printmag.com/creative-voices/lessons-from-cottons-slow-motion-robot-takeover/
Replacing people is a good thing.
Yes, and no: https://www.npr.org/2025/02/11/g-s1-47352/why-economists-got-free-trade-with-china-so-wrong
Imagine no possessions, I wonder if you can.